Controller holders, old metal shoe rack!?

[damageinc86]

Just wanted to share with everyone how I went about making my controller holders.  I have seen a few sites with controller holders that you can screw to the wall or your cab or something, but then I was just browsing through a few local thrift stores and had an idea when I saw an old metal shoe rack.  Well three different old metal shoe racks to be exact, and each one ended up being perfect for holding controllers.  With some coercing of course.

 

 

The cool thing about this shoe rack, which has one line from another rack just to show how it would look all together, is that the back of the metal rods are threaded and have wing nuts to easily secure it.  Not all of them have that apparently.

 

The bottom row's style (pointed) is what I used for my xbox 360 and xboxONE controller.  This one took a lot of bending, twisting, and pulling, to get a decent shape to hold them.  But it lent itself to that style of controller pretty well right off the bat.

 

 

 

The curved style row is what I used for my Gamecube controllers, and it was pretty much a direct fit.  All I had to do was make two simple bends to make it more level once the whole rod was screwed in to my board, that I then screwed in to my rackmount cabinet that has my computer in it. 

 

 

This is a side view of the Gamecube controller holder.  The first bend (left upper) had to be done in a vice, clamped down on the main thick rod, and over the flimsy spot welds where the small rods come out.  I learned the hard way that if you just yank at it without the spot weld area being secure, you just rip the rods right off, because they are barely tacked.

 

 

This is the third style of shoe rack I found, which I cut at the points labeled, and did some bending to hold a Dualshock Playstation controller.  Getting the "tongs" to bend just right to cradle each analog stick so the controller didn't fall out either side was difficult, but eventually I got it pretty good.  I did the half-circle bends in the cradle by using the circular part of my vice handle.  The part where the rod slides through back and forth so that you can tighten it.  That machined circle part was perfect for doing those bends by just pushing down around it.

 

Anyways, this is what it eventually came out to be.  I used some U brackets screwed up into my entertainment center.

 

 

And this is what everything looks like all mounted.

 

 

On the xbox controller row I added some black foam that I found off of a hanger at a store here called marshall's.  I think it was a hanger made for slacks, and it had this nice foam surrounding the metal.  Cut it down the center with an exacto knife and wrapped it around my metal, then sealed the seam with some contact cement.  This really helps to grip the xbox style controllers, and it's soft also.

The gamecube row I left it bare metal rod because it fits really nice as-is.

 

Since I have this audio rack cabinet, I got a strip of wood, cut spacers for in between the main piece of wood and the rack rails, so that it is flush.  Drilled some holes to screw into the audio rack, and also for the controller shoe rack to push through.  The wing nuts go on the back to hold the shoe rack nice and secure. 

 

So if you want to do a lot of bending, twisting, and some cutting, then find yourselves some old metal shoe racks, I am surprised that they would work this well, really pleased with how it turned out.  The best part is, the shoe racks were only like 2 bucks each, the pieces of wood were almost 3 bucks each, and the hangers with the foam on them were like 5 bucks i think.  Oh and I bought some pegboard tool holders for like 4 bucks just to get the blue rubber caps for the Playstation controller tips.  So all in all, really cheap for what you get out of it.

[hitchhikingflatlander]

Good idea and great way to reuse something.

[Agrajag]

Ingenious!