Workshop Drawerganizers You Can Make

hi thanks for checking out next level carpentry in this video about organizing workshop drawers abe lincoln is famous for saying if i had eight hours to chop down a tree i'd spend the first six hours sharpening my axe well that tells me a couple things about abe lincoln the first thing it tells me about ole abe is that he understood the value of working efficiently and even if you're not chopping down trees working efficiently is important and a big part of working efficiently in a shop is to be organized so the tools and supplies are readily at hand so you can focus on the work and not waste time scrummaging and rubbaging looking for what you need when i move from my old shop into this new one about two and a half years ago i upgraded to these two huge rolling tool cabinets here these babies are 24 inches deep and they both have a matching side cabinet like this with storage and drawers in the bottom so there's a ton of storage in there and i just took everything out of the old shop wherever i had it over there and i just heaved it into drawers here just to get it put away so that i could function in the two and a half years since i've been working here i kind of shuffle things around in the drawers to figure out which drawer i want uh what i want in which drawer where so that can work more efficiently in general this side over here this is all the woodworking uh stuff here in this and then the other side there that's more the mechanical stuff wrenches and stuff over there chisel saws and glue over here and in that amount of time i've gotten where i like the arrangement where things are sandpaper here i brushes down there drill bits screwdrivers wrenches and stuff over there that works pretty good so that i know which drawer to pull open when i'm looking for something but even though i've got the stuff that i want in the drawer where i want it because of the haphazard way i put things in there when i was trying to figure this out it's been kind of a mess so when i go in to look for a piece of sandpaper i had to look through sanding blocks and 15 different kind of grits to get what i was after so that was becoming pretty inefficient so in the last few weeks i've kind of embarked on an organizing campaign and i'll show you what i mean anytime i can i'll start a project by picking low-hanging fruit to kind of build momentum and i did exactly that with this drawer organizing campaign the thing i probably use most out of all these drawers is my pens pencils and writing utensils so that's the first drawer i tackled to get it organized i don't have a shot a before shot of what that drawer looked like but it was just a mess looked like an explosion in a toothpick factory but this is what the drawer looks like now as you can see there's a place for every utensil and every utensil has its place after success with the writing utensil drawer i moved on into these other drawers and you can see in these before and after pictures the benefit of the organizing process here's what my draw of scissors and tweezers looked like before and the results after organizing this is what my drawer of brushes looked like before organizing and here's a quick shot of what it looks like now the tools in this drawer are a bit of a catch-all but as you can see there's a magnifying glass a couple small thermometers a flashlight some probes spatulas and deburring tools as it was it was quite a mess when i had to dig in there for one particular tool but as you can see now everything is in its place i regret that i don't have a before picture of my file drawer because it was a mess and not only were the files hard to find but it's no good for files to be laying in a drawer where they can rub against each other but now as you can see there's a place for every tool and every tool is in its place when i'm working on a project at the bench i can reach in here and grab any single file i want even though they're stacked edge to edge and not in a single file line if you do a two minute search on youtube about how to organize drawers you'll come up with a hundred videos and then some and each one has a unique approach but from what i saw most of them have to do with building dividers out of wood of different thicknesses and widths and building some sort of a mouse maze for organizing stuff in the drawers the other thing you come up with is the kaizen foam where each tool kind of has a place but i decided to take a different approach because my goal is to work efficiently not to spend a whole bunch of time making drawer dividers so rather than using wood or foam i'm using a selection of vinyl fence post parts viewers that have been around next level carpentry for a while watched me make these portable organizers out of the same vinyl fence post material sometime back it's really easy to work with it's lightweight it's pretty inexpensive because most of this stuff can be acquired as scrap or bought in lengths and where a little bit goes a long way i want to give a shout out to my friend mark lindblom at arizona fence company for sending me all these various vinyl fence post scraps mark sent me a pallet of this stuff when i went to build some of these other organizers and having all these sizes and shapes on hand gives me a wide range of options for draw organizing so thanks again mark i really appreciate it because the tools and supplies that any person has on hand is such an individual thing i'm not going to get into a lot of details about my personal preferences