Wall-Hanging Chainsaw Rack

Finally getting my chainsaws off the floor!

I have been wanting to build a rack for my saws for a long time.  The current way I store my saws is just in various places sitting on the floor which means they get in the way a lot.   I have three saws that I want to store vertically on the wall.  I have my milling saw, felling saw, and limbing saw.  They’re all different sizes so I’ll take some measurements to figure out the spacing and size of the slot that will be needed for the bar to pass through.

To make the wall bracket I’m using this piece of angle iron that I found in the offcut section of my local steel yard.  It has a 4” leg which will touch the wall and a 7” leg which will contact the saws.  That should give enough depth to support the 090 which is pretty deep.  The angle is ½” thick which will provide a nice beefy industrial look to the rack.   Using the measurements from the saws, I’ll layout the three slots.  They’re all ¾” wide and the spacing ended up being 10.5”.  The 460 and 025 have the same start point for the slot; an inch from the wall but the 090 with it’s deeper setup has the bar starting 3” from the wall.

Now I can use my metal bandsaw to make the cuts to establish the slots.  To establish the ends of the slots, I was planning on drilling a hole.  I decided to cut the slots first because I figured it would be easier to drill a hole that is centered between two kerfs than trying to saw two kerfs that are perfectly tangential to each side of a hole.

After the 6 kerfs are cut, I can cut the angle to length.  This leaves me with a 1 foot length that I could potentially use for a baby shelf in the future.

Over on the mill I can start drilling holes to release the waste.  I was going to drill one large hole but my ¾” drill is still all chipped from when I was building my saw mill.  Not feeling like spending a bunch of time at the grinder, I decided to drill a row of smaller holes to release the waste and clean things up with an end mill.

Since I don’t have much experience with the mill, little stuff like this is great practice.  One thing I’m still getting the hang of is knowing which way the table will move based on which way I turn the handles.  Since it’s not quite second nature yet, I still have to think about it.

While I’m here, I can also drill the holes for mounting it to the wall.  I’m going with 6 holes with is technically overkill but I like the aesthetics of it.

After some clean up with a grinder and a couple coats of paint, I can give the bracket a try.  The saws fit correctly which was a nice reassurance.  Now I can look at storage for extra bars and chains.  I wasn’t planning on including storage for these but after looking at the set up, the bars and chains are way in the back and almost shielded by the saws.  I laid out a few of the bars and chains to establish spacing for studs that will hold them.

With the spacing laid out, it was back to the mill to drill and tap holes for the studs.  This was another task that I took some opportunity to practice – in this case, it was power tapping on the mill.  The idea here is the tap is held just tightly enough in the chuck so if there’s a snag or whatever which would cause the tap to snap, it will instead slip in the chuck.  This process definitely took some getting used to.  Mainly I erred on the side of caution with how tightly the chuck was gripping the tap.  So on the first few holes I tapped, the tap would start slipping as it was getting to the point of being fully engaged.

But as I got through a few of them, I got more comfortable with the process and figured out how tight to grip the tap and how much pressure I needed to apply to the quill to help guide the tap into and out of the part.

With those holes all drilled and tapped, this thing was ready to mount to the wall.  I used lag bolts in shields for that.  The saws slip into their slots really nicely but one thing they need is some blocking to stay vertical.

I made a block for each saw to support the side of the saw opposite of the bar.

Lastly I can start hanging the bars and chains.  I’m just using some bolts for this and to class them up a bit, I’ve sleeved them with some tube.

On the studs that hold chains, I’ve also included a washer to prevent them from slipping off.

Products Used
[Amazon links are affiliate links]
Metal Cutting Bandsaw: https://amzn.to/2X5K6us
Triton Multi-Stand: http://amzn.to/2AZs6a8
End Mill: https://amzn.to/2Fv0Pwp
Drill Chuck: https://amzn.to/2XtcF4l
Tap Magic: https://amzn.to/2FtfZSU
Spiral Tap: https://amzn.to/2FrJTGT
Safety Glasses: https://amzn.to/2NcEB8F
Hearing Protection: https://amzn.to/2xbQeSp

More items on my Amazon page
https://www.amazon.com/shop/matthewcremona

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