Tool storage - french cleat spacing?

[Jon Endres]

I am about to start putting french cleats on a couple of walls in my shop, and I've watched a ton of online videos just to see how other folks do theirs. No questions about how it's done, but I see the cleats on the wall spaced everywhere from 2" apart to 8" apart, sometimes even more. For those of you who use them - what did you use for spacing and why? I really can't figure out the logic for any particular spacing other than what might be visually appealing on the wall. I'm going to be using the cleats for custom tool holders, movable shelves, clamp racks and generally some pretty heavy items. Mostly things I use frequently and don't want to dig around in a drawer to find.

[glenn bradley]

I mount larger fixtures to the cleats and put small items in those fixtures.
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This system has morphed a lot over time and even moved with me to my temporary digs.
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The only thing I really mount directly to the cleats are the clamp racks. That is, I don't make a small fixture to hold a mallet and one to hold some chisels. I mount tool cabinets, scrap bins, a compressor shelf, my shop vac (the space did not allow for primary cleat mounting in my temporary location so the reel is mounted to the wall and a short cleat is added for the blower/filter box),
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and so forth. This gives me a lesser degree of granularity but, I only have three cleat levels.

The top level is driven by the ability to mount a clamp rack fixture and put clamps on and off easily. This varies with which wall and what's above. For example; the old shop with a soffit:
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The temporary shop with an overheard storage area:
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The next cleat level is also primarily determined by clamp lengths but, is also at the height where cabinets and such might be mounted as seen in the second pic. The third level is set to the height to mount base cabinets, bench grinders, shorts storage, etc. This also happens to be the right height for 24" parallel clamps.

There is value in the closely spaced cleats if you plan to make a lot of individual or 2-3 item cleat fixtures. For this sort of granularity I prefer peg board (which I mount in panels and hang from one of the three cleat levels). The ability to slide fixtures about and move them with ease relies on the wall surface being true and plumb. This takes some doing.

The experience with simply mounting cleats to the existing wall and hoping for the best is part of what led me to less cleats / larger fixtures. I can hang things even when the wall is less-than-true as in my temporary digs. I will plumb and true the wall in my new shop as I did in the old. This allows you to literally slide large, heavy fixtures left and right as required for adjustments as things change.

You will grow into what best works for you. You could layout the wall for 12" spacing and start with 2 or 3 cleats spread apart as I do. If you find you want more granularity you can always add another row at the predetermined level. This would save yo from mounting a dozen cleats only to find that 4 would do ;-)

[Bob Jones 5443]

Glenn's example is instructive. I offer mine, a close-spaced layout, as a counterpoint to his system.

After we moved to this house four years ago, every tool I own was in a box –– somewhere. Most were labeled, but it was a constant pain to go to a box, use a tool, and then, what? Put it back in the box it came from? Ugh. I moved to a cleat wall and I have been constantly delighted by the decision. My cleats are ripped from pine 1x4, down the middle, at 45º. Each cleat is very close to 2" of vertical height. Spacing between cleats is about 3+" to allow just enough room to lift a holder out of its position as needed.

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When I get the urge to park my car in the garage, my table saw rolls into the space below the cleats.

As you can see, I can put anything and everything on this wall. Each time I want to store a new tool, I design and build a custom caddy for it. With this high granularity, I can move caddies around when the spirit moves me. I still have maybe 25% of the wall area capacity left for the future.

I take particular joy in the screwdriver, chisel, router bit, and Forstner bit racks, which use a total of about 1.6 square feet of wall area for nearly 100 parts, and fit tightly into small gaps around other items. The theme of the wall is to use the 3rd dimension (depth) to store the items.

(My clamps are on two other walls, on shop-built racks copying the Lee Valley product. It looks like Glenn uses a related design for his clamp racks.)

One thing I wish I had done differently: my cleats are screwed into studs through the drywall, which is not strictly flat in my 60-year-old garage. If I had it to do again, I'd cover the wall in 3/4" plywood first. that would add some flatness and would also greatly simplify the locations I could use to screw the cleats on.

I'm a fierce advocate of cleat-wall storage. I can honestly say I smile a little every time I reach for something there, which is every time I'm in the workshop.

Did you spot the Cosman saw?

[Tom Bender]

Glenn you may be that rare woodworker with too many clamps.

[Bob Riefer]

Great timing on this thread as I have been thinking about this for the upcoming "new wall" in my shop (interior obstacle is being removed during a renovation, resulting in me gaining about 17 feet of wall space).

As many pics as people are willing to share are greatly appreciated (and thanks to Glenn and Bob already :-) )

[Steve Wurster]

I have French Cleats on sections of two walls in my shop. There's about 8' of cleats on the wall above my bench, and just under 6' of cleats on a side wall. The spacing between cleats is about 3.25", with each cleat being about 2.75" tall at the peak. The cleats above my bench have been there for nearly 2 years, while the ones on the other wall went up sometime last year.

I made a bunch of custom tool holders to hold planes, hammers / mallets, saws, chisels etc., along with a few simple holders for things like rolls of tape and spring clamps. I also made a few shelves to hold things that don't otherwise lend themselves to cleat storage, such as pencils.

