Quickly customizing a FOGtainer to hold stained glass making supplies

[Frank Pellow]

I find that I now own sufficient systainers, purchased accessories, and home made inserts to very quickly throw together a combination to handle almost any storage and transportation requirement.

As a case in point, this afternoon, I organized my Fogtainer 3 to hold everything that I need for my Tuesday evening night school stained glass sessions.  

Two weeks ago, I started a course on artistic stained glass making and, last Tuesday, getting all my tools and supplies to and from the site of the course was quite cumbersome.   [eek]

Here is what I came up with:

First of all, the FOGtainer 3:

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Opening the lid one finds:

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A ‘double sided tool lid’ available from Tanos has been attached to the lid.  Here it is with the latch undone:

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At the top of the pile of items within the FOGtainer itself is one of the many removable trays (with recessed handles) that I made out of Baltic birch awhile ago:

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Beneath the tray is one of the foam inserts sold by both Festool and Tanos:

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Underneath that insert and on top of another foam insert, are a few pieces of uncut glass, a photo of the window that I am making, and some cut out pattern pieces:

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Removing all that, one gets to the layout board with the glass that I have (roughly) cut so far:

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The layout board is easily removed and placed on a workbench along with the rest of the tools and supplies:

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It takes under two minutes to set up for work and under two minutes to pack up again. [smile]  And it's a whole lot easier to transport than the mess of unorganized stuff that I had to cope with last Tuesday.   [big grin]

 

[semenza]

Very nice Frank,  That really shows how much stuff can be organized, and packed with care in a Systainer. They are handy for all kinds of things.

Seth

 

[mhoy]

Nicely done indeed. I took a course a number of years ago and enjoyed it a great deal. Funny thing is I never cut myself on the glass, but I put numerous thin cuts in my fingers from smoothing the foil for edging the glass. Guess that's why we had a burnishing tool. 

Mark
BTW: All your projects are inspiring. Keep up the posting!

 

[Frank Pellow]

Thanks Seth and Mark.  It's great fun for me to figure out how take full advantage of my systainers.

Mark, I particularly thank you for your comment: "BTW: All your projects are inspiring. Keep up the posting!".  In threads where I have received few responses, I sometimes wonder if the documentation of my projects is boring folks, but I have received sufficient feedback such as this to keep me posting.

 

[semenza]

Frank,

I think the lack of response can be attributed to the good documentation;  nobody has any questions. 

Try leaving out some key details  [big grin]

Seth

 

[Theshipstore]

Frank:  I have to tell you I am impressed with what you do with some of the Festool Goodies we share.
           I like this one as it shows other things than Festool items we could use our Fogtainer for.
            Don't leave out details as for some of us it points us in the right direction to accomplish the same
Sal

 

[Mac]

Nice set of pictures Frank, and as always I find your commentary interesting; it's good to get a glimpse into other crafts like this that I don't know anything about. Threads like this bring diversity to the forum, and that has to be a good thing!

Cheers,
Rick

 

[Frank Pellow]

Sal and Mac, I thank you both for your encouragement.

Earlier this evening I attended my stained glass course and the customized FOGtainer proved to be useful indeed.  I even attached a a second FOGtainer (this one a sys2) underneath it in order to transport a glass grinder.

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I fielded several questions about systainers in general and about my use of them in particular.  I am quite sure that one of my fellow students will be visiting Lee Valley shortly to purchase a systainer 3.

 

[PaulMarcel]

Your project documentation is always top-notch, Frank.  I admit to not always posting a comment to them; usually, I open one in a browser window and read through it throughout the day.  If you do iPhone development, you'd understand why those constant breaks are needed to avoid insanity

 

[Frank Pellow]

OK, I have now proven that this is a good use of systainers for me and it is time to move the stained glass stuff from it's temporary home in a FOGtainer 3 over to a permanent home in systainers.

The only problem that I had with the FOGtainer setup was that it could only hold small panels and small pieces of glass.  The answer to this problem was to utilize a maxi systainer that I already had on hand.  I made a larger layout board and I purchased 5 foam slabs from a nearby upholstering company.  Here are a couple of photos:

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I transferred the double sides tool lid and the tool tray to an unused systainer 2.  A smaller piece of "upholstery" foam was cut for this box, freeing up the two systainer-specific pieces of foam purchased from Festool for future FOGtainer experiments.