Saw Till

For a long time my saws have hung on a rolling cabinet that sits to the right of the workbench.  Recently I rehabbed a couple of saws that had been sitting around for a few years and now need a home.  There's no more space on that rolling cabinet.

Left side: 26" and 16" crosscut saws, two gents saws, Veritas carcase saw, flush cut saw

Right side: 26" rip, 24" rip, two Japanese saws, two crosscut backsaws

In addition to those saws, I have a few coping saws in a wall cabinet.  I've thought about making a saw till for a while.  But the problem is my garage space.  It has floor to ceiling shelving that I don't want to remove (it's not up to me to decide).  My goal was to avoid drilling new holes in the shelving or in the wall.  In the end, I was able to use existing shelf pin holes to affix some pieces.

Here is the location for the till with an initial idea

This area used to be three separate shelves.  These shelves housed glue supplies, a small hardware cabinet, my carving chisel box, safety gear, some old hardware and who-knows what else.  My first idea was to drill a hole in pieces of scrap and put a dowel between them so that the top horn of the saws can rest on the dowel.

This shows the idea

The problem with this is that the toe end of the shorter backsaws (not yet in the photos above) would rest against the wall far lower than the longer handsaws and panel saws.  Not that I would be resting them against the wall - I'll add a piece of wood with slots cut into it.

The next idea was to raise the shorter saws so that their toe ends would sit at the same level as the longer saws.  This would also allow for some storage under those shorter saws.  I started with a scrap of plywood for a vertical divider and a scrap of red alder screwed to the right wall (through the shelf pin holes) to house a length of dowel stretching to the divider.

The idea is coming together

All that was left was to make the piece that would keep the toe end of the saws organized.  It's a piece of Doug fir that fits horizontally in the space and is secured to the sides with 3/16" dowels that fit through the existing shelf pin holes into holes drilled into the ends.  The slots for the saws are 1 1/4" apart and about 3/32" wide.  That's wider than any saw blade I have, so each slot was cut with two narrow kerfs at the extents and the waste between them came out easily with a larger saw.

Viewed from the left

Viewed from the right

In the pics above, you can see that I added a piece of wood to the right wall to hang the gents saws and flush-cut saw.  On the left wall, I used 3/16" dowels to create little hooks on which to hang the coping saws.  And the larger Knew Concepts coping saw fits nicely in the right side next to the vertical divider.

Finally, for the Japanese saws (that I don't use very often), I added a small block of wood, screwed to the cross piece that holds the saw toes.  The block of wood has magnets glued into shallow recesses on the back side.  There is space between the cross piece and the garage wall, as the walls were anything but flat / straight and the shelves are away from the wall by about 3/8" there.

The Japanese saws will be a minor hassle to get out of there

This shows the block that houses the magnets that affix the Japanese saws

The problem now is that I've gotta find new homes for the stuff that was formerly in these three shelves.  And I'm not sure what I'll do with the rolling cabinet that used to hold my saws.  In a small shop, I've got to be creative with storage.

It's nice to have the saws organized better!

Time will tell whether or not I like using a saw till.  But so far, it has been nice.