Air Compressor Tool Cabinet

This week I built a small cabinet to hang on the wall beside my garage air compressor. It is designed to be compact and convenient, only holding the compressor-related tools that I use most frequently.

I had a rough idea in my head about the size and layout of the cabinet, but had not yet created a design in sketchup. The first step was to layout my standard and metric impact sockets on a tray. The size of that tray layout would dictate dimensions of the rest of the cabinet. This was the layout I settled on:

After I was happy with the arrangement, I marked the centers of each sock, drilled holes on the marks, and glued in short sections of 3/8" dowel. I also added the drawer sides so I could measure the drawer, plus full-extension slides, to get the size of the cabinet.

The cabinet body and lower drawer are normal box-construction. There is a shelf at the very bottom of the cabinet for my two nail guns.

The bottom drawer is extra deep to hold several larger tools: an air impact gun, an air ratchet, a palm nailer, a die gringer, and some inflation and tools. There is a small tray that nests in the bottom drawer for smaller pieces such as tire pressure gauge, tread depth gauge, and tire filling air chuck.

The cabinet hangs on the wall using a double french cleat system.

I drilled a very shallow hole in the front of the top drawer and glued in some rare-earth magnets. A very short #6 screw was driven into the back side of the cabinet door to serve as a catch for the magnet.

Here is a shot of the completed project. It hangs conveniently beside my Porter Cable 30 gallon compressor. Tools are easy to access and the cabinet takes up very little space. This was a very useful project.