Monday 2 March 2015

Wall mounted Plane and Tool Cabinet - Part 1 - Design

I have just started a personal project that I have just not had time for over the past view years. This is a wall mounted cabinet for storing planes and other hand tools. For a long time various tools have been kept in drawers, on open shelves, in tool boxes and in the storage module under my workbench, This has worked well but, like most shop improvement projects, the time has come to store them in a more pleasantly aesthetic manner.

Location

I have an ideal position for the cabinet fixed to the wall at the side of the main window behind my bench. The wall in this corner of the shop location is made from Accrington bricks and cement blocks so should easily hold the weight of the filled cabinet.


Corner Location

Relative to the bench


Design specification

The design is for a fully closing door to the cabinet that can open through 90 degrees to present a shallow tray for additional presentation of hand tools. These would be screwdrivers, mallets and other relatively thin profile tools.
The main box is to have sufficient space for vertically storing metal bodied wood planes and have enough height to accommodate a #7 or #8 pattern jointer plane. Every other plane I have are shorter than this and will also fit in. I do have a few plough, rabbet, and universal planes and storage of those will have challenging methods of mounting.
In front of the planes will be a further swing out door that is designed for any other lower profile tools I have.
In the lower part of the cabinet are two drawers that can be fully removed. These are intended to be used to take a series of small tools to the job and keep them grouped. At the moment I haven't decided whether these drawers will be subdivided with a removable upper tray or not. Time will only tell on this one.

The dimensions are 840 H x 420 W x 370 D
(33" H x 16.5" W x 14.5" Deep)

Both outer door and inner doors open

Inner door closed

Side View with the side panel not shown
This shows the space in the cabinet

Inspiration

I took inspiration for this project from the wall hanging tool cabinet designed and built by H.O. Studley in the late 19th century. I don't think mine will be anywhere near the design that Studley created but one can only aspire to such greatness.

Hardware

The main door will be hinged with a full length heavy duty stainless steel piano hinge. When the door is closed rare earth magnets will hold it closed. When open I will devise some other mechanism.
The inner door will use a corner pivot hinge that will allow the door to fully swing through 180 degrees and not catch the main cabinet frame.

Timber

The cabinet will be made mainly from Baltic birch plywood 18mm (3/4" ish) thick. I searched through my stock and found some nice black walnut that will be used as the frame of the door and edge banding (lipping) to cover the raw edge of the plywood. Unfortunately much of this is not quite wide enough so I've had to joint and glue to get sufficient width.





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