There is nothing hard or exciting about this. I just cut some wood into similar shapes and screwed them together with more wood.  It was an easy and somewhat lame project, but it’s kinda cool because of the French cleat wall I put in the shop last year.  The problem was, like most shops, my scrap wood ends up in a pile in the corner, and that pile has grown exponentially.  So I built these arms to hold long strips of leftover plywood and act as shelves.  And since I have 5 rows of French cleats running the length of my east wall in my shop, I made these arms with cleats so that I can move them wherever and whenever I please.  Best part: I made them all out of scrap wood and spent $0.  Scrap wood shelves for scrap wood.

 

I wish I’d filmed the French cleat wall creation, but that was all done before I ever decided to start a YouTube channel.  But if you want a simple way to do that, go get a sheet of ¾” 8×4 plywood.  Measure 2 ½” and adjust your circular saw to 45 degrees and rip it the long way.  Measure every 2 ½” all the way down, and just keep going with the 45-degree cuts.  Stain it all, sand it if you please, and screw the strips up on the wall into studs with 3” screws.  Then you can build whatever gadgets and hanging devices you want by attaching a 45-degree angle piece on the back.  The possibilities are endless.

 

That’s essentially what these shelf arms are.  I had a scrap sheet of OSB about 23” wide by 4’ that was only collecting dust, so I measured 3” on one end and 7” on the other and drew a line.  And I just alternated that all the way down the sheet. Then I cut it with the circular saw and cut some blocks from leftover 2×4’s to act as spacers between the pieces to form the arm.  Then I did some rough sanding and attached the cleats and a block on the bottom back so that it would sit level on the wall.  I painted them different colors with the thought that I might keep walnut on the blue arms, barnwood on the purple, pine on the black, etc.  But they’ve been up a week and it’s already a hodge-podge mess.  But my wood is not on the ground!

 

Anyhow, that’s pretty much it.  Hopefully you’ll watch the short video above and this will all make sense. And if nothing else it leaves you with a general idea of a simple improvement you could make in your own shop or garage.

Thanks for watching and reading!

 

Cheers!

Grant