practical and useful caddy for tools

[wolvenstien]

Ok, I have over 400 carving tools, and I want to make the most practical and useful caddy/caddies to hold and store these tools in.

I have a caddy that I made but am now looking to replace it from ideas I get from you all...

Please post pix of the caddies you have, the ones you use and the ones you use for storage, and please describe the way you have your tools situated, whether it be by catalog (ABCDE......) or how ever you have them and anything else that feeds into how you have them.

Thanks

Mike

[wolvenstien]

no one ? any one ?

[Chris B]

OK i think i can help you here. I have purchased a traveling toolbox from Dale Grabowski, and I like it alot. Right now there isnt too good of organization to it. I have to do that. His website is www.grandpas-pastime.com Good quality and pretty good prices I would say. Hey does have the ultimate tool rack that can hold I think up to 400 tools. Hope this helped,

Chris

[bruce johnson]

Wolvenstein,

I used to store my stamps in 4x6 sections of fencepost that I cut to length to fit into tool boxes. I drilled the holes in the grid pattern, and it worked out just OK. Whenever I got new stamps, I had to the left shift/right shift to make a place for them. I would take some out for my working rack. When I put them back, invariably I would forget one, start in the wrong hole, and not have room for everyone. PIA to keep organized, had to open 3 boxes to get all I needed for one project, but they did look nice.

I went to a more open system. I bought a stack of plastic juice cups on the aisle end display at Target, drilled a hole in the bottom for the pegboard organizer to go through and hung them up. I sort them by type of stamp only now. The old guys used to use soup cans on their bench, my stamp bench is a little shy on space so this way works out for me. These are my most used stamps. The extras that I can't quite part with yet are rubberbanded together by type and kept in an old tacklebox. The only problem with my system is that I have a few stamps by one maker whose stamps are about 3/16" shorter than most, and they tend to hide under the others in the cups. Probably ought to just put all his together in one cup.

I have a little block holder for the project at hand. Usually 10-20 stamps are out, and then they go back into the cups when done. For travel, I made a little rollup bag to carry the stamps and knives. My tooling neighbors at the Wickenburg classes gave me crap about having an 18" strop, and then carrying tools in ziplock bags. Since one guy was going to be at the Elko class too, I made it to shut him up. I attached pics of my wall, the at-hand block, and the tool roll.

[Ross]

i had a piece like your tool roll fastened to my tooling bench. i only put the tools i was using in it, kept the bench surface clear. then i moved back to oklahoma and didn't have room for everything, including the bench. i'm getting my shop put together here and will do that again as soon as i get the chance. till them i'm stuck with the plastic tool holders from tandy for holding what i'm actually using. for storage i use the wooden blocks with a slot for each tool so as to not damage one by banging against another.

[Coiffure]

Hello all, I am brand spanking new here, and haven't done any leathercrafting since I was in the 70's and am wanting to get back into it.

Now I am looking for someone who has made a wood block tool holder and if they have made one, can someone help me find a grid that I can print out so I can place the holes equally apart from each other, and be able to also make holes bigger for bigger tools as well?

Does anyone have anything like that, and if you do, can you email it to me at coiffure@aol.com, so I can get this made and get started in making some things. I am so excited to be working with leather again, as I had a horse accident and can't do anything but lay around, blew both knees out, and am having surgery for hopefully the last one, on Jan 14 and I want to do some leather tooling while laid up. This is my 5 surgery from my accident that happened 2 yrs ago. Been laid up mostly ever since. I hope I can get the help of having a piece of paper that can give me a grid to drill holes in a wood block. Thanks in advance, Pam

PS. I am going to try and put this also in a new forum topic to see if I get answers there as well. I just have been able to post so here I am , new and ready to learn.

[gtwister09]

Mike,

We have made so many different ones. Most of them were made for individual stamps except for our last ones. Some were hollowed out to reduce weight. Some were made from hardwoods. We even started to make one that would have configurable individual tool holders that could be moved around in a base holder but as the number of stamps increased over 500, it became problematic to continue to with the individual tool hole design in any fashion.

-- Some were simple holes in small chunks of 2 X 4's and 4 X 4's.

-- Some were made from styrofoam foundations with epoxy coverings.

-- Some were made on a circular rack that spun around and had various levels for individual tools.

-- One that fit in a Craftsman tool box (Came from one of the leathercraft magazines).

-- We also made the carrying case from leather magazines as well (smaller one with individual holes for tools and

a leather case that snapped onto a wooden block.

-- Some designs were even angled pieces of 2 inch PVC mounted on a holder so that the tools were in bunches.

The final one that we ended up with was a design that placed tools together in pockets or holes. Our design was tailor made to fit our specific workbench with four different tool holders that could be carried and also used to display tools for tooling. Swivel knife holes were also cut into them as well. It was an adaptation of a design by Verlane which was designed somewhat off of the idea of saddlemaker's rolls but in a rack that could be carried. This is included in another post but I will include the link here rather than reposting the filel. It is post #13.

http://www.leatherworker.net/forum/index.p...mp;hl=tool+rack

Regards,

Ben