Inspire Woodcraft 2018 Shop Tour / A Better French Cleat System

so you probably wondering why I'm laying on the garage floor and quite honestly it's just because I can see my garage floor is completely cleaned up it's had the whole surface ground off of it and I don't know it's kind of nice down here it's nice and cool you could eat off this floor if I was stranded on a desert island all I had was my garage floor I would totally eat on my garage floor let's do a shop tour what's going on everyone I'm Jody this is inspire woodcraft today we're doing a shop tour now I've never done a shop tour before so we'll see how this goes I just recently got through doing a huge overhaul of my garage as some of you know I work out of my garage and I always shared this space with well storage stuff so I'm gonna get to the shop part of this in a minute but I wanted to show you the core of how I was able to actually separate the two of these things so this side of the garage is actually the storage side and what I have is I have this plastic wall that's up here I've run this plastic all the way across and I've actually taped off the edges all the way around this is a three mil plastic you can get from anywhere I got it from the home Vee focus like I've said before that's the closest door to me it has a zipper door so that I can get in and out of it and both sides it up and roll out of the way if you want I feel it easiest for me is just to unzip one side and kind of sneak through like you do in a tent basically it works by attaching these long bowls sort of like a shower curtain hanging rod but vertically up to the wall they have clips up at the top to hold the plastic you don't need a ladder you don't need anything like that this is actually the box of it that it comes in if you go to the store looking for it I'll try and throw a link down below if I could find one I've had this thing up now for about three weeks I think it's worked amazing and because I have it taped off it means the dust I create from that side isn't coming over here you might see things like this at say a hospital or a medical facility where they need to do construction on a certain area but they can't have dust spreading out throughout the office or the building the use of systems like this one but this is the one that I found and I'm so grateful that I stumbled across it because I was going to originally do a built in stick framed wall with the door and all that this is 10 very which means I can take it down in the event that we move I can turn this into a garage instantly when I start packing everything else up I just take this down so I think that's the long and short of this side of it now we'll get into what you all came here to actually see which is the shop tour so first off before I before I forget I wanted to show you guys this I have a remote it basically has what I call a pigtail that comes off of an outlet that you plug an item into so say your shop vac a lot of people like to use these for dust collection you could actually turn on your dust collection with the remote four out of my five overhead lights actually plug into an outlet and they don't have their own on/off switch so this allows me to have all of those on a switch that I can operate remotely which means when I'm on the other side of the wall I think turn the lights off when I come in in the morning I can turn the lights on this is pretty cool came in a pack of three I'm not using the other two right now but again I could use one for the shop vac or something as long as I don't mind tote in this remote all over the place for right now I just used the light so anyways this was a huge upgrade I also updated the power strip I cleaned up the ceiling quite a bit when they did the remodel on this garage to begin with they had wires going everywhere and it just was enough to drive me insane I also cleaned up the ceiling where they had a bunch of old makeshift panels halfway nailed up up there I cleaned all that up got rid of some all the wiring and the the garbage and there's just the noise in the background one because it bothered me and two to make my video quality a little bit better in my photography so I don't have so much junk in the background taking away from this subject all right so I suppose I should just start with I don't know bandsaw we'll just work our way around the room this is my bandsaw it's 14-inch rikon and I absolutely love this thing I did a couple of small super cheap modifications to this and one of them is this tray this tray is completely magnetic and removable I made it out of some scrap tempered hard board I had laying around I have pox seed some magnets to the back of it and the idea is is it Eclipse right back on as I'm cutting stuff out and I have small pieces instead of them getting worked over and off to the edge over here where they would fall on the floor before I can make a conscious effort to actually take them and slide them into this tray when this tray fills up I can just take it off and I can dump it into a wood storage bin a scrap bin of sorts so this is made a huge improvement I've used it several times since I made it and and I love it I think it's a great idea you could probably find the magnetic parts tray or something to do a similar job I just had stuff laying around and I figured I'd go for it so in this shop I'm still running on basically one outlet