Started doing a little bit of clean up in the shop, in fact got one side wall cleaned and picked up an extra 4 feet of wall space !! While cleaning I started picking up my extra iron (strap, square tube, round tube etc). I have a back corner that I put the iron into but after some cleaning it looks like I'm going to have to build something kind of metal rack. I hoard tube etc when I can find it. I use a lot of bed frame material for building stands and brackets etc for tooling, it's high carbon and doesn't weld the greatest but it's a good cheap iron. How many have racks for all your tubing, strapping etc.? Show some pics
I use the small oil barrels on the floor to hold my scraps, it doesn't work worth a shit and I can't find a damn thing but I've done it that way for thirty years.
I have all of my metal on a 3-level, heavy steel shelf system. AT ONE TIME it was sorted by type of steel/aluminum, square and round tubing, solid rod, flat strap, etc. with smaller scraps in milk crates setting on those shelves. Now, if I can find what I'm looking for it's just a stroke of luck, because it's all mixed together, and is just another one of those things that I will sort through and arrange "someday".
I have a old wooden crate 2' x 6' that I throw my scrap tubing & steel, always a adventure digging in the scrap looking for that needed piece. HRP
I've got the same thing Ebb. My dad worked at a plastics plant, and had nearly 30 full width fridge drawers scattered around his house. Garage, closets, workroom, laundry, all organized with old discarded fridge drawers. When he moved out, the drawers came to my cluster-fuck to live. I've got a big heavy duty wooden bookcase like shelf that fits perfectly behind the access door. I swear it was made just for these drawers. One for steel tubing, one for steel flat stock, one for Alum, one for misc stuff like mesh and brackets. Any long pieces live in an old barrel in the corner. They slide right out so you can set them on the bench to pick through. I see why he saved them from the dumpster at work.
This one is in my basement workroom. One for Electrical stuff, one for painting stuff, one for plumbing stuff, and a couple misc ones. BTW, if anyone in West Michigan wants some, I've got 20 or so extra!
I've thought about the barrel idea and came to the same conclusion, good for long stuff, shit for short stuff I've thought about the shelving idea too but honestly my biggest hurdle is the idea of losing space, of course if I'd just clean up the shop I'd have so much room the shelving wouldn't be a problem !
I think the thing so many people miss in organizing their shops is the fact that there is a lot of space above the 6 foot level that contains nothing. Think.....pallet racking. My son bought a house about 4 yrs ago that had a limited size garage. Two cars if you didn't want to open the door to get out of the car. I offered him an 8 foot section of rack. He felt it would take up too much valuable space. I twisted his arm and shamed him into giving it a try. He loved it, and everything became very organized since it did't actually occupy much floor space when you considered how much it held. Then he bought his dream home with a nice size out building......and luckily some other nice out building we are gonna spruce up. Anyway, one of the first things he wanted was.....you guessed it,....pallet racking. We bought enough racking at an auction to line his back wall. All of that unused space above head level suddenly became useful storage. On the left end we left the lowest bar out of the rack and pushed his tool boxes under the first crossbar. Then we put 2x6s on that bottom bar and made a real solid workbench. Put a piece of steel sheet on top of the wood and bolted a vice to it. If you watch, you can pick up some pallet rack for reasonable prices, and a little imagination can turn it into useful storage AND workbenches. I have a lot of racking in my shop. I have one shelf where I store most of the 2' to 4' pices of left overs. It's about 6 1/2 ft off the floor. Vacant space.....but now it holds probably a 1,000 lbs of useful scrap. Spent the day, today down at my son's place helping him build an overhead crane in his shop. The place he bought already had a two post lift in it. As I mentioned we installed racking across his back wall. We are using the two post lifts uprights to support the two rail crane we are building. Makes a very solid center support. The two rails go to the back of his shop and mount on some brackets we made to fit against the face of the pallet rack. Going in the other direction toward the front of the building, we made a crossbeam sitting on two poles to hold the two crane rails. Since the crossbar is 10 feet in the air, it occupies no useful space. Only the two supporting poles cost him any useful space, and one of them is next to the wall. So basically, by giving up about a foot of usable floor space, he has an overhead crane 20 feet long that will lift up to (or more than) 1,000 lbs.
Barrel in the corner for the longer stuff and a 5 gallon bucket for the short stuff. I might get better organized if and when I get the shop finished. I tend to save pieces until they are too small to use for anything
I have 2’x3’ bin with pieces of stash in it , the piece I want is always at the bottom . Long stuff is stacked up right in a corner . I’m limited on space as everyone is , if I had a 100’x200’ building it would be full in about 3 weeks .
Metals, I love metal. I will pick up any useful piece I encounter when possible. I had access to a veritable steel yard with probably a 100 tons of metals. Alas after 30 years the new plant managers had a scrapper come haul it all away. I always worked around steel my entire career. Now that I am really retired I tend to be more frugal with my stash. I recently needed a small section of 1 inch angle. Could not locate any in my hoard so went to Home Depot for a piece. over $10 for a 3 foot piece! To heck with that. Got a bit from a local fab shop I am friends with for free. I picked up a sheet rock dolly at a yard sale for 10 bucks, makes an excellent storage rack that can be rolled about easily. quite stout as well, and will hold considerable weight.
Here are some pictures to show how many treasures you can keep if you make use of the overhead space I talked about above. Com'on guys make use of all that empty space above your shoulders........
I usually stand them up in taller pails for longer stuff and regular pales for shorter stuff that way I can see what it is at a glance and it takes up less room. I also took one of those speaker cabinets from the 1970s that were usually three or four feet tall and cut a hole in the top panel. These things were built like a brick shithouse and I put wheels on them so I could move them around.
My wife does metal sculpture so we have iron all over the shop and outside (28 feet of three level pallet rack). On the smaller/shorter pieces I use sheet rock buckets set at about a 45 degree angle to sort out box/angle/flat etc. The rack was a battery rack that I picked up for free somewhere. In another area I use barrels to sort longer pieces. She sorts "her"metal into a variety of containers depending on size and shape, since metal can get heavy I've put wheels on tote sized containers and they roll under shelving. We have a pretty good sized shop but space is still at a premium. I also built a rack for long pieces of new stock (some are twenty feet long) but most people don't have that issue. You can see the rack to the drivers side of the Studebaker.
Go to Home Depot and check out the rack that they use to sell different shapes and length of metalit is about 3x4x4 I made mine from scrap and put some casters on it
^^^^ That's a great idea there hotrodder, I'll have to go out and take a good second look at their rack ! Mines getting out of control, although not huge but enough it's becoming a problem. So it's one of those by the end of the year projects.
I had that problem of scrap metal piled up really thought about different ways to store.Then it came to me I called a buddy his dad was a scrap metal collector. So he came and hauled off 90% of it now I stop over his place and pick through his scrap when I need something.Saved allot of room in my garage local steel yards usually have pretty decent prices.
Unused space at the end of a shelving unit. Just enough tilt to keep the metal "leaning-in". Made from scraps of plywood, wood and metal. Lengths of "holey" angle for reinforcement and a divider. The sharp edges are covered with plastic door edging or pipe insulation. Panels, sheet metal, etc go in the space between the space in between.
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