Making Drawer Dividers

After completing my tool chest with 10 shallow drawers it became very clear that I would need compartments in the drawers to hold the stuff in an organized manner. I started of making dividers for the topmost drawer and then would add dividers to the remaining drawers based on needs.

The top drawer would be used mostly for storing fasteners (screws, nuts and bolts, etc.) so decided to go with many small compartments. The drawer was divided into two large compartments by a support strip that ran from left-to right to support the drawer bottom.

The front compartment would be divided into 102 smaller compartments by using 16 vertical strips and 5 horizontal strips.

The rear compartment of the drawer would be divided into 22 compartments by using 10 vertical strips and 1 horizontal strip (as shown in the figure).

The strips would have slots cut to allow the strips to notch into each other (second part of the figure) creating the compartments.

I cut 1 inch wide strips from freecycled white Pergo flooring on my table saw. To cut the slots into these strips I had to take a pause and build a cross-cut sled for the table saw (separate instructable).

I had to cut 1/2 width slots into the drawer divider strips that I had made out of the laminate flooring materials.

I marked the location of the slots in one of the strips and then taped the other strips to this with masking tape so that in one go I would be able to cut slots in the others trips at the same time.

To cut the slots I placed the cross-cut sled onto the table saw, raised the blade to the proper height and then started cutting the half slots.

At the end of the process I had all the pieces ready for installation into the front half of the drawer.

Before installing the strips, I cleaned the drawer bottom with a moist rag to make sure that the hot glue would stick.

I placed the horizontal (left-to-right) strips in approximate position and then anchored these in place with a vertical slotted strip on the right and one more on the left.

I applied hot glue to the bottom of the remaining vertical strips and inserted these into the mating slots of the horizontal strips.

I removed the first two vertical strips, which were not glued, applied hot glue and re-inserted them in.

The horizontal strips were not glued but were held by the downward pressure of the many vertical strips which were glued to the drawer bottom.

Cleaned the back half of the drawer bottom and then directly hot glued small vertical strips to the drawer bottom about 4' apart. Used a square to keep them perpendicular to the large drawer divider.

Once the vertical strips were in place, I attached a long horizontal strip with hot glue.

Finally hot glued the remaining vertical strips behind the long horizontal strip to complete the rear of the drawer.

I now had 102 small compartments in the front of the drawer and 22 larger compartments in the rear of the drawer for a total of 124 compartments.

Already started storing screws as you can see in the pictures!

Started collecting all the fasteners stored in various locations, sorting them and placing them in the compartments in the drawer.

Having all the screws, nuts, bolts, hooks, etc. in one location is definitely going to make it easier to find stuff when I need it and also prevent me buying new stuff just because I cannot find a specific fastener.

Am going to wait on making dividers for the next 9 drawers in my drawer chest; till I figure out what needs to go where.

Have posted a quick youtube video on the drawer dividers.