Dremelsaurus! dino tool holder Research the materials

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Research the materials

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As a multi-tool user, you’ll sooner or later end up with a vast variety of bits and accessories. Hence this project to create a unique and interesting Dremel accessories organizer. Note that your build may vary from my example: through your choice of storage figurine, but also depending on what set of tool bits you end up storing. As your tool collection expands, think about creative variations on this theme: bigger dino? different type of creature? What else? Share your project variant concepts in the Dremelsaurus builder’s group. Share your Dremel knowledge in the Dremel user’s group.

Today’s tasks: first, figure out which accessories you want to store. Second, select the figurine base that will work with your chosen assortment.

1. The discerning accessory collector

Task: first, we should select the subset of our accessories collection that we want to have readily to hand in our new tool holder. This will allow us to plan our storage layout, and select the most suitable figurine for the base.

We all need drill bits

For this first draft of the project, we’ll just work with the collection of tool bits we had on hand at the time, a handful of particularly useful ones. First up, I recommend a set of drill bits that all have the Dremel-diameter shank. This turns your Dremel into a light-duty drill, good enough for many small hacking projects. An easy solve for this is the Dremel 631 Brad Point 4-bit set; it includes the most common product modding sizes.

Everyone could use a plastic-cutting wheel

A very common task in product modding is hard plastic shaping and cutting. A great tool for that is a fiber cutoff wheel designed for plastics. Dremel makes one, called the Dremel EZ688-01 EZ Lock Cutting Kit for Metal and Plastic. It’s still not perfect on soft materials like PVC and rubber, but wow is it useful for harder plastics like styrene! This set contains heavier cutter wheels compounded for metal, some for plastic, and some lighter wheels designed for a thinner cut. Note: this is a quick-release system, much more convenient and safe than the old-school type (where you thread a tiny screw through to hold the wheel on the mandrel).

A burr set: great for shaping!

Carbide cutting burrs are great for shaping harder materials, plastic, wood, etc. This 10 piece burr cutter set is a great value, decent quality and affordable.

The tip of the iceburg...

This is just the start: there are so many useful accessories! As you work more projects, you will collect more specialized tools for specific tasks. But the above three, along with the stock ones you get with the Dremel Lite, are a great starting set. If you know of others we should discuss and recommend, please share in the Dremel user’s group!

2. Which creature? Exploring storage options

Task: pick a creature. What kind of spiny creature should we use? Anything with a lot of surface area to hold drill bits would work. And ideally the model we use as the base would be of a reasonably hard material, too so it’s easier to modify. Could be something like a porcupine an anteater, or a pangolin. Better I think would be a dinosaur; something bad-ass perhaps. And with a long spine, that can act as a vessel for our dremel bits.

Stegosaurus, kentrosaurus, ankylosaurus, styracosaurus?

We originally made a holder from a Stegosaurus model by Boley, which makes solid dinos with great deco. But, the rest of the set was kind of lame two-footers that didn’t even stand up well. And it’s now out of stock, perhaps discontinued. So now we recommend the three-dino set from YOOUSOO, which has the great advantage of having three creatures suitable to tool holders, in the same kit. They’re still solid, weighty, have decent deco, and good postures.

Styracosaurus

This is a very nice looking creature. Strictly from a tool holder perspective though, the kick-ass spiky collar might get in the way of easy tool storage and retrieval. But it’s got very nice slab sides, so you could store a lot of tools there too. Definitely a contender.

Kentrosaurus

This one is close to the Stegosaurus we used in our video, and offers a lot of spine length for tools. I like the raised tail, where I might store the ones I reach for most often.

Ankylosaurus

While our plan is to drill along the spines of a figure to make a simple tool holder, if we need more storage we could also drill around the body, to make a sort of porcupine. One dino that would be pretty good for surface area, out of the box, would be Ankylosaurus, which has a wide round flat back, like a desert lizard.

If you like one of these, grab the set then head to the next step. There’s also a complete parts list in the materials tab on the build start page, and you can filter in the shop by this build, to see all the tools and materials we use here, at one time: project-in-a-box.

Next: the plan of attack!

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Dremelsaurus! dino tool holder

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