Trays!

[jwmay]

Well I think that trays are probably where a person might start with sheet metal. While cleaning out my toolbox (got a new job!), I found some trays I'd made. They aren't great, and technically not finished. But here are some trays. A small and simple contribution to be sure. But it's a start.

 

[Winegrower]

I made up a bunch of these out of 0.040 Al, custom sized as toolbox trays/dividers. It’s terrific to just lift out a tray of what you’re using, pick what’s needed and put the tray back.

Is that crazy, explaining to you guys how this would work? I got carried away with enthusiasm, sorry.

 

[C-Bag]

It’s terrific to just lift out a tray of what you’re using, pick what’s needed and put the tray back.

This concept was new to me when I picked up a cheap HF copy of a wood Gerstner machinist box. At first I thought it was cheap that the drawers didn’t have stops to keep them from pulling free of the box. Then for like sorting through my drawer of snugs I started pulling it out to set it on the bench and all the sudden it made sense. For those odds and ends I never know what to do with that are in one of the small drawers of my main box and a pull out tray would be perfect.

I’ve been contemplating how to form scalloped sheetmetal trays for taps, reamers and oddball drills etc. to keep them divided.
Lista makes plastic ones but they are expensive.

Having never been through any “course” on sheetmetal I don’t know what would be the place to start but trays would be as good a place as any. Organization really is key as the tool arsenal expands.

 

[jwmay]

That's all the formal training I had. Part of our OJT was to fabricate a drip pan out of steel that would hold water. So I guess it was sheet metal/welding class. It took me 4 hours to "succeed". It's amazing how much weld a corner will hold and water still find a way through. Since these were to hold random handy stuff, I didn't bother with the welding. Truthfully I was just happy the top edges lined up.

 

[Bi11Hudson]

That's all the formal training I had. Part of our OJT was to fabricate a drip pan out of steel that would hold water. So I guess it was sheet metal/welding class. It took me 4 hours to "succeed". It's amazing how much weld a corner will hold and water still find a way through. Since these were to hold random handy stuff, I didn't bother with the welding. Truthfully I was just happy the top edges lined up.

Been working sheet metal like that for years. I use metal roofing on my "outbuildings", there are always scraps left over. Then there's "flashing tin" from Home Depot, Lowe's, and roofing supply houses. I have a small press brake, Horrible Fright, that's only a foot long for my model building. But the rolls of flashing are only 10 inches for the widest stock. Tray's, I call them pans, are most useful just to catch small parts, if nothing else. With the lighter metal like that, corners can be folded so that there's no gap, no leakage. It looks like $#!^, but don't leak. If I need another tool tray, I just buy a cheap tool box. My pans are usually just a half inch deep or so, more like a cookie sheet. Then there's stuff like the catch trays for oil changes. It gets used a few times and then becomes a wash tray, full of kero or some other solvent.

Sheet metal work is one of the more important skills to a "do it yourselfer". It is useful in day to day jobs around the estate(house), not just machine shop work. Making another tool tray for specific tools for specific work can trim hours off a job. It does run up the price somewhat by having duplicate tools in many boxes, but eliminates the frustrations of having to dig, and search, and scrounge just to find that odd size drill or screwdriver. Then there's all the "stuff" I brought home from the mill when I retired. Even more tools that needed to be re-seperated for home jobs. The splicing work I took up mostly required new/ different tooling, so that doesn't count. . . yet.

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[BWSmith]

Love trays. Have made a bunch. They are especially well suited to "insert" into drawers. You can do 1/2 depth too. Meaning, the tray slides fwd/backward to reveal parts under.... yet still lift out.

Slight detour and backhand gloat;

I use and will gladly accept old(or new?) cookie sheets from the kitchen. Just a lazier way of not having to make them? But if you price them new,better be seated right.

A week ago found about 10,made in USA older,but not vintage..... maybe 10,15,or so y.o...... cookie sheets someone left on the edge of the dumpster. Somebody cleaning out an estate look to it. Brought them home and have been beaming like a puppy with a stick!

 

[C-Bag]

cookie sheets someone left on the edge of the dumpster.

Yup, sheetmetal is sheetmetal no matter where it comes from. And being a fellow junkyard dog seeing a stack of cookie sheets on a dumpster would make me happy too. Trays are a great way to get the skills to pull off the precision to make such useful stuff.

My early layouts were not trays but chain guards on machines and conveyors. I could never leave drives unguarded because the cleanup crews were always crawling through the machines getting all the fruit and debris out after a days run. And they left everything on while they cleaned.

All we just had a plasma and welder. So it was often lay the pattern out flat with all the different bends all in one piece. Then plasma where the bends would be leaving “tabs” uncut so I could bend the whole thing by hand. Really helped with learning setback, and thinking of the whole as one pattern etc.