on how this is set up other than to say it's helpful for efficiency to kind of group things together that belong together i.e writing utensils brushes naturally screwdrivers drill bits etc sandpaper that sort of thing so that's kind of up to the individual to figure out so the main thing i want to show in this video isn't the particulars of how you should or shouldn't organize your stuff or where to put it but rather i'll show you a handful of fabrication techniques and methods and tricks that i came up with for fitting these parts into those drawers every toolbox manufacturer out there makes their toolboxes just a little bit differently and the stuff that you put in your drawers and the quantity and variety of things that any individual puts in those drawers is infinite so the key to this whole thing is for the organizing system to be adaptable the configuration i end up with for any particular drawer varies widely so i switch up the size depth width and count configuration of the various fence post parts for optimal storage capacity and efficiency the most basic element of draw organizing is a simple tray like the one you see in this drawer these basic trays are just cut to length and then drop into place in the drawer to switch up the configuration for adaptability these simple trays can be cut full length for the drawer going front to back side to side or cut up the short sections which can be turned either direction for efficiency the material is thin and lightweight so it doesn't take up much drawer space and the organizing you get from it is well worth it depending on the width of the drawer the depth of the drawer and what goes in the tray i cut them to different lengths and depth to suit my needs as you can see there's a wide range of sizes and configurations available and there's more available than what i have here but for my purposes i found that the two most common ones are the four inch and the five inch square they seem to suit the depth of the drawer and the stuff i need to put in the best but obviously there's other ones for different applications and the takeaway is that the basic cutting process for all these different configurations as long as it's this vinyl material is basically the same any thin curve blade will do the job but i'm using a 60 tooth thin kerf cross cut blade here and probably more importantly i'm using a forest blade stabilizer and i find that this combination along with a zero clearance insert gives me the cleanest initial cuts and probably the most important thing about cutting these pieces is that i don't raise the blade up and cut through the whole thing at the same time but rather and i really like this the blade only has to come up through the thickness of the material being cut so in this case eighth inch material quarter inch blade height that's pretty sweet the drawer depth that i need for these shallow drawers here is an inch and three quarters this is a four inch square tube i can cut it in half because there's a lot of spring back in the tube itself i make the initial cuts at two inches and then clean it up by resetting the fence to right at an inch and three quarters as i'm cutting the parts i'm mindful that there's going to be some spring back and pinch on the blade so i make sure i have a firm grip on the part and because this material when it's cut is a little warm it's a little sticky it could be prone to kick back if you're not paying close attention but to make the initial cut i just set the fence at two inches and slice the tube in two next i'll reset the fence to the inch and three-quarter total depth that i need and trim up the edges of these two pieces and making those cuts in two steps instead of one assures that i get a nice clean straight cut on the top edge of these trays because this pvc plastic has been cut sharp and clean these edges will cut you if you're not careful so i can take advantage of my drawer organizing go over and get my little deburring tool and clean up the cut edges of these two pieces and now those edges are clean and safe and i'm not going to cut my fingers when i grab stuff out of these trays notice that i cut these to width or height or depth first and i'll cut them to length second depending on where your vinyl fence post parts come from you'll probably want to check the ends to make sure they're square some of these are just end cuts or factory cuts and they're not all that true so i clean them up on the miter saw when cutting these pieces on the miter saw i cut them with the open face facing down and use a slow steady feed rate i learned the hard way that cutting the pieces in this orientation can cause the blade to bind on the plastic when it heats up from being cut and it throws sharp shrapnel pieces that can be quite dangerous so be careful when making these cuts once i've trued up one end i marked the piece to the length i need and trim it off to the exact length for a nice fit as you're going to see there's a couple drawers here that need some serious help i've got to do some shuffling of the stuff that goes in these two drawers so i'm not going to get into the particulars of how those decisions get made but i do want to show you some of the things i encountered in making these trays fit in the drawers because of the drawer configuration and the hardware and how i handle those things because you're likely to encounter similar situations when you get to drug organizing i did do a bit of theatrical staging for this particular video sequence because the drawers