Perforated hardboard is tempered

hardboard Hardboard, also called high-density fiberboard (HDF), is a type of fiberboard, which is an engineered wood product. It is used in furniture and in the construction industry. Description Hardboard is similar to particle board and medium-densi ...

which is pre-drilled with evenly spaced holes. The holes are used to accept pegs or hooks to support various items, and perforated hardboards are therefore used for purposes such as

tool board A tool board or tool wall is a board for hanging tools onto, and is typically mounted on a wall or as a folding cabinet which rolls on wheels. Such boards are often found in workshops, and often consists of plates made of wood or metal. The tool ...

s in workshops. Peg-Board is an expired trademark used as a brand name by the Masonite Corporation, first used in 1962, which is often used as a

generic term Trademark distinctiveness is an important concept in the law governing trademarks and service marks. A trademark may be eligible for registration, or registrable, if it performs the essential trademark function, and has distinctive character. Re ...

for perforated storage boards made of hardboard,

wood Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin ...

metal A metal (from Greek μέταλλον ''métallon'', "mine, quarry, metal") is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electricity and heat relatively well. Metals are typicall ...

, or other material. It is commonly used in retail settings along with steel rods sticking out to hold peggable products such as bagged

potato chips A potato chip (North American English; often just chip) or crisp (British and Irish English) is a thin slice of potato that has been either deep fried, baked, or air fried until crunchy. They are commonly served as a snack, side dish, or ap ...

printer ink An ink cartridge or inkjet cartridge is a component of an inkjet printer that contains the ink that is deposited onto paper during printing. Each ink cartridge contains one or more ink reservoirs; certain producers also add electronic contact ...

, and

action figures An action figure is a poseable character model figure made most commonly of plastic, and often based upon characters from a film, comic book, military, video game or television program; fictional or historical. These figures are usually mar ...

Materials

Perforated hardboard and similar systems are made of a variety of materials, each of which has different characteristics that affect the range of possible uses. Standard perforated hardboard is made of wood fibers, usually with the addition of

resin In polymer chemistry and materials science, resin is a solid or highly viscous substance of plant or synthetic origin that is typically convertible into polymers. Resins are usually mixtures of organic compounds. This article focuses on n ...

, and tempered by coating with a thin layer of linseed oil and baking at a high temperature to

polymerize In polymer chemistry, polymerization (American English), or polymerisation (British English), is a process of reacting monomer molecules together in a chemical reaction to form polymer chains or three-dimensional networks. There are many for ...

the oil. This provides more water and impact resistance, hardness, rigidity and tensile strength. Hardboard will bend and warp with age and in the presence of moisture, and will sag under heavy weight (the exact weight is based on the dimensions and quality of the hardboard) unless secured to even weight distribution among several mounting points. Perforated wood is more labor-intensive to manufacture and will warp and splinter under heavy loads, but is sometimes selected for aesthetic reasons. An inexpensive wood such as

pine A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. The World Flora Online created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden accepts ...

is often used, and it may be chemically treated for strength and

fire retardant A fire retardant is a substance that is used to slow down or stop the spread of fire or reduce its intensity. This is commonly accomplished by chemical reactions that reduce the flammability of fuels or delay their combustion. Fire retardants m ...

characteristics or turned into plywood first. Perforated wood may be mounted as a thin strip instead of the more square shape of perforated hardboard. Metal pegboard systems are usually made out of steel. Metal pegboards are usually mounted in strips, as it would be comparatively costly, cumbersome and inefficient to sell in larger sheets. Sufficiently thick metal pegboards will not sag between mounting points. Instead, the system's mounting on surfaces such as

beams or

sheetrock Drywall (also called plasterboard, dry lining, wallboard, sheet rock, gypsum board, buster board, custard board, and gypsum panel) is a panel made of calcium sulfate dihydrate (gypsum), with or without additives, typically extruded between thick ...

will usually fail under a heavy weight before the metal pegboard does. Manufacturers advise customers to hang tools and other gear based on the estimated strength of the mounting points. High quality metal pegboard systems use

extruded Extrusion is a process used to create objects of a fixed cross-sectional profile by pushing material through a die of the desired cross-section. Its two main advantages over other manufacturing processes are its ability to create very complex c ...

holes, while other systems have the holes drilled after

casting Casting is a manufacturing process in which a liquid material is usually poured into a mold, which contains a hollow cavity of the desired shape, and then allowed to solidify. The solidified part is also known as a ''casting'', which is ejected ...

