As it turns out the Pacific Northwest is a damp place! When you are in the leather goods business, the top priority is keeping those hides in good shape and in an environment that is temperate and dry. After moving up to Washington state last June we put the leather workshop into a steel building on the property. The building was pretty bare bones, just a large open space and your standard steel sheeting for walls. The priority once we got up here was to get the place insulated and heated – both for comfort and to help control the very humid air up here. Living in a forest probably makes that problem a bit harder to solve. It’s just always wet here and will be for 8 months out of the year. As time went by, the insulation went in, and heating was installed but the humidity remained…inside the building. Heating air will reduce the relative humidity but in this temperate environment in the PNW, you can have days in the fall where it’s mid sixties and 95% humid. What happens is that the damp air slowly makes its way inside to the slightly warmer dryer air. Over time I would see the humidity levels increase a few percent each day hovering close to 70%. You can’t keep unwaxed leather for a prolonged period of time at that level so a solution was needed.
Since I started leatherwork I have been storing my rolled up hides on these steel and fiberboard shelves. It worked great in the Southwest, where it was dry enough to keep things in good shape. They also offered a portable solution for the numerous times the shop has moved (4 times in 5 years !). Up here in WA, this shelving style was not going to cut it. One of the main problems with it is airflow. Up here the damp air can just sit there undisturbed. 
So, looking at these old shelves I decided to come up with a better solution to help protect my investment. The first thing to do was to get the whole shop dehumidified. I purchased a large ‘whole house’ dehumidifier and had it installed into the heating system. Now when the humidity in the shop hits 42%, it kicks on with the blower and blows dry air out the ducts. The dry air measures around 20% humidity and it mixes with the more humid shop air to bring things down a bit. It’ll drop to 38% and the system shuts off. So far so good on that end…but I needed something a bit more stable and I am not sure how well the system will hold up come warmer weather and high humidity (it’s winter now so the air is relatively dry). 
I have this space under the stairway that is kind of a dead area. Can’t do too much there except store things…so why not build the shelves into that space.
Since completing the walls in the shop, I still had a fair amount of plywood and lumber so I got to work framing things up. By the way – that foam insulation on the floor works great as a backstop for cutting plywood with the circular saw on the ground.
First and foremost here’s one of the original designs – the belt loop keychain. Shown above with all 7 current hardware options. This style was meant to clip around your belt, but you can attach it to a water bottle, bag, or whatever else is convenient.
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