3 weeks by cncdivi
What’s better: crazy crowded drawers or a nice vertical organized tool stand?
I am obsessed with toolboxes. Each time there’s a sale after occasions like Father’s Day or Christmas, I seize the moment to expand my collection of rolling toolboxes. Despite the number I purchase, it feels like there’s never sufficient drawer space to properly organize my workshop, so continuous accumulation has been my solution. However, there might be other possible solutions.
Adam Savage, one of the figures behind the MythBusters TV show, possesses quite a number of tools himself but despises toolboxes. His claim is that “drawers are where items get lost forever.” He prefers an approach that allows him to locate items visibly without having to dig through layers of drawers. As for me, my ideal situation would be to set up French fittings for my tools in toolbox drawers, but I have yet to actualize this dream up until now.
Enter Adam Savage’s Tool Organizer Stand. It’s his alternative to drawers. Check it out:
With this novel approach, Savage achieves three ideals at once for tool storage and access:
1. It’s portable. If you’re tired of running back and forth to the toolbox, you’ll like this idea. Just drag the Tool Organizer over to where you’re working and everything you need is handy. It’s mounted on casters and as you’ll see from the video, it’s very easy to move around, whether to get to a new work area or just to spin it around to access tools on all four sides.
2. It’s dense packed. Savage achieves a very high density–there are a lot of tools in a very small space on this thing.
3. You can see what you want. Tools are logically grouped by type and everything is very visible. Nothing hides under other tools or in a closed drawer.
He has more than one of these things. The other isn’t shown very much, but it has the standard organizers for drill bits and other cutters. I could see a stand like this set up to keep toolholders together with new inserts, cutters, and twist drills handy in a small CNC shop.
I am tempted to give one a try. The stand certainly doesn’t look hard to build, and if nothing else, I’d be more likely to put the tools back where they go with a rig like this instead of leaving them on the nearest flat surface. A CNC Router with a big enough table could be knocking one of these out in no time.
Check Out Adam Savage’s 2001 Space Suit Cosplay
I wondered what sorts of projects were being made in the workshop lately, so poked at some of the latest video uploads. Savage does a lot of Cosplay (basically, making costumes that match movies, comics, and other media). I got a real kick out of his 2001 A Space Odyssey replica space suits. They’re really faithful to the original movie:
[youtube width=”800″ height=”540″]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxRoK5LZa_A[/youtube]
Space suits from 2001: A Space Odyssey…
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Recently updated on March 4th, 2024 at 01:02 pm
Bob is responsible for the development and implementation of the popular G-Wizard CNC Software. Bob is also the founder of CNCCookbook, the largest CNC-related blog on the Internet.
wait a week, it will be on Kickstarter, LMAO
A guy with a water jet could do these real nice out of poly board.
There are downsides to having your tools out and exposed all the time: dust & spider webs. Tools kept in (closed) toolboxes tend to stay cleaner than tools that sit on the bench top or hang on a hook wall.
For various work projects around our farm property, I’ve found that segregating tools by task type helps minimize the frustration of rummaging around trying to find one ore more tools for the task at hand – and reducing trips back to the workshop to get something I forgot. I have separate tool boxes for plumbing, electrical, irrigation (specialized plumbing), fencing, and general fix-it (carpentry) tasks. If I need to replace a light switch, I can just grab the electrical toolbox and go. Water pipe breaks? Grab the plumbing kit and go
Danny, as far as the dust, I’d throw a tarp over it when done.
Cool idea! At work I keep commonly used tools upright in a big block of plastic sitting on top of a tool cart. This is far easier to deal with than running around with a drawer full of tools. A rack like this is just icing on the cake so to speak and probably many times more useful.
I’m not completely against drawers though, something like this sitting on a low profile roll around tool box would be ideal. A rack on top of something like this: http://cdn0.grizzly.com/pics/jpeg500/h/h5650-26aeb2f00324b4b5f3e48aa3e4d16b67.jpg would be ideal. Need to think about this a bit.
As for the spacesuit, you realize that’s Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut, with him? He doesn’t look too eager to get in that suit…
Yes, I watched the video and Chris identifies himself. He’s pretty low-key throughout the video. I can understand his perspective–why dress up in a play spacesuit when you’re a real astronaut? Nevertheless, I’ll bet he wound up having fun despite it all, LOL.
He’s an astronaut, that is kind of their way. There is another video where they walk the floor and he has a great time.
Here near the beach tools that are left out will rust, and tools in drawers with sheets of vapor barrier paper under them are still at risk.
I recently bought a used Lista cabinet (22x40x60 tall x 9 drawers) and while at $800 it wasn’t inexpensive it let me put almost all of my lathe, mill, inspection, fixturing and fastener stuff away in one spot. Even the big lathe chucks fit into a deep bottom drawer. With heavy loads the drawers still move smoothly and easily.
I had to sacrifice 40″ of workbench to find a place for the cabinet, but then that workbench was usually buried under piles of stuff anyway.
It was money well spent, and I wouldn’t mind having another one.
Michael, I am also near the beach, but see very little rust. I have an “induction” process for any new tools arriving at my shop. I give them a spritz and wipedown with a firearms-grade rust preventative. I like Break-Free, which I discovered from this review:
http://www.thegunzone.com/rust.html
It goes on not just hand tools, but all my tooling. Try it or something similar. You will like it.
I’m neither convinced nor unconvinced by this approach. My pliers draw is in complete chaos but I’m not sure I want them all out on a stand either. I have some common tools on the wall (things for assembling and disassembling) but I’m happy to have circlip pliers etc put away. French fitting is not flexible enough for me either, still looking for my perfect way.
CHECK OUT http://www.osaapamerica.com/ for frenching tools into drawers. I saw them as Eastech this year.
This works great if you have your own shop with only a few people having access to it.
If you work for an outfit with two or three shifts and dozens of guys, your tools would disappear pretty quick; all you would have left is a nice empty rack.