Hardware Drawer
For the longest time, I was using a couple of Stanley small parts organizers for sorting some of the hardware that I had accumulated over the years. I also bought a couple of Husky organizers to handle the growing pile of hardware I was collecting. On top of that, I still had some hardware in the small packages in which they were originally packaged. I had such a hodgepodge of hardware storage that it was getting hard to keep track of things.
I really like the Stanley storage system as it has bins of various sizes depending on the amount and size of hardware to be stored. My only problem was the storage containers themselves. I didn’t want to have to sift through a few different containers to find what I wanted. I wanted everything stored in one place, if possible. I was in the middle of reorganizing my miter saw station drawers and I found the bottom middle drawer on the top section that would be perfect for this. It was deep enough to have two levels (one for the large deep bins and one for the smaller shallow ones).
There was one problem with using this drawer. If I stored the bins in there instead of the original containers, they would be sliding around all of the time when I opened and closed the drawer. I needed a way to have them sit in place just like in the Stanley containers. I looked more closely at the Stanley boxes and saw that they had a bunch of circular depressions all evenly spaced out. This enabled any size bin to be stored anywhere in the box. All I had to do was drill some evenly spaced holes in the bottom of the drawer and I’d be all set.
There was another problem with that solution. The drawer bottom on all of the drawers in the miter station were glued and screwed in place. It would be a royal pain in the ass to layout all of the lines and drill the holes using the current drawer. No problem. I had enough scraps on hand to just make another whole new drawer, only this time I would not glue the bottom in place.
I was going to need quite a few of some bigger size bins, but I didn’t want to have to buy a bunch of the Stanley organizer boxes to get the amount that were required. I would rather just buy the bins themselves. I searched Stanley’s parts site and was able to find them on there, but they were all out of stock. I decided to search elsewhere, based on the part numbers, and I lucked out with a guy on eBay who had a bunch of them for sale. I bought all the ones I needed and then began to work on the layout of the drawer.
Yes, Drill Sergeant!!!
I laid out the bins in the best way I could and figured out that I would need to drill 165 holes only a fraction of an inch deep. HOLY CRAP!!! That was going to suck. And this was only for the bottom section of the drawer. Well, time to get drilling. I first tried setting up the drill press, but it was just too cumbersome dealing with a large piece of plywood with such a small work surface on my drill press table. Not to mention, I needed to be pretty precise with where I was drilling to enable the bins to lock into place once set in the drawer. I opted to just use the cordless drill instead.
Before I started the arduous task before me, I went ahead and took a scratch awl and marked a small starting divot for all of the holes. By doing this, it was much easier and faster to line up the forstner bit for drilling.
Getting the right depth was going to be more difficult than if I could use the drill press, partly the reason for wanting to use it in the first place. I started slowly on the first couple of holes. Once I got a feel for how deep to go, I got into a bit of a groove. The depth didn’t need to be quite as precise as the actual spacing between the holes, so I could go a little deeper and still be okay. Along the way, I checked a small section with some of the bins to verify that everything was going to work. I don’t remember how long it took, but it took a while. My hands, wrists and shoulders were feeling it after all of this drilling.
Thank You, Drill Sergeant...Can I Have Another?!?!?!
Once the bottom of the drawer was finished, I loaded everything up into the different bins and set them in place. Everything fit just fine, and when opening and closing the drawer, nothing got jostled around, even with some bins not in place. Finally, now I’m finished...weeeeeeeellllllllllll, not quite yet. I still had to make a couple of trays for the top half of the drawer to hold the small shallow bins. UGH!!! Here we go a drillin’ again.
Since I already knew all of the key measurements for the hole layout, constructing the two trays was fairly straightforward. I laid out the circles, punched the centers with the scratch awl just as before, and got to drilling again. I had another 120 holes to drill between the two trays, so I got to work on that right away. I was still a little sore from the day before, so I think it took me a little longer to finish the trays than the drawer bottom. Nevertheless, the holes were drilled just like before, and everything came out just as planned.
The trays ride on top of some plywood “slides” installed on the inside of the main drawer sides. They slide back and forth quite well, and I don’t anticipate any huge problems with wood movement over the long haul. Everything is made from plywood, and my workshop has a good amount of insulation to prevent the humidity from getting too high and swelling the plywood.
I’ve just about filled the entire drawer to capacity to this point, so I hopefully won’t have much more hardware to account for in the future. If anything, I’ll likely get rid of some of the stuff I’ve got down the road if I’m never using it, which will likely be the case. Most woodworkers only use a specific number of fasteners for the majority of their projects, and I’m no different. However, it’s nice to have a lot of smaller and different-sized screws for those DIY projects that pop up around the house. Either way, I know EXACTLY where all of my hardware is located, when needed.
***RETIRED: June/July 2021***
The hardware drawer I had in my old miter station has been retired. It has moved and been replaced by the series of smaller hardware drawers I built into my Rockler workbench.
The construction of the new drawers was the same as the larger one, with the size being one small bin deeper and one large bin wider. I don’t foresee any changes in the near future with the new hardware drawers. I still have room for a bit more hardware in these drawers, and I’ve since been going through and getting rid of stuff that I don’t use/need, so I have a bit more room for expansion.
