Perforated hardboard is tempered

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

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 structural tissue/material found as xylem in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulosic fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin t ...

metal A metal () is a material that, when polished or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electrical resistivity and conductivity, electricity and thermal conductivity, heat relatively well. These properties are all associated wit ...

, 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 Potato chips (North American English and Australian English; often just chip) or crisp (British English and Hiberno-English) are thin slices of potato (or a thin deposit of potato paste) that has been deep frying, deep fried, baking, baked, ...

printer ink An ink cartridge or inkjet cartridge is a component of an inkjet printer that contains ink to be deposited onto paper during printing. It consists of one or more ink reservoirs and can include electronic contacts and a chip to exchange informa ...

, and

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

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 A resin is a solid or highly viscous liquid that can be converted into a polymer. Resins may be biological or synthetic in origin, but are typically harvested from plants. Resins are mixtures of organic compounds, predominantly terpenes. Commo ...

, and tempered by coating with a thin layer of

linseed oil Linseed oil, also known as flaxseed oil or flax oil (in its edible form), is a colorless to yellowish oil obtained from the dried, ripened seeds of the flax plant (''Linum usitatissimum''). The oil is obtained by pressing, sometimes followed by ...

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 form ...

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 Aesthetics (also spelled esthetics) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and taste, which in a broad sense incorporates the philosophy of art.Slater, B. H.Aesthetics ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy,'' , acces ...

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. ''World Flora Online'' accepts 134 species-rank taxa (119 species and 15 nothospecies) of pines as cu ...

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 ...

characteristics or turned into

plywood Plywood is a composite material manufactured from thin layers, or "plies", of wood veneer that have been stacked and glued together. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured boards, which include plywood, medium-density fibreboa ...

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 Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon that demonstrates improved mechanical properties compared to the pure form of iron. Due to steel's high Young's modulus, elastic modulus, Yield (engineering), yield strength, Fracture, fracture strength a ...

. 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, gib board, gypsum board, buster board, turtles board, slap board, custard board, gypsum panel and gyprock) is a panel made of calcium sulfate dihydrate (gypsum), with or witho ...

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 ...

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 or ...

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 (), also known as gravitation or a gravitational interaction, is a fundamental interaction, a mutual attraction between all massive particles. On Earth, gravity takes a slightly different meaning: the observed force b ...

alone, though some systems use

screws A screw is an externally helical threaded fastener capable of being tightened or released by a twisting force (torque) to the screw head, head. The most common uses of screws are to hold objects together and there are many forms for a variety ...

instead. These screws can be supported by additional

straps A strap, sometimes also called strop, is an elongated flap or ribbon, usually of leather or other flexible materials. Thin straps are used as part of clothing or baggage, or bedding such as a sleeping bag. See for example spaghetti strap, shoul ...

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 A tool is an object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment or help them accomplish a particular task. Although many animals use simple tools, only human beings, whose use of stone tools dates ...

and

keys Key, Keys, The Key or The Keys may refer to: Common uses * Key (cryptography), a piece of information needed to encode or decode a message * Key (instrument), a component of a musical instrument * Key (lock), a device used to operate a lock * ...

. Heavy duty metal systems can support the heaviest objects, such as push

lawnmowers A lawn mower (also known as a grass cutter or simply mower, also often spelled 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 ...

and vertically stored

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

. 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 vehicl ...

, storage

shed A shed is typically a simple, single-storey (though some sheds may have two or more stories and or a loft) roofed structure, often used for storage, for hobby, hobbies, or as a workshop, and typically serving as outbuilding, such as in a bac ...

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 only ...

. They may also be used in professional environments such as

factories A factory, manufacturing plant or 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. Th ...

, along with the back shelving for

discount store Discount stores offer 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 costs. Types (Uni ...

s (larger and thicker versions are used by

big-box store A big-box store, a hyperstore, a supercenter, a superstore, or a 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 ...

s), but are rarely seen in more

white collar White collar may refer to: * White-collar worker, a professional who performs office-based or similar service-based jobs, as opposed to a blue-collar worker, whose job requires manual labor * White-collar boxing * White-collar crime The term ...

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 (masonry), mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and ...

boards, where a child may create pictures and lettering by inserting colored pegs in the board, in a way similar to pixel art. 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 An abacus ( abaci or abacuses), also called a counting frame, is a hand-operated calculating tool which was used from ancient times in the ancient Near East, Europe, China, and Russia, until the adoption of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system. A ...

. Concepts like the

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

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 in ...

, 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