Making storage boxes for strip materials & sheet styrene

[0121modeller]

Over the past few years I've become increasingly interested in scratchbuilding projects, & I like to have various items in & sometimes plenty of them, then some efficient storage methods are needed.

 

Heres a couple of photo's of my old strip assorter box, its lasted well, made out of mostly plywood & oother stripwood dividing sections, all dividing sections are fixed in place with glue, screws & small nails.

You'll notice it holds everthing thats a "strip" plastruct profiles, brass & wood, the Evergreen items are kept in their individual packets (but open), the packs are wide, so they need a wide storage area of 7cm , Its tiered as to allow storage for cut down or smaller strip like items, the shortest strip item is approximately 8cm.

 

The box seen here had basically served its pupose well for the past 10 years, but due to it all being glued the modification process of enlarging & altering would be too damaging, it could no longer accomodate every item I have, recent purchases of more Evergreen strip packs & various modelling stripwood items as seen in coffee jar meant I needed to design & build a new bigger & better box. ,

 

[0121modeller]

 

You got more strip than most shops I visit!!

 

Thats an old photo, you should see my very latest photo of the styrene I now have !... here's the most recent photo;

 

Anyway,

The box I built here (finished item above overflowing to brim) is much more demanding as to store everthing "stripwise" I have, so it'll store a lot more than current box seen in my 1st post of this thread, (4 or 5 main divided sections) totaling no more than 14" wide (36cm),

I decided on the dimensional requirements i needed & kept one aside as to use as a template for the other 5 that I've jigsawn out to be exactly the same., the size dimensions are shown in black pen, this will accomodate most of you strip items height needs from most plastruct profiles & evergreen packs at 14" high (36cm), down to your off-cuts for these & others (brass tubes/profiles & thin midwest stripwoods down to 3" (or 8cm) in off-cut heights & various heights inbetween, that way nothing is "hidden" from view as everthing is tier'd & sorted into alike divided various componants of similar sorted sizes.

 

Golden rule: the nature & design of this box is easier built with perfectly flat plywood, Last year I attempted building a box using plywood like this, when I purchased the plywood was flat, a day later the changes in room temperature can often & did make a huge differance & the ply & other wood warped & bowed as seen with the above photo, so the project was unworkable so I gave up on that attempt, but I've used a lot of the warped plywood for other things instead.

I've so far been lucky with the plywood & softwood I'm using here for the main sides, middle & sub-dividers seen here .

 

Here are 4 of the 6 side & main dividers cut to shape taken from the above template of the same, the front, back & bottom plywood panel sections will be cut last, as i'll need to work this out at a later stage as I'm not sure what all the 5 divided sections will add up to in total, all this will become more clear soon., but if there are less main width components , making a smaller, not so wide box (to store less items & variety), say for instance 3 as seen uprights in total, (RH main, middle & LH main) then by all means pre-cut all whats needed at the same time, other peoples prefered methods may be different, but do a job the way you feel its easier & less prone to mistakes & errors on measuerments.

[0121modeller]

I puchased a few 3ft lengths of 3 & 4cm x 6mm & 9mm wide pinewood strips from B&Q, I made sure the selection I chose were as perfect as possible, having no splits, warps, knotts, twists or other im-perfections. These will be the sub-divided partly glued assemlies between the 6 main divided setctions.

They will be cut down to varied heights the equal to the plywood tier'd separators, as seen in photo's below with the ones already done.

 

These 4 peices of 6mm thick x 30cm x 7cm plywood sections will be another main divided section made up similar to the 2 other divided sections already made up as seen in photo's below. They will be cut down to the following size heights: 10, 17, 23, 26, & *30*cm (*=no need to cut down).

The reason why they all start off the same 30cm height is because I cut them each 7cm from a square 30cm x 30cm, ideally they'd be all cut from one long piece of 7cm wide to start with, but I used whatever plywood That I had which was flat & not warped or bowed.

 

You can see from this photo that one is a mm under, I cut the wrong side of the penciled line I made :roll: , I'll keep this in mind when it comes to assembly, but, I can rectify this by glueing a section of 6mm x 1mm Midwest stripwood piece I have at a later stage.

 

The 2 photo's above show how one of the tier'd assemblies will "slot in" , the idea is to have the option of removing the tierd dividers rather than permanently glueing in place.

 

I've used mostly 6mm x 6mm pine stripwood for the slot in / guides, after working out the "mirrored effect" of facing main dividing section the 6mm x 6mm guides were glued & fixed permanantly wth track pins, & drilled a 0.5mm pilot hole first of all as 6mm x 6mm stripwood is liable to split otherwise, push down trackpins with a sprung return pin pusher tool.

 

Heres how one of the divided section assemblies will look, you can see another tier'd assembly section stacked behind this, the two stacks cannot be mixed together as other stack is a slightly different widths & placement & retaining guides & slots have been made & glued to 2 of the main dividers as shown above symetrically aligned.

