How do you organize your blanks?

[jeffmoss26]

Here is my updated storage setup:



L to R
American, Arrow, Corbin 60 keyway, Corbin large bow 59 series, Eagle, Falcon, Best SFIC (in boxes)
Sargent L series, Sargent R series, KW1, SC1, Master/American padlock, Y1/Y2/Y11 etc, Misc cylinder and wafer blanks
Schlage, Corbin Russwin 5 and 6 pin (common kewyays), Sargent LA, RA, LN, RN 5 and 6 pin
Corbin 27-57-67-77-59, Russwin D1, D2, D3, D4, L1 etc
Ilco, Lockwood, misc keyways, Sager 1047CL, more Schlage, Sargent overflow, WB A thru D keyway, Weiser, Weslock, Yale 8FL, V/Y/Z, G/S/T, small paracentric, J/K small sectional

I think that's it lol

[GWiens2001]

Excellent, Rumball. You can never have too much room for expansion.

Used to sort my blanks by type as well. Just ran out of space to keep them entirely separated. Still, Auto is entirely on the right board, flat steel keys are along the bottom of the center and left boards, lever started at the bottom of the right board, then sort of crept up the left side of the left board, pin tumbler is most of the rest, with some specialty keys all over.

Jeff, nice in the boxes.

Gordon

[Jacob Morgan]

Had been using a couple of Plano tackle-box type units to organize keys. Came into some lots of key blanks lately and ran out of space. I do not have a spare wall in my workshop (half of the family garage) on which to set up a proper key board. The Plano boxes are nice, but a little expensive and bulky for organizing a lot of keys.]

Saw some boxes on eBay, they were painted red, that held boards that had key hooks. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Portable-Red-Key-Storage-Box-Locksmith-/252480831382?hash=item3ac907bf96:g:GtoAAOSwaB5Xm2Lk One would pull out the given board and then slide it back in place. A pretty slick system, but the starting bids were something like $200. but seeing those got me thinking. Made something of the same concept, but a little different. Used aluminum strip and angle to make frames and each frame holds 60 shower curtain rings. Then there is a plywood box on wheels which hold 6 of the trays. So 360 groups of key blanks in a reasonably small area.

Here is the box:


Here is one of the racks:


The racks were made of 1/16" thick aluminum angle and strip. The parts were pop-riveted together. There were a lot of parts and a lot of holes, but one nice thing about aluminum is that it can be worked with wood working equipment (it is not much harder than maple, etc.), so a stop was put on the cross-cutting sled of the table saw to cut all the parts to length after one set up. Some other cuts were done on a bandsaw. After one of each part was drilled the rest of the parts were stacked, clamped, and drilled in batches. The most time consuming part was putting the shower curtain rings in. McMaster-Carr sells the rings in boxes of 100. The box was made of some scrap 1/2" plywood, given two coats of enamel.

I would rather have a proper key board on the wall, but for now this is better than having all the groups of keys in plastic bags in a box, and with parts and everything it was about half the starting bid on one of the red boxes.