Nuts are easy. Bolts are a pain.
Some time ago I happened onto some used parts bins - largish drawers
in a 5x5 array, wider than high. I sorted by size in columns, starting
with 1/4" on the left. I have a row of washers, a row of nuts,
a couple of rows of bolts, and the bottom row is leftovers.
Since I predominantly work on British cars, this works great, since
all I care about is fine thread. The few coarse thread parts
that I keep around are in the leftovers drawers.
I have a much smaller cabinet for wood and sheet metal screws,
and machine screws below 1/4. It's barely adequate. I have a
couple similar cabinets for pipe thread stuff and hydraulic
fittings and occasionally stainless fasteners and springs and
hose clamps and ... well, you know.
When I started working on Italian cars, I found a Wurth distributor
and bought a nice bolt/nut/washer assortment in a metal tray. I
also have a clear divided tackle box for oddball metric stuff.
Come to think of it, I have a bunch of those tackle boxes for
electrical, trim, metric and other specialties that need to
be sorted in small quantities. They stack well, and take
a Sharpie for marking the ends. They fit nicely inside my 12" deep
cabinets.
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