Well, I finally got around to organizing my hand planes. Instead of them being piled up under the workbench, I spent the time to build a plane rack to organize them. I got a 2'x4' piece of Baltic Birch ply and made some diveder strips from some leftover maple boards. I rounded the edges of the boards on both sides on the router table and then used my Grippper to cut 1/2" strips off. This was after planing the boards to 3/8" thick. I didn't bother sanding it except to get off the worst router burn marks and put a single coat of a wipe on varnish to protect the wood a little and bring out a little character. It seems to be working out pretty well and only took a couple evenings to complete.
I used sketchup to figure out how to lay things out after measuring each of the planes. The final layout deviated some from the sketchup drawing though. I found room for the router planes and shoulder planes as well.
Laying things out.
And finally I mounted it under the bench by laying one of the strips on its side glued to the bench to make a lip for it to rest against and I ran a 1" dowel through one back leg and into the other leg for the back of it to rest against. Seems to work pretty well.
Time will tell if gravity is enough to hold everything in place once I start banging on the bench or if I'm going to need to embed some magnets into the ply. It seems pretty sturdy with just gravity working for me.
- Ken.
I used sketchup to figure out how to lay things out after measuring each of the planes. The final layout deviated some from the sketchup drawing though. I found room for the router planes and shoulder planes as well.
Laying things out.
And finally I mounted it under the bench by laying one of the strips on its side glued to the bench to make a lip for it to rest against and I ran a 1" dowel through one back leg and into the other leg for the back of it to rest against. Seems to work pretty well.
Time will tell if gravity is enough to hold everything in place once I start banging on the bench or if I'm going to need to embed some magnets into the ply. It seems pretty sturdy with just gravity working for me.
- Ken.