Honing supplies storage

Not sure if this was more of a owner/management question or a general shop question so I defaulted to putting it here, in the "General" forum.

Have 75 +/- Sunnen mandrels and more stones than we will use in all of our lives, between us. Also have general maintenance items but this question isn't about them. They can go in a box... There are likely 150+packages of stones. I don't mean the tiny 9/16" long K4 stones. I mean every single size, and in the plastic and cardboard packs of 12 and 20. Looks to be about 50 extra wedges, besides the wedges that are with the mandrels. Approximately 60 pieces of shoes. You get the picture. A shite pile... Mandrels range from D2 size through P28 size, with most in-between. ( 0.060" - 1.500" ) They range from 4" long to 12.5" long.

I'm looking for suggestions on how to store it all. Frankly, a Lista seems best, here. However, I have NO desire to have a cabinet larger than the machine hogging up precious floor space in here. Maybe after we move. But not now. I thought about buying a cheap tool cabinet that has drawers that are deep enough to hold the adapters and then creating sheet metal dividers ( or some other material ) to keep all the mandrels sorted, while letting the plastic blister packs stand upright in the lower, taller drawers. Still, I'd like to hear how others are doing it because there are many more intelligent people than I, here. They've likely been down this very road before. And yes, I've seen the trays/bins that Sunnen offered/offers(?) and am largely unimpressed. Seems a lot of bins that you still have to somehow still store.

So what have you? Got any novel or cool ideas or experience with this?

In my tight farm shop, the 2 drill presses, I set up one piece
of pallet racking, 3' deep, 10' wide and one shelf at about 6' 8".

I put plywood on the shelf and screwed it down permanently locking it
in place. Under it I mounted (2) 4' shop light fixtures.
All the popular used drills & taps (and vices, etc.) are in
a cabinet under the drill presses for easy access.
Lesser used materials are "up top" a 4' step ladder kept folded at the
shelf column enables quick and easy access.

So the drill press items, are kept near the drill press.

If I had more ceiling height, I could put another shelf above the first.

Of course, if your hone requires crane service, all bets are off.

Look for a Sunnen LN-650 cabinet, you may need a couple of them.

pmack said:

Look for a Sunnen LN-650 cabinet, you may need a couple of them.

Click to expand...

I appreciate it, but those are both larger than the machine and a woefully inefficient manner of storage in my opinion. There is an abundance of wasted space, there. ( see pic ) Right now, the best plan I can come up with is one of the smaller Kennedy rollers, like a 21040B. The thinner drawers will hold the adapters and mandrels well with some creative partitioning, and the deeper lower drawers will hold the stone packages and boxes nicely, too. And, at least on wheels, it is able to be moved around and shoved into a corner or space.

We have an old index card file holding a bunch of honing stuff. Not quite how much you have but a good bit. The drawers are narrow and deep which works well for both mandrills and stones. They were also made at a time when stuff was built to last so they still slide 50+ years later.

Bite the bullet and get the Lista/Vidmar. If ya don't fill it, use the extra drawer space for other tooling. You will save floor space in the long run with the Lista if you think about it. By the way, I absolutely hate that clear plastic packaging that Sunnen went to about 10 0r 15 years ago- it does snot store well and takes a ton of room. The old cardboard stone packaging stored well and you could organize it easily. The folks at Sunnen must have thought they were packaging their consumables for Target or Walmart hanging displays- sorry, rant over!

Zahnrad Kopf said:

Have 75 +/- Sunnen mandrels ... likely 150+packages of stones. ... about 50 extra wedges,... Approximately 60 pieces of shoes. ... Mandrels range from D2 size through P28 size, with most in-between. ( 0.060" - 1.500" ) They range from 4" long to 12.5" long.

I'm looking for suggestions on how to store it all.

Click to expand...

I don't (yet) have as many stones and shoes as you do, but add an AN600 and three external hones to your list and your storage problem is the same as mine. I don't have the solution, but you're not the only one hoping someone posts a clever idea.

My present "system" uses a 4-shelf, 13"x22" bookshelf-type unit from Lowe's with seven P-type and the AN600 mandrels completely filling the bottom shelf, the ~75 K-type mandrels vertically in five Sunnen racks on the other three shelves (2 racks/shelf), with the stones and shoes filling the remaining space on the shelf having only one rack. The external hones, Jacobs chuck, etc. sit on the back of the honing unit. This isn't ideal but is workable, although there isn't another square inch available for anything else.

I've looked at modular units like the Vidmar that was suggested, but because of the range in sizes of the items I can't see how I could piece together something based on drawers of fixed widthxdepth that would maintain an organizational structure without having a lot of wasted space.

opscimc said:

I've looked at modular units like the Vidmar that was suggested, but because of the range in sizes of the items I can't see how I could piece together something based on drawers of fixed widthxdepth that would maintain an organizational structure without having a lot of wasted space.

