drawer storage?

[Pat Meeuwissen]

Hi guys/ladies, I was hoping someone had some ideas for making a drawer storage unit for small parts screws and the like. I know there a ton of plastic versions out there but have a ton of scrap wood pieces and would like to create something myself. Any pics or plans of something similar would be much appreciated. I figure since these will be relatively light that drawers with a stop build in at the rear top and just sliding wood on wood will be adequate, but if someone has a different/better concept I would love to hear it. Thanks Pat

[Joe Chritz]

It sounds like you don't have the drawers yet so that makes it a bit easier.

I have tossed around the idea of making a drawer system similar to a router bit storage one I saw once. Each box is some evenly divisible amount of the total drawer width.

Say 3", 4", 6" and 12" wide. Then you just place them in and fill up the space with the boxes. You can take the box out to use the screws and infinitely change it around. The hardest part may be making the box walls thin enough to stay together and still have some usable area.

I suppose you could do mini dovetails on all 400 pieces.

Joe

[Russell Sansom]

Pat,
The previous owner of my current house treated several drawers in the workshop bench with trays. The tray is half the "length" of the drawer and sits on thin rails glued to the insides of the drawer sides. It can be slid fore and aft and can be lifted out. The tray is divided by 3/16" wooden battens into 2" x 3" compartments. About half the drawer's total depth is available below the sliding tray to hold other things.
This scheme worked pretty well to hold brads, staples, cup hooks, brass screws, and like that. A couple years ago I got very serious about straightening out the shop and realized that if everything must have it's place, then I was never going to have enough drawers and enough trays. I switched to multiple small cabinets holding plastic divider trays. With 30 of these divider boxes, 16 compartments each, I have just enough individual cells now to store a lifelong collections of nuts and bolts.

[Robert Reece]

Pat-

I have designed, but not yet built my shop storage unit. It is 20' linear feet of cabinets, about 40" high. The top will be my slide miter bench and underneath will be drawers. Because it's a slide miter, the drawers will be 30" deep. I was going to size the height of each drawer to fit specific needs. The screws and nuts and bolts and such would go in fairly shallow drawers, probably 4". Inside that drawer was going to be modular boxes built on probably a 3" dimension (3x3, 3x6, 6x6, etc). I was planning on making these modular boxes out of wood with 1/4" thick sides, dadod, glued and pinned. I think they would hold up ok. You can buy plastic ones (from Festool), but they are quite expensive. At the price they were charging, I computed I could make $50/hr or more doing them myself.

[glenn bradley]

You mention that this is for small parts. As Joe points out, making these sorts of things from scrap is a problem as the storage compartment walls take up so much valuable space. After a couple failed attempts, I opted for a scrap carcass to hold cheap commercially available units.