Material Storage Ideas

[Travis7s]

I'm doing spring cleaning of my garage and am trying to get more organized. I used to work for a machine shop and they let me help my self to the scrap bins. Because of this I probably have 500lbs of aluminum cutoffs of allsorts that are just stuffed in boxes all over the place.

What systems have you guys implemented to help organize your materials? I'm looking for some inspiration! Thanks.

 

[Karl_T]

My shop is in the basement (walk out). I used the area under the stairs for steel and AL storage. Made a real nice rack to fit it just right with many levels. this area was going to waste.

 

[JimDawson]

One practical way of having the pieces accessible is to store them on narrow shelves, sorted by length, thickness, and shape, but this takes up a lot of wall space. Another way that comes to mind is a hardware store type rotary nail bin. Takes up less room and should hold the weight.

I keep my shorts on shelves under my air compressor. Top one for aluminum and stainless, bottom for steel.



Or you could just send it all to me for proper disposal
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[pineyfolks]

My short material is on 2 racks on casters. The rest is on pallets under my saw that I can pull out with my pallet jack.

 

[francist]

I built this a few years ago out of some salvaged grid wall from a store. Fairly small footprint but holds a lot of stuff. Obviously it's best for shorter lengths up to about 6' but I don't inventory a lot of full-length sock anyways, or at least try not to. I made it mobile on casters if it ever wants to be moved.

-frank

 

[Tom Howland]

I've had this setup quite a while and it has worked well for getting to pieces quickly. 4" plastic pipe screwed together at different hight's

 

[Andre]

I have a small box under my lathe. Any scrap bit of metal goes in, even tiny parted disks. You wouldn't believe how much of it comes in handy, I even keep electrical box knockouts.

 

[Lucky 13]

I use free 5 gallon buckets.

 

[MozamPete]

I built a horizontal tube storage - primarily for non-ferrous section, threaded rod, etc up to 1 meter in length (not large quantities of steel) . Sits at the end of one of my shelves.

 

[Ripthorn]

I have a small wire rack for flat stock and then re-use the cardboard tubes from Enco round stock, cut to different lengths. I have perhaps 5 different lengths for sorting stuff out. Sheet metal is stored vertically between two work benches. It's not pretty, but a whole lot better than it was a few months ago.