Hardware Sorting Tray

I don’t know where it comes from, but miscellaneous hardware seems to accumulate rapidly in my shop. My storage solution to this clutter was simply to scoop all the screws, nuts, bolts and other odds and ends into a plastic bucket. As you can imagine, this wasn’t a good plan when it came time to find a particular item in this stew.

Finally, I got the motivation to sort out my collection. And to make the job less tedious, I put together the sorting tray you see in the photograph.

The tray is simply a shallow box with a gutter along one side made from a section of PVC pipe. The construction is pretty straightforward so I won’t go into the details. The drawings show you everything you need to know.

Figure 2 and Detail Drawings

To do the sorting, I simply dump a handful of hardware into the tray and then separate like items into the gutter. From the gutter they can easily be emptied into an individual container. And I’m happy to say that my hardware bucket has been permanently retired.

Good woodworking,

Ted Raife
Online Editor, Woodsmith

Woodsmith Tips

Hardware Sorting Tray