 

Now its starting to take shape,

 

The photo above gives an an idea of the size dimensions & how various items will fit in their place, I would imagine the storage area available seen here* (*=if fully assembled with base, front & back panel) would be adequet for most modellers who choose not to have a lot of raw materials on standby, I'm more of a "spur of the moment" type of chap & I prefer having as much quantity & variation as possible needed as for modelling & within arms length, so the end product will be approximately twice the width of whats seen here.

[0121modeller]

I had to find some unwarped plywood as to cut the base, back & front as seen here, at this point I checked my tri-square for accuracy as shown in photo below.

Tip; - I use one of those angle things found in school geomentry/maths sets as to check accuracy of my tri-square.

 

The total width required was calculated, in this case the 4 main divided sections needed a back, front & base width of 36.8cm. (as seen in above photo)

 

The Plastruct range of strip items can also be purchased in poly bags as shown here, their strip range is'nt as tall as the Evergreen equivalents so extra "medium height" allocated storage space was kept in mind for these packaged items from plastruct.

 

A great tip is to always keep them stored in their original package (just snip the top of the packages off).

When you run short & need to buy a new pack of the same, keep the old packaging for something else thats thats strip related & consists of the same size , it can be for anything strip that you've multiple of, you'll just maybe need to label it up with the size/dimensions, the main idea is that identical products of a large quantity are kept together.

 

The whole thing ready for final assembling, then painting, It has much more holding capacity than my other box

[0121modeller]

The strip & profile storage box now completed;

I gave a couple of coats of white primer, the main components (front, back, base & main dividers) are'nt yet screwed & glued, reason being the first coat of primer will need a gentle wipeing over with very fine sandpaper & the area of spraying vaccumed.

 

Although I was as accurate as possible with the measurements, I reckon the slight bowing/warping progression of the plywood was taking effect, re-assembly fitting internal stack dividers was a mm out & slightly angled so giving a slight skew on screw fixed prior to glueing assembly, the cause of the problem will need to be rectified before final glue & screw assembly, bear in mind the internal stack divider glued assemblies are designed to be lifted out for occassional vaccuming inbetween the 4 main divided sections.

 

Allowing primer to dry for a day then I gave a spraypaint coat of satin red. I chose the colour red because nothing I have "strip" is red, so everything will be clearly seen & found, if i chose white paint or clear varnish the white styrene & model stripwood would'nt be so easily seen, sort of "camaflaged"

 

Topside view, I counted 51 compartments.

 

A similarly built box for storeing my styrene sheet assortment will follow in my next post to this thread...

[0121modeller]

My old sheet material storage box was'nt big enough to store all of my plastikard & Evergreen styrene sheets, so designed & built like the old box the design is tiered to vertically store & gain easy visual access for various sizes of any sheet material (styrene, metal, 1mm plywood sheet etc) that has been cut down (off-cuts up to 6"x5" upwards to 12" wide x 14" high)

Method of construction was fairly easy & a similar method of contruction to my strip styrene assortment box as seen in my posts above.

Choosing straight & unwarped plywood was essential for ease & tidyness of construction.

The main "box construction" is seen above screwed & glued together,

 

The divider inserts slot into place, but not glued in..., reason being it'll be easier to remove those dividers as & when it needs the vacuum nozzle inside to remove dust etc every now & again.

It'll also be easier to replace any of the plywood dividers if any of them should dramatically warp too much, as plywood often does !.

 

Now all painted over with spray primer, & ready for loading up,

 

The old box next to new box loaded up with mostly styrene sheet. As the new box is larger, its capable of holding much more styrene modelling sheet & sheets of other material that I use for modelling.

 

Cheers,

Dave.

.

[0121modeller]

As to store a small selection / amount of strip & profiles, a magazine file available from IKEA can be easily modified as to suit as seen above, a couple of dividing sections are fixed inside, the red one above stores my selection of Evergreen profile strips, offcuts of these will be placed in the lower sections

 

On my workbench I have a small strip storage assortment stacked in a stationary assorter, its ideal for storeing the specific strips & profiles I need including offcuts for a particlar item I'm scratchbuilding at the moment.

[Sandy Harper]

Wire has always been an issue with me so this is my solution for a bench storage rack.

 

Regards

Sandy Harper

 

[Western Star]

Thank you for posting this build. I made something similar... about 50 years back... in styrene. After all of that time the joints have aged somewhat and the structure needs repair or replacement.

 

regards, Graham

[0121modeller]

On my main modelling workbench, up to now I've been using this pencil holder for storage of styrene offcuts that I'd be currently using (below) ;

Two issues with this being ;

1. The taller compartment being 13cm high, so as a consequence the thinnest of styrene strips being 0.25mm, 0.4mm & 0.5mm flop downwards as you can see in photo above.

2.  I attend a model railway club usually once every week and I needed a more suitable container with multiple compartments with tiered heights for various offcuts of strip styrene, aluminum/brass tube etc, depending on the project I was on , The design & size of this would also need to fit in to my tote box that I take to modelling club.

 

So I made the decision to make something similar, but much smaller than my main 'stockpile container' of strip materials.

I had some spare sheets of 40 thou' & 60 thou' plasticard, nice & flat, unwarped, all I had to do was be accurate with a knife & rule & the help of a 4" tri-square.

