Magnetic Workshop Organizer

A lot of advertising is done with disposable magnets that don't have to be thrown away. Sports schedules that are only good for 1 season, business cards for plumbers and electricians, wedding announcements and more are all things that often end up stuck to my refrigerator. After a while, they aren't useful anymore and but you can reuse them in other ways.

I have a few different ways to hang tools in my workshop. I have some pegboard that I put up, which is handy for most types of tools. Another wall has some old tongue and groove boards that the previous owner put up with nails and hooks spread all over them. I have a magnet strip that is good for holding wrenches, pliers and screwdrivers, but small plastic tools that don't have the right shape or hanger can't be hung easily. As an alternative way to hang these tools, I decided to glue some old magnets to the back of a few things.

Most of the time, these magnets have a glossy finish, so the easiest way to attach them is to cut them to size, peel off the glossy paper and glue them on with a little glue stick or whatever you have handy.

The side panels on old computer cases is a good source for cheap sheet metal. In this case, I took the side panel off, pounded some of the internal flanges flat and screwed it to the wall in my basement workshop. It's the perfect place for my work light and a few other tools that I need to keep handy.

I had a couple more 3d printer tools that didn't have a good storage place. One is my customized socket for the Printrbot's Ubis hotend and the other is my preferred print removal tool, a 1.5" wood chisel. The hotend socket doesn't have a lot of additional space to glue magnets to it, and it won't stick to metal on its own without magnetized it, so I stuck an old hard drive magnet to the corner of the metal plate to hold the socket and other small bits. For the chisel, I screwed a larger hard drive magnet to the old drywall in the workshop. Now everything has its place and the bench is less cluttered.