wood cleat tricks

i need to organize things and i want to make a shallow cabinet for the hand tools

i thought that using a cleat would be the simplest wall mount to use

sometimes called a pinch cleat or a french cleat

but they are not earthquake ready and i could just blast a screw through from the front through the cleat and into the wall but something about that i just do not like

what other clever things have you done to fasten the cleats together without driving a screw all the way through

i was thinking of making half-round grooves in each cleat and then once the cabinet is hanging place a dowel into the full-round to marry them together

maybe a square groove would be better

Reply to
Electric Comet
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Once it is hanging on the cleat, drive a screw through the back of the cabinet near the bottom.

Reply to
Scott Lurndal

In addition to the cleat, you could screw a block or board to the wall above the cabinet, so the cabinet cannot be raised off the cleat.

If appearance doesn't matter, there's also steel rail solutions (Unistrut/Superstrut) that will hold in any quake that doesn't break walls.

Reply to
whit3rd

that would be the simplest and i may do so but i may move the cabinet or cabinets around if i decide i want a different cabinet in that spot

Reply to
Electric Comet

that would do too and is simple

i wanted something that i could attach and unattach without screws so if i realize i want a different cabinet there i could just remove the dowel or block

i am trying to organize a shop that has never been unorganized

i saw some of these solutions one called z bar i think

but i am much too cheap to do that and i have plenty of wood so i will use it up

Reply to
Electric Comet

Why would you have to "blast" the screw into the wall? It only needs to go into the wall cleat to secure it. Besides, you will already have holes in the wall from mounting the cleat, what's one more hole from the securing screw going to matter?

I guess the real question is this: What is the "something" about that method that you "just do not like"?

..snip..

If you have room to slide the cabinet in from the side, use a "normal" cleat at the top and an "inverted" cleat at the bottom. Once slid into place, the cabinet won't go anywhere unless the room falls over.

Reply to
DerbyDad03

it is sort of six of that and a half dozen of the other but my shop right now is unorganized and i am trying to organize it but i will no doubt move the tools around as i get to the workflow that i like

for those reasons i could have a lot of holes which is not a huge problem but just would rather not

so i would like to place the cleats and just pull out a peg from each end of the cleat to remove the cabinet from the wall

now that is an idea this could allow a totally flush mount

if the room falls over than i probably will have other things on my mind

Reply to
Electric Comet

...snip...

I was kind of hoping that that would be your response.

You are concerned with putting too many holes in your walls, yet you like an idea that requires a minimum of 4 holes better than one that only requires 2.

Interesting.

Reply to
DerbyDad03

So what's stopping you from doing that?

Reply to
dadiOH

imagine you have 4 shallow tool cabinets that are meant to be open most the time

now imagine you hang them with cleats at top and bottom as you proposed

i can move them around without any additional screw/unscrew for securing or removing

Reply to
Electric Comet

i am in no hurry since it is long term getting alternative ideas is important

maybe someone has a clever or novel approach how did you hang your cabinets did you hang them permanently or did you consider that you might move them around

or maybe you just have another workflow in your shop some people like a rolling cart so they have everything at hand

Reply to
Electric Comet

Wall cabinets are fastened to the wall. I have no interest in moving them.

I have two 6' x 4' x 16" cabinets with interior and door shelves. The shalves are moveable, cabinets are not.

I have a 6' x 2' x 37" table/cabinet. It has 12 drawers in which I keep smallish hand tools...wrenches, saws, bits, screw drivers, chisels, planes, etc. It is on casters so it can be moved. I have never done so in the last

15 years.

Most of my stationary power tools are on wheels, the exceptions being the RAS and cabinet saw. The only reason they are on wheels is so I can pull them out from the wall a bit if the need arises.

I have two 4' x 1' x 37" high tables on casters. I use them for routing/planing/sanding/assembling/finishing things and as stock carts to hold boards near a tool. There are a tray shelves at the bottom full of pipe clamps, F-clamps, hand screws, C-clamps, etc. They roll but not easily. Someday I'll rebuild them with larger casters.

FWIW and IME you are obsessing about a very simple thing. Little cabinets full of hand tools are not going to go flying off a French cleat, earthquake or not.

