Cabinet Organization

I have a section of cabinets dedicated to "fasteners."  In this area I keep all my nails, screws, glue, biscuits, and other assorted things that hold one piece of wood to another.  Although it's nice to have all of these things in one place, having a stack of boxes for nails and screws isn't terribly convenient.  The laws of woodworking dictate that the screw you need is always the box at the bottom of the stack, and there are no exceptions to this rule.  This means that whenever I need a box of screws, I have two options: 1, try to delicately remove the bottom box from the stack; 2, just take all the boxes out to get the one I need.

I decided it was time to build a simple rack to store all of the boxes of nails and screws so that whenever I need a particular size nail or screw, all I have to do is grab the one I need.

I didn't make any plans or drawings for this project.  I basically measured a standard box of screws and based all the subsequent dimensions on that.  I started by ripping and cross-cutting some 1/2-inch plywood to form the sides.

I took another measurement of the height for each box in order to figure out the placement for each floor.

Once I had the floor spacing figured out, I used a combination square to mark that measurement across all of the walls at the same time.

Using the lines as guides, I made a 1/4-inch deep dados in all of the walls.  These dadoes will hold the floors.  Since this is a simple shop project to hold boxes of screws, I wasn't overly concerned with accuracy.  If I were to do this on a piece of finished furniture, I would use a jig with stop blocks to ensure that all of the cuts were as identical as possible.

After I cut the dadoes for the floors, I cut some 3/4-inch wide, 1/4-inch deep dadoes in the back, each one centered in the space between floors.  I cut some 1/4-inch strips the final width of the rack, then glued and nailed them to the back of the racks.  This adds a little stability to the rack, plus it provides a backing for each space.

I cut the floors from scrap hardboard I had laying around.  I slid them into place, and they are held by a single drop of glue on each side.  They aren't going anywhere, and the single drop of glue is just to keep them in place when I pull out a box.  Once I had the racks assembled I filled them up with boxes of nails and screws to test out the fit.  I quickly realized that they fit a little too well, and I had no room to get my fingers in to remove the boxes.  I solved this by using a 3/4-inch Forstner bit to make finger hols in each side.  In hindsight I should have done this at the beginning.  Since the holes are drilled on the edge of the board with part of the hole off the edge, drilling these holes at the end of the project was a bit difficult.  It would have been much easier to drill the holes before all of the racks were assembled, with all of the side pieces flat on the workbench.  A drill press would have helped as well.  Alternatively, I could have cut some additional dadoes in the front to match the ones in the back.  Either way would work, and in the end I managed to get the holes drilled so it worked out well enough.

The racks simply slide right into the cabinet, and they are held in place with jut a couple of small drywall screws.  Now I can store all of my boxes of nails and screws with a little more organization, and it's much easier to access any particular box regardless of where it sits on the shelf.  Of course this means that from now on the box I need will always be at the top.