Tool boxes

[mksj]

I use narrow tool chests with lots of drawers and then I mount my 5C collets either on the back or side with racks, as well as centers and other tooling. I have one by my lathe and also by my mill. They are Harbor Freight General side cabinets made to be hung on their bigger cabinets. I put a frame underneath and add locking wheels. They are 14.5" wide, I got mine years ago on a sale, back then they were around $150 a piece. I also have one of their 72" rolling tool cabinets that I mounted a table on the top. They are well built for the money, and you can find discount coupons on-line (at least in the past).

Harbor Freight Tools – Quality Tools at Discount Prices Since 1977

Harbor Freight buys their top quality tools from the same factories that supply our competitors. We cut out the middleman and pass the savings to you!

www.harborfreight.com

 

[Bone Head]

I use narrow tool chests with lots of drawers and then I mount my 5C collets either on the back or side with racks, as well as centers and other tooling. I have one by my lathe and also by my mill. They are Harbor Freight General side cabinets made to be hung on their bigger cabinets. I put a frame underneath and add locking wheels. They are 14.5" wide, I got mine years ago on a sale, back then they were around $150 a piece. I also have one of their 72" rolling tool cabinets that I mounted a table on the top. They are well built for the money, and you can find discount coupons on-line (at least in the past).

Harbor Freight Tools – Quality Tools at Discount Prices Since 1977

Harbor Freight buys their top quality tools from the same factories that supply our competitors. We cut out the middleman and pass the savings to you!

www.harborfreight.com

View attachment 428646

View attachment 428647
View attachment 428648
View attachment 428649

That's a really nice set-up there!

 

[Bone Head]

No roll-a-round huh? If you happen to look at Craftsman top chests, also look at the middle 2 or 3 drawer add-on (middle) they offer. Another place to look is craigslist. Some nice top chests come up there from time to time.
I will offer this. No matter what you get, they're never big enough. I've got two sets of craftsman like this and I still have hand tools and stuff in the clutter.

 

[Boswell]

No matter what you get, they're never big enough

+1

 

[mmcmdl]

I will offer this. No matter what you get, they're never big enough.

Tell me about it ! As I got limited for space over the years , I sold all my Kennedy machinist sets . (5) Roll around , middle and top chests . They all went . They did not hold what I wanted them to hold and I considered them light duty . I know you're talking top chests here . The 3 I kept are a Kennedy large mechanics box which holds sockets and larger tools as well as the few machinists precision tools I have in at work . This sits on a 40" Vidmar which holds the heavy weight items . The Gerstner which was my Uncle's is a 1937 model , and another wooden chest that was his father's from 1916 . They hold nothing other than sentimental value , no tools .

I think your decision should be based upon what you're going to store inside of the box . But as everyone has stated , you run out of room fast if you're a pack rat like myself .

 

[mmcmdl]

The fight against clutter is difficult.

@WobblyHand . As you have seen first hand , I'm the King of Clutter .

 

[Jake M]

Hello again,
I'm getting tired of things gathering around my lathe, mill and on my bench because I have nowhere to put them.

I have that problem too. Trouble is, I don't think storage space is gonna fix the problem. :-/

So, at Amazon, I see a few by Gerstner that look nice and roomy but the image clearly shows finger-jointed material used in the construction and I know what that means.

I do know exactly what you mean. The thing is though, by the time they devolve to "lesser joinery", they've also more than likely devolved to making them out of wood that's been treated as if it were pallet wood. It acts different from proper wood of the same age and species. I've had some stuff like that turn out to be pretty OK.... Yeah, I know... I know...

I've just recently recovered one of my tool boxes from work, that has literally sat unused and abandoned in a storage area for 20 plus years, since it became redundant. It's headed for the dead space behind my 9A with the horizontal drive, which rules out a bunch of nice wooden machinist boxes, because the front cover has to flip down... (They're out there though, and if/when I find the one I like.... It'll happen). This is not a "machinist chest", but I think it's going to be a good fit. This type of tool chest came in a variety of brands, sizes, right down to pretty small... They're dirt cheap all the time on the usual classified ad places, and really not "that" much to buy new. Not sure how this will work out, but the plan I envision is the top two drawers with dividers for smaller tools/bits, and the bottom two for larger items that won't "scramble" together. The top I can see with calipers, safety glasses, one or two mic's, and the current/active tools, and the current/active chuck key. And with a flip down lid to easily cover the active tools when chip control becomes an issue, which it admittedly does sometimes....

