The first little project was to spend time laboriously drilling holes in the cinder block wall for Tap-con screws so I could mount various racks for my woodworking clamps. The first time in my life I'd had them all in one place.
The other bit requires some explaining. When the Radio Shack store in the Park City Mall closed earlier this year, I was immediately interested in the huge rack of drawers that held small hardware items. I called multiple times to check when they would be available, and they finally were:
At first I had the insane notion that I wanted all of them, until I found out they wanted real money for them! I thought some more, and wound up buying one "stack". Looking closely, you can see that's actually two cabinets, each of which has seven drawers. I brought them to the Grant St. Garage and mounted them on a wheeled cart until I could decide what to do with them.
I never even put anything in them in this configuration, because it just didn't work very well. The top drawer was a little too high. Since I'm of average height (173 cm) I had to stand on tiptoe to see in. And the bottom drawers were too low to get real excited about putting anything in them. So, there they sat from February until tonight. I wasn't ignoring them, it's just that I couldn't decide what to do with them!
I considered building a workbench just to hold them. I considered mounting them under my large workbench. I considered splitting them, and building them into two different workspaces. And over and over, I thought about putting them in the shelf/bench in my "machine shop" area. The problem was that those shelving units were just a half-inch too narrow to hold both cabinets on one shelf.
Today, I finally asked myself the question a different way: how high do I want those cabinets to be? The answer was clear. I wanted the top drawer at a height that I could see in easily, and the bottom drawer not much lower than waist height. I did some measuring, and realized that the second shelf was exactly the right height for a test. I removed the top shelf, and sure enough the cabinet was at a perfect height. Only one would fit, though - the shelf unit was still that little bit too narrow.
I went home for supper, and it suddenly occurred to me that I owned that shelf unit, so I could cut it up if I wanted to! All I needed to do was shorten the outside upright. I could still leave the back and one side rail to help keep things stiff. Out came the reciprocating saw, and soon I had the perfect spot. Here's the result, complete with a plywood top I added:
The labels on each drawer are reversible, and white on the back, so I can make my own labels. Each drawer is divided into four sections with movable dividers. But I've had experience with divided drawers before, so I know that little stuff has an amazing tendency to jump to another section. I'm going to use cheap plastic boxes with lids to keep a lot of it. The bigger ones are about 20 cents apiece, and the little ones are only a dime:
Mostly, I'm going to keep hardware in this unit, and I plan to buy some common sizes in bulk. Since many times you can buy 2 screws for 2 dollars, or 50 screws for 5 dollars, it makes a lot of sense. And I'm actually looking forward to being able to find a certain size screw or nut without digging around for 15 minutes.
I won't have nearly enough hardware to fill this substantial space, so the lower drawers will be reserved for some of my machinist tools and other treasures. You can't ever have enough drawers!
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