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I like to mess about making, pulling apart and messing with a wide variety of things: in particular, electronics, microcontrollers and the small housings for suchlike things. As a result, I was always finding that my workbench was getting terribly cluttered up with a myriad of tools that I needed to hand for the various projects currently on the go. All the tools were in use, and so couldn’t really get put away properly, but there were just too many of them eating up precious bench space. I needed some sort of quick, simple local cache for tools in use that would keep them ultra-accessible, but out of the way. After much thinking about it, I came up with the solution you can see below:

I got some nice white PVC pipe, cut a whole bunch of identical lengths, and glued them all together in the pretty looking hexagonal pattern they naturally pack into. Voila! A whole bunch of spaces to throw tools into that maximises useable space, doesn’t make you open a drawer to get at the contents and holds most of the small tools you’re likely to have floating about your bench. You can create as many storage cavities as you like, and add more later if you need to. Awesome!

Tips on Making This Yourself.

Whilst I’m sure it seems pretty basic here’s some of the things you might want to think about if you’re going to make one of these:

• PVC pipe comes in a wide variety of colours and diameters. Measure the diameter of the largest tool you’ll want to put in, and be a bit generous in the diameter of tube you purchase. I used 38mm (1.5 inch) internal diameter. Also, seriously consider using white pipe — it makes it really easy to see the tools you’ve got in there.
• Using a manual saw to cut the pipe can be pretty damn tedious: you’re going to be making a lot of cuts through the pipe. If you can, borrow an electric saw of some sort and save your arm and patience.
• Don’t worry about making the cuts too accurate or straight. A basic idea is enough, because PVC is soft and you can also file or sand it flat afterwards. I used a sheet of pretty coarse sandpaper laid on the table, and ground the ends against it. Very quick. Use a file to de-burr the around edges of the cuts.
• Use some sort of solvent to give the pipe a clean prior to gluing it all together — I’m evil and used mineral turpentine because it’s what I had to hand. It makes a big different to the appearance of the finished product, and helps the glue take, too. (Of course, let the solvent evaporate before gluing, and well ventilated area blah blah…)
• Before you glue another piece into the structure, check which end will look best, and in which orientation (if you’ve done perfectly even cuts you won’t need to worry, of course). Again, makes it look nicer in the end.
• Mark the start and end of the lines along which you’ll need to lay glue along the pipe, or pipes, prior to actually putting the glue down. You can put tools in the little triangular spaces in between the pipes too, and thus don’t want them full of messy glue bits.
• Make sure your glue is suitable for PVC, and doesn’t make it dissolve. Also, try to get a glue that dries rapidly, so you’re not waiting around all night. I used “Selley’s Multi Grip” and it worked just fine.
• The shelf in my workbench has a back in it that stops things falling out the back of the pipes: if need be, though, you might want to consider gluing something across the back of the structure to stop this. Try it out first and see if you need it.
• Finally, only glue on as many additional pipes in one go as will remain stable while the glue dries. Don’t try to glue everything up in one hit, or it’ll all go askew and messy.

I had thoughts initially of making the whole structure sit at a bit of an angle, front to back, so that tools would stay in under gravity. I found, however, that this makes fiddly little tools (tweezers, in particular) fall to the back and become awkward to get out, and reduces the number of pipes you can fit in a shelf. Stuff seems to stay in the horizontal setup perfectly well, in any case.

Hope you’ve found this useful. :)

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 16th, 2007 at 7:32pm and is filed under Making Things. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.