New Workshop Find

What do libraries and bicycles have in common?

Nothing, actually, unless you count this awesome new storage addition I found for my bicycle work area. 

My wife works in the Kent State University library, where, over the years, everything has been converted over to digital records. So one day recently, she found a couple of workers in the Special Collections department hauling this old card catalog cabinet out to the trash dumpster. Being that both my wife and I have always been avid readers and library users, we have long had a nostalgic fondness for the old-fashioned card catalog files. She asked if she could keep it, and they of course had no objections.

The cabinet was too large to fit in her car, so we had to drive out to her office on the weekend with our station wagon to bring it home.

Funny thing - as the two of us were hauling this thing out of the library, a thought occurred to me: how would anybody "official" know that we were actually authorized to take this thing - or that we weren't just stealing it? So, just as that thought pops into my head, some very nosy woman notices us and starts following us. Before we can get out, she asks where we think we're going. Apparently she believed my wife, or at least decided it wasn't worth the trouble to verify her story, because she let us leave with it.

After getting it home, I needed to make some space for it, and build some kind of bench to hold it. That was an afternoon's project. The new bench includes a shelf underneath which will be perfect for holding some extra boxes, or large tools like my bench grinder seen below.

One drawer will hold four freewheels - or twice that if I stack 'em.

I have a pretty good collection of spare parts - like freewheels, bottom brackets, headsets, etc. that I'll be able to file away in the cabinet's many drawers. Before I can really put it to use, however, I'll have to modify the drawers a bit. The drawers don't have a completely solid bottom - there is a large "slot" or "gap" about 1½ inches wide running the length of each drawer. They could be fine for larger items, or boxed items, but small items would fall right through. If I carefully trim some thin pressboard, masonite, or the like, to fit across the full bottom of the drawers, they'll work well for all kinds of bicycle parts.

I'll make the modifications to the drawers, and then I can start filling this thing up with spares. What a cool find!