I’m going to be looking into restructuring our tool wall in the very near future. It has been doing well and serving a good purpose, however I believe we’re at a point where we should have a bit more formal organization than what buckets and bins can offer.
This will also include a purge of existing tools that may or may not function or are seldom used. Additionally this will allow us to stock the tool wall with tools that will be used and cared for.
I had been meaning to look at different ways to organize bits (drill bits and for impacts.) Digging through the bit bucket always takes me a minute.
Also, using the pencil sharpener tends wiggle the squares off of their rests and onto the floor, so potentially a different way to store those, or just being more resistant to wobble.
I’m with you. In the future I’d like to do away with all buckets and “general purpose” shelves. Everything will have a place or label.
If you’re up for helping procure or make a thing for the bits (or anything else), let’s talk! I’ve got a high level plan at the moment but could certainly get some help filling in the blanks.
Robert
Count me in. I would be glad to help you with the tool wall as we have already discussed. Yes, I also am tired of the roofing squares falling off the rack and scaring the crap out of me. Let me know if I can help?
I’m very glad to hear from y’all. I am flushing out a plan and we’ll absolutely be asking for help soon. A lot of it will include building out individual pieces of this. The intent is this tool wall is seen as a complete offering, as if it were its own large tool.
On that note, I found this Forester bit in the lathe drawer, missing from it’s designated spot on the wall.
Please always be sure to put things back where they were taken from. Without this mindset, a new tool wall will be hard to justify.
One of the things I keep on my pegboard at home are a few general-purpose consumables. Especially some acid brushes and tongue depressors, near my supply of various glues/tapes. This is a bit more difficult in a shared shop, but maybe a box of tongue depressors goes a long way for cheap. They are glue tools, shims, and non-marring pry tools all in one!
One of my more common 3D printing use cases is making some kind of mount for tools - whether custom or just a print from somewhere online. In fact my most downloaded model ever is a pegboard clamp rack remix? In this case, the print hours per item are not really justified for most things we can make easily out of wood to be more durable and more replaceable. However, if we identify anything that would benefit, I’m happy to help. My CAD skills are limited to OpenSCAD currently, which happens to be ideal for making tool holders from measurements! Candidates include: Battery racks, battery-like tool mounts (example), and bit holders with standard shanks (example) come to mind.
There is also gridfinity… we could laser or CNC baseplates…
Lastly, in the vein of ‘put it back where you got it’ - I have always wanted to silhouette my tools on the wall, but never committed to an organization system. It wouldn’t pay off for one person. For this tool wall we could probably commit, at least for larger tools. Is the plunge router in use? There is an empty silhouette that says “yes”. If we can nail down a process, cutting silhouettes on the vinyl cutter is very easy.