and an extension cord so every time I go from the bandsaw to the sander or whatever it is I have to unplug and plug the new tool in and it's a real pain in the butt so to prevent from having to bend down each time I go to unplug and plug something in I tried to get all of the electrical cords up at least at waist level so that I could get to them so with this I just attached a magnet with tape and I can just stick it to here I've got a screw clamp down here and I don't normally use screw clamps too much except for when I'm at the bandsaw I use them to hold round stock as I feed it through to prevent the blade from pulling down on that round stock and causing mayhem I made this bracket I actually made it so it would hold three I only have one right now which is fine but I can slide this back on and just leave it on here it's out of the way it doesn't interfere with the doors or any of the adjustment knobs or anything and this is worked out pretty well all right so right next to the bandsaw is the drill press floor stand model it's an old Delta I've probably had it close to 20 years all the time I've ever owned it I've never had a decent table so I made a halfway decent table old piece of melamine shelving that I had that was still straight and flat I covered it with quarter-inch tempered hardboard and then I waxed this I made a adjustment knob fence type system it's pretty Elementary but it'll get me by and it'll also allow me to see what it is I do and don't about a fence system or drill press I also like to eventually make one that incorporates some sort of dust collection and so I'm still gonna play around with that in the meantime this will kind of give me my dues in my don'ts eventually maybe I'd like to make cabinets under here for storage that would tidy up things a little bit more this will work for now same thing I have the cord with a magnet on it this can be stuck under here somewhere I promise it can or in my case I just leave it up there it's within arm's reach the other thing is I put the Chuck on a lanyard which it's always been on a lanyard but the lanyard finally broke when I replace the lanyard I also glued a magnet to the housing and now that maintenance just I can just take this on and off use it as I need just throw it up there it won't fall in the dust and the debris underneath I won't lose it and it keeps it up and out of the way so super cheap a little upgrade that makes a huge difference in my shop floor oh and to use this this is like I say this is a simple design as a threaded knob here that can come out if need be so we can completely remove the fence otherwise the novel strollers in there's a threaded insert underneath and it can spin this way so that's how you're gonna get your front and back you can clamp it to one spot just with the clamp and it doesn't go anywhere actually moves the press before it moves the fence and then I have an adjustment knob just with a screw here and nut on the back when the nut slides inside of here and grips it stays stays pretty secure so I think this will work pretty well until I do say the upgrade again alright so some of you guys coming over here to watch this from Instagram you guys follow it along and you saw that I decked this whole place out in French cleats now for those that don't know what a French cleat system is a French cleat system has a 45-degree angled cut it has a top and it has a bottom the bottom gets fixed to a stationary object usually the wall and then the other half gets attached to some sort of a fixture that becomes removable now the whole idea behind a French cleat system in a shop is that you can move things and rearrange it as necessary typically what happens is a person will build a hole they'll face a wall or part of the wall with french cleats and they'll have a whole bunch of different levels to it and so they have say this drill bit holder but they don't like where this drill bit holder is anymore so they can just take it off of there really easy and they can move it up a notch or they can move it down or they can move it to another part of the wall in my shop I decided that I would put this French cleat system all over the place so I could move anything I wanted to to anywhere else that I wanted to depending on my workflow for that project so it's pretty easy it just simply slides on like this so I put it on walkway take it off the other thing is is for me almost everything has flat bottoms so that I can move them out of my way and onto another surface in the event that I need to say for cleaning I want to get back into this spot and I want to clean back here or I want to move something around whatever these might get in the way now I can just take him put them up on top of this surface do what I need to do put them back if I want put them somewhere else if I want and it all works out really well all right so moving on from the drill press what we have is the miter saw station now I have here my 10 inch miter saw which this is actually the first miter saw I ever owned it's an old Delta I have the upgrade which is the 12 inch tool and then I have one that I got about a year ago which is actually 1956 if I got my numbers correct radial arm saw also made by do all these three are all online so I can use each one of them as necessary so I could set this one to make 45-degree cuts and I could set the DeWalt to make straight cuts