While working on the girder bridge project it started to bother me that my collection of styrene strip material was such a mess. I had been bundling it up and wrapping the bundle with blue tape. When I would get it out to work with it I would end up with the kind of mess seen here.
I knew there had to be a better solution. The Train Shop in Santa Clara where I buy this has an entire wall of the store devoted to this product but that was not practical for me and I normally only have about 20 to 25 packages of different shapes and sizes. When bundled, the bundle would normally be about 2 inches in diameter.
My answer was this 9 inch long scrap of 4 inch diameter ABS waste pipe left over from a project and sitting in all my plumbing supplies. This material is great for making large tanks for refineries or other industries and works well with the same Plastic Weld we use for modeling projects. It commonly comes in 1-1/2, 2, 3, and 4 inch diameter sizes at most building supply centers.
Just as I had done to make the roofs of those industrial tanks, I attached .030 sheet styrene to one end of the pipe but this time to make the bottom. Because of the thick walls of the pipe the sheet has a lot of material to hold on to. I also made a hole near the top end of the pipe that a screw can go in to hang it up. That hole can been seen in the photo above next to the bottle of Plastic Weld. So now I can remove easily this container from it's hanging position and set it on the bench to look through the different shapes. When I get what I need, hang it back up and keep the work bench clear.
Interesting problem you point out here as I too had the same growing collection of styrene strips and the organization problem they create! I ultimately solved it with a similar solution using round tubes used for mailing posters cut in half! Yours looks nicer though!
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