Junk boxes

From: Mzthompson_at_aol.com <(Mzthompson_at_aol.com)>
Date: Thu Jul 8 06:46:29 1999

On Tue, 6 Jul 1999, Max Eskin <max82_at_surfree.com> wrote:

>>Hi,
>>I'd like to know how people here store their junk parts, as I'm looking
>>for an efficient method myself. For the past several years, I've been
>>keeping them in ziplock bags in a plastic box, which is falling apart, and
>>also is useless for storing anything small.

On the same day, John Lawson <jpl15_at_netcom.com> wrote:

>My junk box? Very simple, elegant, straightforward:
>I just use a house.

>PS: The garage works for when the house is full. Like now....

And the barn works fine after that ;-)

I bought this place years ago, and probably what intriqued me then was
limitless (NOT) storage space. Of course then it was just electronics
in general, mostly old radios, and now the computers. The garage
building has a 2 car garage up front and beside that is an 8' x 20'
room I use as my electronic shop. Across the back is another room
which is 12' x 30' and has a garage door at one end. This room is
my general workshop along with storage for whatever wanders in.

Over the years, some of what I have hauled home has served as storage
for the rest of it. The back garage has 12 19" racks (solid steel sides)
laid over on their sides and stacked three high. Down the center of
the garage is other equipment racks where I have added shelves inside.
So never turn down a free equipment rack, especially one with wheels.

The are some DEC racks that are a steel frame with removable side panels
and the steel frame is put together with pop rivets. I have taken these
and removed the panels and drilled out the rivets holding the top side
rails and crossbars. I then cut the uprights down to around 30-33" and
drill and remount the top side rails and crossbars. Next I put a
plywood top on it. This particular style of rack has shelves that
mount on the inside of the uprights. I put in a few shelves, spaced
just right. In one rack I put a DECstation 3100 CPU box on the bottom
shelf, an expansion box on the next shelf up, and a TK50 expansion box
on the top shelf. For the keyboard, you can mount a board on the
front with angle brackets. The monitor goes on top and you have
a machine you can roll out of the way while you play with your latest
haul.

My wife owns a sewing shop, and as such is known by all the fabric
stores in town. When one of them closed up, she was contacted and
got the chance to go in and buy some of the furnishings. She bought
6 patterns cabinets for $10 each, put two in her shop and gave the
other four two me :-))). These are about 2'd x 2'w x 3.5'h. Since
I knew they would be heavy once filled, I grabbed the left over side
panels from the DEC racks, and put some reinforcing steel on the
inside and mounted casters (removed from other racks). Each side
panel was big enough to hold two pattern cabinets, and they were
all bolted to the side panels. Each of these cabinets has four
drawers which each have dividers, making them nice for organizing
stuff.

The point to all of this is that given a little imagination you can
combine various items of junk (hauled home treasures) together to form
storage space for your stuff.

Mike Thompson
Received on Thu Jul 08 1999 - 06:46:29 BST