Tool Management Ideas

Everyone with tools knows that they can be a pain to find if you are not organized. Whether your tools are as few as one of everything or as extensive as several different kinds of hammers alone, they need to be stored somewhere.

What I have seen in a woodworking shop I used to work in was the idea of having a storage unit (ours was a big empty metal cabinet with doors) with some good pegboard attached to the insides of the doors and the walls inside the storage unit, with the result of making the doors as much a storage space as the inside walls. You can use the pegboard inside your cabinet to hang up your tools on pegs.

Once you have all your tools interlocking as much as you want in order to save space, you can then use a permanent marker to trace around each tool. This will make it so that you and others will remember how the tool originally was hung on the pegboard. You can then use a label maker to make labels for each tool. This will make it easier for those who are not acquainted with what name goes with which tool to assist you when you are laboring in your designated workspace. Also, one more thought is that you can also put an inclined shelf at the bottom of your storage unit with wooden ridges for tools such as planes to rest on so that they are visible without being in danger of falling off.

There is also the method of a storage chest and/or set of drawers. You need to make sure that you do not overfill these spaces so that it is not more of a pain for you to retrieve the tools than you feel it is worth. Keep each drawer or compartment limited to one particular category, such as keeping all your flathead screwdrivers in one place and all your hammers in another. You may also have so many tools that you have tools that are used in entirely different ways. In this case, I suggest you put your tools that are specifically meant for, say, metalworking, in one storage apparatus and those used only for fixing cars in another.