There was a time when one of them sets of 50 odd drill bits in a folding metal rack sufficed in my shop and a 20 piece set in the truck, but that was long ago. The accumulation has been becoming increasingly unmanageable for me.
My search, and it’s been casual, has yielded nothing commercial suitable for organization of drill bits in the workshop. Stuff that might store twist bits up to 3/4″ just doesn’t help store 3″ forstner bits.
Then, and this was the catalyst, the same problem occurs with taps. You start with a basic metric and imperial set in cute little plastic boxes, but then it grows in a similar fashion. Soon there is the same “pile” of non-standard taps in a drawer and they run from teeny tiny stuff up to 1″+ stuff, in varying TPI’s metric and imperial,perhaps tripled in some cases by having intermediate and bottoming taps, and possibly doubled agin by 2 for metric and imperial.
When you spend two hours with a magnifying glass trying to find the right tap, you know you got a problem that has to have a solution.
Anyone who is in this situation will realize the investment that this presents, so to have them banging together every time you open the drawer has to have grated on your common sense as much as it does mine.
To make a long story short (too late- I know!!) Someone out there has to have obtained, made, or seen or even imagined some type of exquistely good storage for a plethora of drill bits of every type and size, and such a storage unit would be possibly quite suitable for taps as well.
Can you please share your insights with me
Eric in Cowtown
Replies
I've never seen one but I would be highly motivated to purchase one. I've had to settle for building my own imperfect one's as I've had time and need. Let me know if you find something. The thing would have to be huge. My Forstners start at 1/8" and go to 4" by 1/16's. Then there's the 115 pcs. of regular twist in numbers, letters and fractions. Now add in the TurboMax's the brad points up to 1" and then the tapers. Then the tap's and die's in metric and S.A.E.. We haven't even gotten into the augurs and bell hanger bit's, aircraft bit's or spade's. From a retail point of view it would be a no brainer, a lot of people would have a compulsion to buy bits to fill it. I would like it labeled for 50 year old eyes, spaced so I don't have to perform contortions to get at the bit's and glass double doors would be nice too.
Don't take this as sarcasm, I would be first in line to buy one.
Edited 6/17/2006 4:07 am by dgreen
Edited 6/17/2006 4:13 am by dgreen
Find a cigar smoker, ask him for two empty boxes,one for taps and the other for drills. I gave up organizing bits and taps, rarely takes longer than ten minutes to find the mating drill and tap.I keep a rubber band around a drill and matching taps that I use often.
mike
I hope you don't store your planes, chisels, router bits and other cutting edges the same way.
Since the house is on fire let us warm ourselves. ~Italian Proverb
I know the problem. The items are small, many and similar looking.
Solutions are there, but depend upon the individual mainly: a tidy methodical mind will help.
There are very nice engineers tool sheetmetal cabinets to be had. These have drawers of suitable depths and can be labelled .You might have to have several, what with metric , imperial etc.
Doubtless if you spend some money on the means to organise the horde better you will find stuff you never knew you had.....
You are so right- a tidy methodical mind may help.I spent some money on cabinets along the way. I spent a bunch of time along the way tidying and organizing as well. This taps and drills issue is just the one that percolated to the top of the pile of things to do.What I asked for was help with ideas to store the plethora of drills and taps, and it seems I hit upon a problem which a lot of other folks have encountered. At least a lot of folks have posted the "let me know...." type of response.The engineers cabinets are undoubtedly, as you said, utilitarian. They are also relatively expensive. Despite the expense, I do have several versions, from antique QS oak through to Kennedy. They are alas filled with machinists tools, of far more individual value and requiring substantially more protective environment than a 1/4-20 tap. Further, for whatever reason, the individual chests are notoriously characterized by having lift up lids, which generally have to be lifted to unlock the lower drawers. Ergo, you just can't stack em up. I also have a wall cabinet drill storage unit, which while effective in a retail environment where you gotta have 100 1/4" drill bits on hand, is grossly inefficient in a workshop, where 5 or 6 may suffice.I'd be interested to know how you store your taps and drill bits. Eric in Calgary
I have some nice storage setups with divided drawers specifically for taps and for drills. I know they are available in fractional and letter and number drill sizes and I assume they are made for metric as well.
The manufacturer is HUOT. I believe you can get them from a machine shop supply house such as MSC (website is mscdirect.com) or even Mcmaster-Carr supply (website is mcmaster.com)
They are gray metal with nice drawer slides and each divided part holds multiple drills of each size. You could even relabel the drawer fronts to accept odd size tools.
Good luck.
Those are nice boxes,Huot also makes nice boxes for sets, I believe the biggest one for single bits is 115 pcs.
Since the house is on fire let us warm ourselves. ~Italian Proverb
The only thing I have been able to come up with that works for me, I built a 1½" thick shelf and as I get a new bit I use it to drill a hole 1"deep in the shelf and use it for storage.
Jack
Eric,
I have been debating for several months on a new way to store my drill bits. I havent seen anything commercially available that will cover all bases. Do the base end of all your taps come in 1 or 2 different sizes? If so you could consider making little cards with holes drilled in them to store your taps on. This same approach could also work for drill bits that all have the same size tail end such as forsteners and spade bits. As for all the twist bits of various sizes the best solution I can come up with there would be to maybe try magnetic tool strips if you arent woried about the bits picking up a magnetic charge..