You know what you need to store better than I do, but speaking more from my mechanic experience, I like full width drawers with adjustable (or at least replacable) dividers over small narrow drawers. Small drawers work exceptionally well for things that actually fit them, which almost always means (in my world) that nothing fits right, so the small drawers get random things which fit more so than they get grouped items collected together, otherwise they end up with one or two things and a lot of empty space. Dividers waste less space with extra slides and box infrastructure, and of course if you make them, they're made to fit your tools just right.

 

[Bi11Hudson]

No roll-a-round huh? If you happen to look at Craftsman top chests, also look at the middle 2 or 3 drawer add-on (middle) they offer. Another place to look is craigslist. Some nice top chests come up there from time to time.
I will offer this. No matter what you get, they're never big enough. I've got two sets of craftsman like this and I still have hand tools and stuff in the clutter.

Over all, I'm not sure if the boxes are too small or if I am driven to acquire new "stuff" to fill out an empty spot. I have more boxes than I can readily count. and still have loose tools laying around for no dedicated spot to store them.

I will concede that there are several crafts represented. I have been an "old school" electrician my whole life. There is an armature lathe laying around somewhere. In my early days, I did a lot of work with "rigid" conduit which is simply reamed sched 40 galvanized water pipe. I won't openly admit to some shenanigans, but gas fitting falls in that area of interest.

This is a "machinist" related board so no need to go into the tooling there. I do have a couple of lathes, a couple mills, a shaper, a complete, albeit small, machine shop.

Then the carpentery tooling. I have done some serious work there, both "new" work and "old" work when I needed to escape the electrical field for a while. Usually getting my brain scrambled by being overly enthusiastic. I tend to partial to old trucks. . . Not for restoration or customizing. Not very fast but brute force powerful. And last but not least is my models.

All of these crafts of interest share a great deal of tooling. It's not a matter of closing off one hobby and its' tooling and opening another. Even my model building (mechanical) crosses to electronics, which crosses to small machinist work. Just needle nose pliers go from tweezers to surgical graspers to small pliers to electrician's needle nose, some 11 inches long.

I have several Kennedy boxes, several Craftsman boxes, and several "Wally World Specials". As much as I would like a (several) Gerstner tool box, it (they) would be no more than fancy Kennedy boxes and would be treated the same way. The contents would span so many hobbies that they would be "just another" storage spot for smaller tools.

.

 

[redvan22]

I use narrow tool chests with lots of drawers and then I mount my 5C collets either on the back or side with racks, as well as centers and other tooling. I have one by my lathe and also by my mill. They are Harbor Freight General side cabinets made to be hung on their bigger cabinets. I put a frame underneath and add locking wheels. They are 14.5" wide, I got mine years ago on a sale, back then they were around $150 a piece. I also have one of their 72" rolling tool cabinets that I mounted a table on the top. They are well built for the money, and you can find discount coupons on-line (at least in the past).

Harbor Freight Tools – Quality Tools at Discount Prices Since 1977

Harbor Freight buys their top quality tools from the same factories that supply our competitors. We cut out the middleman and pass the savings to you!

www.harborfreight.com

View attachment 428646

View attachment 428647
View attachment 428648
View attachment 428649

Beautiful, that's what I'm taking about.

 

[Dabbler]

I have al lot of boxes (there are never enough).

My Husky is cheaply made, but gets the job done. My older Kennedy is a clone that undoubtedly came out of the same factory, but without the logo. My other Kennnedy tool boxes I bought used (again 25+years old). My fave, however is a set of offshore boxes made of stainless steel I bought used. They are the best made, better than my vintage Craftsman, or the Snap-on that I have now passed on to someone else.

My point is, that any box is better than none, a smooth running box is better than one with bad runners. Maybe my standards are low, but buying a zillion $ tool box fills me with embarrassment rather than joy.