Walls for new workshop

Regardless of the surface, paint it white for more light reflectivity.  

Also, think about running utilities before and/or after installation.  In my shop, I found that running EMT conduit on the wall was a lot easier than trying to guess where placement should be.  Planning is key, either way.

It goes by a variety of names, but chip board or oriented strand board works for me. It's cheaper than plywood, stronger than drywall and it'll hold any screw-mounted shelf, peg board and or the channeled board that's all the current rage. It'll take paint well and leave a textured finish that has a little character. It'll also work for ceilings in the thinner grades.

For a wall where I want to mount tools, paper towels, and maybe a pencil can and 3x5 cards I don't like pegboard, mostly because the hangers that go into the holes aren't very secure and they may not fit my tools as well as something I can easily make. I've used 1/2" plywood but Dave's suggestion of OSB would work just as well and be less expensive.

I used 1/2" underlay in my new shop.



I can post anything any where I choose.

Just a note on conduit:  if you run your power in conduit, you must strip off the romex tube so you run the wires  with single insulation.  Romex and other cable will heat and overheat in use.  If the insulating coating on the individual fail or melts with the heat, you're looking for the fire company's number if you don't get fried by the conduit.

Mark Mandell wrote:

I used 1/2" underlay in my new shop.



I can post anything any where I choose.

Just a note on conduit:  if you run your power in conduit, you must strip off the romex tube so you run the wires  with single insulation.  Romex and other cable will heat and overheat in use.  If the insulating coating on the individual fail or melts with the heat, you're looking for the fire company's number if you don't get fried by the conduit.

Cheaper and less of a PITA than stripping romex is to buy THHN single wire in black, white, and green.  You can buy spools or by the foot.  Just be sure to get solid wire rather than stranded.  Stranded makes a worse wire nut connection since the wire tends to spring back and untwist after you finish twisting it.  I expect the pros don't have this problem, probably get a feel for how to do it.  A friend of mine who had a lot of wire pulling to do used sections of conduit and conduit clamps to attach all his spools to a hand truck.  If I were a pro I would do that - made moving it around really easy and wire came off the spools without a bunch of curls that later turned into kinks.

There are schedules for conduit fill - number of wires by gauge for a given size of conduit.  As you say, the reason is heat.  Fringe benefit is that you don't have the problem of pulling too much wire in too small a conduit.  That is a workout if there's more than a couple curves.  Deburr all the conduit ends too, burrs are a recipe for a short.  If it's going to get inspected, put little plastic screw on grommets on the ends of all the box/conduit fittings.  Inspector told me once that some of his colleagues used the lack of them as an easy fail.  Those even go on plastic threaded fittings, not just metal.

I think I pulled romex through a conduit once, first time I used it.  Even worse PITA than stripping the romex!

Thank you all for the comments.    I am going with 1/2 inch osb painted white.

alan

Mark Mandell wrote:

I used 1/2" underlay in my new shop.



I can post anything any where I choose.

Just a note on conduit:  if you run your power in conduit, you must strip off the romex tube so you run the wires  with single insulation.  Romex and other cable will heat and overheat in use.  If the insulating coating on the individual fail or melts with the heat, you're looking for the fire company's number if you don't get fried by the conduit.

My man with the hanging plastic! My dad used hanging plastic in our basement as the only barrier for dust for 40 years - and his shop area (he was dumb labor for my mom's craft business, not a hobby woodworker) had boxes full of dust laying around in it, but we never had any appreciable dust anywhere else in the basement. 

Sometimes, discussions of shop walls go up when the only goal is to block dust between different areas. it always shocks me that people want to castrate the potential versatility of their shop and put in a permanent wall because they think plastic doesn't look official enough. 

I use it now any time I'm doing metalwork. It reduces the particle count in the rest of the garage to almost nothing, and more importantly, leaves no area in the rest of the house that registers any increased particle count at all.

The shavings may fly, but not too far!

I use clear shower curtains for my movable screens.  I stretch 1/8" cable for the "curtain rod".  They work great.  I've had the same curtains hanging behind me at the lathe for years.  A little beat up, but they do the trick.