Not just Idea

More Shelves for More Moulding Planes

As Ive mentioned in the past, Im 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.

Heres 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.

Heres 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, Ive 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 didnt bother with stopped rabbets - so if you are extremely tall or very short, youll be able to see the gaps. I can live with that.


Heres 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. Its 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 ones 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; Im writing a separate post with shots of the tools in task groups. Ill try to have that up in the next day or so...