Tool Organising, or The Adam Savage
Obsession – TOOL CASES
Okay I admit it. I watched Adam and
realised that my workshop was hopeless – I don't actually have a
workshop in fact. I need a space that can be organised as a workshop
but more than that, it needs places for all of the tools I use and
they must be organised so I can find them. I have suffered though
moving house and as a result everything shop was packed in cardboard
boxes and shoved in a tin shed until now. Then I decided to start
making things again. I ended up buying tools I already had again
because I didn't even know what I had, and even if I remembered it, I
couldn't find it: a nightmare.
I won't get this problem again if I
make my tool boxes well and so this is that project.
This is not a new idea for me either: I
have been saving some cases from old video equipment I found years
ago for exactly this purpose – they are mainly plywood and even if
I only use the metal corner bits and hinges it will have been worth
it.
I looked at buying tool cases but there
is nothing that meets my needs – either they are impractical, too
expensive or both. Lots of blowmould plastic: Nope. I will be
getting some organisers for parts like nuts & bolts but none of
the tool cases I have seen make sense to me.
I don't really want any big
freestanding tools like a sawbench since I don't expect to do that
much sawing – and I would rather find or make some sort of compact,
folding alternative instead – I know I will have to move house
again sometime and if any item is too big it will just be a burden,
and don't even think about the cost. Those things are expensive.
DESIGN
I first set out some categories for my
tools so that I could decide how many cases and what for:
I came up with six : (1) marking, (2)
drill/tap, (3)saw/file, (4)join/clamp, (5)electrical and (6)paint.
As I learned from Adam, the best cases
can either be sat at the back of the workbench for easy access or
they become the workbench itself – this I intend to do for the
electrical case.
I also want to avoid making layered
cases where you need to open layers to get at the tools behind: that
means you can't see what you have got. Everything should be visible
at a glance.
The cases must also be hand movable
which limits the weight, so I might need to split the power tools up.
It is also a good idea if heavier items should be lower down in the case for stability.
I expect to make them mostly out of
plywood so I will need a saw with straight guides for that: not sure
exactly how that will be done yet. I may need to buy a new tool for this !
There is one more issue to mention:
expansion. I expect to be getting more tools as time passes or
replacing tools that fail, so there must be some room for expansion
and ways to modify or replace the tool clamps as needs arise, so the cases should be like this:
there should be a solid main case body and then tool clamps screwed or otherwise removably attached
to that.
As always I begin the design phase by
measuring and modelling in Blender to get an idea of how things will
be packed in and so forth.
Here are the two basic design ideas as
described:
 |
| Basic case |
 | |
| Case/bench combination |
Yep, that means I now have a whole heap of projects to keep me busy every spare moment - and this one could stall the others for weeks - but it has very good reasons why. I don't ever want to dig through piles of rusty tools for a chuck key again. It's kind of a metaproject: all others will benefit from it.
Special thanks to Adam Savage for reminding me of my maker roots. Maybe other people have their ethnicity or something to identify themselves with, but me? I'm an engineer, a maker.
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