How to organise DeWalt TSTAK / Stanley Fatmax Pro-Stack Drawers

We get lots of questions about these tool systems, so we decided to answer all of them! We wanted to show you how to organise a range of tools in the DeWalt TSTAK / Stanley Fatmax Pro-Stack Drawers; both the deep drawers, and the shallow drawers. We already have DeWalt TSTAK inserts and Stanley organiser inserts, amongst many others, in our store. This makes it super easy to do the inserts as you can just fit and go. But if you don’t have a TSTAK or Stanley Fatmax organiser and have a tool box or drawer that we don’t supply custom inserts for, check out this easy guide. With our help you can make your own insert to fit pretty much any space you want.

You might already know this but despite the different branding, the actual shape or template of each of these boxes is exactly the same That’s because both brands are owned by Black and Decker. So this means that our custom foam inserts will fit all these drawers nice and simply.

Our Stanley Fatmax / DeWalt TSTAK inserts.

Our inserts start at only £19.99 for a pack of 2. They come in either 30mm or 50mm depths, and in a range of colours. So when you think about it, for essentially a tenner you can protect and organise a power tool which possibly costs around 10-15 times more than that. So all considered it’s a cost- and time- investment well made. Protecting your kit against loss or damage in transit for years to come is that easy!

Who’s Stanley Fatmax organiser is it anyway?

The TSTAK we are going to be organising is in daily use by one of the contractors who worked on our new unit. There’s a couple of drawers there which need sorting out. Then there’s another 3 drawers in the Pro-Stack to do for a data engineer. Here we have a real mixed bag of tools to fit in including specialist crimping tools and ethernet crimping tools..

In the Stanley Fatmax Pro-Stack deep drawer there are shallow ribs in the base of the drawer which our pre-made inserts can just sit nicely on top of. In the smaller drawers, it’s fitted with removable ribs which create sections in there and these can just be wiggled free so that the foam insert slots in nicely.

Planning the layout of your drawers

When it comes to planning the layout for your tools, it’s important to consider what you as the main user wants where. As we are doing these for someone, we took guidance from them as to where they’d prefer the main items to go, and then tweaked it a little to be able to fit more gear in for them. Another consideration is that when you are kitting out drawers, we need to ensure that the tools contained don’t stand too proud so that the drawers can still be closed. Drawers are a lot less forgiving in those terms compared to tool boxes!

Once happy with the layout, we decided to start the cutting in with the Jigsaw. It already has a battery and blade attached… we wanted this to be a dynamic storage solution. The idea being you can just pick out the tool you want and go without having to remove batteries, blades etc for storage.

Important safety advice!

Please always ensure you wear cutting gloves before you begin cutting. We are going to be cutting this project with the blades that come contained within our basic cutting pack. These packs come free with all orders over £50. But if you don’t already own cutting gloves, it’s well worth getting these. We supply them as part of our next level cutting kits; you can add these to your basket for half price. That’s less than £10 when placing an order for foam. There are also instructions included in the cutting packs. Also, it’s worth familiarising yourself with some of our YouTube videos, especially around cutting and peeling before starting too.

Time to cut our DeWalt TSTAK inserts

For cutting, we apply just a little pressure to the item, then holding the scalpel like a pencil, use it to trace a line around the item. Initially we skip over the blade and stick to scoring around the profile of the item itself. Once we’ve gone lightly around, we can then go back over and cut down to the desired depth for the tool. We obviously don’t want to cut all the way through, but still go as deep as we can. So for us here using 50mm inserts, that means going down to around a 40mm depth, leaving 10mm as a strong, solid base. Sometimes with deeper items we do end up having to cut all the way through, as you’ll see later. But wherever possible we will leave a base layer. Then, it’s time to peel.

As always, we test fit the insert we’ve completed, making sure we can close the drawer! Then, we can move on to the next one.

Next, the drills. Here we managed to fit a combi drill and an impactor along with impact bits, screw extractors and some other bits and pieces all together. We did cut all the way through one section. As the illustration below shows, that’s where the contractors belt clip is attached to the drill. Obviously we want to keep that on for ease of use for the user. But creating that small area of extra depth makes it fit nice and snugly. Also, importantly, it makes sure it won’t snag on the drawer when opening and closing. We also add finger pulls. That’s a great tip to make sure it’s nice and easy to get the tools out of the foam easily.

The Stanley Fatmax Pro-organiser

So that’s the TSTAK drawers finished… time to move on to the Stanley Fatmax Pro-Stack drawers using the same process. First, plan the layout, trace cut around, cut down to the required depth and then peel the foam. The main difference with these versus the previous drawer is that we need to apply a little more weight to the item. This stops smaller / lighter items from moving even slightly when cutting around. With finer items its even more important to keep the blade perpendicular to the foam when cutting. This makes sure there’s no chance of tilting the blade in under rounded tool profiles.

Aesthetically, we planned it so all the handles lay the same direction. Not only is that pleasing to the eye but it makes finger pulls easier too. We can do one long, neat finger pull all the way across them using a steel rule. Also we have cut the full depth of the tools into the foam so they lay perfectly flush in there. That means we know the drawers works as they should.