During my first year in the shop, I found that students had a hard time finding tools in the tool room. I would ask for a pair of diagonal cutters and it would take them ten minutes to find the tool even though they were hanging in the tool room at eye level. During the summer I decided to re-organize the pegboard. I watched a video from Highland Woodworking about a 5S storage cabinet that I found very inspirational. I decided that I was going to try to implement some 5S organization in the shop. I started by moving all the tools that I didn’t use as often to the farthest end of the wall. The tape measures and layout tools were at the front followed by staple pullers, pliers, hammers, screwdrivers, nut drivers, scissors, etc. This system worked a little better, but it didn’t solve my pegboard problem. I continued to do more research, and during my third summer at North Port, I began work on a new tool organization system using the rear wall in the shop.

I started by ripping strips of plywood down to 2” with a 45° angle on one side. I installed them using a 3” spacer with a matching 45° angle. I used 3/4” MDF as a back and attached the cleats with 2” screws to the wall. I made sure to cut out holes in the MDF to accommodate the surface-mounted electrical boxes. I trimmed the 8’-0” x 8’-0” panel in 1x to stop mounted shelves from sliding off.

The French cleat wall was an experiment that ended up solving several problems. It lessened my use of the pegboards in the tools room while moving all of my most used tools closer to the main workspace. In the end, I regretted not making the wall bigger to hold more tools. I found that once I put everything on the wall, it was a little cramped. I also could have moved more tools out of the back room and into the shop. I know that for some people it’s important to keep tools locked up, but in this situation, the shop was under 24/7 surveillance and there were only five people on campus that had the key to get into the room.

The rear wall of the shop was being used for clamp and castor storage. The system I installed worked, but it didn’t use the space effectively. I wanted to move all of the tools out of the tool room and into the shop to make it easier to grab the tools that I needed. After spending some time researching storage systems online I decided that I wanted to install a French cleat system on this wall. This system would allow me to build customer holders for all the tools, and it would be easily modified in the future.

I wanted to keep my castors and clamps on the back wall, but I decided to mount the clamps perpendicular to the wall instead of parallel to save space. I moved the drills and batteries to the back wall and built a custom rack for both. I have three shelves on the wall to hold glue, tape measures, safety glasses, spare batteries, and my stereo system. I also added a new ghost light that was gifted to me by a biology teacher. Later on, I would add magnetic strips and metal pegs that held screwdrivers, staple pullers, pliers, nut drivers, drill bits, and saws. The French cleat wall made finding tools easier and shortened the distance that students had to walk to find something. I often joked with my colleagues that the students used to have to walk through one too many doors and would forget what they were supposed to grab.