Fastener Storage Ideas

[snowman]

A followup from the "material rack" thread.

What ingenious ways are you all storing your assortments of fasteners and random hardware?

Nobody needs to show the $400 racks, we've all seen them and we're jealous....just curious of what you may have made.

[SGW]

I bought about a dozen 12-compartment boxes similar to these: http://www.brownells.com/aspx/NS/sto...PARTMENT+BOXES

Then I made a simple set of shelves for them by making a 3/4" plywood frame, grooved on the sides to take shelves cut out of scrap laminate. I put a knob on the end of each box, so it can be pulled out of its compartment. I think it's two columns of six shelves each. The whole thing is maybe a foot wide and maybe 15" or 18" high, but it holds an amazing assortment of screws, washers, and nuts.
The hard part was the hours spent sorting all the screws, washers, and nuts to go into the boxes!

[Your Old Dog]

I'm using the Glad microwaveable plastic food containers. I get the ones about 4x6" and just about everytime I go to the supermarket I buy a package of 3. I have a 3x5 card file chest high file cabinet full of them and it makes stuff easy to find.

[67chevelle]

I use plastic bin boxes from Depot or Lowes. I built a rack to hold them from angle iron and square tube.




Mark

[IOWOLF]

Library card catalog drawers or similar.

3x5 card file cabnets.

[BadDog]

I've got one of those big metal 4x8(ish) book shelf looking things. It's got metal bins, something like 5 wide x 4 tall x 14 deep. Enco has them on sale once in a while. Seems like there are maybe 92 bins, but I've only got maybe 89 of them.

Just found it at Enco Part 505-1607.

Doesn't get much better than that...

[lazlo]

Russ, what did Enco charge on the truck shipping for that rack?

[J Tiers]

BadDog has the best solution..... although I prefer shallower drawers, maybe 2" tall or so.

I have similar, but mine are a cabinet I got at a sale, now sitting in a set of clip shelves.

Nice to be able to walk up and pull out the 3/8" drawer for instance and pull out anything you need in a few seconds. Mine are categorized by size, then threading, then length.

Before you suspect me of being over-organized, my wife did the sorting..... *

But it beats heck out of rummaging in a big bin. Which is why I like the shallower ones, 2" seems to be optimum for rooting in, good since they are not sorted by head type.


* Yes she has two sisters, but they aren't as nice as she is......... sorry

[BadDog]

I didn't order it from Enco, I got it from a guy, who got it from a parts house auction. I paid $80 for it, missing 4 drawers, and with 3 drawers that went to a different set (different design, slightly small), and some classic gray "porch paint" flaking off the front. I went over it with a soft wire brush on a hand grinder to knock off the loose flakes and put it to use. It now holds hundreds (several) of pounds of bolts ranging from 1/4 up to 3/4, plus nuts/washers/studs/bearings/bushings/spacers/expanding mandrels/extra drill chucks/and on and on. About the only thing more heavily loaded in my shop is the Lista/Vidmar type cabinets (mine are actually Lyon/Nu-Era, but most don't know them).

I wouldn't mind them being shorter in some cases, but in general, it works fine for my application. However, I do keep all my bolts/screws/etc of smaller then 1/4 (nominal) size in a different set of shallower bins. I got something like 300+ dividers with the bins, so I can keep 3/8 bolts separated by length, head style (hex/SHCS/Button/etc.) with nuts (separated nylock, crimp, standard, and "odd" for jamb/thumb/etc.). Depth has been no issue based on my organization, and I get over 50% (often 80%+) utilization of most all the bins, but I can see it being a problem if you wanted to keep smaller screws/nuts/whatever in there. But my Nu-Era has 22(I think?) thin drawers to the short Lyon's 15(?) or so. Add in the smaller "organizer bins" for the really small stuff, and I'm not hurting for short/shallow/small storage options either.

Oh, and I did all my own sorting. Really sucks, but when I start hurting so bad I can't get up and move around, and the current project doesn't lend itself to localized seated work, I sit down and sort, or ponder on organizational options that let me get more out of my limited space. And while the pain killers eliminate the option to run the lathe/mill/etc (safety issue), they do help alleviate the tedium of sorting.

[snowman]

Before you suspect me of being over-organized, my wife did the sorting..... *

I started mine today. I've already got drawers according to size, but not according to length. Just dumped the buckets on the floor and got goin...didn't take too long, only thing is, I'm afraid I've got some metric mixed in.

When I packed from the last shop, I just dumped it all in buckets because I knew I needed to sort it anyway.

I was looking at building little drawers, but when I look at the cost of akromills drawers, I think it's easier to just order them one fastener size at a time...they are expensive, but when I compare it to the cost of gladware or something, not that expensive. I'll make a large rack for them or something out of plywood.

[J Tiers]

I'd like to separate more, but I have 1/4 the drawers of that item..... only 5 ranks of 6 each, so you do whatcha do..... Besides, I didn't have to sort them (but I DID owe bigtime......)

[Mcgyver]

Mark, imo that takes the prize. cheap, accessible, sorted, huge amount of storage, great for everything from electronics to taps and dies. you could even knock up a few open trays of plywood to hold all the bits of metal, 'shorts' that end up at the bottom of a box never again to see the light of day.

[kennyd4110]

I have several of these from HF, they are often on sale for $29.99.


http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=95496

[lazlo]

Mark, imo that takes the prize. cheap, accessible, sorted, huge amount of storage, great for everything from electronics to taps and dies.

I agree -- Mark's shelving seems like it has the best price/performance, unless you find an auction bargain like BadDog or JTiers did.

The only (slight) downside I see to Mark's shelving is that you have to pull the box completely out of the shelf to see the contents, so "browsing" or "rummaging" is a lot easier with BadDog's shelves. But if you're anal and have the shelves labeled, or have a really nice Wife, I guess you can avoid that

[wierdscience]

I dump mine on the floor,it saves time since I normally end up crawling around on the floor looking for the ones I dropped anyway