Once I assembled my new dust collector, I no longer had a good place to store my clamps. So, I set out to make a french cleat clamp rack for the unused wall in garage. Here is the finished picture
As usual, I started out by drawing a plan of the wall space and what the supports would look like. I can’t find that drawing anymore, but I think it is pretty straightforward from the pictures. Luckily I had enough scrap 3/4″ plywood to get me through as well.
The wall had 4 studs across it, which was great for supporting the weight.
In order to get an idea of the support design, I laid out the clamps on my floor to get an idea if they would all fit on the wall. Fortunately, I was able to fit even more clamps than expected on the wall. I also measured the width of each clamp to see what is the widest bar.
Components
Wall Cleats
The cleats that hang on the wall are made from 28″ long pieces since that was all I had. It worked out well since the wall was about 57″ wide. The strips were ripped at 3 1/2″ wide and were ripped again at 45 degrees on one side.
Mating Cleat
The cleats on the support racks are 6″ long and 3″ wide with a 45 ripped on one side.
Rear Support
The backbone of the support pieces is 6″ wide by 10″ long. Simple rectangle.
Gussets
The triangular gussets are 8″ by 8″ squares that are cut in half. They later get 4 pocket screws per gusset.
Top Fingers
The top pieces that the clamps sit on are 1.5″ wide by 10″ long.
Below are all the components laid out.
- Lower Left – Top Fingers
- Lower Right – Wall Cleats
- Mid Left – Support Cleats
- Rear Right – Rear Supports
- Rear Left – Gussets
Pocket Holes
All gussets received 4 pocket holes to mount the gussets to the rear support.
Creating Assemblies
The first step was to glue and screw the cleats onto the rear supports.
I set up a small jig with some 90s and hold fast to screw these together
The next step was to screw on the gussets. I first used my Kreg clamp and alignment lines to attach them.
After this first one, I found a better way, which was to clamp on a piece of scrap to stop the gusset from sliding.
All the clamps I had were narrower than 1 1/2″ wide, so I used a spacer to set the other gusset.
The last step was to attach the top “finger” pieces. Each support assembly is unique based on the clamp width. I set the width based on the actual clamp size.
The last item to attach is the reaction block. So, this block contacts the wall and counteracts the moment.
Cleats on Wall
First step was to lay out where the wall studs were and where I needed to drill the holes in the cleats.
I used 3″ screws from SPAX to attach the cleats to the wall. Luckily there were two studs per 28″ section.
