I have a pile, no... a pile of piles of fasteners, nuts, bolts grommets and odds -n- ends from gutting a couple cars. They are mostly impossible to organize by category. I constantly use bits from the pile of piles so its not really ok to just throw it out but... it is sitting in2 upsidedown trash can lids and it is always in the way. I need a solution that isn't just coffee cans (can't see thru 'em).
How do you keep your not-quite-junk accessible but out of the way?
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Grtechguy wrote:
+3 cause that is the minimum number you should get. You will wish you had more in short order.
My grandad used baby good jars & nailed the lids to the underside of the shelf above his work bench. Or...my mothe-in-law buys candy in those big clear display jars. I use them for the random but to good to tos stuff. They're plastic and clear.
I like the HF bins, but also I keep a rack on the wall right above the bench that has those little tilt out clear plastic trays - makes the common stuff - washers, wood and sheet metal screws, matching nuts and bolts (always a hard pair to make
) etc at arms reach. The Yellow bins are great for other random stuff you wan to keep, but only go reach for every other weekend.
SillyImportRacer wrote: My grandad used baby good jars & nailed the lids to the underside of the shelf above his work bench.
That's a clever idea.
All my odds and ends are strewn atop a 44-gal drum. It's not an ideal system.
Then once you have the bins, organize the best you can based on your "inventory" - if you have a lot of nuts/bolts that are the same size but different lengths, toss them in one bin. Toss random metric fasteners in one and SAE in another, washers in one, spacers in another, etc.
That's why I hate those bins. Unless you are the only one using them, (and sometime not even), they'll become a disorganized mess. People will take them off the rack, and use them to store all kinds of stuff, and you'll end up with bins full of junk lying around the shop.
I won't allow them in my shop at home, or at work.
By "them", I assume you mean people who will destroy your organization.
Aside from having a personal assistant I don't think I'll ever be organized. I'm slob, and no matter how often I try to reorganize, I always regress back to my slob roots. It stinks, but I am what I am.
When the kids were younger, and I was poorer, I started saving our empty peanut butter jars. They're not glass, but clear plastic. Easy to see what's inside, easy to store/stack, and usually don't break if they get dropped. As I saved more and more jars, it was easier to 'file' nuts, bolts, and washers by type and size. They now reside in my old kitchen cabinets(upper ones) in the garage. The tops are labeled with magic marker as to contents and makes it easy to read without having to take each one out of the cabinet to get the one I want.
Keith wrote: By "them", I assume you mean people who will destroy your organization.
Im sure he meant the zombies. Eventually they will disorganize his garage. Theyre always a nuisance around here
Luke wrote:SillyImportRacer wrote: My grandad used baby good jars & nailed the lids to the underside of the shelf above his work bench.That's a clever idea. All my odds and ends are strewn atop a 44-gal drum. It's not an ideal system.
We have these and PB jars, but I never use them as they need to be super-organized. Not to mention I have dropped the glass jars on the floor shattering them a few times.
I have a 2 part system. Coffee cans and frying pans. Keep everything in a coffee can, when you need something from it, dump it in a frying pan and dig around.
Bonus if you can keep some coffee cans standard and some metric. I don't and I have lots of coffee cans. The old frying pans let you dig through it without spilling everything on the floor. I usually keep a "shovel" in each can, a long bolt or brush to dig through everything without cutting myself on the loose razor blade.
I got some industrial bolt cabinets from a closing hardware store, however they would only work with a paid employee making them work. They are a mess, I don't have the time to keep organized.
I have a few compartmentalized containers that I use for my common nuts and bolts - the metric ones I keep going back to. Another cool little box has four drawers that are all split up, and that's my race pack. It has one drawer for electrical bits, one for rivets, one for a selection of "uhoh" nuts and bolts and one for basic track spares like spark plugs, a sway bar end link, zipties and the like. This little box has a handle on top so it's easy to pull off the wall and toss in the truck when I'm heading out to the track. It's come in very handy.
On top of that there's one of those sets of clear drawers that is used for various bits like SAE nuts and bolts, grommets, machine screws, etc.
One of the biggest helps is a collection of ziplock bags. A big collection. When I'm disassembling a car and I run across specialized fasteners, they get put in a ziplock bag which is then labeled and put in a box with the other bags. That way I can easily retrieve a set of driveshaft bolts from a Camaro (for example) without being concerned that they may have ended up mixed in with my MG fasteners. The zombies have a hard time disorganizing the ziplocks, it's proven to be a really good system.
Each project car has its own shelves, so Land Rover parts don't mix with Cadillac parts.
And of course, there are a couple of coffee cans. I take them and sort them once in a while to replenish my various stores. I'm not inherently organized, but trying to juggle so many project cars at one time has forced me to develop some good habits. I also end up doing a major re-org of the garage about once a year in order to free up space and ensure everything is accessible. It takes a bit of time to do, but I save time overall as I never have to hunt for things. Being organized saves time, it doesn't take it.
Many folks nail/screw the lid of the peanut butter jars to the bottom of an upper cabinet. You then screw the glass/plastic part to the lid, and the stuff hangs there in plain view.
Keith wrote: By "them", I assume you mean people who will destroy your organization.
I mean those bins. In my shop at work, as soon as somebody sets one of those down, people start filling it with parts/pieces/garbage, etc.