weren't really this messy when i started off but you get the idea of how difficult it is to dig through here looking for a particular tool or supply and how it will be much more efficient when all this stuff is organized these toolbox drawers come with a kind of a no-slip lining and i'm leaving that in place even though if height were really really critical i might need to take it out for just a little more clearance for what goes in the drawer you can see here where i got the 21 and an eighth inch length for these organizing trays that i want to run front to back in this drawer and with the slight flex in the back of the drawer they slip snugly into place i use the same process to make a couple of five inch trays for the same drawer just to show you an example nesting two of the trays and cutting them at the same time is a great way to increase efficiency for the organizing process it's a little bit like spending time sharpening that axe now you can see how an assortment of tray woods fits quickly and cleanly into this drawer depending on what you're putting in the drawer the size of the drawer and the size of the fence post pieces you have to work with that may be all you need to do for some of the drawers i organized here though i encountered hardware that caused a little inefficiency when i needed all the width i could get out of a drawer so i'll show you what i did with that you can see these little clips that hold the drawer glides onto the drawer and they prevent the tray from sliding over to the edge and on these particular drawers there's a left seam where the side of the drawer is welded to the front of the drawer and that little lip can also prevent a snug fitting tray from sliding to the edge so i'll address this piece first that sticks into the drawer about a half inch and it's maybe a 16th of an inch thick so i want to provide just a little bit of clearance on this lip of this end of this tray i can make this light trimming cut on the miter saw but like i showed you with that scrap piece it can be a little bit dicey so i'll show you two ways that works fine but if that saw grabs this edge it can blow up and it can get a little spooky so the other way is to set the blade height at about a half an inch and then use a miter guide to make a small trimming pass on the end of the tray either way that slight trimming cut lets the tray fit snugly to the front and back of the drawer without binding on that double up weld seam now the next thing the tray encounters is the little tabs from the drawer glide and if i want to take advantage of this final quarter inch i need to deal with that so i just make some little holes i lay out the location of the tabs using a draftsman's triangle slipped down in between the tray and the drawer side and then transfer those marks down along the side of the tray the holes start right at the bottom of the tray and need to be about 5 16 tall they're rounded on one end and squared on the other end at least for the hardware on these drawers to make these unusual shaped holes i clamp the tray in the vise and then use a 3 8 inch pilot point bit by dewalt to drill out the rounded end of the hole i decided to go with 3 8 of an inch for these holes so i don't have to fight the fit with those 5 16 inch tabs for the longer holes i'll drill with the drill bit twice to minimize filing in the next step now i can quickly reach for a square file in my pre-organized file drawer and finish out these funny-looking holes a quick pass around the edges of these funny-looking holes cleans them up and satisfies my ocd tendencies for details like this and now you can see how these three odd-shaped holes allow for a finer fit of the tray in the drawer but it still leaves one last detail to take care of and that's the rivet used to hold the latching mechanism to the side of the drawer it's kind of hard to see and to mark but drilling a hole here provides clearance for that little rivet giving me the clean snug fit that i'm after you will no doubt encounter inconsistencies in the configuration of the drawers that you're organizing but this gives you an idea of how simple it is to work around those things for a nice tight fit instead of having the organizers kind of wobbly in there and a wobble-free fit leads to more efficiency so i'm going to show you one more thing that i encountered in organizing these drawers and that is when the trays run the opposite direction in a drawer i had to deal with that hardware just a little bit differently to provide the clearance you can see what i'm talking about in this drawer that holds my scissors tweezers and knives most of the trays just slide cleanly in and out because there's no hardware on the sides but the end tray has to clear the same sheet metal doubling up there and the same rivet and the same drawer hardware thing so i'll show you how i made these notches to account for that so that the trays fit snug front to back with no wasted space at either end the main difference here is that the trays encounter the hardware on the end rather than the side so i need to make the notches a little differently i've got to have a small bit taken off the end a half inch around for the little gusset in the corner and i need to have a notch for the hardware glide or the drug light in the side that's a little notch here and those things stick out a strong eighth of an inch and last but not least i've got the rivet which is up here near the top that's just a little notch here so three things to deal with first is clearance