Storing rod, bar, strip and wire materials?

[Lacathedrale]

Hello,

 

I thought this might be the most appropriate place to post, but please feel free to tell me that it should be moved elsewhere. My efforts so far have primarily been in building track and some chassis kits, but with handrails, spring wires, actuating rods, dummy axles, as well as strip, bar and sections of brass, plastic and aluminium I've ended up with a real mess in my wine bottle holder:

 

 

Any thoughts or suggestions on making this pretty gruesome arrangement easier would be greatly appreciated.

[Fat Controller]

I'd suggest using plastic tubes; the sort of thing that Steradent is sold in for smaller stuff, then small-diameter plastic water pipe or similar.

I've done something similar for drill-bits. Get hold of a couple of bits of wood an inch or more thick (preferably hardwood, offcuts of which can be obtained from specialists in bespoke kitchens etc)

. Mark one out with hole spacings for the tubes, then drill right through with the appropriate -size drill/hole cutter. Once all the holes have been done, sand the rough edges, and glue the two pieces together. You can then simply pop the tubes into the holes; if you don't fix them, then you can remove them every so often to remove crud build-up. If anyone wants to try this, I have bag-fulls of 'Calceos' containers(90mm long by 23mm internal diameter), which you're welcome to for the price of postage.

[polybear]

How about a length of 15mm or 22mm copper piping, as used for plumbing? One end can be blanked off using a stop-end fitting (solder or push fit type).  Works well for rail

HTH

Brian

[TheQ]

plastic conduit. buy a length cut to various sizes as required glue the various lengths togeather to make a pack..

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

That nice Mr Atkinson at Hobby Holidays will gladly sell you some nice small diameter transparent tubes, long enough for Evergreen strip styrene also, I've got dozens!

 

Mike.

[jonhall]

Based on my limited research you do currently use a container conforming to the RMweb 'standard', I went for something more engineered. but when I think what I paid for my collection of Evergreen I could probably buy quite a good 7mm loco, I felt it was worth the effort. Its since been acidently shortened when the handle broke off, and the reworked version with a smaller hole nearer the edge is a great improvement.

 

 

 

Jon 

[N15class]

I would not keep your plastics on the bench, unless you use them quickly. They are susceptible to UV light so discolour, and go brittle. I keep mine in a drawer. Metals are fine I store mine in a rack. Thought some are tarnished through being stored in the open for years.

[Lacathedrale]

That's a fair point. I think an interesting medium would be PVC/copper tube cut to lengths inside a magazine holder - quite how I'd avoid not cutting myself on all that knife edge copper however, I'm not clear

 

Though I've gone with plastic in lots of situations, I really would prefer to go down the wood/metal route going forward - it feels comfy.

[michl080]

That's how I solved the problem:

 

30 cm pieces of square aluminum tube in 15x15mm and 20x20mm.

A peg at the backside keeps the wires where they belong.

 

 

You can call that overengineered, but what can you expect from an engineer

 

btw., all proposals so far have a common problem: you can't get hold of short pieces that disappear in the tube.

 

Michael.

[Fat Controller]

5 minutes ago, michl080 said:

That's how I solved the problem:

 

30 cm pieces of square aluminum tube in 15x15mm and 20x20mm.

A peg at the backside keeps the wires where they belong.

 

 

You can call that overengineered, but what can you expect from an engineer

 

btw., all proposals so far have a common problem: you can't get hold of short pieces that disappear in the tube.

 

Michael.

That's why the plastic tubes I use are an interference fit in the wooden block- you can just take them out and invert them to get to small bits at the bottom.

[Enterprisingwestern]

1 minute ago, Fat Controller said:

That's why the plastic tubes I use are an interference fit in the wooden block- you can just take them out and invert them to get to small bits at the bottom.

 

, and my plastic tubes are filed in an A4 plastic page according to a size system, labelled on the neck with the size, and easily removed to invert!

 

Mike.

[N15class]

This is my answer copied from someone else. Made from 2mm polystyrene sheet painted to UV proof. Need to make another soon as some are doubled or tripled up. Plus side short bits can be used easily when spotted. Most new stock is 500mm long.