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In the Shop

Building a Clamp Rack
by Roy Griggs

My clamp rack, the one I move around in order to have close to where I’m working has become overburdened. It is holding up a lot more clamps than it was originally designed to hold. So it is time to build something new.

(A NOTE ABOUT DESIGN AND ME)
I spent about 25 years working in and around the petro-chem industry as a design/draftsman. Starting as a welder in an oilfield fabricator’s shop and running a welding truck in the oil patch, I jumped at the first opportunity to transition into an engineering department. So, after 25 years of detailed drawings and dimensions in the (.0000) ten thousandths, I really enjoy the freedom of just starting to work with a general idea of what I want and making it up as I go along. That’s not to say I don’t design a project if it is intended to be a nice piece of furniture, but not for shop stuff like this clamp rack and the cleaning bench (see project #1) that won’t be seen by anybody but me.

Once again I am using Southern Yellow Pine and Red Oak that I acquired in the spring of ’05 for free. Both are rough cut lumber that was used as cribbing for stacks of pipe for a couple of different piping projects locally.

I made two feet for the rack each 24” long from a 4” x 6”…I like the Southern Yellow Pine for ease of chopping mortises and I need the practice chopping mortises. Also a pinned mortise and tenon joint is almost indestructible, and these will be heavily stressed.

This is the obligatory tools used picture.

I used my homemade bowsaw to cut the corners and relief in the feet. I’m gonna have to do some smoothing on them as I’m still learning to use a bowsaw and the cuts are rough and inconsistent. Then I drilled the caster holes with my Stanley 2101A 8” brace using an Erwin 3/8” auger bit. Next I used a tapered reamer in my Stanley 965N 8” brace to taper the holes to provide a snug fit for the scavenged casters I’m using. They have a 7/16” shaft (?) and are just driven in till they fit tightly.

Next up I cut my verticals 1 ¼” x 2 ½” x 72” out of Red Oak.

These will be spaced at 18” to the outside edge and leaning into the center at about 5 degrees. I cut a tenon on the end of these uprights to seat them in the feet. Although the uprights will lean in I cut the tenon to be perpendicular to the feet. (Easier to cut the mortises that way.) I made these cuts with a Japanese saw, actually it is a Vaughan Bear Saw, but it’s a Japanese saw. I really like the fine kerf of a pullsaw, they just take some getting used to. I would use a good antique tenon or backsaw if I had one!

Here is the first mock-up of the verticals…

Yes, it’s gonna be tall but that will enable me to hang my 6’ pipe clamps from it without them dragging on the floor. This will be the permanent home for my collection of bar clamps, my c-clamps and some other assorted clamps.

Now I need to tie the feet together; I ripped a couple pieces of SYP to 1 7/8” x 1 ¼” x 46”. I’ll put a 1 ½” long tenon on each end which will make the rack 4’-1” long. Here are some pictures of the first mortise and tenon. The little piece of red oak is a convenient ¼” thick and makes a good marking gage.

And the two put together…

And then thru the magic of television….

And now I have a mobile base with uprights…the beam pocket is just plywood with a filler piece between the uprights .

 

Here is a rare photo of me actually working…you gotta be quick to catch me workin’. As you can see to my left, I’m just going to do lap joints on the horizontal clamp supports. This side will be a grid for bar clamps.  What the heck SWMBO took several…squatting like this is hard on my…everything.

Horizontals and one vertical only one side of any of the joints are cut I need to do the other half which are all on the horizontals. But I’ll get those after I get the bottom verticals and their horizontals that will be for c-clamps. I want the c-clamps, which are quite heavy, to be near the base and distributed on both sides.

Mock-up with clamps, I figure I can double the number of bar clamps that I already have and still get them on one side of the rack. The bottom square on each end will be for c-clamp.

Here are the right and left racks for c-clamps…

This is how the grid is all tied together…and yes it is intentional that the center member is not flush with the front of the horizontals…

This is pretty much it for right now...

I added a couple of horizontals to hang my pipe clamps on. I will go back and clean it up, round edges, and put some kind of sealer on it. And maybe even gussie it up a little. As a final note… While mocking up how I wanted to arrange the clamps I needed some place to put them and may have discovered what may be the perfect way to organize bar clamps…

It is certainly less work! But more expensive, I figure I got maybe 5 centavos tied up in screws and glue in my rack. Mine may not be as nifty as the ones in the magazines but I bet it works as well for me!

BTW, as I improve on my basic rack I will try to add pictures.

© Roy Griggs
Visit Roy's web site at http://www.ShavingsAndSawdust.com/

November, 2005
 

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