Tool hanging hook

[mklotz]

In Garaj Mahal, my overcrowded garage shop, stuff gets placed where there is space. Sometimes that means hanging things from the rafters overhead.

At 6'1", I can reach many of the things hanging above but sometimes a smaller item will be a stretch, literally. Some of you may be old enough to remember when the local general store hung merchandise from nails in the exposed rafters. They used a tool to place the stock there and retrieve it when a customer wanted to buy it. This tool was a long rod with a curiously shaped hook on the end.

A discarded broom handle, a length of 3/16" stainless and a bit of time with the bender and I had my version of this tool. The long tongue on the leading end of the hook gets under the hook or ring supporting the suspended item, allowing it to be freed from its support. Its chisel-shaped tip neatly slides under holders lying flat against the timber.

If, like me, you hang stuff from the rafters, making one of these hooks might make things a bit easier for you.

[Frank S]

When I was in the Army, for a brief time I was able to moonlight as a mechanic and pump gas part time at a full service gas station in order to supplement my income enough to take some college courses . We had all of our belts and hoses hanging from hooks high up on the walls mostly to keep them out of the way and allow an easy visual sight of inventory plus to prevent them from easy access by people who would rather not have to pay for things
We had a tool similar to yours

[C-Bag]

I too spent the last 5yrs of being wrench in a Shell station and hadn't thought of that way of organizing in decades. We had the whole wall above the office that would have been dead space full of belts and hoses. It was a wonderful way to organize as you could see exactly what you had. And in the case of hoses get an idea of what could be improvised to work.

We didn't have such a nice hook but it worked. Being vertically challenged I had forgotten that means of storage/organizing. The whole thing is something I'm going to have to revisit. Thanks for the brain bump Marv.

[mklotz]

I too spent the last 5yrs of being wrench in a Shell station and hadn't thought of that way of organizing in decades. We had the whole wall above the office that would have been dead space full of belts and hoses. It was a wonderful way to organize as you could see exactly what you had. And in the case of hoses get an idea of what could be improvised to work.

We didn't have such a nice hook but it worked. Being vertically challenged I had forgotten that means of storage/organizing. The whole thing is something I'm going to have to revisit. Thanks for the brain bump Marv.

Having a tiny shop like mine gets one thinking vertically when it comes to storage solutions.

Many of my small tools are organized in vertical stands. They occupy far less room that way as opposed to being in a drawer, and they're more visible and more easily accessed.

A length of chain slung over a rafter and fitted with homemade S-hooks allows one to hang several small tools while using the least amount of rafter length.

If you have a tilt-up (versus roll-up) garage door, the back of the door can hold light, seldom-used tools. They must be securely latched to the door lest they fall on the cars in the garage when the door is opened.

[C-Bag]

We all have the peculiarities of our chosen work space. I'm sure what we do with the space dictates configuration. I do so many varied processes in a two car 19x20' space I couldn't afford to have a fixed bench. And the fact one opens up to hide the powdercoat power unit means I can't keep anything sitting on it. So while the small tool organizer like yours is a very good idea for you just keeping everything in my big rollaway works for me. Certainly not better because I have to go back and forth which you don't, just different choices. I'm probably the only guy here who doesn't have a fixed workbench. But after my last job working in a 10,000sqft building building machinery off a cart that served as my workbench/rollaway I got to where I preferred to take my bench to the work, not the other way around.

If I had more room I guess I could dedicate space for an installation of the various machines but right now the only things in the whole garage that aren't on castors is my small 9x20 lathe, a very heavy military drawer unit and my 19x24x4" surface plate. Everything else has to move to be able to weld, fabricate, powdercoat, beadblast, machine(lathe, mill and shaper)+the occasional table saw. I don't mind reconfiguring most times unless I miscalculate have to redo a setup after just doing a run.

This is the first time I don't have a tilt up garage door and I don't miss the mess with the springs breaking and making it so I can't open the silly thing a bit. Never thought about using one to organize on. Interesting concept.

[Hemi]

I like the idea. I myself have a small shop too, BUT I too have several small benches that are cantilevered off the wall, and stationary in-place, for several different types of work. I have a "Machine Bench" that holds both my Unimats and all the tools with them, as well as a Dremel wall-mounted bit organizer, then to the far right in the corner, I have a "Electrical Bench" for soldering and all that, with a Weller and bench top placement, then to the right of that is my "Train Bench" which is where a lot of the tools I use for working on my scale model trains is done, with a Electrical Tester stand. Then around the Chimney I incased the corners of with strapping lumber I have a small 16 by 24 inch "General Bench" where I do most of my Model car work.... Only actual Tool it has near it is a Dremel with Flex Shaft suspended from the ceiling that operates by a variable speed foot pedal on the floor. Behind me in that area is my "Molding Bench", that has but a digital Scale for weighting Resin plastic and then to the right of my General Bench is a Aux Bench (I call it my "Paint Bench"), due to it having the Air Brush Compressor mounted under it, and a cabinet above it housing all sorts of paint rattle cans, and other painting supplies, down that same wall goes to my Wife's Craft Bench, and up the wall to her right is a "Drying Bench" by the window, and then up and coming (I have yet to build) another small bench into the corner where I once had a small Shop refrigerator to house chemicals, like Lacquer, and thinners of all sorts as my shop gets hot in the summer, that kept them cool, but it went up this winter and has been removed, and a roll around cooler took its place and that wall there in the corner will be another bench this summer. Down the wall from that your back at my "Molding Bench" and to the right of it, in the other corner is my "Shop Computer Bench" which has my offline Shop Database Computer there, and to its right, your back at my Machine Bench....

Question guys, where can I post pics of my shop to show all of this? -That way when I speak of it those who read my posts have an idea of how my shops laid out...