Solving A Black Hole

While I appreciate the spatial efficiency and construction elegance of large tool chests, I know myself well enough to realize they are not suited for my temperament nor work habits.  As the renowned classical philosopher Harry Callahan remarked, “A man has to know his limitations.”

I prefer my tools to generally be in open storage at torso height whenever practicable (not always possible but still the goal), such as my habit of festooning the shop with machinists’ tool chests and hinged cabinets chest-high around the perimeter of the space, and my always handy rack of drawknives.

For the past few years I utilized a vintage tool chest for storing my molding and joinery planes next to my FORP Roubo bench.  Unfortunately for me the reality of my untidy habits comes to the fore and the chest is almost always under a crap-load of stuff, some of it valuable and some of it less so.  Thus I spent more time devising “work arounds” to avoid accessing those tools than using them.  I decided that the tool chest had to go.  Exactly where it would go has yet to be determined but had to go it did.

At the same time with some shop rearranging I had a surplus but crude shelving unit that fit the spot perfectly.  Coincidentally it held all of the planes that were formerly stored in the black hole of the big black tool chest.

Problem solved.

In the weeks since I made the switch I have used the now-easily-accessible planes more than in the years they were languishing in said Black Hole.