Homebrew Ham Radio Projects - Tools and Storage

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Published on Thursday, 18 August 2011 00:49
Written by David L Norris

A good variety of tools will serve you well.  The proper tools can make or break a project.  

Ideally, you will need a few different types of tools.  You can never have too many tools.  

ToolsThe key is organizing these tools so you can remember you have them, see immediately if a tool is misplaced and find the correct tool instantly.  The time you spend trying to use the wrong tool or trying to find a misplaced tool is time wasted.  At best, its distracting.  At worst you can damage something.

Electronics Tools

  • Electronics prototyping "breadboard"; bigger the better. I have owned a 3M 922354 most of my life.
  • 30W Adjustable Soldering Iron (Frys!), Reworking Station ideally
  • Heat Gun for extracting/salvaging components from boards and activating heatshrink tubing. (Harbor Freight)
  • Solder (Kester, period, its that good.)
  • Solder Wick
  • Solder Suction Tool (a hot air/vacuum pump is built into most rework stations)
  • Soldering iron tip cleaners.  I prefer the chemical type for removing oxidation but also use a brass coil type cleaner to remove excess solder
  • Solder Flux Paste and Brushes
  • Wrist strap to dissipate static from your body.
  • Jumper wires of every kind you can imagine.  Alligator clips are very handy.
  • Tweaking tools (service alignment)
  • Diagonal cutters (wire dykes) for trimming leads.
  • PCB boards, breadboard style.
  • Copper foil tape for repairing circuit traces.  You'll find this anywhere that sells stained glass materials.
  • Digital and Analog VOM
  • Signal generators and tracers.  Audio and RF are handy.
  • Digital Logic probe.
  • 12V power supply is a must.  5V is also useful.  An old computer ATX supply works great.  Green wire shorted to black on the ATX connector turns on the supply.
  • Oscilloscope
  • Probes of several types for all of your test instruments.
  • Adaptors to convert between all of the input and output connections on your test equipment.
  • Variac to adjust your AC line voltage from 0-130VAC or so.
  • Iso-Tap style AC line isolation transformer.  Isolates an AC line powered device such as a power supply from ground so you don't accidentally kill yourself if you touch something while it is energized.

Hand Tools

  • Screw Gauge, Metric and SAE - Measure screw, nut and washer diameters and thread counts
  • Small Specialty Screw Drivers (Radio Shack)
  • Large Specialty Screw Drivers (Home Depot, Lowes, etc)
  • Socket set, Metric and SAE (Sears Hardware Store)
  • Wrenches, Metric and SAE (Sears Hardware Store)
  • Sheet Metal Break (Harbor Freight, $30 or so)
  • Sheet Metal Shears (Harbor Freight)
  • Sheet Metal Nibbler (Harbor Freight, $5 or so)
  • Power Drill (Dewalt or similar)
  • High Speed Steel Drill Bits, Metric and SAE (Dewalt!)
  • Hand Drill, crank powered
  • Large Metal Files (Harbor Freight)
  • Small Metal Files(Harbor Freight)
  • Rulers of varying units of measure and lengths, tape measures included.
  • Slide rule and/or a graphing scientific digital calculator

Storage and Organization

Parts Storage CabinetsDivider boxes or thread boxes are cheap and great for sorting small parts like washers, brakes, set screws, and other small specialty items. Buy good metal drawer cabinets for the bulk of your metal hardware because it will be shockingly heavy.  Those $10 cabinets at Walmart will disintegrate the moment you lift it full of metal parts.  Again, look at thrift store for these cabinets.  Akro-Mils steel cabinets have not changed at all since the 1950s.  They are as much as $120 new but being around for 60 years means they are everywhere.  Fleamarkets are filled with them.  Auctions practically give them away.  I never pay more than $5 for each cabinet.  And a case of 144 new-style rubberized drawers is around $40.  The part number is right on the drawer and they are all over Amazon and eBay.  The old part numbers are the same for the new, better replacement parts.  To the right is a photo of my Akro-Mils parts cabinets.  They fit on a single shelf.  That's all the space I'm willing to give them.  If I start collecting more parts than that I begin weeding out parts I've not used in a long time.  Also, these cabinets don't look like it but they  are bolted to the wall.  That shelf is to keep them straight and level but not to hold their weight!  The second box from the bottom left weighs 25 pounds!  The 4th one is about the same.  Hardware is heavy.  Plan for it!

  • Dymo or similar label printer. I prefer the Panduit LS-8/9 because it prints on a great variety of tape and heatshrink tubing.  $200 or so.
  • Sturdy parts drawer cabinets such as Akro-Mils steel cabinets
  • Large and medium sized clear plastic boxes optionally with color coded lids.  I use Sterilite "shoe" and "sweater" boxes.
  • Small parts divider boxes either from a hardware store or the kind for needlepoint sewing threads.
  • Sturdy shelving units to hold your parts boxes and cabinets.  Mine are a minimum of 900 pound shelves for the big boxes.

Parts Storage ShelvesSmall Hardware Sorted into Divider BoxesSoldering Irons Stored in a Drawer

Organizing Hardware

Sorted Parts next to a Compartmentalized Box

Lets just start with a random pile of stuff you've collected over the years in that mystery drawer most of us have in the kitchen or garage...  Also, go to your friends and tell them to dump hardware and broken equipment they'd normally throw away into a grab bag for you.  I know, it sounds like an episode of Hoarders.  But I'm serious.  You don't need to hoard junk to build up a nice collection of hardware for reuse.  The key is to decide what's valuable up front and what you will buy new.  Collect old VCRs, DVD players, TVs, etc from everyone who would otherwise have thrown it away.  Visit Goodwill Outlet stores and the like and buy trashed equipment like this by the pound.  You can get some amazing stuff for almost no money this way.

Most importantly, set aside a night every week or two to part out those scavenged items.  This lets you trash the junk you don't need and sort out the parts you do.  Find a local recycler to take boards and plastics and whatnot you don't need.  They might even pay you something for them.

Now, back to that bag of junk parts your friends have collected.  My friends are maybe a little more esoteric than yours so my parts might be more interesting.  Once you start sorting a big pile of random stuff you start realizing you have many like parts.  More surprisingly, after doing this for months, weeks, years, decades you discover the same exact parts over and over in many different kinds of devices and from many sources.  Suddenly things don't seem so dissimilar and this maybe isn't a waste of time.  Screws of the same type, length and thread come up time and time again.  Certain things like brass nuts and washers will appear over and over again.  The little black lock washers are everywhere.  Sort these out religiously and put like things into bins, drawers, compartments of boxes or whatever is appropriate to their size and other specifications.




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