Started with woodworking as a hobby a year ago. I have plenty of tools now. Started with a workbench which is way to big for my small barn where also bicycles are stored (Dutch). So that’s going to be dismantled.
But what frustrates me is the lack of organized storage of tools. So I’m thinking of a French cleat wall to put my tools against.
Has anyone here did a French cleat wall and want to share experience or photos?
Thx all, I’ve started. Let’s see where this goes.
Buy a sheet of 1/2" Baltic birch for $100 US and rip it to make the cleats. You will be able to finish the entire wall behind your work bench. Then have fun making a new storage piece for your tools every night for a month. You will have the most OCD, beautifully organized tools of any workshop around. Go one step further and get a laser engraver to etch in a logo of each tool where it goes.
I made something like this and it worked out well. Like the other commenter suggested, I used solid wood for the cleats and plywood for stuff like boxes and a custom circular saw holder. Take a look at peg board organizer kits to get ideas for what you might like to recreate.
Not a woodworking guy but son of one.
If the picture you presented is representative, then make the cut of the wood in the other direction (not in the direction the wood layers). That piece of wood is either glued or / compressed. And in the way it is cut, if you hang heavy stuff there is a real possibility that wood layers are separated by brute force because is the glue which holds all together will not be enough.
But it is fine if you want to hang something small like a hammer.
I’m actually going to agree with this comment. That design sucks. To be stronger, it needs to have cross brazing such that the wood is in tension in the direction of the grain. That said, unless you fold it, I don’t see how that would work. However, let’s be practical, you can probably hang a bicycle from there so its not gonna fail if you hand a hammer on it unless you have it under the sun for 30 years or under a constant water drip or something similar.
That’s plywood. The layers are laminated at 90 degrees to each other. There is no “other direction” to make the cuts. There’s nothing weak about this setup, it’s a tried and true method of making French cleats.
I don’t refer that, the way it is cut the pull down force will de laminate the wood because only the glue between 2 layers is what is going to hold everything together.
As some other users were pointing it is also possible that the glue in recent years is better than the one I recall when I was a child
Any woodworker will tell you that wood glue is stronger than the wood its self. If that piece fails, it won’t be the glue that fails, it’ll be the actual wood.
It could be, as I said before I am not the woodworking guy. Perhaps the glue improved in the last 30 years but I am pretty sure that my father wouldn’t like how it is cut :)
The accessory cleat is such a small piece, it should probably simply be solid wood. Whichever way the layers go on the one in the image, it will cause problems.
And a sold wood one is liable to crack with the screws or grain. The only solution is to use forged tungsten.
