Modular Clamp Racks
For around a year, I was using a parallel clamp rack fashioned after one designed by Brad Rodriguez at Fix This Build That. It served me well, but I felt that it took up a bit more space than I preferred and I would rather have something that was more modular in design to give me flexibility.
I searched online for inspiration and I came across a design by Shane at Shane’s Hobby Shop. I liked that he had a rack for both parallel AND f-style clamps.
I have my f-style clamps in the rolling cart that is behind my miter saw station, but that was a bit more of an inconvenience than I had envisioned.
These were simple enough to build with some scrap plywood. I still had a few long strips of French cleat sitting around, so I just cut off a few pieces and glued and screwed them in place. I needed four racks for the parallel clamps and two for the f-style clamps. I liked that the f-style clamps were stored back to back on a single rack. This didn’t take up that much more room and it allowed double the amount of clamps to be stored.
After waiting for the glue to dry, I spaced out the racks where I wanted and loaded them up. With the modular clamp racks in place I took a measurement of the space used and it turned out to be a couple of inches narrower than the old clamp rack. That was a win right there. I put the f-style clamp racks on the wall next to the parallel racks. When I loaded up the f-style clamps, I noticed that they were hitting each other a bit. I needed to make these racks just a bit wider to alleviate this problem. Oh well, something to note for the next ones that I make, because I’m sure I’ll be getting more clamps in the future. As a woodworker, one can NEVER have enough clamps.
***UPDATE: March 2023***
This latest version of clamp storage is very much still in use in the workshop.
I recently made a change to the right side wall storage and I had no issues with moving the racks around. They were all still quite sturdy and showed no signs of wear or structural inadequacies.
When, not if, I get more clamps in the future, I’ll definitely be making more of these clamp racks. Actually, with the reorganization on the wall, I’ve got room to hang all of my squeeze clamps as well. Currently they are all stored in a drawer under my workbench. I don’t think I’ll need the exact same type of holder for squeeze clamps as f-style or parallel clamps, however. Just a simply dowel or board they can clamp onto would suffice.
I’ll provide another update when this takes place.