The width I decided for base and tiered dividers was 9.5cm, the hieght for tallest styrene strips is 27cm , the lowest tier being 7cm.

Then, 23mm divider sections within each tiered hieght, basically 23mm being the width of my steel rule.

 

All tiered & divideing sections assembled & welded into place, all it needs is for the side panels to be welded on, then sprayed up with a colour other than white, as, its easier to see & identify exactly what styrene I'll have in this. 

Also, painting will help preserve the styrene sheet that the box is made from, as age cracking/fatigue is an issue with styrene over a period of years. 

[pointstaken]

My Plastruct styrene strip presently resides in the cut-off lower halves of two plastic squash bottles, but I do feel minded to copy your idea. By cutting off the top of the Plastruct polythene envelope and leaving the rest in the envelope you can always identify the size of the plastic section, i.e. only take out as much as you actually need.

 

Dennis

[PhilJ W]

I store mine in an old filing cabinet 'recovered' from a skip many years ago.

[0121modeller]

 

My Plastruct styrene strip presently resides in the cut-off lower halves of two plastic squash bottles, but I do feel minded to copy your idea. By cutting off the top of the Plastruct polythene envelope and leaving the rest in the envelope you can always identify the size of the plastic section, i.e. only take out as much as you actually need.

 

Yes, I always store unused full lengths of Evergreen inside their original packs takeing them out whenever needed, but the point of this new desktop assorter box is so as I can store & easily see exactly what 'offcuts' I've got & their variance of cut down sizes.

 

As for size referance for offcuts of the Plastruct & Evergreen strip & profile, (there are around 70 sizes in Evergreen's styrene strip range, & at least another 30 in their profile, tube & rod range) , I'll always use a 0.4mm nib fineline permanent ink felt pen to write the item number, if the strip is extremely thin for instance an Evergreen #122 being 0.5mm x 1.0mm, then I've pre-cut some spare styrene strip wide enough to write the referance number on, then weld the tab to one end of whatever thin strip or profile as shown below; 

 

Now primed & painted,

 

The old container next to the custom newbuild,

[Colin parks]

Hi 0121modeller,

 

You are certainly very well organised in your storage of all those strips etc.!

 

rather like the new blue-painted plastic version of the holder as it looks much easier to build than the plywood one. Constantly rummaging around for odd pieces stored loosely does waste a lot of modelling time, so spending a while making a holder for such off-cuts makes sense.

 

All the best,

 

Colin

[0121modeller]

Thanks Colin,

Yes, the new blue box is just a nice size as to fit on the shelf of my modelling desk, & yes, Easier to build as its smaller & no sawdust or powertools needed. 

I really wonder why something similar to this is'nt available for modellers & scratchbuilders, I would've thought Slaters, Evergreen or Plastruct would make such an item , but seemingly not, only something like the rotateing Plastruct display assorter box for retailers , which itself does'nt visually accomodate anything as short as 7cm.

Yesterday, I spent some time cutting tabs from #116 strip as to label the thinner styrene strips & rods I'd not previously labelled, its now much easier to see what offcuts I have, I've arranged the strips so that the thicker/wider strips (usually with high numbers i.e; #149 - 199  are on the left-hand side , & the lower numbers #103 - 148, and also any thin rods are on the right-hand side, any plastruct or evergreen profile items placed in the middle section, all in tiered order.

 

 

 

 I reckon I've the majority of the 70+ evergreen strip range (usable offcuts) in the blue assorter, so I'll only need to pull out full lengths out of their original packs in my main storage stock of evergreen & plastruct in the larger box whenever neccessary, the red plywood box being much to large & heavy for the shelf on my workbench, so the new blue box is perfect.

[Fat Controller]

Crikey- you're well organised! Another possibility for short sections would be the sort of containers that 75mg Aspirin (and other medicines) is sold in, secured to a piece of 20mm ply or similar. For sheets, some of the larger stationers sell things called brochure holders, designed to take A4 publications.

[Colin parks]

What an amazing array of stuff in that red holder 0121modeller.

 

The most recent picture definitely shows you have more stock than my local model shop (as someone else similarly commented).

 

Sadly, I think scratch-building is on a gradual but steady decline, but it's nice to see a fellow enthusiast's enthusiasm for this aspect of the hobby.

 

All the best,

 

Colin

[Adrian Wintle]

Mine tend to live in their packets, sorted into card tubes - the ones that single malt scotch bottles come in. Procuring extra storage tubes is an enjoyable experience...

 

Adrian

[hidden-agenda]

This is a must I got to build one of these i have my eg in a large plastic jug that has fallen over more times than a drunk and knocked a job off the bench on one occasion.

[0121modeller]

Two weeks since building my styrene strip offcut assortment box, I've been using it with great satisfaction as I'm on a kit-bash modification / scratchbuilding project at the moment & using Evergreen styrene strips of several size combinations.   

 

I reckon almost every size is in there & whatever sizes I require is easily found as lengths of off-cuts are tiered, so I'll rarely need to get full lengths out of the packs in my larger main storage box, as a fair chance the specific size I need will be in this blue box on my workbench shelf.