I can set the radial arm saw to make n cuts on say wider pieces like cutting boards and whatnot and I can do all those actions without repositioning blades all the time which I could also have a finishing blade in here I can have a construction type general-purpose blade in the bigger saw and that's kind of how I have it set up right now so when I start making art pieces when I start doing more production type stuff this workflow is really going to come in handy I understand maybe you don't have several saws Sol's can be picked up pretty cheap and they can usually be tuned up pretty well so this might be something if you're looking to step up your production game I would definitely recommend something like this now on the other side some of you may have noticed there was an old closet over there we tore all that out and when we did I took and reused the studs for this frame essentially this is four boxes that are all put together and then the saws are individually put in between there then that allowed me to have a little bit of storage so like the compressor which I used to have to pick up and carry around and trip over all the time is now on wheels and it primarily lives here until I need to drain the tank which I can just roll it right outside drain the tank bring it back in and it's right where it's supposed to be it's under here so it's not in the way anymore which it was a huge game changer is getting a lot of this stuff on wheels and out of the way so that I could move things around as necessary I mean technically we decreased my work space by a third and yet I have more room in here than I've ever had before because we thought more about how to use what little room we had if that makes any sense so same thing under here this is under the 12 inch saw I made a shelf where I was able to put the router table and you can't see it but I just have a spot for trash cans I know that's kind of silly to show but you know place for everything and everything in its place right now this cart that the planner is on this is the court that the radial arm saw used to be on by moving that over here it freed this cart up to put something else on so like I said we put the planer on it I put wheels on it's not a perfect setup and it's overloaded right now because I have a bunch of scrap wood waiting to be thrown out stored underneath it but this is a good solution for being able to get the planer out of the way the planer used to live either on the floor or I had to pick it up and put it on the bench when I needed to use it make a big mess trying to find somewhere to store it always a pain in the rear so having this thing on wheels although not the greatest solution in the world is a good temporary solution for right now until I make a flip-top cart or something like that and behind it I have my little six-inch porter-cable jointer a lot of people give that thing a bad rap I have never had a problem with it but to be fair I never had a planer before and I had on jigs for the table-saw and whatnot so I'm happy with it it seems to give me nice square flat true edges and that's really what I need it for that's not on wheels because that's light enough the stand that I made for it I can pick it up and move it as necessary use it and put it back in it doesn't get used all the time same with this and so these two things are able to store over here out of the way if they're in the way I can always move them to another spot alright moving on from that corner we have the assembly table this thing was originally just a hollow core door with plywood sides it was built very elementary and also it was simply just a table and I've completely transformed this thing into much more part of it is I have that same French cleat system basically almost completely wrapping the outside of the perimeter of this table and the reason is is because I have a bunch of fixtures that I made similar to the other side where I have containers now I'll show you these containers in a minute they're super simple but the idea is is I can put a lot of my most well used stuff in here and if I need this space on the table I can simply take this container and put it here on the side and that gives me my work surface area back so if I'm making something that's large enough that I need this stuff out of the way I can and because they sit flat on the table I could also move them to another surface if I really needed that much space where I needed to overhang so that's it right now that's a pretty sweet system again I've used this plenty since I started this and this thing it man it just makes it makes a world of difference alright so here's some of these fixtures we have just this simple tray it's got a t-handle on it so that we can pick it up and move it as necessary I've got my glues epoxies and stuff that I use all the time in there this is another little deal here it's got a handle same thing if I can see what I'm doing sets on the side and it just hangs there this also has a drawer or I can put miscellaneous objects and bits and pieces that I use all the time has a spot where I can store rulers and squares most of the time that thing will just live up there on the assembly table because it's stuff I need but again the idea is I can move it away from there if I need this space I also made just a few other little holders same thing set these up here made a small trashcan