Convenient Gel sheet Storage?

[beachcombah15]

Does anyone have any crack ideas on storing their gel sheets so their not always wrapped up in a tube? or any ideas that im too stupid to think of...haha. Everytime I need to go to cut a new gel i end up taking 10-15 minutes matching all the sides on the sheets so they roll up evenly back in the tube...

[Footer]

The "industry standard" way of doing it is something like this...


I have seen people use old drafting filing cabinets as well as individual PVC Pipe for each type of gel (yes, that would be a wall of over 300 tubes).

[beachcombah15]

so gel storage= pipe organ! haha

[waynehoskins]

I use my version of a drafting "flat file" -- which to normal people resembles a flat surface with a pile of stuff on it.

[lieperjp]

If you want to get some new drafting cabinets, good luck as they are very, very expensive. See these here.

Something else that you could do is get a rolling tube rack, something like these. You don't even have to keep the tubes, just roll up the gel and stick the rolls in. I work at an office supply store, and we have several of the wire ones in our store like this or this. The metal ones are actually much sturdier than they look. Biggestbook.com is where many small office supply stores can get products, if you don't want to order online. Just take in the item number. Again, they're all pretty expensive. You're better off just building something with leftover pieces of wood.

We use something like what Footer posted above... we don't use that much gel so we just have it separated by base color on each shelf. Also, I use two mobile file bins for cut gel (one for our strip lights and a second larger one for the rest of the lights.)

[Wolf]

Originally Posted by Footer

The "industry standard" way of doing it is something like this...


I have seen people use old drafting filing cabinets as well as individual PVC Pipe for each type of gel (yes, that would be a wall of over 300 tubes).

This is what I use, works great and on mine the shelfs slide out. We keep about 5 different colors on each.

[Esoteric]

I keep sheets rolled up in shipping tubes (many times you can get them free), and cuts in file folders in a traditional file cabinet. Something I picked up at the PAC,

Mike

[Wolf]

Originally Posted by Esoteric

I keep sheets rolled up in shipping tubes (many times you can get them free), and cuts in file folders in a traditional file cabinet. Something I picked up at the PAC,

Mike

To me it seems as if that would way to many tubes, and take up a lot of space. I could see keeping some tubes on hand for when you need to take full sheets with you but other than that not so much.

Is there a reason you use tubes?

[Esoteric]

Originally Posted by Wolf

To me it seems as if that would way to many tubes, and take up a lot of space. I could see keeping some tubes on hand for when you need to take full sheets with you but other than that not so much.

Is there a reason you use tubes?

We (the two churches I freelance for on a regular basis) do not keep a lot of sheets. We only keep about 4 colors in sheets. Everything else is ordered and cut up as it is needed.

When we were at the PAC and when I spent time TDing at a theater where we kept significant amounts of gel we used one of those old style files.

Of course at the PAC we would order gel by the roll and not the sheet.

Mike

[aporter2012]

At my theatre we use old Accordion Folios for all the cut gell. They come in handy because it is one folio so we are not dealing with alot of storage, and the gell stays flat and organized by color. As for big sheets, we keep them in an art portfolio. Again, we have one thing that holds the gell so we dont have to juggle a bunch of tubes.