workshop table plans “+10,000 Step By Step Plans ...even if you don't have a large workshop or expensive tools!“ Download Today...
workshop table plans
“+10,000 Step By Step Plans ...even if you don't have a large workshop or expensive tools!“ Download Today! 👈
Is your shop disorganized? Well besides the obvious effects on your OCD did you know this is probably costing you time and money? Well in this video I'm going to share 10 storage tips You're on 10 on your guitar where can you go from there?Where? Wait what's wrong with 10? Put it up to 11! Exactly! All right we're cranking it up to 11 storage tips to help you get more organized in the shop! Organizing your shop can be overwhelming. I mean, where do you even begin? i have no idea But after a decade of building my own shop up from a two-car garage to a dedicated workspace I've developed a few good rules that I follow that have helped me out a lot and all of these things you can take and apply to your situation right now wherever you perform work whether that's in your workshop your office or even your kitchen So to get started I want to talk about three basic rules that I think are the fundamentals of good organization and you should work on these things first Rule number one is everything in your shop needs its own home Without this rule in place stuff can begin floating around the shop from surface to surface ultimately ending up in the darkest recesses of your shop you're probably already starting to relate to this rule when you know that it hasn't been in place i mean how often have you been in the middle of working on a project and you spend more time walking around your shop looking for a tool than the amount of time you spend actually using the tool on the project yes reach I've even found myself in the extreme circumstance of knowing that i owned something already but I just couldn't find it and I ended up having to go out and purchase it all over again just to get my project done but just by sticking to this first rule you're going to start to set yourself up for success and start shaving off those time wasting and money wasting events rule number two is organizing like items together in one place that means putting fasteners with other fasteners putting all of your glue in one spot putting all of your router items in one place and in this case putting everything related to drilling in one cart keeping everything of a certain type or that performs a similar task in one place is always a good idea this way you always know where something should be and I like that the drill press is a good visual key for me when I'm working so if I'm wondering hey where are my drill bits where are my countersinks where are my forstner bits well just look for the drill press and that's where the drilling tools are and rule number three is store your items close to where you use them the most let me show you an illustration of what that looks like in my shop this area of my shop is primarily where I do assembly and if you look around the perimeter you can see all types of things related to that on this wall I've got my clamps over here in this cabinet is where I keep all of my glue and epoxy and other adhesives and in this cabinet is where I keep all of my fasteners screws dominoes you name it so I know if I'm in the middle of an assembly I'm not very many steps away from anything that I might need to get that done and that can really save you especially in the middle of a very complex glue up where there's not a lot of time to decide and react what to do next you don't want to be wasting time walking around looking for tools now here's a perfect example of hitting the trifecta of all three of those things that I just talked about this cabinet is where I keep all of the glue and adhesives in my shop they only live in this cabinet so if I come looking for glue and it's not in this cabinet I know I'm out of it and I need to go get more and this cabinet exists only four or five steps away from where I do the vast majority of the assembly in my shop all right my next tip is to keep items that you use the most often easiest to access now for me that means keeping items on countertops or in the upper drawers of cabinets one of the ways I accomplished this was to put a collection of my most used fasteners in these pull out cubbies on my miter saw station and because they're labeled it's easy to see what's in there and I can just grab a bin and take it right to my project and when I'm done I can put the bin back in its place I also reserve these upper cabinets for items like marking and measuring tools as well as drivers and bits and another good example of this rule is my tool wall this is where I keep all of my squares it's easy to see what I have grab the one that I need and use it in my project and then return it right back to its home and the next tip on the list is the opposite of the last one which is to keep lesser used items in bottom drawers and in the back of cabinets and one bonus tip that i recommend is using pull out trays now this is going to make things way easier to access in the bottom of these cabinets and you're not going to shove something to the back of the cabinet and forget that it exists all right so in my shop i like to keep things looking clean and tidy which makes this next tip one of my personal favorites and that is to label what you can't see so if you're abiding by rule number two and keeping all like items in one place well then this tip is going to be super easy to execute all you got to do is get you one of these and start labeling so the good part about keeping all your tools in cabinets is that you don't see them the bad part about keeping all your tools in cabinets is that you don't well see them that's where labeling is crucial just like you don't want to go searching all over your cluttered shop for that one tool you need right now you also don't want to open every door and drawer to find out what's behind it you can get these labels in white but I actually like the clear ones because it lets the grain of the wood show through and it blends in more naturally while still being able to read the label all right if you want to get really good at not wasting time and money in the