for pencil shavings and tape and you know packages when you open stuff and you need somewhere to put it and as you can see I put that cleat pretty much running all the way down so I can move those things wherever I want I can move to the other side of the table I can move them up here depending on my workflow and you'll see why that really makes a difference here in a minute when I get to the other board also on this table I put some OSB on the sides because it was a cheap alternative to actual plywood and this is where I have my clamp storage just as a clamp rack that I made that I can't use right handed I'm actually left-handed so that makes sense all my f-style clamps can go here we've got a hook handmade now none of these are on French cleats these are all actually screwed into the OSB but it just makes a really nice spot to store things and as you can tell since this thing's on wheels as well they don't come out from the edge of the table and that's really important because I want to be able to stand here without having to huddle over these things if we keep moving underneath here I just put a small shelf and that's just to hold certain things I've got a couple more pieces OSB and some foam and plastic and just just random stuff that I don't want out here eventually if I have this table for that long I'd like to make a full system of shelves or something in here to really utilize that space now on this side of the bench we have the same thing I have a couple of cleats that are nailed up there or screwed in up there and then I have more brackets this is where I've got some of my longer clamps this is where I have finally my k5 mounted now this does hang on a cleat and now the wings are there if you're not familiar with this system inside this is where you house all your bits and pieces and now this thing can be thrown on a table used and when I'm done with it I can kind of just clean it up and store it back on the cleat system next to the jig I actually have open containers of screws that I use quite a bit and so now they're within easy reach these are on cleats as well so I can take it up here and I can use it I can grab a screw use it for what I'm you know trying to do and when I'm done I can put that away now before I forget this is my cart that I made up for my shop vac and for this guy which is the dust stopper this is a separator separates the dust the vacuum pulls obviously sucks the dust through the main hose and into here and the dust settles into this container and keeps only the fine dust in here this thing works amazing I just made it on this simple cart setup with a handle back here and I made a hook for it to store a secondary hose and try and keep the cord off the floor and now I can move this thing to each machine or or clean up as necessary and it's completely on wheels just like most everything in the shop I know you guys might recognize this stuff from the shop before this is essentially like a plywood storage bin if you will just holds a lot of scraps and nonsense in here probably to go through and clean some of it out this is on wheels and this this is an old dresser that I had that I converted into a storage area and also a work cart for the sander so the sander lives up here underneath here I can put storage which is obviously what I have here but I was able to take the sanding station off the back and actually to a wall over here which I'll show you in a second this is on wheels too so I can move around I can get to the dust port in the back it just lives here against the wall next to this guy no these save a lot of space being on wheels now right above the sanding station and the the storage bin I actually have this cabinet now this cabinets fairly experimental so far so good it's super functional this is all made at a half inch plywood my vat dowels to hold stuff up top it's not necessary but I put it there that looks a little more polished that way what's really cool about this cabinet is that I have all my quart size cans up here and I actually have sprays in the back and some solvent based materials as well and so this actually works really well this little deal that I have here helps take the weight off the hinges on the other side but the thing really works super smooth I can come in here grab what I need close the door you get it super handy I doubled up my space basically and I don't have a shelf dedicated to living on the floor which would be not movable I guess I could get a shelf with wheels but I wouldn't want to be wheeling all this stuff around anyways because knowing me I'll run over a quart or something it'll spill everywhere and I'll have a big mess on my hands so anyways pretty cool stuff all right now this is the same dresser that I had before this used to be my wife's old dresser and when she got rid of it I took it out into the shop I used to years ago have my mitre station on it and actually just recently until I did this I had my miter saw up here right now it's I think going to be where I do my product photography I think I'm gonna make a nice bottom layer for it and then maybe like a wall and I can have this for a little spot where I shoot photos but for right now it has a couple of random things on here that I haven't quite found space for and I have my enormous vise up here cos it's really heavy and I don't have anywhere else to put it by making the storage systems