Pegboard Tool Storage, Part 1


It was time for a change. I had spent way too much time rifling through  boxes not finding the tools I want. I switched to pegboard storage. Yep, it was to be idyllic, a new era of having all my tools on display on a wall so that I could find any given one instantly.

After identifying target wall space, I bought the pegboard, and a couple packages of little metal hooky things. Once the pegboard was mounted on the wall, I started arranging my tools. Of course, there wasn't enough space on the board, and optimal packing of tools created an unaesthetic clutter, but I was enthusiastic. Well, at least I was until the first time I hastily grabbed a tool and half the collection fell from their hooks onto the floor. As I put them back and realized how badly these hooks worked, I thought, “tool boxes never did this”.

That's a problem. Those cheapo metal hooks don't fit securely. Oh, I should have bought higher quality? Um, like where? As far as I can tell, they're all made in China and they all are junk.

It was time for a new solution and the answer sat on my toolbench: Makerbot Replicator 2. I'd design my own pegboard storage hooks and make them secure. I could print as many as I'd like and customize them to be perfect.

Part #1 Choose a new location for the pegboard, closer to my work bench. There isn't any wall space, but there is a shelving unit that has adjustable shelves using peg/slot system. If I could adapt the shelving peg/slot system with a pegbard peg/hole system, mounting should be easy.

The pegboard has one inch between all the holes. The shelving has sixteen and a half inches between horizontal holes, and two inches between vertical. Adapting from pegboard to shelving requires two type of adapters.

I started with Peg Board Hanger ( siderits ) / CC BY 3.0
and sliced off all the extra stuff to make a blank pegboard support.


From there I made two variants with pegs that would fit in the shelf supports.



Why two different ones? The singled legged one lines up directly on a one inch mark.  The two legged one has the peg on a half inch mark.  That's what it took to get the proper alignment between the shelf brackets.

Once printed, they looked like this:


and then in place on the backside of the pegboard:


Hanging them on the shelves was simple:




Are they strong enough to hold all the tools?  I printed these as solids for the greatest strength.  Thinking of these as pegs as sacraficial, I then grabbed the top of the board and tried to pull it down and break the pegs.

I was unsuccessful in breaking them and therefore successful in mounting my peg board.


In my next blog posting, I'll start populating my peg board with custom tool hooks and holders that won't loosen and fall off.