Sunday, June 28, 2009

More Shelves for More Moulding Planes


As I've mentioned in the past, I'm fairly addicted to moulding planes. My collection (all users, of course) has been growing steadily and it was time to make some additional shelves. At first, I was just going to make a third unit using the same design as the first two, but with a different top profile. But after looking at the space available, and visualizing the three shelving units as a whole, I decided to make this unit larger to serve as a sort of center piece, flanked by the two existing units.

Here's the plan I came up with on paper:


The smaller bottom shelf is for holding short sections of moulding profiles, as well as my plane hammer.

Here's the stock waiting for layout. The sides and bottom are full width, but the shelves are narrower to allow the back to be set into rabbets, hence the panel gauge.


The four shelves are housed in dadoes. There are a lot of ways to cut dadoes, but after trying most, I've settled on using the tool dedicated to that purpose - the wooden dado plane. For this project, I used a plane that my fried Dave sent me. It was fast and easy; thanks Dave!


Next came the shaping of the tops and the rabbets. Each side is topped with an ogee, or cyma recta, which has the upper section concave and the lower section convex. Layout was simple with a pair of dividers. I cut the curve with a turning saw and cleaned it up with spokeshaves. As this is strictly shop furniture, I didn't bother with stopped rabbets - so if you are extremely tall or very short, you'll be able to see the gaps. I can live with that.


Here's a shot of the shelves in place. All three are hanging on French cleats, which I use for hanging almost everything in the shop. If you are not familiar with these, they are two cleats, one screwed to the wall and one to the shelves (or whatever), with complimentary 45° bevels. This system uses the weight of the shelves to lock them to the wall. It's simple, strong, and very flexible. These interlocking cleats are visible in the photo below if you look very closely at the top, rear of the right-most unit.


And with the moulding planes home to roost:


This one's just a fun detail shot:


Traditionally, I end a project post with a shot of all the tools used on that project. This time I am going to do things a little differently; I'm writing a separate post with shots of the tools in task groups. I'll try to have that up in the next day or so...


8 comments:

  1. Beautiful set-up, Dan, and a truly impressive display for your planes.

    Now about those planes...

    Peace,

    Mitchell

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  2. Looks great Dan. I am very jealous of your plane collection. I wish I had 1/128th of that :-)

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  3. Mitchell - Thanks, and what about those planes?

    Jason - I think that would give you slightly less than one complete plane. But hey, tool rehabs are fun! :)

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  4. Ok, if you can't take a hint...

    How about a tour of "those planes"?

    I have picked up a few in my travels but in general, I tend to shy away from them for a few reasons. I just don't know what to look for in the way of problems, I have no idea what can be fixed and what can't, I haven't a clue which manufacturers to look for and I have no idea whether I'm paying too much or getting a deal with them. The main one, though, is that, for half of them, I have no idea what they do.

    Hence, "Now about those planes..."

    Mitchell

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  5. Mitchell - Okay, I think I can do that. I will try to get a post up about the planes themselves soon. Hmm, might actually be several posts...not exactly sure what they will look like...

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  6. Dan,

    I really loved this project... And the Planes.. Great job and Great Collection.

    I do however have to say, that when I was reading, I thought you was making this all one unit, then after I started looking, You basically made 3 Units then tied them together so to speak.

    I thought you was gonna Basicaly use what I would call the Create method... It's Basically where you would take your Left side, Middle and Rightside Columns, and have the Groves 1/2 way through.

    Then your Rows would have the same, so you would Interlock them in a Since, making it all One unit, Almost like a Torsion Box in a since...

    But the method you used looks like it's working very well for you, and maybe even more Stable then what I thougth you were going to use lol

    Handi

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  7. Handi - Thanks for the compliment. As far as construction, I think I know what you are describing - and that would probably work great. But I already had the two smaller shelves, so I decided to just build the center unit. They are not tied together in any way - they just hang from the same cleat on the wall. They don't match perfectly, but close enough...

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  8. Dan, Love your shop and all the awesome tools. I've just discovered the wonderful world of handtools and starting my collection. You've inspired me to create a great storage system for them.

    The thing I want to know is who is Dave??!!!! I want to be his friend too!!!!

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