I prefer these for nuts/bolts, washers, small parts etc.
The plastic bags work well for projects, or customer cars. It's what I use when I tear down a bike.
For small bits, in fairly small quantities, I keep a drawer of my tool box full of up-turned spray can lids. I'm pretty anal about saving/sorting those things, and I'm the only one with access to my box, so no zombies to worry about.
I also have a collection of baby jars in reserve, for the point when I grow out of that drawer.
I wound up going to HomeLowes' and getting several of those plastic bins, about 8" x 12" x 6" deep with snap on lids. All the metric bolts go in one, then metric nuts in another, fractional nuts/bolts each get their own container, another for self tap or sheet metal screws, another for small brackets, you get the idea. It really cut my search time way down. Each is labeled with a Sharpie. I have them on a shelf but they can be easily stacked to save space. I also have two of those plastic drawer thingys where I keep electrical connectors, O rings carb parts etc.
I thought I was going to have to cut Toyman's hands off once when I realized he was chunkin' stuff in the wrong bins. Pizzed me OUF. But he's all better now. 
In most cases when ripping a car apart if I'm not planning to reuse stuff to reassemble the car it gets sorted out and goes in my plastic boxes. If it's going back together, either everything gets a dedicated cardboard box or in the case of a major long term project (like a restoration), Ziploc bags with the assembly area (right door, trunk hardware, etc) written in Sharpie. Those will go in a big cardboard box or one of those Rubbermaid containers.
Don't forget when disassembling an engine, tranny, differential etc which will be scrapped you need to pick that sucker clean of alignment dowels, shoulder bolts, throttle cable brackets etc. That stuff has saved my ass more than once. I will even cut off brake line brackets and throw them in my bracket box.
My dad did the baby food jars, but took it a step further. he took a 12" long 2X2 hunk of wood. Then he nailed 4 baby food jar lids to each side and made the 2X2 into a spindle of sorts, mounted horizontally. So, you have 16 baby food jars on a spinning ount that takes up less than 1 square foot of bench space. Then he did something similar to a lazy susan, mounted upside down to the ceiling.
we just went through this task. We got three of the plastic drawer cabinets. One for metric, one for standard, and one for misc hardware (clips and stuff...).
While it looks like a ton of crap, in reality, you probably only have a few of each various size. Found nuts and bolts... left-over extras... so don't just organize for what you have, but also for what you will probably get in the future.
Step one, get out you thread gauge and start separating the metric and standard stuff.
Step two, sort everything by size.
Step three, make stick-on labels for the drawer in ALL sizes of metric and standard, regardless of whether or not you actually have any of them. Planning for future sizes you don't have is the only way to keep it organized (I have a couple of empty drawers in the cabinets).
Step four, put nut and bolts into bins and enjoy.
I won't kid - it took the two of us the better part of a week of evenings after work this past Winter... it's tedious... and involves a lot of nuts and bolts spread out all over...
Grtechguy wrote:
love mine. Top shelf is bolts by size from 1/4 to 1/2". Nuts and bolts of varying lengths, but correct sizes. Metric is Metric. When I have multiple sheet metal screws, smaller containers get put in the bins. I have a few of the bins labeled as loosly as Pinto 1 and Pinto 2 for a catch of pinto parts that have no other home but the car. As the car is being assembled, the need for those bins will diminish.
Jensenman wrote: Don't forget when disassembling an engine, tranny, differential etc which will be scrapped you need to pick that sucker clean of alignment dowels, shoulder bolts, throttle cable brackets etc. That stuff has saved my ass more than once. I will even cut off brake line brackets and throw them in my bracket box.
This is my problem - I NEVER forget to harvest everything. Hence the pile of piles. I even cut off all the little wiring terminals so I can make nice connections when fabbing up my own wiring harnesses. I have a bag with probably 100 odd relays in it that I have no idea of the pin-outs. But someday... one of them will save my ass and for that I cannot throw any away.
I'm going to head over to HF this evening and see if I can grab one of those yellow bin units... and for smaller stuff like o-rings and c-clips I might nail some PB jar lids to a board.
In addition to the bin drawers, my g/'f's parents thought it would be nice to give her a double-sided, rolling bin rack to her for Christmas last year... While a nice thought (and would have been very usefull when we were ripping cars apart), my initial gut-reaction was, "great.... now where the hell are we going to put that thing..."
She decided to put all of the extra house-related electrical and plumbing crap in those bins...
No... I still haven't found a good home for it in the garage so the effing thing is constantly in the way...
I have an old Dorman hardware cabinet (actually two, bolted together side-to-side). It has eight drawers, with the corrugated dividers to create compartments. Each drawer is labeled, such as 5/16", Metric or whatever is in the drawer. Mine also includes metal screws, zip ties, pens/pencils/markers and miscellaneous hardware. If I get a compartment full of any certain one size, the "overstock" goes in a container behind the cabinet. Usually, I get a shallow can of leftovers or newly found stuff that sits on the shelf until I get time to organize and file these in the appropriate compartment/drawer.
I rarely have a hard time finding a fastener. If it's not in the drawer, I'm pretty sure I don't have it, and I make a quick trip to the hardware store to buy what I need along with a few extras.
Good luck finding an old Dorman cabinet--they're like gold. My father found a similar cabinet that originally lived in a factory or somewhere. Having perfectly labeled homes for everything makes organization easy.
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