A niftly little find at Office Depot

[Jack Flesher]

Okay, so it won't be for everybody, but I thought it was neat enough to share...

I was strolling through Office Depot and came across a hard-sided portable file box made by Vaultz. It appeared to me an almost ideal size for 8x10 holders... It is made from some type of high-tech thermal-plastic with aluminum corners and is textured on the outside. It has a hinged top with a bead-seal that should keep out dust and provide a mild barrier to guard against the occasional splash.

Heck, a picture is worth 1000 words... Here it is with a dozen holders and three boxes of film. It will comfortably hold 15 holders stored in the padded envelopes (I keep my individual holders in bubble-padded mailing envelopes as shown) or probably 20 if they're naked:



There are some obvious downsides... First it costs $40. Next, it is black in color -- I would have preferred white for heat. Third, it is not particularly lightweight -- however I got it primarily for storage and vehicle transport and don't plan on carrying it very far; 15 or 20 loaded holders are not all that light to begin with.

It does have inner rails for pendaflex folders, so one could conceivably use them to store and/or separate individual holders. Office Depot also has similar-sized lighter-weight translucent plastic boxes that cost about half the Vaultz. I personally rejected these because they were translucent. Call me old-fashioned or over-paranoid, but I prefer to store my holders in reasonably light-tight containers. For those of you not concerned with that, the plastic versions present another attractive option. There is one more minor nicety to this case -- the inside is lined with a fuzzy poly material, and male Velcro sticks to it A square of Velcro on my favorite pen and pencil stores them conveniently at the ready on the inside of the lid.

Cheers,

[roteague]

Nice find Jack. I wonder if they would have something like this that would work for 4x5. I'll have to go look.

[Jack Flesher]

Hi Rob:

This unit is legal folder wide by letter folder deep and whatever height they need to accomodate those. Vaultz makes a smaller version that is letter folder wide by about 6" deep and the same height. I suspect you could get maybe 2 rows of 8 holders side-by-side, but the case would be taller than desireable for easy access. This case would however be pretty nifty for storing readyloads. I imagine you could get about 8 packets (2 rows of 4) of Ready/Quick loads if you first removed the packets from the boxes.

[Jim Noel]

There is always white spray paint.

[David Louis]

The box is cool, but I'm really interested in your idea of storing the film holders in bubble wrap envelopes. Thats a great idea!

[roteague]

I'll have to drop by and look. Thanks for the heads up, Jack. These look like an ideal way to carry loaded holders.

[BradS]

Yeah, that's a good find. Thanks for passing it along.

[Jack Flesher]

There is always white spray paint.

Indeed... But I am going to use it as-is this weekend and see how hot it really gets in stock trim. I'll report back

[Jack Flesher]

The box is cool, but I'm really interested in your idea of storing the film holders in bubble wrap envelopes. Thats a great idea!

Yes, they are almost a perfect fit too -- I trim off about about an inch of the envelope at the flap end. They weigh next to nothing, provide a bit of padding and do a great job of keeping the holder free of dust. Note that there also all plastic bubble envelopes -- I tried those first but found they static'd up and attracted dust like a magnet. These paper ones with bubble interiors don't seem to be similarly afflicted.

[gregstidham]

I recently used some Rust Oleum aluminum colored paint and found it to be very reflective. A pint was $3.99