Functions

Storage and display

Perforated hardboard and similar systems are designed to support peg hooks. These are usually mounted by hand and support themselves with

gravity In physics, gravity () is a fundamental interaction which causes mutual attraction between all things with mass or energy. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 1038 times weaker than the stro ...

alone, though some systems use screws instead. These screws can be supported by additional straps to prevent the metal from bending under a significant load. The hooks in turn act as storage for a variety of objects such as tools and keys. Heavy duty metal systems can support the heaviest objects, such as push

lawnmowers A lawn mower (also known as a mower, grass cutter or lawnmower) is a device utilizing one or more revolving blades (or a reel) to cut a grass surface to an even height. The height of the cut grass may be fixed by the design of the mower, but g ...

and vertically stored

bicycles A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-powered assisted, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A is called a cyclist, or bicyclist. Bi ...

. These storage systems are usually mounted in utility areas of a household such as a

garage A garage is a covered structure built for the purpose of parking, storing, protecting, maintaining, and/or repairing vehicles. Specific applications include: *Garage (residential), a building or part of a building for storing one or more vehicle ...

, storage shed or

workshop Beginning with the Industrial Revolution era, a workshop may be a room, rooms or building which provides both the area and tools (or machinery) that may be required for the manufacture or repair of manufactured goods. Workshops were the on ...

. They may also be used in professional environments such as

factories A factory, manufacturing plant or a production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. T ...

, along with the back shelving for

discount store A discount store or discounter offers a retail format in which products are sold at prices that are in principle lower than an actual or supposed "full retail price". Discounters rely on bulk purchasing and efficient distribution to keep down cost ...

s (larger and thicker versions are used by

big-box store A big-box store (also hyperstore, supercenter, superstore, or megastore) is a physically large retail establishment, usually part of a chain of stores. The term sometimes also refers, by extension, to the company that operates the store. The t ...

s), but are rarely seen in more white collar areas of a workplace.

Games and education

Pegboards are used in games and for educational purposes. Games based on the pegboard concept include peg

mosaic A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ...

boards, where a child may create pictures and lettering by inserting colored pegs in the board, in a way similar to

pixel art Pixel art () is a form of digital art drawn with graphical software where images are built using pixels as the only building block. It is widely associated with the low-resolution graphics from 8-bit and 16-bit era computers and arcade video g ...

. These boards are designed so that the pegs do not fall out when the board is tilted from a horizontal position. Pre-school and elementary maths and geometry can be taught using a pegboard . Basic operations like sum, subtraction, multiplication and division can be illustrated by moving pegs on the board, in a similar way to an

abacus The abacus (''plural'' abaci or abacuses), also called a counting frame, is a calculating tool which has been used since ancient times. It was used in the ancient Near East, Europe, China, and Russia, centuries before the adoption of the Hi ...

. Concepts like the

associative property In mathematics, the associative property is a property of some binary operations, which means that rearranging the parentheses in an expression will not change the result. In propositional logic, associativity is a valid rule of replacemen ...

of sums, multiplication tables, square and

triangular numbers A triangular number or triangle number counts objects arranged in an equilateral triangle. Triangular numbers are a type of figurate number, other examples being square numbers and cube numbers. The th triangular number is the number of dots i ...

, can also be easily demonstrated in a graphical fashion.

Exercise

Large vertical pegboard can also be used for climbing exercises, whereby athletes hold two large pegs to insert into the holes of the pegboard to move up the board.

Typical dimensions and layout

These dimensions apply to standardized hardboard systems. Other systems may use their own spacing.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Q&A / Pegboard and Custom Color Pegboard
at Ask the Builder Engineered wood