French Cleat Measurement Tool Storage

Originally posted on April 15, 2020 (LumberJocks). It has been as useful as I hoped.

A few years ago, I installed a pair of French cleat rails in our garage. At the time, I had grand plans to build all sorts of handy little storage racks and the like. Aside from some clamp racks and a crosscut sled holder, I never built any of those things. Now that I can't easily go out and buy more lumber for new projects (due to Covid), I decided to use scraps on hand to start improving my storage situation. My first project is a rack to store my smaller, commonly used measurement and layout tools: speed squares, combination square, bend rule, and digital calipers.

I've seen several such racks on the web, but most of them store speed squares perpendicular to the wall. They jut out too far for me; I'd surely bump my head on the ends of the squares. I wanted a wall-hugging design, with the squares parallel to the wall.

Here's my solution. It holds two 7" speed squares, two combination squares (even though I have just one). A small shelf holds my Wixey digital calipers. My bend rule just sits on top of the cleat. It will be nice having all of these tools at my fingertips for future projects.

The design is extremely simple. It's just a few 3/4" thick planks of plywood with 1/4" spacers in between to provide space for the squares to drop into. The third photo shows an interior view of the rack, and the SketchUp renderings show more details.

Thanks for looking!