Click to expand...

I appreciate the input. The way I've been party to in the past when using a Vidmar for this very purpose was to use the dividers to create individual pockets for the mandrels and arbors. The stones were stored in the same fashion, but I would not duplicate that as they did not have as many stones as we now have and it was a crappy result for the stones, as well. They were always being tossed back into incorrect "pockets" due to others not giving a shite. Plus, they tended to bang around from the drawers opening and closing.

Dan from Oakland said:

Bite the bullet and get the Lista/Vidmar. If ya don't fill it, use the extra drawer space for other tooling. You will save floor space in the long run with the Lista if you think about it. By the way, I absolutely hate that clear plastic packaging that Sunnen went to about 10 0r 15 years ago- it does snot store well and takes a ton of room. The old cardboard stone packaging stored well and you could organize it easily. The folks at Sunnen must have thought they were packaging their consumables for Target or Walmart hanging displays- sorry, rant over!

Click to expand...

Thanks, Dan. I appreciate your weighing in. I may end up doing this. Fact of the matter is that I know I will end up doing it. The real question is do I do it now, or once we move? We were looking at options today and realized that I can clean out/clean up/consolidate three of my Kennedy rollers into two, leaving me a roller free. This serves nicely for the Sunnen consumables and hard parts storage for now without taking up any more floor space than is already taken. So I will likely do this for the immediate future, and then once we move we can get a proper Vidmar for the duty.

Thanks!

Triaged said:

We have an old index card file holding a bunch of honing stuff. Not quite how much you have but a good bit. The drawers are narrow and deep which works well for both mandrills and stones. They were also made at a time when stuff was built to last so they still slide 50+ years later.

Click to expand...

Not a terrible idea. Thanks.

How do you store your mandrels now? Our "use all the time" ones are stored in 1 Sunnen cabinet and the ones that don't fit there are stored in upright Sunnen mandrel racks. The "extras" are in a bottom drawer in the Vidmar. Here are the racks I'm referring to- they are on ebay at times. Not sure if that helps, but. . . . .

Dan from Oakland said:

How do you store your mandrels now? Our "use all the time" ones are stored in 1 Sunnen cabinet and the ones that don't fit there are stored in upright Sunnen mandrel racks. The "extras" are in a bottom drawer in the Vidmar. Here are the racks I'm referring to- they are on ebay at times. Not sure if that helps, but. . . . .

Click to expand...

Dan,

We have not had to up to now. I've been using an outside shop to do our honing. That worked for a little while, but we have simply gotten to the point where it is stupid to keep pissing money away to have someone else hone the bores and holes, while we sit on our thumbs waiting for them to return. ( yes, there are other things to do, but why wait? )

And, to be very honest, I've always been very uncomfortable not having complete control over that part. As an employee I had always honed my own parts, and when one considers it from shop slave's perspective ( AKA, owner ) it makes things MUCH more simpler to be able to plan and accommodate other operations around being able to accomplish certain things, in house. That, combined with the fact that our Gear work is growing just as much as our other machining work makes owning the process even that much more logical. As someone in this business, you know how it is when you want to control all facets of the Gear in tenths... we grind the arbors and indicate them in... sending a box of Gears out to be honed so that they fit the arbor within 0.00005" - 0.0001" and then WAITING for it to come back so you can Hob or Shape them is NOT conducive to rapid processing.

So, we bought a hone and tooled it up. Actually, it is more like opportunity knocked and I pounced. So, here I am.

I had considered one of those Mandrel Adapter racks, but honestly I've always just disassembled the Mandrel assembly and put the bits away when I was done with the specific task at hand. My plan is to continue the same way. The Gears tend to stay at constant bore sizes, but the other stuff we will be honing are really all over the place for sizes, so there's no real benefit to having them assembled and "stocked". I could be wrong, though... Wouldn't be the first time.

This comment is way late, but since this is support for an important bit of equipment, and inventory you cannot get at is just waste, I'd go for a cabinet.

BUT - in addition to Lista/Vidmar, I'd look at Stor-Loc, and would take the time to configure as close as possible to exactly what I want. (When I last looked into this sort of thing Stor-Loc was better priced - by no means cheap - and easier to get the thing you really wanted.)

Also, there was another cabinet maker, maybe Russeoue (French Canadian) who I seem to recall also did custom stuff.

You have a huge advantage here in that you have a list in hand of the material you need to store, and you know how big it is. And it's a machine that you want to be part of your business, rather than something somebody dumped in the parking lot.

So order up a custom cabinet. Probably as tall and narrow as you can stand (maybe need to bolt it down)