I've never had a plane till in my shop...they were always kept in a cabinet or under the workbench earlier on. That changed with the new shop. This project is the first of what will probably be multiple small shop projects to make woodworking tool specific storage for the OmniWall setup I chose for the new shop building.

Given this was one of those things I wanted to "work things out" with before committing to the "nice wood", I initially build a prototype out of scrap plywood. This helped with a number of things and also rulled out the use of two magnetic strips to hold it to the metal wall system as that also required some bolts due to the weight. The magnet strips were also too wide. It also helped with finding a good compromise for the angle of the storage face and the arrangement of the actual tools. Here are a few shots of that prototype process...and yea, it was somewhat ugly.

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The "real deal" came next, this time made from scrap oak left from a stairway project, a small piece of 1/4" thick oak veneer plywood and some repurposed oak strip flooring I was given years ago. Four inexpensive metal shelf brackets (the older single row, flimsy type that went into standards mounted to the wall) rounded out the materials. The construction was sized so that it would be an exact fit between brackets in the outermost slots of the wall system...14 7/8" exactly. (While I prefer to work in metric for projects, the wall system is on exact 1" spacing, so...) The height of the tray is 20" for reference. And just to be contrary, the strips of wood used to divide the space up are 15mm wide.

So here's the complete tray and arrangement for my small plane collection. You'll note that the rabbit plane is resting on its side...the best way to keep in in the tray without having a much, much steeper angle which would be uncomfortable for access up on the wall. (and it's wee wittle baby version is just above it. )

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Of course, that was the easy, flat part of the project. Due to its nature, the tray has to be angled so that the heavy metal things it will hold don't fall out. I needed to increase the angle a bit from the prototype for sure, and the piece of oak stair I had was just about the right width so that cutting it corner to corner would result in a reasonable angle that did the holding job without making getting to the tools uncomfortable as they are about 5' up off the floor. Clamping the material to the slider wagon such that the initial corner to corner cut could be made worked out very nicely. This doesn't have to be perfect as the next steps would clean the edges and make the two triangular pieces identical. At this point, things are a "no measuring" type of activity.

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After splitting the material as shown, the two pieces were tacked together with some 23 gauge pin nails with one edge completely lined up. The ends were trimmed perpendicular to that edge and then the long angled edge was trimmed to produce identical triangles. This is, give or take, about 30 degrees or so, but I did not measure it as it was not important.

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Those pieces were pried apart and test fit with the tray to determine the actual length required and marked...taped back together and then the points were removed back on the saw.

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