What is Good Storage?

[mklotz]

I wonder what the Mythbuster's shop would look like after a major earthquake ;-)

Yes, and their shop is located near San Francisco. Remember the damage the Loma Prieta temblor caused?

Living in a quake zone myself, I take a fatalistic view. No point in worrying about the shop in a big one; there will be far more important damage to worry about. Small quakes are a different thing. They can do a lot of damage by knocking things off shelves, out of overhead storage, etc. There are precautions one can take to minimize this sort of damage and that effort is labor cost effective. Tilting shelves back toward the wall a few degrees can save a lot of grief. Put the heavy stuff and liquid containers near the floor, etc..

We got thoroughly shaken during the Northridge tremor. The water heater (mounted in a shed outside the house) tore its earthquake restraint loose from the house and sheared the cold water inlet but the shop suffered no damage rather some unintended rearrangements that were soon put right.

[suther51]

A storage system that I have long range plans for (longer that I would like) is sliding barn door pegboard, shallow shelves, or what have you, panels that can be slid to cover Windows in my shop. The building started out Life as a 1 room school house. After many decades of neglect abuse and butchery I started to reclame it about 15 yrs ago. Returned Windows to one hight and added back windows that had been taken out. At night it would be a fish bowl, all on display, not my style. The rolling tool storage will act as privacy, security shutters that can be slid back to let in light and views when wanted. As I get along I will try to post more but am all ways crippled by metered data.
Eric

[mklotz]

There are so many competing, often contradictory, aspects to shop storage design. Visibility vs. compactness vs. accessibility vs. available space vs. frequency of use vs. cost vs. time to implement vs. environment vs. type of work done vs extendability vs...

This means any design becomes a complicated mechanical engineering tradeoff heavily influenced by the personality traits of the user. Any form of canonical design is impossible; each person has to lay out his own plan.

Plan for evolution; the real purpose of your initial design is to reveal its flaws and highlight the features important to you. Depressingly, the previous sentence applies to all the succeeding plans that evolve from the first. :-( The best one can hope for is minor victories.

[PJs]

OUCH @ Mythbusters Shop after an Earth quake!!!!!! LOL

I myself am ALWAYS looking for "Shop Storage Ideas" for my own little shop............ So POST up some pics guys!!!!!! (I need some ideas for small stuff even tools!)

Good Point Hemi! I'm appreciative of the direction this thread has taken from Ricks point of view as a unique, evolving process.

I helped my dad move and build shops 4-5 times over the years as we started in the tiniest of spaces in Germany in the late 50's doing U-control model airplanes in a space barely big enough for both of us at a small bench. The first storage I remember was baby food jars for small modeling parts. It was a 3 tier rack mounted on the wall with about 24 (8x3) large and small baby food jars hanging from the lids screwed onto the wood above each row. Easy to see what was in them and just unscrew them from the lid get what you need and put it back...easy peasey. Don't have any pics of those but dad build many of them over the years...and me too. Great to organize screws in particular, wood, machine and nuts for them, etc. Glass was the only issue and broke a few over the years but Clear see through was just the ticket, imho.

Like always happen in shops, the collection of smalls and medium size "Stuff" grows and most of us just can't toss it as sure as heck you'll need it next week or month. During one of dads moves in the later years my brother and I found a paint can full of bent rusty nails and laughed are butt's off and all he could say was; "Ya never know I might need one of those to finish a project"...and he was probably right but we tossed it anyway, because it took 1 day to move the household stuff and 3 days to move the shop, after it was packed!

The last move I got to help him build the new shop and we did it up good with "organization" and a bench you could land a plane on with peg board behind and lots of electrical sockets flush with the front face and 2 shelves above for easy reach. Over the years he/we (my brother and I) have treasured coffee cans for keeping stuff in. Dad had quite a collection but they had been on shelves with masking tape labels facing out and 3 deep in most places. In the new/last place Dad had the idea of a coffee can rack pretty much floor to ceiling that the cans could face lid out so you could pop the lid off and get something or pull the can to get something at the bottom of it. I sketched some plans out and put some numbers on it and this is what we came up with.



