Plier Rack Revisited

A reader asks:

I was looking for plier rack plans and came across your site again (I had seen it before and ordered BMC pliers).  I was wondering if you had an extra copy of the mjsa article on your plier rack?   I could not make out too much based on the pictures of your site.  I enjoy your bench mods and shop customizations.  Keep up the great work!

Here are a few glimpses to help out.

First, below is a shot of my plier rack in use:

My plier rack swings away when not in use, inward, toward the wall of the bench. It's constructed from elements scrounged from the garage - an old hinge, a scrap of wood and some leftover L-section aluminum extrusion. I've attached various do-dads to it as needed over the years.

The naked rack. The black handle is actually a GRS graver handle. I store it there - it's easily accessible, and it also serves double-duty to deploy the plier rack. Notice the large hinge. It's anchored to a wood block that I secured to the inner wall of the workbench. This block provides clearance for the plier handles so that when the rack is swung into the 'closed' position it closes parallel to the bench wall. A good drill, some machine hardware and a bit of  imagination is all you should need in addition to the hinge, a wood block and some aluminum extrusion (or something like it - a section of wood would also serve nicely).

Rear view. I added the brass plate to prevent pliers from flipping off the rack. Didn't happen all the time, but enough to propel me to fix it. The round brass chunk on the end prevents pliers from flying off the end. You'll need something on the end that serves that purpose or you'll always be picking up pliers every time you use it.

This view shows the rack without the GRS graver handle. The mount for it is just an odd bit of hardware that happened to work for me. The brass tubes were soldered onto a brass base to hold my dividers, secured to the rack with screws.

Here it is in the closed position. Notice how there's clearance for the plier handles on the wall side.  Clearly there's room for improvement in this design. For instance, greatly shortening the wood block, or finding a space-saving alternative for it would improve the rack's capacity quite a bit. I don't need to do that because my dividers occupy that space. Your mileage may vary, of course. 

Have you made your own rack? Send me a shot, and I'll post it.