"ideal" Drawer Depth?

[intjonmiller]

I've posted a couple times in the POTD thread about the workbench and tool drawer bank I'm building in my tiny garage (barely qualifies as a 1-car). This is a 12 foot long continuous bench to hold the surface grinder, mill, and lathe. Almost 200 linear feet of steel tubing. It's beautiful.

I set the vertical supports in positions directly under the machines, with spacing that is consistent with standard drawer glide mounting hole spacing. Now I need to fill it up with drawers. But here's the thing: these drawers are for holding tooling I don't own yet. I have some (three chucks, various angle plates and 1-2-3 blocks, and a decent assortment of HSS bits), but I don't have nearly enough to have a sense of the drawer depths that will best suit me for years to come. Obviously that can't be foreseen perfectly, but I'm betting there are some opinionated people here who would be willing to share their preferences.

I have 30" between the top and bottom rails to fill up with drawers of tools, in 3 banks (the fourth is reserved for a special purpose). I will be using ball bearing drawer glides which are about 1.75" wide, so figure that is the most shallow any drawer will be, plus 1/8-1/4" of wiggle room between drawers. So 15 drawers 2" deep? Or 2 drawers 14.75" deep? Probably somewhere in the middle. 24" front-to-back in two sections, 36" available in the third.

I figure shallow drawers for mics, HSS bits, indicators, scribes, and other layout and metrology tools. Then something deeper for chucks and angle plates and all that. But how much deeper? What drawer depths do you find most useful for machine tooling?

Who wants to help me overthink this?

 

[Randall Marx]

I don't have enough stuff to give much of useful idea, yet. I would lean towards some of a few different depths, according to tooling that you will have much of. I am planning to build stands for my two small lathes and incorporate tool storage into them, so am quite interested in ideas as well.

 

[12bolts]

A couple of shallow drawers at the top for small, delicate and oft used tools. Then a bit deeper drawer for "bigger" stuff in the middle, and a deep drawer at the bottom for bulky items.
From the top, 2-4 drawers at 2", then 2-3 drawers at 3-4", and bottom 1-2 drawers at 8-12" deep. Dont forget you will be losing 3/4 to an 1" of depth within the drawer and you dont wont stuff so close to filling the drawer that it rubs and catches on the drawer above it. You dont need to make each bank the same either. Consider also that you could make interim dividers within a bank so that you had 2-3 narrower drawers within a bank of drawers, at the top, (or bottom) section and still full width drawers either above or below them.
What size machines do you have?

Cheers Phil

 

[tq60]

Take a trip to sears and spend time in the tool box department.

They have many as does lowes and home depot.

Try some out and get the general layout and take your camera and tape measure.

Special note...New fad is to install drawer slides at angle so drawer naturally slides closed.

We have a large chest and too box from sams that does this.

It is great BUT...

Things need to be shorter than the drawer or placed in front as drawer rises as opened and things hit drawer above.

Second is when drawer hits end of trave the stuff inside move towards back...even with non slip.

Do not make yours do that...

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337Z using Tapatalk

 

[intjonmiller]

take your camera and tape measure.

My wife would laugh if she saw that advice. I'm a professional photographer and a wannabe machinist and quasi-professional woodworker (I've made a respectable amount of money from it, but still have a TON to learn). I ALWAYS have a camera and some form of tape measure, usually an old Stanley 12' which lost its clip years ago, and likes to live in my left front pocket.

 

[T Bredehoft]

Consider, if you have or will have sets of collets, a drawer, or drawers with drop-in holes for the collets. The drawers need to be just deep enough for the collets, not much more and certainly no less.

 

[intjonmiller]

That's very much the point here. I will have collets. I need to be able to store the collets, among many other things, in these drawers. But I don't know at this point what drawer capacity will work best because I don't have the collets to judge by. (Well, I have four R8 collets. But I figure I'll also end up with at least a set of 5C and ERxx.) I realize most people like to store these things on exposed racks near the machines, but that's not practical for my situation.

I missed the question earlier about my specific machines. I have a Logan 850 (10", no QCGB, barely over 48" in total length, not counting access to the gears), an RF-30 type early 1990s HF round column mill (I can never recall the actual model number), and a Covel Type 6 universal/surface grinder. All are bench-mountable mid-size machines. I have allotted 4' of lateral space for each. And there will be some storage space on the wall behind the machines, but only for very infrequent access, with no power to the machines.

 

[rock_breaker]

My recently purchased Atlas Horizontal mill came mounted on a two drawer cabinet; about 10 to 12 inches deep. The top drawer has rails on the inside that support a tray holding some of the smaller tooling. I haven't used it as much as I would like but I do know it provides access for most of the tools with out being overloaded. The 12" Clausing has two 4" deep drawers under it but not the same width. I built shelving on the wall behind and above this lathe. The Enco 14" lathe only has cabinets under it. I put a deck level with the door bottoms so I would not have to lift chucks up over a 3" lip. A re-purposed steel kitchen cabinet is above this lathe. Items like morse taper tooling and lathe centers are stored in 2 x 4"s with holes drilled in the 3.5" dimension, in the wide central opening.

Hope this may give you some food for thought.

Ray

 

[Fabrickator]

Personally, I use two large standing cabinets for organizing most of my tooling, especially the larger, heavier items and seldom used tooling and measuring tools. I use drawers for the smaller items and stuff that I use a lot. One drawer under the lathe, and a three drawer rolling mini-cabinet under the mill. I have one magnetic bars to hang my QCTP stuff, center drill and a few extra tool bits. Another mag bar for hanging all of my T-handles and Tommy bar. I have another small rolling cabinet for all of my wood turning tools and polishing stuff. I also have a Snap On top and bottom tool box and a Crapsman tool box for everything else that I've accumulated over the past 45 years.

 

[HBilly1022]

I only have a small space under my lathe and made some drawers for storage too. I made the top ones 2" high (inside height), the next ones 4" then 4 1/2" and the bottom one 8" high. I use the top ones for small tools and bits, mics, calipers, etc. The 4" drawers for taller items, like the tool box that came with the lathe, my mag base and DTI assembly and the bottom drawer for my extra chucks and taller items, like boring bars that come in those wooden stands. I've only had this set up for a little while but love the convenience of having everything at hand. Can't tell yet if I should have made them different sizes but so far seems to be good. Here is a pic of it. Still haven't finished the drawer faces but it's on my to do list.

One thing I think is important is to use full extension slides, especially for the bottom drawers. I used full extension 100lb slides for all the drawers.