Bin Storage Racks
Ladder-style racks that hold totes on rungs, built with spacer blocks instead of measuring.
Find the Right Plywood Offcut Instantly by Labeling It Before It Goes in the Rack
Write the two dimensions, the thickness and the material on the edge of every offcut the moment you cut it, then slide it into the rack. The edge is the only part you can see once it's stored, so you pick the piece by reading the rack instead of dragging out four sheets and measuring each one.
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The Problem
Offcuts accumulate faster than any other material in a shop. A rack of sheet goods ends up holding a dozen partial pieces, all standing on edge, all showing you nothing but a thickness.
So every time you need a piece, you pull sheets out one at a time, lay them down, run a tape over them, and put back the ones that don't work. Four or five minutes of handling heavy, awkward material to answer a question you already knew the answer to when you made the cut.
The edge is the one part of a stored sheet you can actually see, and on a bare offcut it tells you a thickness and nothing else.
The Technique
Label the offcut at the saw, while the numbers are still in front of you.
- As soon as a cut leaves you with a usable remnant, measure it — both dimensions, to the nearest half or quarter inch.
- Write it on the edge in marker, along with the thickness and what the material is. Travis's format is exactly that: 21 x 40.5, 3/4, black — width by length, thickness, then the material and finish (three-quarter black melamine).
- Slide it into the rack, labeled edge out.
Now the rack is a list. You read down the edges of the pieces, find the one that's big enough, and pull that one out.
Pro tip: The edge is also the safest surface to write on. Marker doesn't sand out of melamine or prefinished ply, and an edge nearly always ends up either cut off or hidden in a joint — whereas a label on the face can turn up on a show surface after the part is installed.
Pro tip: Record the dimension as the piece actually is, not as it should be. An offcut from a sheet that was 47-7/8 instead of 48 is a piece you will size something to later — the whole point is that the number on the board is one you don't have to re-check.
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