*its the afternoon while I am typing this, the wind is brisk but the temperatures are holding in the 50s and 60s despite it. It feels like an afternoon coffee type of day. Let's brew....oh and I have a product to review. Can't wait to show this off and give it a go over some coffee*
When BCW released its one of a kind card sorting tray a couple of years ago I was madly in love. So madly in love my wife questioned our relationship when she saw me dancing with the tray every time I added another one. I have four now by the way and may need some marriage counseling.
In the past month or so, BCW teased a revolutionary new sorting tray that is supposed to put the previous tray to shame. I am not sure how they expect to do that when I love the previous one so much, but they did.
Meet my newest model Giselle. Sorry Tom, I mean, BCW's newest model, the Modular Sorting Tray.
*takes a sip of coffee, takes a box of the trays out*
The box teases a six slot tray
while the back talks about how slick it is and all other details about it.
*takes another sip, opens up the box*
Inside of the box you pull out the six cells split up into two sets of three.
Before I show you how these fit together, or the best way I can doing it on a blog, I wanted to break down a cell by itself and show you what it looks like and its hidden feature.
Here we have a single cell from the modular tray. All by it's lonesome and sad because of it. I guess I better hurry up the speech here and put it back with its family.
The card cells are large enough to accommodate cards in sleeves, toploaders, or magnetic holders. That alone is impressive.
On each side on a single cell, you will find grooves. These grooves or dovetail joints will be how you put your sorting tray together.
When you look on the bottom of the cell you will see a hole and what appears to be a push in part. The hole is for pushing cards out of the cell if you need to. I want you to go ahead and push it in. Take note of the double notch at the top of the indent in.
Magic! Just snap that notch into the top of the tray and your deep sorting cell is now half way deep and at an angle if your sorting less cards. Unlike myself who will just keep the cells as they are as I am in the middle of one epic sorting adventure.
(the video I am posting at the end of this post will show you how to do this as well)
*takes another sip, then another. Time to discuss more about the tray and how it all comes together*
I put the cell I took off and added it back to its group of three leading us back to two groups of three.
Notice that each sides when flipped the right way have different sized dovetail joints which interlock into one another once you slide them together.
These dovetail joints slide together and move easier than mine do at age 37.
Here's a couple of much up closer pictures of the dovetail joints sliding in.
One important note of the Modular Sorting
Tray that I need to let you know about is when the card cells are arranged into a
tray, you need to make complete rows (or columns) and then slide those
together. Do not make an L shape and then try to add a card cell into
the center of the L, as you won’t get all of the dovetail joints
connected.
You can see that in this video here:
I will put a full instructional video at the end of this post so you can see it done first hand. But believe me, if I can handle doing this, you can too. This comes from someone whose wife won't even let him hold a hammer.
*takes another sip before showing off the next parts*
What I haven't mentioned yet, was the fact there was no way 6 cells was going to cut it for the size project I was doing.
So I tried six times that.
36 cells later slid together and you have what I consider to be the monster sorter model. It's my Giselle times six.
These sorting trays are also very sturdy in comparison to the older model that was made of thin plastic. I took chances before carrying the old model up and down the stairs full of cards and hoping for the best which worked without incident. This model without a doubt I would feel safely to carry room to room without worrying about an impending disaster.
Another cool thing about this modular tray is you can shape it anyway you want or can fit in your card sorting area. There are many ways to build and use your tray including...
Stacking it to save space.
Let's say you build a monster version like I did and want to not use up all of your space, you can break it down to smaller sections and simply stack em as easy as Pringles.
As for me though, I plan on keeping it all together and put it to full use.
Like I have already done here.
This is only part of my project. The rest I had to use the old model for.
Just in case you haven't seen the old model they were using it looks like this,
It was very useful but didn't hold a lot of cards. Especially for bigger projects and a lot of the spaces were too thin.
The Modular Sorting Tray was a huge upgrade in comparison.
Kudos to you BCW on an excellent creation! I tip my coffee mug to you! I may need to add on to my tray still though looking at what I have to sort.
If this product is something that interests you, find it here
BCW Modular Sorting Tray and remember the more you buy the better deal you will get.
And here is the
Product Video that I hope will be a big help like it was for me in putting this together. And women say men can't do two things at once and listen to instructions...hold on, what was that honey I was typing? Guess I better go and hopefully she doesn't catch me giving Giselle a goodbye kiss.
*coffee cup empty, blogger out!*
