Lo-cost Workshop Storage. Take-away containers, Good/Bad or?

Professional storage systems being unaffordable, except for very special needs, model engineers and home shop types rely on improvised systems mostly based on retail containers re-purposed when the original contents have been used. When I were a lad Brylcream jars with their lovely full diameter tops and baccy tins were favourites. Long gone now and the rise of the obnoxious "Just 'cos you've bought me doesn't mean you can get at me." bubble pack has pretty much decimated any prospect of alternatives. Margarine and ice cream containers seem to be the last men standing but are regrettably fragile.

Take-away meals are frequently supplied in quite good translucent containers of useful volume with recessed clip on tops giving excellent, stable, stacking properties. Depending on your eating habits these can build up at a ferocious rate, my brother acquires a couple of around 6 x 4 x 1 1/2 inches internal size every week. As give-aways they have to be cheap. Judging by a certain auction site a few pence each per 100 depending on size. So buying enough for a useful storage set-up outright isn't out of the question. The $64,000 question is durability. How often can they be opened before the lid cracks up? How drop proof are they? Does the plastic get old and crack up after a year or so? Is there an exceptionally durable breed to look out for.

Obviously great durability is an unreasonable expectation. My guess is around 20 openings before things start to crack-up and decanting into a new box becomes necessary is liveable with for most purposes. Heck even 5 or 6 openings would do for some stuff. So far some of the ones my brother gets barely manage that although other, slightly different types (they aren't all the same) happily sail past 10.

What say ye?

Clive

I have some with sweet and sour centre drills.

Now saving up for Black bean Tee nuts.

I'd be inclined to look at re-sealable food storage containers, many are marked as freezer proof, dishwasher proof and microwave usable, so should withstand the changing temperature of a workshop. The take-away containers will be designed for single use so won't be very robust. I've got some budget food containers that must be 15 years old at least and are still fine for everyday use. You don't need to pay Tupperware prices, there are a lot on offer in supermarkets and pound type shops.

Also it's worth searching the on-line auction sites as well as running a proper search, as you'll most likely come up with the trade suppliers for these things. Usually as long as you buy in their pack quantities they'll sell to you at a much better price than a retail outlet. Worth looking in Yellow pages for your area as well to see what's out there in catering suppliers.

Keith

I've got a good few of the take-away type with a good lid. Some are several years old and still seem OK. But if stacked with heavy stuff inside, eg several bars of tool steel, the ones underneath get a bit distorted. Biggest problem is getting lids off, sometimes forces misuse of 6" steel rule. Ghee seems a good rustproofer.

You need to do the weekly shopping. Supermarkets are full of good robbust container: Grated cheese can come in really good plastic drums, jams and things like mustard still come in glass jars with a standardised sizes of metal screw cap (three or four sizes) and cooking sauces in substantial plastic tubs. These are my favourites. Chemists, phamacies, can also be a source of good plastic tubs.

However I still end up buying food storage containers at the supermarket. The plastic used is of much better quality that that used for storage boxes sold at DIY stores. They crack and split as soon as they are used.

JA

Keith

As you say containers designed for single use can't be expected to be very robust. Standing up to two or three fairly rough openings would seem ample to meet the design brief. In practice the ones I see often do considerably better. Hence the questions become "how robust is robust enough?" and "what's the acceptable price / durability ratio?". If £10 buys you 200 that last 20 openings, 100 that last 50 openings and 20 that last over 500 openings what do you order?

Absolutely agree on the food containers for larger sizes.

Clive

Clive

Only you can make the descision as to what's cost effective with the price /durability ratio, my experiences of picking up a couple of hundred small screws off the floor from a container that breaks as you open it, changes the perspective!

I found this website - http://www.tinwaredirect.com - that may well be of interest to anyone after storage tins. Looks like they do all sizes and the prices aren't bad for something that will last a lifetime judging from how old some of the ancient baccy tins are that I've seen.

No connection with then, just found them in a search, be interesteted to hear from anyone who does business with them though.

Keith

Empty 35mm camera film containers are just the right size to keep individual ER25 collets in.( i asked at Boots & got a carrier bag of them for free)

Ian

This is a good idea, beats leaving all the items sitting on the bench to get lost.

Most re-sealable plastic boxes come in sets and are quite cheap. Ice cream boxes are free after you eat the ice cream but get in there before the wife gets them.

The takaway cartons do seem a bit flimsy and I doubt would survive a drop from a bench full of metal parts.

My personal choice are the racking bins and I pinch one every chance I get, all I need now is the backboard to hang them on, one drawback is that the dust gets in them. Thought, pinch all the bins and they will throw out the backboard and I will get it that way!

If you are looking for decent small sized containers with a screw lid made of plastic, bee keeping supply firms sell them in 1lb size, they come out at about 38pence each. These will hold about 200 eighth inch rivets. They are squat jam jar size.

