On Aug 6, 12:10 am, wrote:
Double-posted to rec.radio.amateur.homebrew and r.r.a.boatanchors

Tubes in their original boxes are easy to store; just line them up on
little shelves which have enough "lip" to keep them from falling off.
But what about tubes which are NOT in individual boxes? I currently
have boxes and boxes (shoe-box size boxes) of loose tubes (mostly 7-
and 9-pin and octal bases; plus a few bigger ones, such as 807/1625,
1619, etc.) Has anyone found a really-good way to store loose tubes?

I've considered making some flat shelves (with enough "lip" ...) and
just laying the tubes down horizontally side by side. I've also drilled
some tube-base-diameter holes in a piece of 2x2 (actually 1.5x1.5) so
they'll stand on end; looks nice and would be easy to mount as shelves,
but will probably cost a fortune in spade drill bits!

Any suggestions?

If these are random used/unknown tubes of no particular value, the
economical solution is to toss them in shoeboxes or larger boxes and
not do anything to protect them. It's questional economics to keep
them lying around for another 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 more years!

If these are known good tubes with some value above zero, cardboard
boxes for all the common tube sizes (in particular the sizes you
mention) are available from AES, Angela, etc.

If you are a distributor with thousands and thousands of tubes coming
in from the far east or Russia, eggcrate-divider packing is popular.

Tim.