Rearranging the tool wall

I have been wanting to rearrange the tool wall for a while now. There were some items on there that weren’t getting regular use and I wanted to replace them with tools that were. It’s one of those things with a tool wall, where you don’t really know what you want on it until you use it for a while. I had some free space from when I initially built the tool wall that I wanted to try and use up for the new tools.

My friend Jeff Ferguson was in town after stopping by Jay Bates house for a few days and I decided that this was a project we could tackle together. I also wanted to gain some space on the bottom row of the tool wall so that I could use it for plane storage in the future as I gain more hand planes! This surface, like all horizontal work surfaces tends to gain clutter so making it into something more usable will hopefully prevent that in the future!

The first step after cleaning up the mess on the bottom shelf was to move the bottom row of tools up a row, so that I would have room for the planes. This is where having the tools attached to the removable slats comes in super handy.Then we moved most of the tools from the upper left hand side while we figured out what to remove and what was staying.

We made a holder for my new Veritas dove tail saw out of a chunk of scrap 2×4.

Just trace the shape and cut it out on the band saw.

After a little trial and error and a little sanding, it fit great and holds the saw nice a steady!

Here is a shot of how I go about attaching most of the tool holders to the slats. I pre-drill through the front after marking the location and then counter sink the back side and attach with screws.

I wanted a spot to hold my card scrapers so I set out to make a holder for them like we did while working on Jays tool wall.

It’s very simple to make, just cut the slots at a 45 degree angle in one inch increments.

We made this simple little shelf out of some scrap 3/4 material and edge banded it with a thin scrap so it would have a ledge on the front to prevent tools from rolling off. This shelf will hopefully catch some of the clutter in my shop.

I made this little holder after we got through filming. It’s just a scrap of 2×4 with a 2 1/8″ hole drilled into it to hold this carvers mallet I made a while back. I gave the corners a slight rounding over just to make them look a little better.

My marking gauge found a home in my pencil holder!

I moved two of my tape measures into the now dead space in between the screw drivers and pencils.

I was able to put both combo squares together onto the same holder to free up some space!

Once we started putting everything back together we realized that by using a more efficient layout that we could not only fit the new tools we added, but also keep some of the others that we were going to remove earlier! I still have a little more room for a few more tools, that is, if I don’t redo it again between now and then haha!