Gene Howe

I'm in the midst of remodeling my shop. Built a bench with 21 drawers. The goal is to egg crate several of the less deep top 2 drawers for screws, bolts, washers and nuts. Then, I'm building 2 wall hung cabinets with shelves that will hold pull out bins for DW, wood screws and pocket screws. The bits and drivers will be stored in the same cabinets.
I like to store things close to where I'll be doing the job. Layout tools, screws and glue over by the assembly bench and TS. Bolts and nuts, etc in the bench where I do repairs and metal work. TS guides, feather boards etc. on the wall by the TS. The routers and all the guides and bits are in a roll around cabinet close to the router table.
My shop is 26X36, but it houses the water pump and pressure tank and 1/2 of the 36' length is elevated by 1'. Makes it kinda unhandy. Every tool I use is either portable or on casters.
Gene

ponch37300

As far as how I seperate and organize I do woodworking, metal working, car repairs, and home remodeling so I like to keep a good variety of hardware in stock in the garage. So I like to try to be as "hardware store" organized as possible. The nice things about the plastic bins I posted is they are 17" long so I can divide them into 6 compartments in each one. I use 2 bins for each size of bolts. So all my 1/4"-20 bolts are in 2 bins, nuts, lock nuts, washers, lock washers, and then bolts from in lengths-3/4, 1, 1 1/4, 1 1/2, 2, 2 1/2, 3, 3 1/2". Then the same for 5/16", 3/8", 7/16", 1/2", 5/8" so I have just about any bolt I could need without running to the store and easily find what I'm looking for. I try and seperate fasteners by type, then size, then length. It took a good amount of time to do this but I've easily made that time up when it comes to finding something. And I very rarely have to make special trips to the store for hardware because I can see when I'm getting low and then get more next time I'm at the store. I figure it takes about an hour to stop what I'm doing and make a special trip to the store so a couple trips and you are better off keeping a stock of common hardware organized, that's the way I look at it.

I worked at a mill that had all sorts of hardware that was very well organized. We also were big on lean manufacturing which is all about organization so I got in the habit of trying to keep things organized. My only problem is I have to many things and not enough space to be able to keep them organized like I would like!

Goodluck

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Thanks for your help, Scott