on the wall like the French cleat systems I opened up a lot of space in the drawers and was able to get rid of a lot of stuff and really and so now I've got a lot of stuff in the drawers that used to be just laying all over the place so one hand kind of fed the next and so now it's it's a lot more organized right now earlier I said that a lot of people will take the French cleat system and they'll put it on a wall and that'll be their primary area where they're gonna organize stuff for me I am very limited on wall space I have a window here this wall is now made out of plastic and I have long storage over there above the miter saw station and my other wall is well it's a garage door so that's not gonna work either so I just took a small chunk of wall and did the most I could with it and this is where I have storage I have you know obviously tapes the sanding station is up here now I have a really cool drill holder that I came up with but the coolest thing like I said about a cleat system is that you can rearrange it as you feel necessary so you can put power tools on there that you want to reach for all the time like say you do a lot of router work but you don't want it laying out on the table you can make a storage system for a router like I say I have ones for the drills I have stuff for rolls of tape extra tape I have just shelves to hold bottles of glue and epoxy and stuff like that this same situation I can take this thing and I can move it over there to the assembly table where I want to use it I'm not going back and forth I'm not taking up table space and to me that's a huge game changer because now I keep stuff out of my way it gives it a home to go back to when I'm done with this so at the end of the day or the end of the week when you do maintenance a scheduled cleanup you have a place to put stuff back and if this doesn't fit your workflow you just rearrange it as necessary and it's that easy all right now this is the bench that I originally started out with when I started getting back into woodworking this is just a normal bench used with construction grade materials but it looks a lot different for one the kids and I went through and we totally squared this thing up and made it more solid so now I mean it really doesn't move hardly at all we also utilized the French cleat system here so that I can put Hardware bins on here again same thing like everything else I can move stuff around as necessary for what I'm doing I don't really use this as a work surface as much anymore I might now used to always just be a place to collect junk which most work surfaces to become that after a while maybe it'll just be my leaning desk from now on I like that I think that's gonna about wrap it up for me hopefully you guys got enough out of this to get some inspiration to go out and fix up your own workplaces it's super nice to be able to not only have a spot for something to go but know where that thing is supposed to go back and then with the cleat system it's nice to be able to rearrange those spots as your workflow changes this should make me a lot more productive a lot more organized and I should really be able to knock some stuff out now along with that to be absolutely honest it kind of gives you a bit of a confidence boost because you feel just more productive just walking into the shop at least that's the case for me one more thing that I may have not said at the beginning of the video is that I ground down the concrete and what I mean by that is I literally ground the entire floor as if you were running it through a surface planer they didn't get it completely flat but what it did is it took off a very top layer of concrete which had a bunch of just nasty stuff on it that gave this place a nice airy feel now obviously that wouldn't be necessary for you necessarily but for me I had so much nasty stuff on it that I didn't even want to really work in here so that made a huge difference so anyways yeah do me a favor and hit the like button if you like this video subscribe if you aren't already and don't forget to hit the notification bell and that'll tell you when I have videos coming out I do have some simple drawers that I'm gonna make I need to do a mountain scape piece and I've had a few people request that I show how I do those so some cool stuff down the road hopefully I can get back into making videos it's been about a month maybe three weeks and in YouTube blend that's that's like three or four years so anyways thank you so much for watching this video and let me know in the comments if if you see anything that could benefit you or some things that you think I should change because obviously I can't think of everything anyways until the next video I will talk to you guys later remember when your parents said don't play with the lights they didn't have a remote this is so fun I don't know what it is I just on of on/off

Channel: Inspire Woodcraft

Views: 153,133

Rating: 4.8905969 out of 5

Keywords: shop tour 2018, inspire woodcraft, french cleat system, french cleat, woodshop tour, woodshop, shop organization, power tools, shop tour, tool storage, wood shop, french cleat tool storage, french cleat storage, diy french cleat wall system, diy french cleat, diy french cleat tool storage, shop makeover ideas

Id: QG0if0_nxnA

Length: 26min 27sec (1587 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 11 2018