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I’m in the middle of a serious reconfiguring of my shop space. Specifically the area where I make most of the dust. I’m cleaning as a go and reorganizing.

I’m going to switch out from the homemade bench top I had been using to some regular counter height cabinets. I have the replacement cabinets already repurposed from another area. With the homemade bench I was losing a lot of space in corners where the surface wasn’t very usable because it was too deep. A pic might help…

This is the homemade setup, which is cluttered now due to moving things around. It used to extend all the way to the corner and across the back wall but I’ve wrecked some of it out already.



Here is one of the standard sized cabinets sitting in the area already wrecked out:



None of that is really the question though.

You can see all the open stud space and also the pegboard which I use today. I’m thinking while I have this torn apart maybe I’ll put something on the walls. I’m not keen to drywall the whole thing. Maybe some white paneling or similar.

This has me thinking about all the stuff hanging on the pegboard and what I would do with it if I don’t put the pegboard back up.

Anyone have a setup they like with either French cleat or pegboard or have some other suggestions? I’m struggling at the moment with making any kind of decisions. I know for sure I have too many containers just sitting on the benchtop and they get knocked over, and I need a better way.

Brad


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Hey Brad, have you seen the Wall Control system?

https://www.wallcontrol.com/pegboard/

I haven't tried it myself, but I've drooled over several YouTubers shop videos where they have it. Seems both very versatile and very expensive!

I prefer plywood for my added walls (main walls are drywall painted white). I just use screws or magnetic strips or make little custom wood holders. I've built a lot of shelves of all sizes for stuff. White is very nice for lighting.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

What are you doing to me right now!?!

Actually, this looks pretty good. Thanks for the pointer.


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Our Canadian guys, Darrel, and Craig both have nice clean set ups. Don't remember exactly what, but looks neat.

How do you stand that Brad? Everything else you do is so clean.

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Why be normal?

I learned the hard way not to have any storage over my work surface. Spruce does not forgive a dropped tool. I got tired of searching through drawers to find a tool and finally invested in these rolling tool cabinets with shallow drawers. The small stuff, I can lay out in one layer in each drawer. I keep thinking that I’m going to purge the pegboard of the tools I don’t use, but when I get there to do it, I can’t find even one I want to do without. Anyway, my recommendation is to have your work surface in the middle of the floor so you can walk around it, get shallow drawers for the little handtools, and not enough pegboard for everything else. I have too many of those little plastic cases with little drawers. The little drawers are full and if I had more places to put the drawer cases, I would have more. My children love me, but I expect they might say unkind things if I go before I close up the shop.

Can't have too many drawers. At last count I think I was up to 42, some in a roll-away tool cabinet but most are shop made.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Here’s mine FWIW

Brad—

You’ve seen my shop. I use some of what Bob recommends and some of what Steve recommends. Having 1/2” plywood on the wall means you can put a shelf or hook literally anywhere, ignoring where the studs are. And it is always easy to re-organize. But also, having metal tool cabinets with lots of drawers of various depths is super handy. If you toss in some conventional cabinets (lowers) like you already have, and some metal shelving (the serious, 2 foot deep kind), you should be able to improve on what you have now. Good luck!

I’m pretty keen on the idea of French cleat and little microsystems in caddies that can be shuffled around at will. That’s how I’ll be setting up the new shop anyway…

I built my shop around french cleats and I've been very happy with it. I have a plywood backer behind the bench and 4 rows of french cleats with plywood panels for tool sets or groups of tool types. Most panels have been modified or moved around as I acquired tools.
I also put a row of french cleats all around the shop walls near the ceiling. It lets me hang large panels for things like clamps and table saw blades, or smaller hangers for jigs and templates.

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Craig

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Luthiers can happen even in the best of families. No one knows why.

One other thing, Brad. Again, you’ve seen my shop. I like having a free standing bench that I can walk completely around, and that has no storage underneath, and no permanent fixtures like a vise attached. That means I have to attach vises and other things as I need them, and I rely heavily on storage elsewhere, but it also means I have what can be a blank slate for any type of project, guitar or otherwise. That’s my preference; others prefer something else. Just an idea to ponder.

Thanks, all!

I should clarify, the corner in question, where the pegboard is, is not where I work on the instrument itself. That happens on a bench on the other side that I can walk around for all the reasons stated. Right now it looks like this, see it under there?



Ken, I’ve got blinders on at the moment so this doesn’t make me crazy.

I ordered some of the control wall stuff to experiment with. I’ll just return it if I don’t like it. One advantage is it works with normal pegboard fixtures too, which I have a lot of already.


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Brad, this shop examination has made me clean up a couple of my junk piles. Thanks, maybe.

