Hi I was curious about everyone’s Sheet metal organization. Right now we have everything leaned up against the wall and its less than ideal. We cut mainly 1/8" and 3/16"mild steel and a little bit of 1/4" aluminum and its a pain moving every sheet to get the one sheet we need in the back. Any ideas appreciated!
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You must have copied the same guy that I copied 
I know some have created a movable dolly that loads from both sides, similar to the way glass is stored. But that takes up a minimum of of 3x8 floor space, all the time. And, I can’t see it being easy to get the third sheet down, out of that pile.
I have a few 4x8 sheets in my horizontal plywood rack but there is only one shelf that is of an appropriate height for loading and unloading. I don’t have any sheets thicker than 10 gauge. Can’t imagine sliding a sheet of 3/16 or thicker by myself. I use a table that is 2x4 and is adjustable in height for loading/unloading. I use the same table to get the sheet to the plasma table.
All my partial sheets are wedged up against the wall. And the aluminum is really getting scratched with this method. Space is at a premium.
I look forward to what ideas your topic brings.
Come on guys and gals…there have been 25 views of this topic and no one else has any comments!?
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You got me thinking so that got me drawing. I used to work in a sheet metal shop in my youth but we only stored sheet metal that was up to 18 gauge horizontally. The heavier stuff was stored on its edge. (Not really sure of 16 gauge.)
…Anyway, my thought is that if I could store things on edge in a small vertical “bay”, you could tilt sheets side to side and pull out a sheet in the middle of a compartment. But there needs to be enough room to tilt at least 50% of the sheet one way or the other. Preferably, there are only two different gauges of metal per bay. I used 1-1/2 square steel tubing.
The rack I would like, might look like this and would have wheels on the outside edges. This rack is 84 inches long, 36 inches wide and the interior bay height is 62 inches (to accomodate those 5 foot wide sheets). It may need to be 42 inches wide for stability.
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Ditto. Although I do have it mostly sorted by type and thickness. New sheets down to half size together, everything else in the misc scrap lean-to stack.
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From my experience in a Fab shop, depending on your overhead lift capabilities (fork lift, winch, etc…) store as much as you can on a vertical edge. It allows selection and lifting without having to unload everything on top of it.
If you are limited in overhead capabilities, stacking easily handled pieces in piles upright works well too. 
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I made a basic rolling a-frame rack out of 1" tubing and some 2" x 2" angle. It’s worked pretty well.
Ignore the messy surroundings. I’m gonna get it cleaned up later today 
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I use a drywall cart that I added a couple dividers to. I don’t have much room so it needs to be mobil.
I don’t have a picture of it but it looks like this.
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Welcome to the forum!
Man, you made me realize one of those vertical carts they have in the lumber section at Home Depot would be awesome.
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You should probably re-paint over the orange when you get it home.
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working on the same design as I type, using old metal fence panels for the divider bars
I will be excited to see that!
Made this out of some drop channel from work. Put the wheels on so it was moveable. Hasn’t moved since I pushed it to the corner
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@Madman This goes to show that even with an elaborate storage system you cant beat the wall-lean method!! 
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I built the rack and loaded all the steel. But I’ll be damned if I can figure out how to get my kid to put things away when he’s done. He’s cut more stuff for his and his buddies demolition derby cars, Than I have for my projects. I’m about to lock the doors if he doesn’t star putting things away.
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It is great to see kids interested in more than video games…
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I am building something very similar to this, will post when done. Thanks for posting!
I went on YouTube looking for inspiration and found this.
Now you’d need plenty of floor space to access it, which got me thinking. What if you only had 2 or three of the trays and instead of sliding out like in the video you mounted it flat up against a wall and mounted the caster at 90 degrees and hinged the other end so the tray opened out like a door. I’m going to try and draw it up in Fusion, but I’m not very good at it so don’t hold your breath on a working drawing.
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