T568A/B timewaster

I built one from an old mainframe tape storage rack. A piece of leftover 1/2" plywood, four casters and some 1/4" pegboard made the frame. Then I bought the gray bins & rails from Harbor freight to cover that side. On the back side I put most of my old steel framed Acro Mills 50 drawer parts cabinets.

Printed labels on the end of each toolbox and sitting in rows on shelves. In the order they are most used.

I have a 30' * 40' four bay garage. My shop is 18' * 28'. The small shop is 12' * 12' and there is an empty 12' * 24' cottage. :)

I have a 60 gal air compressor, and had a lot of used computer equipment donated for my 'Computers for Veterans' project, since they also owned a thrift store for several years. :)

It also means that it will take too much of the few hours a day that I feel well enough to work.

Sorry, I meant those *giant* rolling toolboxes that really *are* "room dividers" in size. (not the little roll around carts). I need lots of *drawers* for tools (e.g., I have a *box* of different hammers)

I put the "part drawers" (mine hold 60 *little* drawers) on a portion of one of the garage walls. Unfortunately, the same wall has the door that enters the living area. Code requires it to be "self-closing". So, each time it slams, the part drawers nudge out just a little bit more. By the end of a week, I have to manually push them all back in.

Didn't anticipate that problem.

Won't work for my "cloth"/canvas bags.

(sigh) I can dream... :> I have a friend who owns four or five homes on "his property". The ultimate hackers haven! He has set aside the garages in each for different types of activities. Auto repair here, machine shop over there, heavy machinery in yet another place, etc. I don't think I would be able to discipline myself to any sort of "reasonable" limits given those sorts of resources! :<

There are many non-profits across the country that will work with you on projects like that. Some insist on 501(c)3 status but many just want you to "be credible". There is no shortage of surplus computers!

This is over six feet tall and almost four feet wide.

Some brands of cabinets are worse than others. Some drop slightly when pushed all the way in. Most of these are over 40 years old, and were industrial grade. I started buying them while I was in high school. :)

Get some soft sheets of vinyl that will roll up, and hang it over each row of cabinets. That should keep the drawers in place, and free of dust.

A cloth label & fabric glue would.

That should have read, '20 gal'. They moved to a new building with a pair of 60 gallon compressors.

Around here, they are forcing them to go to 'recylers'. I lost my last decent source a couple months ago when the city told them that all unwanted electronics had to be recycled. of course, the companies on their approved list all insist that they get ALL computer items or they won't take the bad TVs.

Yes, but how many hammers, chisels, saws, screw/nut-drivers, crowbars, etc. can I store in it's drawers? :> Currently, my "tool storage" (not counting the 3 kennedy boxes, what's in the cars, sitting on my desk or in the "field service kit") is a stack of 6x12x18 boxes 48 inches wide, 18 inches deep and

That's how I got these. It was the standard "gift" for me at the time when folks couldn't figure out what I might "want". I have 14 of them (= 840 drawers) that have survived the numerous moves.

On a related note, when *moving* (i.e., cross country) these things, wrap the entire cabinet in "saran (plastic) wrap" to keep the drawers in place (the cardboard "wrappers/boxes" that I'd diligently kept over the decades eventually got torn and tattered from being slid on and off the drawer assemblies so many times).

Not fond of glue!

TV's are treated like "ugly sisters". Here, you have to *pay* to get someone to take your TV (I realize that is true in places like Californica) just because there are so many of the damn things.

There are shops in Mexico that will actually dismantle the TVs and harvest the electronics, etc. (though I suspect the heavy metals still end up finding their way into the ground!)

that was built to store parts, and small tools. I use old file cabinets for some tools, and those large steel double door office cabinets for others. I also have a pair of 24" wide relay racks with locking doors, shelves and some 1/4" pegboard on walls.

I prefered to buy my own, so I always got the same kind.

I used pieces of carboard between the faces of pairs of cabinets and packing tape when I moved.

Fabric glue is flexible, and holds fabric quite well. My mother was a seamstress and used it for some repairs, when stitches would show.

There is a Japanese patent on a machine that grinds up old circuit boards to recover the metals. If the boards are fiberglass, they use acid to remove the remaining metal, then rinse it and sell the shreaded fiberglass for reuse in things like Spas and other fiberglass products. I harvest some parts off old boards before sending them to a recycler.

=20

No. That is not the difference. The difference is pair number ordering. I have my own copy of ANSI/TIA-568. Since all cables (with maybe some exception for crossover cables) are pair for pair and pin for pin what = you have to remember is what you did at the other end of the cable.

Yep. The law of (un)intended consequences.

?-)

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Understood. My "small tools" collection would never fit! :>

E.g., I have ~dozen different "planes" -- scrubs, jointers, jacks, spokeshave, block, smoothings, etc. The jointers barely qualify as "small" (24 inches long). Easily 150+ "drivers" (sets of phillips, slotted, hex, torx, clutch, square, pozidriv, Reed & Prince, etc.), etc.

I'd need a couple of really wide (though shallow) drawers for each sort of tool. :< Hence the idea of one of those really large (wall size) rolling toolboxes.

When you're 10, you much prefer someone else buying them for you! :>

I picked out the first one and the others were just "repeats". Not much "surprise" involved each time I got one -- but at least I knew I would get what I *wanted*!

Tape sticks to the surfaces. I wrap each drawer in saran wrap (then slide it back in) and the entire cabinet with it. Wrapping each drawer results in some "excess" bunching up in front of each drawer which acts to cushion the little plastic handles.