One other thought: One advantage of drywall is that it doesn’t burn. I’ve never had a fire other than a minor kitchen fire (a handy extinguisher was very useful), but I do try stay cognizant of what could happen. I love my cordless tools, but the batteries make me nervous. And, we all let them charge when we’re not in the room.

Thanks for sharing the shop pictures Michael.

Clean, well organized and very inspiring!

Nice side bender too.

Looks like something from IKEA my son installed recently in his home. Not sure if the spacing is standard, you'd have to check, but I sure found it both attractive and sturdy enough. He's hanging all his cliffhanging stuff on it.

https://www.ikea.com/ca/fr/p/skadis-pan ... -10347171/


Pierre
Guitares Torvisse

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Pierre Castonguay

I have installed some of those to keep parts bins organized and generally dislike them as I keep knocking them out of their slots and the contents end up on the floor. Or I take one bin out and the one next to it gets kicked out. Blame it on my clumsiness, but this does not work as well as drawers cabinets for me. So I have walls full of magnet bars for tools, rolling drawers cabinets (the car mechanics' type) and drawers cabinets of all sizes imaginable for parts on the walls.


Pierre
Guitares Torvisse

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Pierre Castonguay

I haven't bothered to read the other responses yet. I look forward to seeing all the great ideas you folks offer.

I hate peg board. It always seems like the holding devices are wobbling around and falling out. I also just don't like the look of it for some reason. But I am a believer in having hand tools out in the open so that you will be reminded to grab them first rather than trying to devise a way to do a simple operation mechanically.

I never got into French cleats because it felt like the tool holders were often bulkier than they needed to be. And yes you can move stuff around easily but I found that once I hang something, I usually don't rearrange it. French cleats kind of lock you into hanging everything in a handful of vertical planes. I like the freedom to tuck smaller things in the empty spaces wherever I want.

I finally settled on plywood with a Luan sheet over it. The luan is a pleasing enough color and even texture as opposed to the radial grain lines in plywood so it looks a little nicer. I just make small tool holders that can screw directly into the plywood. I also use some of those magnetic bars so I can switch in the files and rasps that are currently my favorite and not worry about them dropping off.

do make sure that you don't have stuff hanging on the wall directly in from of where you will have your instruments setting. My main work area is a large U shape with a 3Xf peninsula where I can work on my instruments away form the walls, but the tools are an easy reach to the side.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Brad wrote:
"I’m in the middle of a serious reconfiguring of my shop space. Specifically the area where I make most of the dust. I’m cleaning as a go and reorganizing."

You might consider making shallow cabinets over the peg board and adding doors on them to cut down on the dusting pegboard and open shelving requires. If you make the cabinets a little deeper you could hang pegboard on the back of the doors and double the storage for the same amount of wall space.
I like to have countertops extend past the front of the cabinets so I can clamp stuff to them. Sometimes I will put a second top over the original surface that can be pulled out some, to allow me to do this if the original surface is flush with the cabinet. This also allows me to have a "sacrificial" countertop I don't need to be careful of.
My shop is a jumble of repurposed second hand stuff, and not terribly well organized. It's principal virtue is the fixtures cost so little, and can be tossed out when something better comes along. I should reorganize some of the stuff to the dump.

Slat walls... efficient, accessible for air or electrical runs, and easily removed when departing locales that have provided ample reason to flee.

5/8" repurposed meranti slats (or 1/2" sande where we ran out) x 3.75" width x 1-3/4" gap on 24" or 16" sleepers lagged to poured concrete. Where there is an existing wall already sheathed, 1/2" birch or sande plwood.

After 40 years of French cleat, pegboard (horrible stuff!!!!), fiddly dedicated tool holders, etc., this is what the boys came up with for the 2018-2019 Greenridge shop remodel.

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Making a little progress, Ken!



I think I’ll make a flip cart for the sanders in the corner, but that can wait.

I’ll need to work in the space for a bit and tweak I’m sure.

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Nice and neat. You don’t want tools stored above any surface on which you might be working on a spruce top. It only took me one top to learn that.

I strive to never have to reach over an instrument to grab a tool. Murphy’s law dictates that, eventually, dropping a tool on a guitar in that scenario is a certainty.

I strive to never have to reach over an instrument to grab a tool. Murphy’s law dictates that, eventually, dropping a tool on a guitar in that scenario is a certainty.

I hear what you’re saying for sure. I may experiment with pulling the bench to this end of the shop, but it would be very tight and certainly not enough room to walk around the bench 360.

Right now I walk back and forth a lot taking tools over to the bench, which they then collect there in an annoying fashion.

I need a bigger house.

Will experiment with it.


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