shop you've got to have a good strategy for dealing with small parts especially fasteners so one of the best finds that I ever made for my shop are these small plastic containers that allow me to organize the nuts and bolts that you see here and there are a lot of reasons why I like this particular container starting with its size I don't know what force of nature or natural law makes this exact size container always work out for the number of nuts and bolts that I need to store in it but it just does it it seems to be the perfect size container for at least for my shop and I like it because it's clear on top so you can see what's inside it and you know what you have especially how many you have left so if you know you need to reorder some that's easy to tell you can also label it so if you need to get more specific with the size that's in here you could do that it's a highly portable container so you can take it right to your project use what you need and return it right back to the drawer where it goes and I think most importantly it's stackable that's so huge and that means I can take full advantage of the amount of storage space that I have in this drawer and really maximize the number of items that i can keep in this one place I'll go ahead and leave a link in the description below if you want to check these out I got them off amazon they're not expensive at all and man for bang for the buck in organizing your shop this one's a pretty heavy hitter one of the things I despise the most is wasted space under tools and that's what this next tip is all about this MFT/3 table will always take up the same footprint in my shop but the problem is I'm only using this much of that footprint and everything below it is completely dead wasted space and here's an example of what I think is the right way to do it so when I bought this router table this was all just an open metal frame I'm sure you've seen that that's the way I think every router table comes but I took the time to build storage into the bottom of it to really maximize the footprint and it turns out that I was able to create enough storage that I can keep every single bit of router kit that I own in one place so every router every router accessory and every router bit all stored inside this one cabinet now it still takes up the same footprint in my shop than it always did but I'm utilizing all that space below it and that is a beautiful thing and aside from utilizing all that dead space underneath your tools another great way to maximize organization in the shop is to utilize the shop walls and for me that means lots of upper cabinets where I like to store items that I use all the time and keep them close at hand but it doesn't have to stop there back in my old two-car garage shop I built this storage loft above my shop to keep loads of items that I would normally store in my garage up and out of the way and as you're looking for storage solutions don't forget to look all the way up if you have a shop that has access to the floor joists this is a great place to store rarely used items like spare clamps and pipes and maybe the best way to effectively store and organize tools is to get creative and make your own custom storage solutions that fit your shop you can get creative by modifying standard cabinets like this example where I made this saw blade organizer that slides out of the side of this cabinet it's super low profile and stores a ton of different blades without utilizing much space but sometimes a completely custom solution is needed and one good example of that is my clamp rack now I build this custom clamp rack to store a ton of clamps neatly and in one place really utilizing my wall space another great example is this drill charging station now it does one job it stores my drills and drivers along with their batteries and chargers it's compact on the wall at eye level so I can see what I have and everything is in one place and a side benefit to building all this custom storage for your shop is it's a great opportunity for you to practice your woodworking skills while improving your shop at the same time all right I said I'm taking this thing up to 11 and we're going to talk about one more shop organization tip and that is developing a good strategy for dealing with lumber scraps and off cuts now if you've been a woodworker for any amount of time you understand that scraps and off cuts from previous projects can lay around pile up and start to get out of control and so it's really important that we develop some rules around how to manage those things so that they don't take over our shops most woodworkers are going to want to utilize some kind of racking system for their lumber this is going to keep it off the ground and also make it really easy to see what you have on hand the next thing I suggest is some type of cart or organizer for larger off cuts I like my offcut cart because I can easily thumb through what I have on hand and shop for what I want to use and you should always have a good plan for storing the small scraps these are the ones that can really clutter things up and get in the way and so I like using a stacking bin system it allows me to keep things organized by color and species type and these bins are pretty big so I kind of have a rule for myself that says hey if it doesn't fit in the bin I probably don't need it and I'm not going to use it anytime soon another great rule of thumb to go by is if the piece isn't big enough to put in a cutting board you probably don't need it alright that's it those are all of my shop organization tips i hope you guys really enjoyed this video and don't forget that I've got links in the description to some of the products in this video as well as plans for the cabinets that I have in my shop if you'd like to try those and also let me know in the description below if you found this type of content valuable and you'd like me to sprinkle these types of videos into my channel every now and then that would be super helpful for me to know and until next time guys have fun in the shop ...
“+10,000 Step By Step Plans ...even if you don't have a large workshop or expensive tools!“ Download Today! 👈
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