Drill bit organizer for the shop

My first post on the forum, yay! I made something useful that I can share. Got the glowforge a few weeks ago and I’ve been enjoying it a lot.

Keeping drill bits in tool chests was driving me crazy and I was inspired by this blog post. Of course, why would I drill all those holes if I can get a machine to do it.

With some help with the wikipedia entry on drill bit sizes this is what I ended up making:

Mind you it’s on some cheap 0.22" plywood I had lying around so the engraving is not as good as it could be on a better material.

I’ll share the file for this flat section only because I think the design for the box can be improved. I ended up mounting it at an angle and the tabs will vary depending on the material you use.

Idrill-bit-organizer-laser-cut1

Oh, and if you were wondering the front holes are for reference. This is the Illustrator file in case you want to make modifications, I left the numbers as text so you need to expand them before cutting: drill-bit-organizer.ai (152.3 KB) and here is the SVG if you just want to use it right away. I scored the guidelines instead of engraving them because it gave me a cleaner, darker line and it was faster:
drill-bit-organizer

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Oh, that’s very nice! I need to do one with labels, I have mine in a stand but it’s just holes. :grinning:

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Perfect for a post in practical cuts :slight_smile:

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Ha, cool! I’ll post it there. :+1:

I just finished putting together a rolling tool chest about ten minutes ago. Guess I know what I need to make next. :grinning:

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Thank you.

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Awesome, thanks for the design!

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Thanks for sharing your project and the file. Looks great.

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That is such a good idea. My mom gave me a huge set of drill bits a few years ago. They are in a case that has them all laying down. This will save me a bunch of space.

@lairdknox, When I read your post, I first thought that you built the rolling toolbox on the GF. I guess when you have a really good hammer, everything DOES look like a nail. HAHA

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Thanks!

Incidentally, do read up on drill bit sizes because it turns out “number and letter gauge drill bit sizes” don’t match fractional-inch drill bit sizes. I was just looking at a set I have in the shop that uses the number system and I couldn’t join it to my organizer, and I’ve seen a lot of sets like that.

Oh the perils of not using the metric system.

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Great solution!

Good point. I’ll look at that.

Can’t think about it right now. I’ve got too many Christmas projects to finish. :christmas_tree:

There are two types of countries in the world. Those that use the metric system and those that have put a man on the moon. :laughing:

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I’ve been thinking of doing something like this for a long time!
I can never keep my drill bits together. This is awesome! Thanks for the share!

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very nice!

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You inspired me! Thanks. (Top panels are some 0.455” thick oak that was reeeeeally pushing the limits for the glowforge) PS: made mine wall-mounted, the rest is draft board.

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Wow, looks awesome! And you have a complete set, or three. :wink:
Also kind of cool that you can cut almost half inch oak, multiple passes?

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Very kind of you to share your file for the top portion. Organization items are the best!

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Wow, love this!!!

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Thanks. :slight_smile: I have piles of drill bits I’ve been meaning to organize, this looked like a great solution. You can just cut through the 1/2” (actually .455”) with a single pass at full power slowest speed, but I got better results with two passes at full power, 110 speed. Still had to pop out the pieces (most just needed a thumb push) and there was a little bit of cleanup. Not too bad. I feel like if the oak had been maybe 0.4” it would have easily cut all the way through. I just used some scrap I had lying around as-is instead of planing it down.

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