Labels For Chicago Screws

Continuing my quest to ditch a mountain of tackle boxes for drawers and bags: Chicago screws.

Labels for a variety of Chicago screws and their plastic drawers.

SVG is available from GitHub.
Made in Inkscape.

The icons for the drawer labels are oblique orthographic projections: showing the front plan to scale, but the side plan (depth) is shown at half-width. This is for recognizing the object on the drawer, but the bags inside have a simplified to-scale side-profile picture for quick comparisons.

Only drawers that contain screw ends have icons on them.

The drawer labels also use a system to display their finish color with grey areas on the very left. All of the screws are expected to be silver, so it’s kind of pointless, but I’m trying to keep the labels consistent – so as many things use them (the area showing the finish color) when there’s space on the label and it makes sense.

Three drawers, separated by length ranges.
Labels in the cabinets.

Making Swatches

I really can’t say what I’ve seen Chicago screws used for out in the real world – but they make for great swatches, especially for thick sheets of materials, like plywood.

I mostly have them to bind swatches for laser-cut patterns and wood finishes.

A collection of 3mm Birch plywood laser-cut design swatches. Bound together with a Chicago screw.
A reference of various 3mm Birch plywood dyes and stains. Bound together with Chicago screws.