Chisel Racks

A few years ago Marc Spagnuolo came up with the concept of Safety Week, eventually one week a year, several prominent bloggers write about ways of staying safe in the shop. It’s not talked about much, but lets face it, woodworking is one of the more dangerous hobbies to get into. Careless mistakes in a woodworking shop, can easily lead to a missing digit, eye, or worse. Now I’m not known for being Mr. safety, some times I do stuff that would make most people cringe. One thing I take very seriously, is cuts caused by hand tools.

If you’ve done any amount of woodworking you’ve probably come to learn that hand tools make certain tasks very easy. You’ve also probably learned that  the sharper they are the better. In the grand scheme of things planes and back saws aren’t that dangerous. Your chisels and marking knife however are just waiting for you to let your guard down so they can slice you open and send you to the emergency room for stitches.

With all that being said, I decided to make myself chisel racks for safety week (yea I know I’m behind schedule). The requirements were pretty simple, the racks needed to be cheap, simple, fully cover the blade, and if possible stylish. What I came up with is below, It’s made from black Willow that I piked up at my local Rockler dealer for  $1.92 a BF. They mount to the wall with dovetails and they also have a dovetail across the front of them so I can make “attachments” to hold my marking gauge, rules, etc. The finish was BLO and paste wax.