Hand Plane Storage

The Problem

To put it simply, I have a ton of hand planes. And they are taking up my whole damn workbench.

Every woodworking YouTuber seems to have an epic, wall-hanging storage solution for their hand planes. They look awesome, but it turns out they are also relatively easy to build, so I figured it was time for me to finally join the club.

Here’s my current handplane collection. I’ve got another post that goes through each plane, their uses and history.

Basic Design

Most designs align the handplanes in a grid, and then use a strip of wood over the end of each plane to keep them from falling out.

I started by roughly arranging my planes in a possible layout. I’m using 1/4 inch birch and two thicknesses of oak, thicker for the borders and thinner for the dividers. You can see that I originally wanted to include my block plane, but its geometry makes it very difficult to retain, so it’ll be living in a drawer.

Retaining the Planes

I’ve mentioned that a strip of wood keeps the planes from falling off the wall. This works better on some planes than others.

The metal Bailey can be easily retained, since it has a long expanse of flat metal on the front. But the wooden plane will require some creativity. You can see my post on how I made this wooden plane here.

retained by the edges

retained by the front

I was able to retain it using the sides of the plane instead of the front. This is a little less secure, but it should be fine, especially considering the lower weight of the wooden plane.

Making the Retaining Strips

But I’ve skipped ahead a little. How did I actually make these retaining strips?

carefully beginning the cut

finished hole

Making circular cutouts on the edge of wood can be difficult. Among other possibilities, you could route it, file it by hand, or drill it as I’ve done here. The biggest difficulty with drilling is bit wander. In a non-rigid setup, the bit will immediately jump off the edge you are trying to drill.

So what I’ve done is used double sided tape to stick the oak to a sacrificial 2x4, punched a starter hole in the 2x4, and then drilled it out carefully on the drill press. It wasn’t the perfect shape, but I was able to easily tune it up later with a half round file.

The square cutout is easier. The initial vertical cuts are made with a Japanese pull saw, then the horizontal cut is made with a coping saw. You can make these cuts perfectly square if you are careful and take your time.

I was neither careful nor patient, so I needed to smooth out the final surface with a file. I should note that for small jobs like this, I don’t usually bother getting out my scrollsaw. The time savings you get by using the power tool is not worth the effort of pulling it out of the closet.

Making the Spacers

I forgot to take pictures of the next few steps, but basically I cut some spacers to be slightly bigger than each plane.

I did this by quickly taking a caliper reading of the plane width, adding 6mm, and marking a piece of oak with the caliper tips. I like this process a lot, as it is very accurate and repeatable, and you can just slot the tooth of the chop saw into the mark and cut.

It might sound a little excessive to be using calipers for rough woodworking, but I think it’s actually faster than a tape, not to mention more accurate.

Cutting Everything to Length

With the layout decided and the width set, it’s time to cut all the dividers and the backer to length.

Calipers won’t quite cut it for this process. Instead I’ll using the stop system on my miter saw. It didn’t come with one, but I built one a few months back and it has been an absolute game changer. I’ll add a post about it soon.

But anyway, when you want to make repeated cuts to the same length like the dividers, you set a stop on the miter saw and just keep cutting. It’s significantly faster and more accurate than measuring every time.

To cut the plywood, I didn’t even measure, I just used the dividers in between the fence and the blade of the table saw to get a length.

Glue Up

An effective glue up sometimes requires some forethought. In this instance, I really wanted the dividers to be parallel and square. It was also essential that the spacers be the right distance from the top, or the retaining system wouldn’t work.

click me and I will enlarge

so many clamps

You can see in the left image how I made some light pencil marks to guide me during the glue up. The clamping picture looks like I’m basically finished, but I’m only actually gluing the border. The interior pieces are just sitting loosely to makes sure they will fit.

After gluing the borders, I went through and carefully did each divider and stop. For the ones in the middle, I had to lay a long board with a spacer across and clamp on the ends. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of this process. I ended up doing 3 separate glue ups over the course of a couple days.

Finishing Steps

Here’s the final result after the glue up.

As you can see from the leftover pencil marks, there are actually a few steps left. I still need to sand it, oil it, and then hang it on the wall.

I’m not really sure how it will be hung. The backer is too thin to counter sink a screw, so I may need to add a cleat or a thicker backer. I’ll update this post when I figure it out.