On 20/01/2019 14:46, jkn wrote:
On Sunday, January 20, 2019 at 1:43:35 PM UTC, newshound wrote:
On 20/01/2019 12:29, jkn wrote:
Hi All
I have a nice large tool chest with sliding drawers, bought via Gumtree a
while ago. It has eight drawers of depth varying from about 50mm to about 200mm.

I am using the shallower drawers for small tools, but want to separate the tools
out and stop them rolling around. The edge of the drawers have useful slots
(about 2mm thick) at 20mm or so intervals. So you can put thin inserts in these to
mark out areas in the base, as it were - a bit like an adjustable cutlery drawer,
if you get me.

The (italian) manufacturer of this chest charge a fortune for the 'proper'
spacers, but I am after doing something on the cheap. So I am looking for ideas
as to what material I might be able to ... find in a skip, type thing.

Some sheets of 2mm Alu would be nice, guillotined down, but that looks a bit
pricy unless I happen across some. Thin MDF would be too weak, I think. FR4 PCB
material might work, but the offcuts I see at work are only 10mmdeep or so, and
some treatment would need to be applied to the edges - GF splinters are not nice!

The drawers are quite large, so I would need lengths of something like 700mm.

Any thoughts as to other sources of cheapskate materials I might consider for
this?

Thanks, Jon N

Polycarbonate sheet, as used for secondary double glazing? Relatively
cheap, tough, reliable to score and snap once you get the technique (and
then just sand the edges smooth).

Bob's point about pinging out is correct, though.

Slightly more expensive is perspex (poly methyl methacrylate) sheet
which can also be scored and snapped. A merit of this is that it can be
solvent welded either to a "footer" strip maybe 8 mm wide, which will
provide stiffening and avoid the ping problem, or the "cross halving"
joints could be glued up in the same way.

That's not a bad idea ... I should perhaps have said that

- yes, I will most likely be arranging things in a 'cross-halved' arrangement
- it might be that the required thickness will be nearer 1.5mm, rather than 2mm

How straightforward would it be to score and snap polycarbonate sheets of such
thicknesses? Also, to make saw or dremel cuts for the cross joints?

Thanks, J^n

Polycarbonate is available in 2 mm although IIRC the common size is 3 mm
and this is obviously a bit stronger. Even if your slots are a bit
narrow you could always put a gentle chamfer on the ends of the dividers.

Scoring and snapping polycarbonate is relatively easy, you can do it
with a Stanley knife and a metal straight edge. For Perspex I've found
it better to use a "scriber" with a 90 degree corner, for example you
can use the corner of a chisel blade held almost perpendicular to the
sheet, with a slight negative "rake", i.e. so that the point is slightly
trailing the direction of movement. For perspex it is worth making a
fairly deep groove. Polycarbonate and perspex both saw OK but as with
all thermoplastics if there is too much load and speed the frictional
heating causes the plastic to melt, and then it "snatches" on the tool.
Junior or ordinary hacksaw is normally fine. Or jigsaw at low speed. I
imagine you could do it with a Dremel too, pehaps the saw or
alternatively the fibre reinforced cutting disks. Worth having a
practice on some scrap.