It doesn’t take long to amass a pile of masking, duct, electrical, and repair tape in your shop. Here’s how we store and organize them so they are easy to identify and access!
We really like having a shop space that supports the rest of our property but is where we make a lot of stuff. That means we use various kinds of tapes, in differing widths. Keeping them organized and accessible used to be a challenge. Not anymore!
In this episode, we’ll show you two different ways to conquer the tape mess and for you to know at a glance what you’ve got on hand and what you are running low on. Better yet, each roll of tape is INDEPENDENTLY accessible, so you don’t need to rearrange or unstack tape rolls to get the one you want.
Our shop-built version uses 6” (15 cm) PVC thin wall pipe. This is DWV (drain-waste-vent) rated and can be obtained from a plumbing supply. We got a damaged section very inexpensively. When this pipe is cut lengthwise, it creates half-round troughs that can used to nest the tape in.
While you can put these on a shelf, we decided to put them in a drawer to further neaten up our tape storage and to help keep dust at bay. To begin, determine if you want the storage troughs to run side to side in the drawer, or in shorter sections from front to back. We chose front to back.
Once you determine the overall length of the troughs, carefully cut the pipe into sections that long. We used a bandsaw, but a hacksaw or miter saw can be used. If you use a miter saw, feed the blade into the pipe slowly to ensure no kickback as well as getting the smoothest cut.
Once your sections are cut to length, they need to be split in half lengthwise. We did this by screwing a piece of plywood along the side of a section. The plywood is the same width as the diameter of the pipe. This provides a surface to run along a fence of a saw. A bandsaw is better for this operation than a table saw, as the bandsaw is less prone to kickback, and you can cut the pipe in half in one pass. If you do use a table saw, it needs to be equipped with a riving knife to stop the pipe from pinching shut on the blade on the first cut. Then flip the assembly end for end, and make the second cut. Repeat the process for as many troughs as you need. You may want to make a few spares while you are set up for this process.
We also used some 3” (7 cm) gray PVC electrical conduit and made a set of smaller troughs for electrical tapes.
Once you have the troughs, sand the edges slightly to knock down the sharp edges. You’ll be glad you did!
You have some options of how to install the troughs. If the drawer bottom is thick enough, you can drill countersunk holes in the bottom of each section and attach the troughs side-by-side. Hot glue does the trick as well and that is what we did. We were able to get several sections of the larger size placed, and filled in the leftover section with a smaller trough. It works beautifully.
We filled our organizer and found we had a lot of duplicate tapes. Seeing what you’ve got, by size and type is a thing of beauty and will eliminate unnecessary tape purchases in the future. We especially like that each tape can be located, taken out and used, and then replaced - all without messing around with any of the other tapes.
If you don’t want to store and access your tapes from a drawer, and you’d like an off-the-shelf solution, there’s a GREAT one out there - the Peggyback® system.
These ingenious little devices, invented and manufactured by a micro-business in the Central United States, are clever, scalable, and economical. They are available both for pegboard mounting or for attachment directly to a standard shop or home wall. They are available both for larger and smaller tapes. These units consist of durable plastic half-round brackets with holes that ½” (12 mm) dowels fit through to form a round bottom tray the tape rest in. Kits are available with or without dowels. You can set up as many as you want in a line, as long as the brackets are not spaced further apart than 12” (305 mm).
These holders work for a variety of maker and crafter supplies as well, such as ribbon, spool wire, solder, and tape.
You can visit them at www.peggyback.com. We don’t get a commission and we like it that way. We just like telling you about great solutions to common problems and supporting the inventor community and manufacturer base in the country we live in. Give them a visit won’t you?
Whether you take the DIY PVC pipe or Peggyback.com approach, you’re gonna love the results!
Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com.
If you have a maker or work or maintenance space,
you know how tough it is ongoing to keep organized.
And one of the areas that can really overwhelm you
is way too much tape.
We've got two great solutions for you.
One shop made and one that you can buy.
Hey, stick around.
Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com.
I love getting my workspace organized,
but it's an ongoing challenge.
Tape is one of those challenges.
And if you're a maker of any kind
and just active in your homeowner's role,
you're gonna end up with a lot of tapes,
masking tapes, duct tape, frog tape,
different kinds that are used for all sorts of things.
And when you try to store them or make them organized,
what are you gonna do?
Throw them in a drawer and then dig through it
every time you know, and then you can't find it.
You go down and buy more tape
and it just makes the problem worse.
Or are you gonna hang them on a dowel sideways
or some kind of string,
but the one you need is always in the middle
and you have to undo everything and all that.