for the gusset and because the saw is already set up i'll make that cut now next i want a notch for the drawer glide clip and the rivet so i'll lower the blade and set the fence to the top side of this little notch that way i can start the cut and then rotate the piece slightly to widen out the notch to clear the rivet and the hardware clip naturally i'm being mindful of where the spinning blade is and where my fingers are while making these little important but dicey cuts i don't want my fingers back here inside the piece where the blade is doing the cutting so they're high up on the piece and then i'm using the fence here to help pivot this piece safely and that makes those operations comfortably safe and efficient and you can see how those notches come into play when the tray goes full side or that's the full width of the drawer because otherwise it won't it won't slide in past the hardware intermediate trays don't need anything they're just cut to the width of the drawer but anytime that hardware is encountered the little notch provides clearance for the drawer glide hardware and it's just kind of reversed in the back of the drawer except in the back of the drawer for this manufacturer that little gusset isn't in there so it just takes the bottom notch to clear that last little piece of hardware that way i can slide a tray in slide to the back of the drawer drop a tray and slide it to the front and then drop the intermediate ones down in between kind of little sequence puzzle thing there to get that nice snug tray fit like on the drawers over here for the scissors and pencils i use that shallow tray as an example for the cuts and the fabrication stuff but everything applies to deeper drawers like this other than the trays are a little tricky to get down in there because of their height they do come out like that but i've got a little tray in the corner here for these scrubby pads scotch brite pads and it's got that same notch in it for the hardware in the back so that this tray drops in slides back into position and then the stuff's stored neatly in there and there's not wasted space at the back of the drawer so that all works fine it's the same sequence of cuts setups etc to get the notches made for drawers of varying depth this was really handy the middle tray here is a five inch wide one five inch wide post five inches deep it holds these gator sanding blocks quite nicely keeps everything organized and in this particular drawer i don't have the trays fitting tight side to side because i made these trays that go at a 90 degree angle so some of the tight fitting situations aren't encountered because uh what's in the drawer just fits up next to those drawer guide clips over on the side here and i didn't have a six inch fence post to take care of this spot but the space left over by these other trays is just the perfect width established by this little tray for putting these parts in here i hope that all kind of makes sense but it gives you an idea of the various configurations options that you can use to make fitting the trays and storing your stuff more uh fast and efficient just like a sharp axe unfortunately i don't have a before picture of this sandpaper and sanding block drawer but it was a mess it's one of the worst ones and was a big motivation for getting this project underway and also during the organization process i moved the sanding blocks from over here to over there put a bunch of tape here instead just because i accessed this more frequently and that's just something that comes up in the process of the time since i moved into this shop and got these toolboxes those things kind of get optimized and made more efficient over time so in this case i just switched the drawers back and forth but if i got different sanding blocks or whatever i can just pop these trays out i can make new ones i can turn them sideways i can reconfigure it and i'm not out a bunch of time material or effort by making the switch up to keep things more efficient cutting that nested pair of cross trays finishes up the compartments i need for this roll everything fits snugly into place and i can drop the plant contents into their new locations just like that and you can see how these cross trays are a great way to even up the space going side to side whereas standard fence parts might leave a little bit of a gap on either side half an inch or a quarter or some dimension that you don't have available to fill in with a standard size post so cross trays are a great part of your organizing i want to show you another trick to put in your arsenal for draw organizing everything so far i'm using standard tray widths and then these cross trays but there's another situation that i come across a lot and that is when i want to organize multiple things in a single tray the stuff i store in this row of cross trays is too long to fit in a standard fence post width if i had some six inch post material that might work but a cross tray can help me make up for that extra difference with froze like this where a number of smaller things go in a standard width tray i still want to put dividers in here because when the drawer slams shut the contents tend to shift so in cases like that i want to put in little crossways dividers in a standard width post for this particular drawer if i put cross dividers in here to separate these compartments it'll keep contents from shifting when the drawer is opened and closed to accomplish that i just take a piece of fence post and rip a straight strip out