Storage for shop manuals, books
 

Anyone have any clever ideas for a cabinet to store shop manuals, binders, books, etc, all the stuff I need on hand in the shop? Rather not build anything, needs to be enclosed. Tired of my manuals getting all dusty and floppy.

My giant new tool box has an upper section that is about 2 inches too short to put them in vertically, and I hate laying them down on the side.

Also really don't want to use an old kitchen cabinet, wood gets all dusty and dirty.

Am looking for the same. Have quite a few original Pontiac Master Parts books, Parts Price Guides, Shop manuals, Assembly manuals, etc. Many of the more expansive ones being 45 years old, ive had to iron & reprint numerous pages. These old factory parts books smell musty & I need a way to store all of them in my shop, where I can easily access them. Currently am storing most in a stack of 28 quart Rubbermaid tubs, & if researching something in the evening, will haul one or two rubbermaid tubs up to the house. That may be as good as it gets, as I really don't want to do the filing cabinet thing

Half of mine are in stacks on my bench in bags and totes. I am going to build something to go on top of my sears workbench

At my old house I had stacks of original parts books, boxes of parts flyers, old 35mm pictures. I could get to all of the critical paperwork I have now usually fairly quickly, sometimes it took upwards of 10 minutes, as sometimes I misplaced a parts book. Nearly all of the old books did have a musty smell & they never were wet. Made for real happy wife...

One thing that a family friend has been going through for the last 6 months has concerned my wife & I. There has been an explosion of bedbug infestations over the last few decades. Has something to do with lack of certain pesticides being allowed to be sprayed. One of the major items bedbugs like is... PAPER. Our family friend's home was discovered to have a bed bug infestation this previous July. The pest control guy that has been intrusted to treat the inside of this older home, bed bugs are all he does, & he is swamped with work, its that bad. Typically homeowners insurance doesn't pay for the process, so we are talking thousands & thousands of dollars out of pocket. From what I understand, ****I'm not a pestcontrol guru****, as everything is being treated, the contents are put in these thick plastic bags & set for so much time. the items then have to be taken out of the thick plastic bags & be allowed to air out, quite a bit more time. Next, a pair of specially trained dogs are brought in that hit on any items that still have live bedbugs. If any live ones, items have to be retreated & process repeated.. Long story short, just another reason my wife & I are concerned about boxes of old paperwork, paper records, etc, inside our home.

METAL BARRISTER CASES.
 

Living in a Navel Area I have found old "Navel" barrister cases at garage sales and on local CL.
Most of these are the same dimensions and each case is a separate unit.
They are interlocking so you can stack them as high as you want.
The bases with legs are separate additions as are the top panels.

I have since moved and no longer have any of these but they worked great for many items.
I refer to them as Navel as most of the cases I came across had id tags indicating Navel Surgical Unit #s.
I'm sure these were used/made by other sources.

IIRC these were aprox 24" wide. 12" deep and varied on heights.
That is what made them great for the shop/Garage they didn't take up a lot of space.
On average I could pick them up for around $20-25 each.
These might fit your needs?

Beautiful. Those come up for auction at our NY state auctions sometimes. Always go for good money. High quality pieces too. Had the chance on numerous occasions to pick one up and I never did.

I keep the shop dehumidified, which helps keep the books and everything else in pretty good shape. Before I did that, anything paper would start showing age pretty quick.

For temporary(;)) protection, I've used large cereal boxes (Cheerios, Mini Wheats, etc.) that you can fit quite a few magazines in and then close the top. They work quite well.

Have you looked at the white cabinets at Home Depot? they are 6ft tall & 4ft wide, maybe 2 ft deep. You assemble them yourself. I think they are around $100.00 or so. I have 2 of them & while I don't use them for my manuals because my manuals are on a shelf in the office, but I believe they would work nicely for them.

God Bless
Bill

What about a commercial file cabinet? I have all my books under my bed, not handy whatsoever, but I like to read up on things before I go to sleep at night sometimes.
But, its a pain in the rear when I need them. I have an old 4 drawer file cabinet in the basement, I'll have to see if binders would even fit in it. Probably not. Hmmmm