How are you storing your materials?

New GF user here wondering how you all store your materials? I’ve been using mostly the Proofgrade acrylic (12x20) and wood (12x20). I’m wondering how you all store your sheets? I’ve been stacking them under the GF’s table, but I’d love to get them off the ground. I started looking into storage units, like those rolling ones, but the drawers for most I’ve seen aren’t big enough. Any tips? Purchases that you love? What are the experts doing :slight_smile: ?

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I made my own shelving units out of 2x4’s that sits next to my GF and then labeled them using clear acrylic and black paint.

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Hey welcome to the forum. Boy do I have good news for you: this has been discussed a lot.

Try searching the forum like so:

https://community.glowforge.com/search?q=material%20storage

I’m sure people will pipe up, people love to talk about their setups, but those previous discussions are a goldmine, you should definitely take advantage of the years of research that people have posted.

While we’re at it, I bet you’ll find this topic useful:

We love new users around here, we can’t wait to see what you make!

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That is for this info! I actually tried searching several terms and couldn’t find any relevant topics. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

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Sadly, discourse search isn’t great. It doesn’t do a lot of guessing to help you, it takes everything you search for very literally. So, if you’re a new user and don’t know the exact way people phrase things here it can make searching a lot harder than it should be, you know?

Just a quirk of the forum, I guess.

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Agreed, totally. Thanks again for the direction!

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Well it does work . looks ?

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Acrylic on shelf wood on top of file cab

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Hmm…never thought of shelves actually behind the GF. I may have to make me some, especially since your bottom shelf is even with the top of the GF, which would make it cover my vent pipe, which goes sideways behind the GF. And yeah, the side shelves would be great too, but I’ll have to make them fit on my other shelves . :slight_smile:

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My shelves are 1 1/2 inches apart with every other shelf comes out to make more heigh if needed.

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Love it.

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I store my supplies flat in the drawers and on the top of a chest of drawers. It is a family hand-me-down that just happens to be the perfect size! You might try something designed to store clothing. The drawers may be large enough.

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I don’t have much space in the room my Glowforge lives in, so I have one shelfless cabinet to hold my materials. I have them stacked in categories with sheets of paper sticking out telling me which section is what. I keep the scrap pieces on top of the whole sheets mostly in a Priority Mail box that some of my materials came in.
I have an inventory sheet that I try to keep updated…

Can you stack multiple Priority boxes and use those to divide your materials? If it fits, it stacks! :wink: But at least you wouldn’t have to be lifting up a stack of materials to get one from further down.

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I tried stacks of priority boxes, but once they are partially empty they begin collapsing and make the levels above look like they will warp.

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This is my “shop” (aka, the corner of the living room I have taken over):

Top to bottom:

  • Pegboard I made from this thread
  • Husky rolling table, which is basically the perfect size for the GF
  • Some slightly incorrectly sized stackable storage bins - if I had it to do over I’d have gotten ones that were 12x20 on the inside not the outside :woman_facepalming:
  • This shelf from the forum with extra supports to hold more weight. Probably going to try a 1/4" cut of this thing I made to replace it for better strength though.
  • Boxes of Columbia Forest Products stuff (or unopened Priority Mail boxes) underneath - you can only stack them 2 high under the bottom of the rolling cart so you don’t have to worry too much about them getting crushed.
  • A bunch of boxes I made next to it: Some shelves, a big-ass box of cardboard, and a wood offcuts box for kindling. Which of course is full so there are two extra bags of kindling next to it now :stuck_out_tongue:

I was joking with some folks I was talking to a couple days ago that the Glowforge is an ourubouros of crafting since half the stuff I’ve built with it is to hold materials and/or offcuts.

Oh also, I can’t find the original post that tweaked me to this, but balled up on top of the cardboard pile is a pack-n-play fitted sheet, which it turns out is basically the same size as a GF and works wonders as a cover.

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