of one of the sides the width of this strip is an inch and 5 8 which is the depth of the inside of these trays and then i just need to mark it for length and cut as many pieces as i need to divide up the drawers i make sure to use a backup fence in the miter saw so that i don't have little pieces of fence post turning to shrapnel while making these cuts to get the dividers to fit nicely first i round off the bottom corners with one of my best blocks for demanding sanding and then carefully use the deburring tool to clean up the sharp edges the rest of the way around and that makes the piece fit nicely in between the sides of the tray and i could speed things up like sharpening an axe by doing a batch of them at the same time once i've got all the little divider pieces made and cleaned up i slip them into place and then mark their location inside the tray with a pencil once i've got everything made located and marked it's time to glue these little dividers into place to do that i simply remove the tray from the drawer empty out the contents and then use a block of wood with relieved corners to square up the location marks in the bottom of the tray those location marks act as a guide when i apply the pvc vinyl glue to the inside of the tray i put a generous bead along the bottom of the tray and then slip a divider down into place i relieved the top corners of the block for this operation to try to keep the wood out of the glue and i use a real small piece of green frog tape to keep the divider in this position while the adhesive dries for a nice strong connection and a clean fit once the divider is positioned and secured i add a full bead of the vinyl adhesive along the edges and corners of each divider so that they're welded firmly into place this particular glue is a little runnier than some so i'll watch how this bead runs inside the divider and clean it up if it's necessary but keep in mind that this stuff shrinks back a whole bunch when it dries so although it looks kind of sloppy now that won't be much of a deal when it's all dry yeah i'm not real fond about how runny this brand of glue is it's kind of making a mess here so i'm going to switch to this other brand of adhesive this is what i got from mark but if you get stuck with runny stuff like this you can just use a popsicle stick to clean up the excess adhesive in these corners you'll see the difference when i glue up the rest of the dividers with this other brand of adhesive it's got a long nozzle on here that i've trimmed to about an eighth of an inch hole so it makes the whole process a little bit more user friendly i'll use the same sequence as before first applying a bead to the bottom of the inside of the tray oopsie that thing just wants to slide all over on me so i'm making a mess of this one too and the worst thing is i can't even blame the adhesive this time got no one but myself to blame and as i do this third divider what's running through my head is if i had eight hours to glue dividers into a tray maybe i should spend the first seven hours practicing so i don't embarrass myself on camera i guess that goes to show that third time's a charm that last one is how it's supposed to go all the time but you can see that a little bit of practice makes that go a lot better now keep in mind that this stuff stinks to high heaven all kinds of crazy toxic fumes so make sure you got plenty plenty of ventilation i'm going to air out the shop as i move forward and glue up the rest of the dividers for this drawer while i glue up this last divider i just want to say that if you like this video this sort of content i hope you'll consider subscribing to next level carpentry if you haven't already it's free you know and you'll be notified every time a new video gets uploaded to the channel if you like this particular video go ahead and hit the thumbs up button just disregard this glue up part which isn't thumbs up worthy but go ahead and hit that thumbs up button for the video and that just lets youtube know that there's stuff happening here at next level carpentry if you need any of the tools and supplies you see in this video you can check links in the video description that'll take you to amazon and the next level carpentry influencers page where products you buy are at the same low online price you'd expect but amazon actually pays next level carpentry small ad fees which help justify the time spent producing videos like this that you can watch for free on youtube that last glue up went about like they're supposed to i'll throw in here too if you want a t-shirt like the one i'm wearing here or any of the posters and stuff around the shop check out links to teespring in the video description actually i think they call themselves just spring now but sales there help support the video production here on the channel as well and i appreciate it and i think you can see in the performance there of uh this glue versus this glue that it's a whole lot better and there'll be a link to this product that's for sale too i think mark has that for sale on his website i'll try to put a link in there for that because if you find yourself gluing these dividers in the one adhesive is a whole lot more user friendly than the other one as always make sure you follow manufacturer's instructions on the glue for use and clean up and ventilation etc but the instructions on this say to let the glue joint grab and then leave it undisturbed for 30 minutes but for the sake of the video and to keep it moving along i am going to work