Cleco Storage

[SteveF]

Here's a few pics of how I keep my clecos organized and stored in my toolbox. I tend to be a little bit obsessed with order and neatness in my shop. If you think this is a little over the top, I won't be offended. It works great for me, and I love it!

Here's what I did:

I repurposed some drawer divider rails I got for free from office furniture that was being thrown out at work (I'm also a little bit obsessive about repurposing things, especially scrap). If you don't have access to free office drawer dividers, they're pretty simple to fabricate. I adapted the rails to fit my drawers and installed them along the sides. The divider cards that came with the office desk drawers weren't the right size to fit in my toolbox drawer so I made divider cards out of sheet aluminum, drilled the appropriate sized holes in them, labeled them, loaded them with clecos and put them in the drawer. Labeling is optional of course, because it's simple to tell the different sizes just based on color of the cleco. But, I labeled them in case I need someone less familiar with clecos to get some for me.

I can remove an entire divider card and take it with me to where I am working if I want to, and picking a cleco single-handed with the pliers is simple. This arrangement is portable, convenient, saves/maximizes space, keeps all my clecos organized and together when I'm working, and allows me to see instantly if I don't have all of my clecos accounted for after a job and how many are missing.

I also bent the top edge of all the divider cards slightly so they are easier to pull out and handle.
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This is the back of the divider card. Not much to see, just holes, but thought I would show you anyway.
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[SteveF]

For the edge clamp clecos, I took a couple of pieces of extruded angle aluminum and riveted them to a divider, one on each side, with the rivet going through both pieces of angle. I formed/bucked the shop head to a dome shape to look like the manufactured head so that it would look nice and clean, front and back. You could countersink the solid rivets on both sides instead if you prefer that look more.
This divider is kept in the back of my standard cleco drawer. You can see it in the drawer in the pics above.

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Here you can see the rivets holding the extruded angle aluminum to the divider:
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[SteveF]

Here is one of my wing-nut/draw cleco cards. Similar to the edge clamp cleco cards above, I took a piece of extruded angle aluminum and riveted it to a divider, but only on one side of the divider card. Also, the rivets are countersunk for clearance, but the shop head on the back is just normal, not countersunk.
Spacing these far enough apart from each other and far enough away from the card so the wing-nut has clearance to turn was a little tricky, but once you figure out how much space you need, it's pretty easy.

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[Bdflies]

I'm really a stickler for organization. Ask me where a tool is and I can put my hand on it in short order. My wife and kids think I'm really anal retentive about tools. I showed her your pics. She agreed that your cleco collection is beautiful! She added that there's medication for that...

See y'all soon!

Bill

[SteveF]

Thanks Bill. Glad to see I'm not the only one with the sickness!
I got a FEVER!
And the only prescription, is MORE COWBELL!

[jaredyates]

I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum. I cut the top off of old laundry soap tubs, a different brand for each so that I can spot them from across the hangar. Then I spent the other few hours doing something else.

[SteveF]

I appreciate the feedback. If that works for you, then great, keep doing whatever works.
Personally, I don't like spending time counting clecos after every job and at the end of every shift for tool accountability. That would take me a lot of time, much more in the long run than it took to drill all of those holes and install the drawer divider rails.
Plus, it maximizes drawer storage space so I can use the room I saved for other tools. It's also easily portable, much more convenient to use (especially if you can only use one hand to pick clecos up with the pliers), and I never have to worry about knocking them over and spilling them out all over.
That's me. It's what works best for me, so I put it out there in case it could help someone else who is looking for a different storage solution.