On 9 Sep 2003 at 10:43, Bob Nelson wrote:

> MORAL; Start drinking single malt as soon as you're able - the heck with
> this wait until you're over 40 concept. 

I thought the only rule was you had to be older than the Scotch.

Anyway, with respect to the original question on tool storage, 
"philosophy" is definitely an appropriate word. I suspect the only 
thing many would agree on is that The Toolbox Book is a really good 
place to start, as it presents many choices. You get to review a 
number of alternatives that may not yet have occurred to you, and 
try to match one to your chosen methods of work and what you are 
building. Also, your working set of tools (with room for expansion, of 
course) is likely to drive a number of decisions.

For me, I have gravitated to the following, but am still flexible 
enough to change as the shop planning continues. There's a bunch 
of boards that used to be a friend's redwood fence (reuse instead of 
cutting down new trees) out behind the pump house, and I am 
arranging them on the ground in many interesting ways these days.

1) I like to keep my bench planes under my bench, because I use 
them a great deal.

2) Specialty planes now live in the new glass-front cabinet, so I can 
see where they are and yet keep the dust off of them.

3) Wooden moulding planes have their own cabinet, although many 
folks like tool chests for this.

4) Saws belong in a saw till, rather than hanging on walls as in my 
shop. These days I use my backsaws more than ever, and I am 
thinking of finding a way to keep them closer to my bench. If the saw 
till is too far away when I get around to building it, I may need 
another alternative to keep them handy, at least the two or three that 
get daily use.

5) Long skinny things probably belong in drawers. This includes 
chisels, even though mine hang on the wall in a shop-made rack. 
The good news with respect to the rack is that they are handy 
(again, close to the bench is good) and you can look at them all in a 
single glance to pick out the right size. The bad news is that they 
used to fall out once in a while, and there is a risk of damage or at 
least painful retrieval. I have seen shops where the chisels were in 
drawers and it looked quite appealing. I could live with it. 

Bitstock likely should be in drawers if you've got the room (bit blocks 
are OK if you don't have a great deal like I do). And I want my 
marking and measuring stuff to be in a drawer some day, rather 
than the cool but not overly protective cigar box they live in now. I 
had a wall mounted rack for files in my old shop, but it was poorly 
designed and they tended to end up on the floor while reaching for 
something above them. Not as serious a problem as with chisels, 
but still a bad thing. Files and rasps in a drawer? Maybe, I have not 
figured that one out yet.

6) Some things just naturally seem to hang on the walls, like braces 
and eggbeater drills. 

As you can tell, I don't gravitate towards a large "one size holds 
everything" type of tool storage solution, even though my tool 
acquisition has slowed down quite a bit these days. There clearly 
are beautiful and useful tool cabinets out there that do follow this 
route, just as for some folks a tool chest is the most comfortable 
way to work.

-Ken

Ken Greenberg (ken@c...)
667 Brush Creek Road, Santa Rosa, CA 95404
woodworking page: http://www.calast.com/personal/ken/wood.htm