Tool Storage
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How do you store your tools, and/or do you have plans for additional tool storage?
I have a large back room of the house turned into my workshop. So at the moment tools are stored in units I built into the alcoves.
I’m sure Paul has a tool box planed for this series, so I will surely be making a few of them.Very Best
KenHi Ken,
I’ve a feeling Paul will probably provide for tool box making in the forthcoming series. Adequate tool storage is a must and tool alcoves/pigeon holes certainly sound like a good route to follow and as back up to any tool chests/boxes you make. 🙂
Since a recent house renovation and move most of my tools have remained boxed in their respective tool chests, but it was certainly refreshing to get back to re-fitting the house and breaking out a few tools I’d not used for quite some time. 🙂 I’ve plans to for a new workshop in my garden on the site of two existing sheds, so it promises to be an interesting time of it as I re-build/repair parts of the house primarily with hand tools.
Hi Gary,
The new workshop project sounds great, a true labour of love. I wish I had the room to build one outside, but you make the best of what you have, as long as I can potter on with projects, I’m happy 🙂Good luck with the re-build 🙂
I’m looking forward to it and thank you Ken 🙂 I know how you must feel as I lived in a terraced house with back yard and no room to swing a cat for years, so had to either keep my work at work (Luckily I worked as a cabinetmaker before my premature retirement) or nab a bit of space beneath a tarp in the yard and pray for good weather lol 🙂
I think the main thing is gaining as much enjoyment as possible. 🙂
I am struggling with this now. There is a part of me that vibrates very strongly to Chris Schwarz’s thesis that you should be able to build wonderful stuff with what you can get in his tool chest. I am 67 years old and a little set in my ways. I have worked out of wall cabinets for the past thirty years with a recent hiatus of ten years from the shop. I just retired and I am back at it with a vengeance. I need to redo my tool storage because i have converted from an almost exclusively machine based way of making furniture, to hugely hand tools. Planes and saws are the biggest challenge. .
Right now my tool boxes are rubbermaid tubs….sadly.
-Canada
We all began somewhere Dave and I’ll bet you’ll make yourself a toolbox in the not too distant future and it’ll be something you can keep and work from for a lifetime of woodworking 🙂
@ronharper: I have also been swept away by The Anarchist Tool Chest and started dreaming about a chest with the tools needed to perform most tasks when building with wood. The more I think about it though it is probably the concept of “building things that outlast me” and the anti buy-use-throw ideas that I really like.
The tool chest that Chris describes in the book is really nice and I hope to build one. But for storing my tools and enable an efficient workspace I think that a wall mounted tool cabinet will work best in my shop. Floor space is precious in my tiny space, so it makes more sense to use the area on the walls.
For the moment most of my planes are stored in plastic containers to protect them from dust and humidity, saws, chisels and other tools are hung on a toolboard for now.
Located in Jönköping, Sweden.
I am another retiree much like Ron, been working wood for most of adult life, took a break do to a lot of traveling with my job etc. My first wood working project was a wall cabinet I built all most 40 years mainly to house marking tools, saw blades for my cabinet saw and so forth. Since retiring 3 years ago and for heath reasons I am primarily Hand Tools now, I do keep my Shopsmith and Band Saw handy and a corded drill occasionally but am relying on Hand Tools.
I am also a fan of Christopher Schwarz and am planing on building a tool chest similar to the Anarchist Tool Chest and am building Paul’s bench as we speak.
Steve
Steve Massie, I live in the great State of Florida, US
In all honesty, wall cabinets – if you have the wall space – tend to provide better facilities for tool storage than chests and help reduce/eliminate repetitive bending. Chests are great if working in larger workshops or you find yourself relocating from job to job, but so are the smaller tool boxes that can be more easily transported and primed with task specific tool kits.
If anybody has links to free plans or descriptions of wall cabinets that stores planes, chisels and other common tools please post them here 🙂
I’m trying to accumulate as much information as possible that will, in time, boil down to a good cabinet solution for my shop.
Located in Jönköping, Sweden.
“The Toolbox Book” by Jim Tolpin is a pretty decent and well illustrated read. It no doubt helps expand upon ideas and plans expressed in “The Anarchist Tool Chest” by Chris Schwarz, but – perhaps more importantly – proves the facts that far more options are open to the individual and tool storage can’t be approached with a one size fits all mentality. Every tool kit/set of tools differs and one section within the book helps confirm potential flaws in Chris Schwarz sliding till layout, saw storage and lack of tool specific trays.
Some of you may have already seen this but Popular Woodworking are documenting the tool cabinet of H. O. Studley. It’s a pretty legendary tool cabinet for so many reasons. An absolutely astonishing cabinet. Have a Google for more images.
http://www.popularwoodworking.com/woodworking-blogs/chris-schwarz-blog/learning-to-speak-studley
http://www.popularwoodworking.com/woodworking-blogs/chris-schwarz-blog/h-o-studley-by-the-numbersGeorge.
"To know and not do is to not know"
I broke down and started building a modest tool box. Its going to have a deep compartment on top for my planes and other large’ish hand tools and two drawers underneath for my chisels and other bits. I’m working in pine but once we get to the tool box project I think I’ll try it in oak. It will add to the weight but since I don’t travel with my tools that doesn’t bother me at all. I keep seeing that great looking redish brown tool box and chest in Pauls videos, anybody know what that might be made of? Its a beautiful piece of furniture, one day I hope to make one like that.
-Canada
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