I needed to make a mini tool wall for all my leatherworking tools. I didn't really want to spend any money on this, so it was made from pallet and scrap wood, and leftover copper pipe. I like peg boards but it looked like too much work drilling a lot of holes, so I just used copper saddle clips.

For this project you will need;

Step 1: Pallet

Firstly I broke down a pallet to get all the wood. There are loads of ways to break these down, but I used a crowbar if getting the full length out of the boards, then this might not be the best method as it does have quite a high chance of splitting the wood.

Step 2: Cut

I cleaned up one end of each of the pallet wood boards. I then measured 58cm long, you can make this as short or as long as you like. I didn't want the overall thing to be too heavy.

I then set up a stop block at the 58cm mark, ensuring the clean square edges were always butting up against this. In this way, I worked my way through the boards until I had enough for the overall width, and all the edges were even.

I attached the support boards at the top and bottom and predrilled and screwed them together. I decided not to use any wood glue for this. I'm happy with the board having gaps in them.

Step 3: Paint

I gave all the boards a quick sand down just to smooth it out a little and remove the roughness. I didn't want a very thick black coat of paint, so I tried to water it down. In hindsight, this was an oil based paint and did not mix well with the water.

Either way, a did one coat of paint onto the wood and let it dry.

I attached the bottom shelf with just screws again.

Step 4: Wax

I finished the wood with my Beeswax Wood Polish.

Step 5: Copper

I added a support rail to the bottom shelf to stop stuff from falling off. I had a load of copper pipe left over from my Copper Pipe Wine Rack. I used a mixture of pipe, and series of elbow joints, and attached it to the frame using saddle clips.

Step 6: Glue

To glue them together I'm using gorilla glue. You can solder them together, but this means you then have to clean up the pipe afterwards. This way you just wipe it clean after 15mins of glueing. I made sure to wet the ends of the pipes, this helps the glue cure.

Step 7: Wall Mount

To attach to the wall I wanted to try using a french cleat. I've never worked with these before and liked the idea of being to lift the whole unit on and off the wall if needed. This is easier I think with a table saw, but as I don't have one I used my bandsaw and tilted the bed to a 45-degree angle, set up the fence, and cut a piece of wood in half.

I screwed the one bit onto the back of the tool wall. Where the pallet wood was not very even I had to use a bit of scrap wood as a shim to keep it level.

Step 8: Logo

I wanted to add my logo on somewhere. So used a stencil and sprayed it onto another scrap of pallet wood that was left unpainted.

Step 9: Clips

To attach and hold the all the different things onto the tool wall I used these copper saddle clips. I had them in 15mm and 22mm size, which is the standard plumbing sizes here in the UK. They work great, they are super cheap as well. One of my favourite things about them is they are really easy to flex and move to hold different tools.