gingerly to slip these trays back into their respective places so that i can move on and wrap up this video now we just got to remember where everything goes that's due for now and in case you're wondering the general theme for this drawer is scrapers and squeegees and that's basically what's in here i've got some glue up supplies here which sometimes i have to scrape and squeegee and in this little compartment i've got the formica laminate chips that i did a video on showing how i sharpen these i called that video making faux fingernails out of laminate chips and you can see a link to that video here but if i'm careful i can slide this thing back into place and finish up with one last drawer just remembered i was going to switch that drawer with this one because of the frequency i use everything in this drawer and that should do nicely as long as i'm careful and don't slam the door until the glue sets on those little dividers i said i wasn't going to get into this but hey you know me mr rabbit trail so part of the overall reorganization that i'm doing with this is to take the contents that were in this drawer and combine them with some of the stuff that was in this drawer that frees up this drawer because i'm going to take the rest of the ingredients from this drawer and put them in a drawer down here and that way i have a full empty drawer up here that i can re-prioritize for different contents and because this drawer is about half the size of this drawer all this stuff will go in there quite nicely uh-oh got a train wreck i keep up with moves like that and somebody's going to accuse me of creating drama like on hgtv and i won't go through all the details for this drawer but it's basically a rinse lather repeat from what i just did there i've got the same type of hardware the same kind of connections on the drawers and i'll probably combine trays going across and a couple of cross trays going that direction but i'm going to work all that out off camera after a good deal of consideration and deliberation this is the configuration i came up with for organization of this drawer full of extra blades and knives you can see that i used two full length trays that go front to back in the drawer there's a five inch tray on one side and a four inch wide tray on the other side both of those have the glued in dividers using those two tray woods i ended up with a non-modular space in the middle which i needed for the long extra blades for the dw735 thickness planer i could have just set the blades in that space but i chose to make this hybrid tray to fill in the gap both for consistency and to demonstrate possibilities of what can be made with vinyl pipe pieces i made this hybrid tray by cutting a couple l-shaped pieces from a fence post corner and then filling the space in between with a wide strip cut from the side of a fence post and i finished it up by gluing on this vertical tab that separates the planer knives from the razor blades on a side note viewers roger and john might recognize these planer blades as some they sent to next level carpentry a while back and this is where they'll get stored until i swap them out in that planer as i slide this organized drawer home i want to give a shout out to all the viewers who support next level carpentry as patrons through patreon all the viewers listed over here have gone to patreon and signed up with a pledge to support video production at the channel which really helps me justify the time that i spend in the shop producing videos like this that you can watch for free on youtube for any viewers who want to join this growing list of patrons just go to the patreon link in the video description check it out sign up if that's something you're motivated to do well i hope this video is both motivation and inspiration for viewers to undertake an organizing campaign of their own i'm looking forward to using these drawers with hopes of working a bit more efficiently in the shop and as you can see in this drawer that holds most of my marking measuring and layout tools my organization campaign is far from over but i'm motivated to press on by how well these other drawers came together i've also got a couple more organizer builds that i use those fence posts for that i'll show in upcoming videos but for now as always thanks for watching that reminds me the second thing that that quote tells me about abe lincoln is that he should have invested in some axe sharpening lessons just think about this he's got eight hours to chop down a tree right he's going to spend the first six hours sharpening an axe and the second two hours chopping down the tree well what if he did this instead what if he took the first six hours he spent one of those hours taking an axe sharpening lesson and then he applied what he learned for sharpening axes in the second hour then he can go chop down his tree with a nice sharp axe total of four hours he gets a whole four hours off now that seems like a quote to remember and i guess the second piece of advice i give abe is to take his wife out to dinner and just skip the theater sorry abe just saying

Channel: Next Level Carpentry

Views: 46,080

Rating: 4.9645586 out of 5

Keywords: drawer, drawers, toolbox, shop, workshop, organize, organizers, orgainization, neat, clean, tidy, efficient, next level carpentry, tray, compartment, stuff, junk, tools, hardware, abe lincoln, fit, arrange, category, categorize

Id: JO_QEWO1FIQ

Length: 36min 28sec (2188 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 03 2021