Clive Hartland

As part of SWMBO's training package, she has learned to retain all those butter containers for storage.

I have nearly completed training her, which appears to be very successful.

Dennis

The ones that 'Munchies' ready meals are sold in at the garage I use seem to be reasonably robust. I have two take-away ones I have been using for etching PCBs for a number of years. I tend to use them as trays trather than storage.

Neil

Aldi used to sell "Beaded Hand Cleaner" in 1 litre, clear plastic screw top jars with a 100mm wide neck. Ideal for seeing the contents, and getting my hand inside. But now they have gone over to hand cleaner labelled "Stanley" with a neck just too narrow to get my paw inside.

There are some on Ebay LINK with 100mm necks but they work out at over £2 each if you buy six, which isn't the same as getting them by recycling old containers.

Andy

A trip to the £1 shop will often be rewarded with several sturdy re-sealable containers for your pound.

N

Baccy tins* and Coleman''s Mustard tins are a sad loss

Smith kendon travel sweet tins have their uses.

The tiny flip top tins used for posh mints come in handy for things like collecting together all the small screws when you dismantle the latest project.

A colleague who got addicted to sugar-free mints when he gave up smoking gave me enough flip-lid oval-section metal tins for all my 1/4 watt resistors.

The ambassador's Ferrero Roche boxes are a handy size for storing small parts.

The big flat metal biscuit tins (not deep chocolate tins) are useful for storage, I use one for all my odd bits fof brass etc. They can also be a source of useful metal sheet (the top of the bonnet of my shunter when I ran out of brass).

Plastic crates are great for storing untidy things like power tools, footpumps, music leads and power supllies etc.

The little sets of plastic drawers are great for small electrical components.

I have a set of 16 wooden drawers from a crafty shop, very cheap in unfinished limewood that got stained blue an never finished. ideal small tool chest. I think you are meant to paint hearts and flowers on them and fill them with girly stuff.

Boot sales can turn up all sorts of handy little containers, sometimes aalready filled with useful bits (or just rusty screws)/ I was given a little brass two-part case presumably meant for sewing needles. In it were a selection of tiny spade drills.

Neil

*Remember whenb you could always spot an old lag by the matchstick encrusted baccy tin?

Back when Pontius was a pilot, I remember my father using jam jars to store all those spare screws, nuts and bolts one used to acquire. Only he used to screw the lids to the underside of the shelves and thus double his storage space. I don't think he ever used more than a handful of these really useful bits and bobs, but you never knew when you might need that odd fixing! Happy days!

John

I mention these takeaway boxes in my current column, 'Club News'. I use them for holding the fasteners and small components when working on the bench, and arranged side by side in a drawer can hold small tools like box spanners and jewellers' screwdrivers, loupes etc., which may otherwise get lost amongst the other tools. I use the nests of plastic drawers for fasteners, taps, dies etc., which have to be arranged in order of size. As the takeaway boxes are free, it doesn't matter how short a time they last, the supply exceeds the demand, even if you only use the takeaway once a month or so.

Regards

Geoff

I use 2L icecream cartons, i'v got ones over 30yrs old that are as good as the day they left the Super Market, and the newer ones that last about 2yrs before they start to disintergrate. Ian S C

I don't seem to be able to get margarine tubs ever to stop seeming still greasy, but the lids of the big ones do provide plastic for experimenting with vacuum forming and heat gun bending.

Common rainwater downpipe found in skips is the right size for 40int arbor flanges with wooden bung turned up for each end.
Some coffee comes in tubs about 7 inch diameter with a plastic lid that can be cut down and joined to make individual holders for grinding wheels and s & f milling cutters. The plastic lids for these fit fray bentos pie tins but very loosely.
Slitting saws can be put in CD cases.
Business card boxes can each hold 4 end mills with separators from heat gun formed margarine tub lids (square kind).

Marks n Sparks do some very nice mints in a "tin" (ali?) about size of old pastille tins. Pick up @ checkout display. Guess how I know?

Still using large round clear plastic tubs with black screw lids in which Tate & Lyle used to flog treacle, years ago. Very nice tubs.

Always wondered what I could use the large Nescafe coffee tubs for, now I know! Store disc type grinding wheels.

All of you beware! Dont use cardboard (Absorb moisture) or metal containers for steel stocks or steel tools, unless you put in some anti-rust VPI paper. They are however, handy for non-ferrous storage - I keep all my small pieces brass/bronze in the large steel sweet "tins" that come out @ Xmas. Some are now being supplied in plastic - great! Use for the small ferrous stock/steel tools.

AH, yes, Quality Street tins - got a load of them waiting for a use but don't like he non-squareness.

The bottom 3-4 inches of a milk carton will fit into each other if a little heat is applied. Makes a nice square plastic box that is variable length as the two halves slide together.