As you can see it will hold the Magical 3lb cans as well as 2 & 1lb cans. All were labeled and grouped by categories like Fittings, Electrical, Hardware, etc. If you notice there is only 1 can turned backwards as it was empty...soon to be filled when something needed was saved. Oh, and I'm not positive but I think it is pretty earthquake resistant as it's anchored Quite Well to the wall and the cans tip rear down about 15°.

Hope this inspires others.

PJ

[Jon]

I wonder if perhaps we can't enunciate some sort of shop organization method so that people can more rapidly develop a well-functioning organization scheme.

Initial stuff like:

-What will go in the corners?
-How will you handle ceiling storage?

And then rapid iteration tricks like:

-As you're working, ask yourself: "Are all of my tools within hand's reach?"
-How many footsteps did you take inside your shop to complete this task?

Etc.

[mklotz]

Some storage hints from my shop...

I don't use my metric box wrenches very often so I got one of those free HF magnetic strips...

https://www.harborfreight.com/18-in-...der-61199.html

and, using two HF cup magnets, stuck it to the side of one of my rolling tool cabinets. The wrenches are instantly available but no longer taking up space on the pegboard over my bench.

The rolling cabinet mentioned above is one of those ridiculously low height models sold by Sears, probably for midgets. It rolls under my workbench and provides five drawers without the need for me to do any carpentry. It's proof that bad designs can be made to fill awkward spaces.


Speaking of sticking things to the sides of rolling tool cabinets...

Most socket racks are devilishly hard to remove sockets from. Get some of these...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...0?ie=UTF8&th=1

They hold the sockets magnetically so no futzing with little clips. The bases are also magnetic so they can be stuck to the side of cabinets. The socket retention is good enough that they can be inverted without any sockets falling out. Stick them to the fender when you're under the hood.


1/4" Hex bits can be similarly organized magnetically using these...

https://www.amazon.com/ARES-70080-Or...G62A5M4GZKH1H7


Hanging stuff from the rafters is a good idea and it gets a lot easier with one of these...

http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/t...0735#post92074

Rather than pounding nails into the rafter, keep things easily reconfigurable by screwing a length of light chain to the rafter - many attachment points quickly.


If you have a one-piece, tip-up garage door, as is common here in LaLaLand, don't overlook storing things on the inside surface. This requires positive holding clips and should be limited to lightweight stuff but it is a usually overlooked space.


I'll add some more tips as they occur to me.

[Hemi]

Marv,
Good ole Horrible Fright, is actually good for some thing. storage if nothing else...... Tools, (bits especially), are junk from HF but their storage items aren't to bad!!!!

I got to say tho, I LIKE the idea from others to see if any one did things that I could do, in a smaller way to get the same result from. and modified to fit my own needs that I didn't think of myself so, I'll be watching this topic for ideas!!!!!

[Frank S]

I have far too many roll a round tool boxes littered with mismatched items and 1 rather large Snap-on cabinet 6 1/2 ft tall 5 ft wide and 28 inches deep also littered. During this past flywheel housing repair I decided that the Snap-on is going to be the wrench and socket box, 1 of the craftsmen boxes like Marv's is going to be for screwdrivers and anything related to those another is going to be for pliers of every type while another will be for punches and chisels another box will be for taps dies and associated articles for them another for air tools and the remaining 5 or 6 roll a rounds would be for the specialty kit tools.
Then I got to thinking that this probably will not work out well either until I completely re arrange my hardware storage area so I can put all of the boxes along 1 30 ft wall in the tool trailer So I will probably just leave it as is for now because I can find things from learned habits and placement.
If I could just talk my wife into arranging things for me without my knowing about it then re learn the placements I think I would be better off.

[Hemi]

LOL Frank @ the "Wife" comment.............. Let me KNOW HOW you manage that one!!!!!

[suther51]

Sometimes the hardest thing is to decide what is worth organizing and what should go in a shed or other location, sometimes the "round file" aka tossed.
Eric