A Place for my Files

I have a decent collection of files going.  Most are Iwasaki plane files: fast, aggressive files that leave a planed surface.  Nothing short of fantastic (oh, nicely priced, too).  Okay, I'm on a tangent...

Problem is storing them.  I put them in a drawer in their shipping bags so they don't bang together, but then I have to riffle through them to get those I'll need.  Had to be a better plan.

I asked for ideas over on FOG and an Aussie posted this link to a nice shop tour where a pretty good solution was waiting.

I grabbed a scrap board and laid out an array of Dominos up each side.  The flat files need 8mm of space.  Marching up the board using the previous Dominos as a reference off the base spaced them with a 7.5mm gap; good enough.

What you see attached to the fence is a narrow stock spacer; only works on pin-style Domino fences (nah nah ne-nah nah).  You could use the paddles to get a similar quick spacing.

The half-rounds needed more spacing so I stacked a few plastic shims (very handy) as I marched up those Dominos.

The result is a nicely organized board.  The gap in the middle is where I may someday put a handle to lift the whole thing out of the drawer; for now, fingers work well.

The resulting board even fits nicely in the drawer where they were.  Take the same space as before.

I forgot I took these pictures until I went to grab a file to soften some corners of a vacuum press platen I put together tonight!