I always seem to spend more time working on projects than cleaning and tidying in the shop, and the result is usually chaos – stuff everywhere.
The best times I have found to clean up and organize are late at night when I can’t do much else, or while waiting for glue or finish to dry.
I just completed the finishing stage for the last batch of live edge cribbage boards, and between coats of finish I took the opportunity to organize all my parallel bar clamps.
Since I moved into this shop almost five years ago, they have been sitting on the floor behind my jointer. The long ones are hard to pull out and they occasionally get knocked over and are difficult to retrieve. I got some small parallel bar clamps earlier this year, and they went into the back corner of the shop behind the tablesaw because there was nowhere else to store them.
Utilizing 16” of wall space between two cabinets, I built a clamp rack from some scrap plywood. I experimented to find the ideal spacing and location for each set of arms.
The arms attach to the backer with bolts and cross dowels.
The plywood backer mounts on steel French cleat-like brackets that run along my shop walls, and I ran a screw through the backer into a stud for extra security.
I was able to load up my 24 parallel bar clamps on the rack without issue and with room to spare, so I hung up a few other long clamps, then the guide rails for my track saw.
I am glad to have the clamps and guide rails organized and easy to access – and a bunch of nicely finished cribbage boards ready to photograph.
Remember: price increase on live-edge cribbage boards is coming November 1.
Sculptural Woodwork by Chris Wong 