There's a better way.
What we did is we created this drawer organizer
using large diameter, in this case,
six inch PVC sewer and waste vent pipe
and simply cut it in half lengthwise
in sections that would sit inside the drawer.
And then we hot glued them together on the bottom
so they could be adjusted later on.
Now, to do this, the first thing you're gonna need to do
is cut pipe lengthwise after you've cut it in sections.
And so what we did here first
is cut it to length on a standard miter saw.
You can go ahead and lower a blade through the PVC,
but do it slowly so it doesn't grab
and you get a nice, smooth, square cut on each end.
And once you have that cut,
or you can actually use a hacksaw
if you don't have a miter saw,
but get the cuts as nice as you can.
Then what we did is we used a block of wood
that's the same height as the side-to-side,
outside dimension of the pipe,
and we screwed it to one side of the pipe, short screws,
and then used our bandsaw
and used that straight piece of wood
as a guide that just ran across the fence,
sent it to cut the pipes right in half
and fed it through using a somewhat fine tooth blade
to end up with these assemblies like this,
where you've got half pipe like this.
And you can actually see on this one,
this was the side that we drilled in
and put a block of wood that was the same height,
and then ran this through the saw right here.
And you end up with a reasonably smooth here.
But when I use them, I touch sand them up.
That creates a series of troughs
that can be put side to side
and all your tape can line up in there.
That's a quick way to do it.
And it's cheap, and you can find a damaged piece
or go to a plumbing supply and create this.
The nice thing about that,
if the tapes that you use are not as big as this,
and you want to use something that is smaller,
let's say for colored tapes, colored electrical tapes,
then I had an old piece of this gray PVC conduit around.
You can see the wall thickness is significantly different.
So what we did right there is use the same approach,
a piece of wood, the same height as the width of this pipe,
screwed it to the side, ran it through the saw,
halved these, and now I've got two different size troughs
that I can use to use different kinds of tape.
This has really made it easy to access the tape,
store it, and to know what you've got.
You know what I found out?
I have way too many tapes.
So I'll be using up a lot of them,
but at least I know where they are
and I won't be buying more
that'll just keep multiplying the problem.
Now there's another product out there
that I want to mention to you,
and the reason I bring up a product,
we aren't a product review channel
that we just bring in products
for the sake of reviewing them.
What we're doing here is giving you a solution
to a problem of organizing your workspace better.
Well, a pair of inventors in the central United States,
in Indiana, created this cool product called the Peggyback,
and they were actually solving their own problem
in their maker space,
and as they were prototyping and making it,
they had lots of different tapes that were overwhelming.
And to make it easy to get to,
they created this cool little sling
that is actually kind of a curved device
that dowels go in, that creates a cradle
that tapes of different sizes can be set in.
They come in different versions.
They come in ones like this that go on pegboard,
where you just put it in pegboard and load it up,
and you can load as many as you want in different areas.
If you're gonna multiply and use longer dowels
than the ones that it comes with,
then you would mount them every 12 inches,
and you can literally get the dowels
to go through the aligned holes and make a larger set.
Let's suppose like something that's a meter long
or around 36 inches, you could do that as well.
And they're economical.
The other thing is that you can get them
in a configuration that allows you to screw them
right to a drywall or an OSB wall or a plywood wall,
and you don't have to be using pegboard.
I don't use much pegboard,
so I would prefer to use the other type
that I would simply line up every 12 inches,
a place that you would screw those in.
And if you're using drywall,
then you can use these kind of anchors right here
that they provide in their kits to put these brackets up.
And it's a great way to organize
and get those round objects like that up there.
I suspect we're gonna see something more
from this micro business.
They're actively prototyping other products
and they're active inventors,
and I love supporting small business
in the country that I live in.
So this is a great way to do it,
and this helps fuel their ongoing endeavors
for other cool products they're gonna bring out.
You can check them out at PEGGYBACK,
P-E-G-G-Y-B-A-C-K.com.
Take a look over there and see what they've got going
and see if that's a great solution for you.
One of the tapes that we reach for
and on an ongoing basis is this FrogTape.
We use it a lot, but is it worth the price point?
Hey, check out this video where we put it to the test
and saw whether or not the hype's all worth it
and the price point is worth it.
And while you're at it, check out this other video
from our catalog that YouTube
thinks matches your interest perfectly,
and we think you're gonna like it too.
Hey, until the next time, this is Dirt Farmer Jay.
Thanks for sticking around.
I did try to stick to the script.
I'm on a roll.
All right, cut.