I don't doubt it holds. My objection is removing it -- changing a label, etc. The leather "luggage tag" approach seems to work well. Looks like it belongs -- without drawing attention to itself.

Lately, I have been digging through the *cases* looking for particular shapes of metal pieces (I REALLY wish I owned a brake!).

If you're really looking for one of those, HD has a pretty good price on their stainless tool caddy. Both pieces are around $750, about half what I've seen for similar units elsewhere. I've thought about it, but all of my tools wouldn't fit and I don't need it for the small stuff, really. I also don't know why I'd want it all on wheels.

I look at it each time I'm there. But, I'd need *two* of them

The wheels are a non-issue -- they wouldn't offer me any added value (though might offer someone who does automechanics some added flexibility -- rolling it around a vehicle-in-repair). But, I probably wouldn't remove them if they were there...

I am still looking for a solution that would address more of the storage issues -- tools, test equipment, etc.

I bought 100 new #2 Philips once for $20. I was going to grind the ends off and braze torx & other security bits to them but they turned out to be a lot better quality than I expected. That was over 15 years ago, and I haven't worn out any of the ones I've used.

I'm making long, full width drawers for those relay racks. They are almost three feet deep, and the drawers will be about 22 inches wide, in various depths.

No, I asked for things like 100 foot extennsion cords and a propane torch when I was that age. Scared the daylights out of my parents! :)

The Acro Mills cabinets are recessed enough to protect the drawers The 'handle' is small, compared to other brands. Her is a smaller version of the metal cabinet type I have:

I used the tape on the sides of the cabinets, with a piece of cardboard between each pair. I hauled them well over 1000 miles in my old stepvan when i moved, and only a couple parts vibrated out of the

Then use velcro. :)

I have this small brake:

Here are a couple more:

I kept the cases of some early, tall tower cases. It is a lot thicker than that in newer, smaller computer cases. I have about a half ton of used angle iron & other metal stored behind my garage in what was one of two horse stalls. The other is used to pile up scrap metal, till there is enough to sell for scrap.

We had a (secret) "employee store" where you could buy claw hammers for 5c, jointer planes for $1, etc. Of course, the "selection" varied greatly/unpredictably, so you couldn't count on finding some particular item that you needed, there. But, if you're a teenager accumulating tools for your "life to come", who cares if you end up with nutdrivers this week, planes next week, hand saws the week after, etc.?

I had thought of taking small 1U-4U servers, discarding the electronics inside, *keeping* the rails and fabricating a heavy duty set of drawers out of those. But, too much work and I'd end up with a hodge-podge of oddball looking drawer fronts. "Hmmm... did I put the hammers in the IBM or the HP?"

Dad already had that sort of stuff in his shop. But, you knew you weren't going to be "walking away with" any of that when you moved out! :>

The cabinets I have are also made my Akro Mills. It doesn't appear that they are still in production, though. Mine have 60 drawers (10 rows of 6). My searches only turned up 64 drawer products...

When the drawers are fully inserted, the tip of the handle is "behind" the plane formed by the face of the metal cabinet. But just *barely*. I.e., if you put an inflexible sheet of wood across the face, the drawers would be safe -- from all but violent blows.

However, simply sliding the cabinets back into the cardboard (paper?) "sleeves" that they were wrapped with when purchased doesn't give that sort of protection. The wadded up saran wrap coupled with shipping the cabinets in pairs -- face to face -- was what enabled me to keep them for all these years (and through all those *moves*) without busting the drawers.

Try entrusting them to professional monkeys^W movers! :<

GooGone/acetone will remove the paint from these (they are very old). I'd even be hesitant to use spirits on them, at this point. Other cleaners (awesome, etc.) dull the finish (and I would never use around the clear "plastic")

Or LUGGAGE TAGS! :> Much less effort: un-"buckle" the strap on the tag; slip it around one of the handles of the bag; re-buckle the strap. Want to change the label? Slide out the business card and mark up another...

I visit the local recyclers and cherry-pick through the scrap. At pennies a pound, they don't even care if I take a few items out. Though, at some point, some pencil-neck is probably going to throw a fit over the "liability issue" and prohibit *anyone* from doing this sort of thing. (You actually have to be careful to plan how you will get in and out of the "dumpsters" -- the size of semi trailers -- BEFORE you climb in lest you get trapped in there! Hint: make sure there is a big pile of stuff

I took the bottoms of a few blade servers to make a cart (heavy gauge steel, not aluminum). But, that still means I will have to cut the pieces to get the size that I want, etc. (though I won't have to worry about making that nice *crease*!)

One place let you go to the tool room and get a scrap pass for returned hand tools. Most were damaged, but some were from people who were fired, quit or retired and look almost new. You could also get small items they had junked, before it was moved to the area where a local surplus shop bought it by the pound. I got a bunch of modules for the PRC-77 that had been through life cycle testing. They all worked, but couldn't be shipped in radios.

Everyone knows that the hammers go in the Dell servers.

Woodworking tools go in the IBM servers and the metalworking tools go in the HP.

I had the opposite problem. I had mere and better tools than my dad, and they kept disappearing into his collection.

I used thick corrugated cardboard, about 1/4" thick that was the same size as the cabinets. Then they were stacked under a workbench that had been a PDP-8 computer in a factory.

I printed folded liners with the labels to fit inside the drawers. Not only did you not need to stick them to the drawers, they were easy to replace.

As long as there is no chance of them getting caught on something. :)

That is where air tools come in handy. :)