New tools and containers for me, but they were fabricated in the shed of miracles from cunningly preserved special items.
Like most of you, I have thousands and thousands of nuts and bolts and screws and whatever in all kinds of containers. When I’m looking for something in particular, I have to dump them out into an old 11x17 aluminum tray, pick out what I want, and then dump them back in the container. When I dump them back in, a few of them always miss the target and I have to dig for them.
So I took a regular ole laundry detergent jug/dispenser, the bigger one that has a handle, about the size of a gallon of milk, and I split it down the middle but preserving the handle, and then I cut the neck off by the cap to eliminate any ridge as the items pour out.
Those are 1/4-20 bolts up to 4 inches long, and they slid out without one missing the target, and I poured them three times as fast as I’ve ever done before. The beauty of the soap jug is it’s a more flexible, more heavy duty, vinyl plastic, a lot heavier than like a milk jug, so it should be durable.
The next item was to make some storage containers for bigger and heavier nuts, and bolts and such. I remember when I was a kid, my uncle would take glass jars with screw-off lids, and he would screw the lids to the underside of a shelf, fill the jars with whatever, and then he could screw the jar into the cap to leave his workbench clear, but still have them at his fingertips. It’s that kind of idea, but more modern.
I like all kinds of pickles. The Klausen spears are one of my favorites. They come in a heavy duty plastic jar, probably around a quart or a little more, that’s squared off on all sides. They’re very easy to stack.
I took the lid, pulled out the liner, and drilled two holes in it. Then I took a little piece of scrap Aluminum about half the size of a pack of cigarettes, and drilled matching holes. Then I used an 8 inch zip tie and ran it through the lid and the aluminum under the lid, but left it loose where I can still get my fingers under it on top.
Lincoln was supervising.
A few years ago I picked up a box of 2,500 1/4 20 self tapping pan head bolts, which are fabulous for all the projects I do, for a whopping $25. I’ve used a couple hundred of them, so 2,300 left, and I’ve been tripping over the box at the base of my workbench ever since.
It might be a silly thing, but that jar is pretty heavy, and the little handle makes it a breeze to move around with one hand. I filled up three of the pickle jars, and half filled a peanut jar that was very similar. I tucked away the three, maximizing space because I could stack them, zip tie just flattened out, and I put the half full peanut jar handy since I end up using them one or two at a time in day-to-day projects.
And before the chorus chimes in, I know, I know, Harbor Freight sells a tray for six or seven bucks that does the same thing, and they sell little storage bins for two or three dollars each. I’m just not in a position to throw around that kind of cash for something that’s not an emergency.
Patents Pending…