I like this solution, and I have moved things around a few times to either suit my workflow or the addition of new items that I wanted to hang up.

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[David Walser]

I am about to start putting french cleats on a couple of walls in my shop, and I've watched a ton of online videos just to see how other folks do theirs. No questions about how it's done, but I see the cleats on the wall spaced everywhere from 2" apart to 8" apart, sometimes even more. For those of you who use them - what did you use for spacing and why?...

Jon -- The spacing between cleats is a compromise between flexibility and time/cost. The tighter the cleat spacing, the more flexibility you have in arranging items on the wall. This can (at least in theory), allow you put more things on the wall. Also, by closely spacing the cleats, the cleats below the one being used can properly space the bottom of the item being hung out from the wall. Otherwise, you might need to install a spacer on the back of whatever you're hanging on the wall.

On the other hand, with a tightly spaced cleat wall, many of those cleats will never be used to hang anything. That's a lot of material and time expended for no real purpose.

HTH

[Jim Becker]

David makes a great point. A regular spacing of the cleats permits the cleats to support something hanging from a higher row, permits easy configuration of using two cleats on a very heavy item and allows one to standardize on how to size various fixtures that may come and go over time that use the cleats. But I also agree that there will likely be shop areas where an extensive grid would use a lot of material (expense and time...and "dust collection") that would go unused. No matter, just use the same spacing if cleats need to get added or subtracted or moved into those areas for consistency. A slat-wall is certainly an alternative solution but has its own foibles to manage.

[Andy D Jones]

Glenn you may be that rare woodworker with too many clamps.

Blasphemy!

One thing I noticed from all these pictures, is that you can either have more cleats per unit of wall height, or you can put feet on your cleated items/fixtures that don't reach down to (and consume) the next row(s) of cleats.

So, while the extra row(s) of cleats may not all be usable for hanging, they do provide finer granularity in the height above the floor of items hung on the wall, while also avoiding the need for feet on shorter items/fixtures.

-- Andy - Arlington TX

[Andrew More]

Counter suggestion: solid plywood. I have yet to see a cleat system that wouldn't also work with just screwing things into a decent sheet of plywood. With the plywood you don't have to have anything behind it, if you've got a naked stud wall like my garage, and there are no worries about cleat spacing.

[glenn bradley]

Glenn you may be that rare woodworker with too many clamps.

LOL. Every time I would do a glue up and run out of a certain clamp I would remember. The next time I found a good deal on that size and type of clamp I would buy a couple. It’s been a long time since I’ve run out of clamps during a glue up :-)

[Jim Becker]

Counter suggestion: solid plywood. I have yet to see a cleat system that wouldn't also work with just screwing things into a decent sheet of plywood. With the plywood you don't have to have anything behind it, if you've got a naked stud wall like my garage, and there are no worries about cleat spacing.
Yup...this does work for sure. But for someone who wants to have a flexible system for moving things around easily for convenience, you can't beat a cleat system (or heavy duty slatwall) Since I hang shop cabinets on cleats anyway...it's much easier to do that way for other things...it makes sense to consider it for other needs where being "mobile" is handy.

There is no one best way, for sure. :)

[Andrew More]

Yup...this does work for sure. But for someone who wants to have a flexible system for moving things around easily for convenience, you can't beat a cleat system (or heavy duty slatwall)
I'll agree, but the plywood is in a very close second, if you position the screws correctly, you just zip them out with an impact driver and move on.

Anyway, you're correct, no best way, just want to throw that out there for consideration.

[Mike Heidrick]

I have diy slatwall walls made from 1.5" plywood after the cleat is lplaced on the solid sheet. Cleats and plywood is the ultimate for me. Cleats help position stuff easily and sinking a screw in can also lock in a cleat and prevent sliding.

[Jim Becker]

I have diy slatwall walls made from 1.5" plywood after the cleat is lplaced on the solid sheet. Cleats and plywood is the ultimate for me. Cleats help position stuff easily and sinking a screw in can also lock in a cleat and prevent sliding.
You, my friend, have a slat wall castle. :) I suspect many folks have forgotten your project or never saw it.

[Kurt Cady]

My cleats have 6.25” clear between them. I think they’re about 3.25” wide. I don’t know why those dimensions to be honest. And my cleats have 45 bevels each side because I just set the blade to 45 and didn’t stop ripping until I was. I think the 3.25” maximized the plywood while providing almost 2” of flat face to get two screws in, if needed. Don’t remember why I settled on 6.25”. All the hangers I built have a little piece of plywood on the bottom to rest against the drywall

[JOEL MONGEON]

Hi, I'm new to the forum but thought I'd share my french cleat walls. We moved to a new house in the fall and instead of leaving the walls insulated and drywalled, I bought 1/2 sheets of baltic birch plywood to cover the walls. I then ran strips of cleats along both 19' walls using scrap 2x4's as spacers.
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[David Walser]

Welcome to the Creek! And, thank you for sharing pictures of your shop. They're inspiring, or depressing, depending on the point of view.