French Cleat Plier Rack

I'm going to attempt to relay my design ideas to others who might be in a similar situation such as I am. After many search attempts to try and find what I wanted, I only found designs that had bits and pieces of what I wanted. Therefore, I have attempted my own design with ideas pieced together from multiple other designs. So please try not to be too critical and if I have stepped on any toes I apologize in advance. So here goes...

In the ongoing attempt to organize my garage to make it easier to find and access tools and other items, I am working on a better organization system for my tools than simple pegboard hooks. I have determined thru a multitude of various searches that I feel a french cleat system would be useful to me as I never seem to be able to leave things as they are and always seem to be moving things around. As this is one of my issues the french cleat system would work perfectly and still keep my tools organized and within easy reach.

In the attempt to organize my garage any opportunity I have to use or get rid of something is a plus. I spent a good portion of last summer redoing my fence so as a result I have a multitude of old fence pickets lying around, so why not repurpose them into something useful. So my supplies for this project are an old fence picket and an old wire shelf. I made all the cuts on my table saw and utilized my drill and impact for most of the assembly.

I used my table saw and ripped the long edges off of the fence picket to give it nice sharp edges and to make it a width of 5 inches. I then lowered the blade to only half of the thickness to cut a grove in the picket to hold the shelf where I wanted it.

I then used the saw to cut the pieces to length, I only made them 15 inches long because I thought that would be a good size. If you decide to make your own you can make them what ever length your heart desires. I then decided that I wanted the front lower than the back so I ripped the front pieces down to about 3.5 inches. This then allowed me to taper the ends to give it a more planned look.

I next had to measure out the width of the part of the shelf I intended to use. I measured using any way I could think of and finally ended up cutting a small portion off the end of the shelf, until using a trial and error method I got it to the length I wanted. Then using a pair of snips I cut the center (the part I wanted) out of the shelf. The thin wire portion I had just spent so much effort cutting would hopefully fit into the groves I had cut into the front and back in step 1. I used a hack saw to cut the bar in the center to length and saved the rubber tips to make sure the ends were covered because I am a kluts and would likey cut myself on the ends. I actually left them just a little long to make sure they would fit, I then cut them to final length as I began assembly.

Next I decided to paint them, I like the color blue so this works for me and as it is leftover paint from inside my house (and I have almost a gallon of it left) the cost was minimal. I didn't paint the back side of the back piece because as it will be against the wall it will never be seen, otherwise I painted the front and back and all four edges of each piece, twice. I think waiting on paint to dry is one of my least favorite things to do. Once the paint was dry I began the assembly process sorry I don't have photos of this part I was too busy trying to get things to line up how I wanted. But once I got one end on it was easier to place the shelf piece in and finalize the final length of it. When I finally had them cut to the length I wanted I pulled a can of spray paint out and made them look a little nicer.

When everything was all painted and dry I finished off the assembly and now have a place to put my pliers. The use of the shelf piece gives me about a 1 inch spacing so that my pliers will hopefully not be banging into each other. Now as long as it works like I hope when I get it hung up it will all be grand. I hope this helps give someone who might be like me an idea in the future. Until then happy building.