Core77

Clever DIY Solution for Sorting Loose Hardware

By Rain Noe - November 21, 2014

in Object Culture

I'm cheap, so I save all hardware and fasteners that aren't bent out of shape or stripped. As I disassemble one DIY project and prepare to move on to the next, all of the old screws and such go into the sad "system" you see below, a collection of plastic containers. When they're full I dump them out onto a tray and sort more precisely.

It's a lame system, I know. And I became aware of just how lame when I saw this killer idea from "Wulf" over on the Craftster community:

At the shop where I work we just toss loose screws, bolts, nails and other bits and pieces of hardware from the workbenches and the floor into a bucket and, every couple of years when the bucket gets too full, somebody has to dump the whole mess out and sort everything back to where it belongs. When that job fell to me this Spring, I decided there had to be a better solution. So I designed a bin that would help to at least divide things by type to make the final sorting easier. Though built for an industrial situation, it would work equally well in the home craft room for jewellery findings, sewing notions, etc.

Vertical dividers between the openings act as stops for the drawers and prevent items from bouncing into the wrong drawer. I wanted to make the openings as big a target as possible for those handfuls of hardware, so I made each wider at the top like a funnel. And I cut the shape of each as a visual reminder of what to put where. (This actually works really well - no thinking on the job required!)

By making the drawers shallow and easily accessible from the side, it has the added advantage of making the collected hardware readily available any time. So if you happen to need a washer and don't want to go get one from the bin in the stock room, you can just pull open the appropriate drawer and see if one has been collected in the bin. Much easier than digging through a miscellaneous bucket, and the closed bin keeps out sawdust and debris.

o
2

Favorite This
Q
3

Comment

Comments

Austin Wade

10 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

Why not have drawers on the long side? You could make all the drawers the same size as the nut drawer (or make it deeper and put them side by side. this way you aren't wasting roughly half of the box. Plus, in this design, the bottom drawers will have everything clear in the back of the drawer (will pile up and make it difficult to open the drawer).
!Report as spam
jt

10 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

Clever idea, but there's still sorting involved! This will have to work until we get a hardware version of Coinstar.
!Report as spam
scott brown

10 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

This is clever, and possibly useful. I laughed when I saw the first top view picture, imagining that the inside was just one bin - you know, "to be sorted".

!Report as spam