Reply to
dadiOH

Even though the double cleat was my idea, I don't mind poking holes (pun in tended) in it.

Keep in mind that you will need open wall space to slide the cabinets on an d off. Depending on your layout, you may need as much open wall space as ca binet space. Or maybe just one cabinet's width space so you could slide all of the cabinets off into that one open space and then slide them back on i n a different order, i.e. multiple moves.

'Twere it me, I'd grab my screw gun, remove the single or maybe even 2 scre ws and just lift the cabinet off the single cleat. Is it worth wasting the wall space and/or having to move cabinets around more than actually necessa ry just to avoid the use of a couple of screws?

In my case, I don't have a single inch of open wall space available, let al one multiple cabinets width's worth.

Reply to
DerbyDad03

French cleats are designed to make it easy to remove the cabinet from the wall. If you screw it down to make it "earthquake proof", then you have no need to complicate things with a french cleat, just screw the thing to the wall, as is normal.

If you have an earthquake that raises the cabinet up enough to jump off the cleat, you probably will be worrying about far more than that cabinet, but I'm guessing, I live in earthquake free zone:-)

If it's not uncommon for earthquakes in your area to jump up and down 1 1/4" or so, one screw in the bottom is sufficient to make sure the cabinet and wall jump in unison, then all your worries can be focused on the wall.

Reply to
Jack

Standing up for EC, I'll offer this:

He wants to use cleats so that he can easily rearrange the cabinets as he plays around with various organization ideas. He may start with a particular arrangement this week but decide on a better one later on and then again on another one a few months from now. In the meantime, Mr. Richter might pay a visit and he wants to be able to welcome him into his shop safely.

EC is essentially looking for a temporary way to protect against the worst case yet make it easy enough to rearrange the cabinets at various - and unknown - points in the future.

As others have suggested, a single screw into a cleat should be enough to secure the cabinets yet allow for fairly easy movement.

Reply to
DerbyDad03

FWIW, It is many times easier to mount a french cleat on the wall and hang a cabinet on the cleat and add a single screw to secure it than to hold the cabinet up against the wall and level and at the correct height while adding multiple screws and hopefully into something solid.

Reply to
Leon

It's simple to hold the cabinet to the wall, exactly where you want it and screw it into studs. It's how kitchen cabinets are hung all over the world. French cleats require screwing into something solid just as attaching the cabinet directly.

The french cleat adds measurement difficulty if you want the cabinet an exact distance from the ceiling, in that both the wall cleat and the cabinet cleat must be exactly right, not to mention you can't hang the cabinet closer to the ceiling than needed to lift the cabinet over the cleat, assuming you don't have space to slide the cabinet sideways, seldom the case. Also, you need to attach 3 extra boards, two for the cleat and one for the spacer, if your cabinets have backs.

Standard cabinet hanging techniques are about as simple as it gets. On a scale of 1 to 10 I'd put hanging normal kitchen cabinets as 1 and using french cleats as 1.3.

Reply to
Jack

Well, simple to say but to do is another matter. I am not a full time kitchen remodeler but I do have a few under my belt, 10 IIRC so that probably 80 or 90 cabinets. And while you are correct, most kitchen cabinets are simply hung on the wall with out French cleats, they are generally mounted on top of temporary ledger boards to hold them in place while the tops of the cabinets are attached with screws/bolts to the blocking boards between the wall studs.

Not really, simple math and that calculation pretty much works for all of the cabinets unless the tops are not all the same.

not to mention you can't hang the

Typically you don't mount the cabinet against the ceiling anyway, hardly any ceiling is perfect and you don't want your cabinets to follow an irregular ceiling. Leave a gap, 3/4 will be plenty and cover the irregular width gap with a molding.

Now while I have never used french cleats to hang kitchen cabinets, up to this point, I will strongly consider using them should I have another remodel come my way.

Reply to
Leon

Easily solved. ;)

Since almost all shop built cabinet have "tack strips" incorporated into the cabinet for both structural integrity and mounting to a wall, all you have to do is rip both tack strips in half on a 45 degree angle.

This instantly creates both halves of the french cleat, using the exact same amount of material as the original cabinet:

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Reply to
Swingman

Plus the cabinet itself is lighter. ;-)

Reply to
DerbyDad03

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