Chris
Chris....While I was waiting to see what gelled out with this question, I started scoping out possibilities, and the little red drawers in the LV catalogue stuck in my mind. I got 5 1" ones and 3 3" ones and cobbled up a case (ignored the plans that came with em) Worked out to be about just over 18" highSat Aft I sat there and sorted through the taps and organized them. On Thursday, when I could only find one 1/4-28 tap, when all was said and done, there were 4 of em sitting there. The 3" drawers were a bit of a mis-step, although I'll keep one for the bigger stuff, by the time I got the bottom covered with the over 1" taps, the drawer was so heavy, and there was so much wasted space, that the 2" drawer was obviously the better choice.So this morning I was back to LV and bought some 2" drawers.This is very much a work in progress, but there was an embarassingly high rate of duplication for the common sizes of taps, and suprising finds of the less common sizes there in the cigar boxes full of taps. Windsor Plywood, on of the local retailers had had some bizarre and severely discounted moulding for years now, one of which was a 2x1/2 dentil type moulding only the dentils weren't square, but rather rounded, I had bought some a few years back with the drill organizational idea in mind, and quickly used up what I had, so I went there and bought the rest of their stock. 15 bucks for 50' That will suffice to hold the smaller stuff. Methinks I'm gonna have to route/mould/somehow cobble up similar stuff to hold the larger shank stuff in a "tidy and organized" fashion, At 8-9 bucks CDN/drawer, the two units I've done so far have cost me about 70 bucks each for the drawers, and less than 15 bucks in baltic birch. Not including my time, it's still more than I wanted to spend, but still less than commercial product. The sorting out will also allow me to weed out unneccesary "extras" The fat lady ain't sung yet on this project, perhaps I coulda made the drawers outta scrap BB, cheaper too maybe perhaps, if I didn't have paying jobs getting in the way. There's still a whole bunch or replies to read through yet. Just another canuck...Eric in Cowtown.
Metal worker here.. I have so many metal working tools I forgot what most are used for!
I finally got some plastic 'boxes' at the local BIGBOX and but some 'felt' cut out to fit the bottoms.. Some light machine oil on the felt works wonders.. Now, how to I label em?
An equisite idea which I have used. Plastic boxes. Still got em. What did I use em for? I had one for #6 FH screws, another for #8 FH screws, another set for pan heads, etc, yet another series for plumbing washers, rubber door bumbers, elecrical connectors and clips, bifold door parts -etc, etc-etc . I recollect there were 30+ such organizational aids, and in order to carry them in and out of jobsites, I made carrying cases so that I could carry them 10 at a time.
You ask what to label them with. No doubt you know the answer- black permanent marker at each end. Quite simple, don't you agree? What do you use? But I should ask you how you deal with -30 (C or F it don't matter, the boxes shatter or the hinges break just the same) when these boxes are bouncing around in the back of your truck? Plastic from big-box stores? Is that more durable than N. American mfgrs such as Plano. Alas, plastic, even good quality plastic, is no longer for me unless it ain't gonna get transported out of a heated area. I should confess to using covered plastic boxes to store the plethora of European hinge paraphanalia in the shop, --keeps the dust off of em. Them plastic storage boxes that I used to use for screws etc? I still got the remnants of that system in the shop, but truckable replacements are metal, at just substantially more cost, but they'll outlast this fella--quite unlike plastic, they don't seem to shatter in the cold. My metal head activities are limited to using my craftsman 109 and the usual plethora of insignificant metal work acitvities that are related to the HVAC duct modification in cabinet installation, tool installation/alignment/repair in the shop, minor welding and fabrication, optical instrument repair, a tad of engraving, a modicum of planishing, you know the general light duty stuff that drives you nuts....But then I'm just a tyro in that spectrum of activitiesEric in Cowtown
I understand your problem, I am in the same boat. I want to build a wall cabinet for all of my drill bits, etc., but I realize that I have not yet acquired my eventual inventory. The only solution I have been able to come up with is to build a cabinet with modular section for each type bit. That way as the inventory changes beyond what I can now perceive all I have to rebuild (or add) is that module.
Ken - Just North of Cowtown in Gainesville
My solution for that was to get a 2x6, a 2x4 and a 2x2 and glue them up into a stair step arrangement and then take and drill a hole for each bit with that bit. I have the twist bits in the lowest row closest to me, the brad points above that and the forstners on the top. The whole thing sits on a shelf just above the back of my workbench and is held in place with a cold at each end. The only ones that can get confused are the forstners so for them I took a finepoint sharpie pen/marker and wrote on the wood by each hole what went where. I suppose you could make it a bit longer and add a section for metric bits and for taps.
The taps and dies at least in my mind don't have frequent use, but when you need em, you gotta be able to find them. Drill bits is another story, but with the same caveat. I ain't made much progress on the sortitational aspect, although I did get the huot catalogue, and the cabinets with the LV drawers are made. Seems like disassembly of my saw table to accomodate another table saw took priority. This weekend is the first free time I got and hope to make progress on a coupla fronts.Eric
I have this old drill index. Pretty clever. There are some plastic ones that are similar but not as classy. Although it has limited capacity, you could make several in different sizes. It is a wood cylinder about 3" x 4 1/2". A rotating disc under the cap moves to align with three rows of holes drill in the wood. When the cap is in the closed position, the bits are safe and secure. Toss it in the tool box, back pocket, and don't worry about the bits falling loose and mixing up or banging on metal. Dial in the number you want and only that bit comes out. Don't forget who showed it to you when you make a few!
Beat it to fit / Paint it to match
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