What did you do today?

[dbhost]

Top of the too chest got rearranged. My inner tie rod tool is LONG and apparently too long to fit in any of the drawers, so I had to rearrange the sockets. I need to see if I can figure out how to attach the One+ battery charger to the pegboard back of the chest.

I am discovering I have a lot of duplicates in my wrenches. Basically almost full sets with a missing wrench or two. Considering finishing the sets back up via pawn shops, and sewing together a few wrench rolls and pick up an 18" tool bag from Harbor Freight so I can have a roadside emergency tool bag for the camper.

I was volunteered for Pinewood Derby assistance for my friends kids. Since Debi passed and us never having had kids, they are trying to get "uncle Dave" involved more. I get it and appreciate it...

I found my AC vacuum pump is too tall for my deepest drawer, which is a little frustrating. I was hoping to be able to house ALL my specialty automotive tools shy of lifting and support tools in the toolbox.
The other deep drawers are getting checked to see if maybe I can stow my Ryobi One+ tools. Notably the chain saw, battery packs etc...

And I am sorting through the electrical tools to see how best to organize them.

[dbhost]

Spent the morning cleaning up the old tool stack, still a lot in there, but all the automotive specialty stuff is in the new one, all my sockets, wrench sets, electrical tools, and I still have 5 empty drawers in this thing. Now I need to round up my plumbing tools and get them in here... I spent a good bit of time with pen and paper and made a shopping list of missing sockets to replace, time to go to the pawn shops and start doing some shopping...

I have like I said the combination wrench sets as well that are missing pieces. Will sort them out and list out what is missing for the upcoming shopping. I have full sets in this cabinet, but I am going to dedicate a set for roadside repairs for the truck / camper... Or for when I need to go help a friend out...

As I go through all of this, I am pulling back loose tools that never had a home and giving them a home, and this is helping to further clean my shop out. I should have done this LONG ago...

The sanding pad for my 6" dual action sander has had its foam rubber disintegrate into little bits of black dust, time to get a new one... Yay...

I have 2 drawers in the old chest still populated with unbelieveable quantites of old taps, dies, miscellaneous drill bits and, for lack of a better term, thing a ma jigs... I seriously do NOT know what I am going to do with that stuff.

I found somehow I ended up with 4 soldering irons. Trying to give 3 of them away as the remaining one is my 90w adjustable temp soldering station that I absolutely love...

Anyway that is where I am at now. Going to take a shower, and go have dinner and a discussion about how they want me to cut out and shape their pinewood derby cars. There may be some 3d printing to be done here as well...

[dbhost]

So the Pinewood Derby cars are going to be more or less I shaped, and need to be 9/.16" thick. Not my specs BTW...

Anyway I planed them down and stopped at just under 5/8" as these are short blocks of wood and my AP1301 snipes.

Next step is to drill the axle bores. Maximum camber from this groups rules can be no greater than 2 degrees. Going to dial in the drill press table and get it set up for the task and get this done after I go get some milk for my breakfast / lunch...

Taking down the list of missing tools, spitting the surplusses out.

I might have mentioned it or not. I worked in a hardware store that went out of business in college. When we closed it down, the stock room had a mess of drill bits, punches, taps, dies, C clamps bench vise, bench grinder etc that were store use that were going to be trown out. Well they went home with me.

The bench vise is a nice OLD Ace Hardware machinists vise that I de-rusted and painted safety orange probably 15 years ago now... I don't use it a lot, but I can bolt it down to my workbench when I need to say hold a CV shaft to drive the knuckle off etc... The bench grinder is doing duty in my brother in laws body shop, and all those drill bits and taps and dies....

I am goinmg to filter out the replacements for bits in my current sets that may be missing, and then pitch the rest into a bucket. Bucket goes to a machinist / industrial mechanic friend of mine. I don't need the surplus, he can use it to make money, I get space back, he gets tools he should be able to put to use.

If anyone is wondering, these are almost certainly all old Vermont American stock as that is what we carried back then.

Lookinmg for someone that can dig out a crepe myrtle root at a reasonable price so I can get my shed done.

Lastly, making potatoes O'brien cajun style for breakfast taco filler through the week, need to stretch out the eggs these days...

[LCHIEN]

Drill press wheel camber jig
Scrap materials.
See photos. Works like a champ.
Just threaded a #6-32 screw into the legs using a #6-32 tap to start them.
#43 or #44 drill for the BSA PWD nails depending on how tight you want them.

[dbhost]

Got the car bodies planed, and cut out. Now I need to sneak up on the cut lines with a rasp, round over the edges, then the kids get to do the sanding... Good luck getting them away from the Nintendo for more than 5 minutes though... Ugh...

The nails on these can more or less be pushed in by hand.

My scroll saw blade kept getting loose on me and walking. I need to dig into adjustments on this thing, maybe replace the blade holder bits... Haven't used it in about 2 years, but I don't recall the blade walking so much...

Oh went to Harbor Freight to swap out my rusted up metric ratcheting boxe end wrenches. I already have a newer set that I bought before I realized HF has a lifetime warranty on the Pittsburgh stuff, so I am giving these to the same friend with the kids..

I know this sounds wierd, after this first set rusted up and the ratchet bits wouldn't work, I have taken to every time I get a new one, and periodically, I treat it with some air tool oil just to coat the metal surfaces and not allow rust to start...

[LCHIEN]

Kids should be able to do the rasp work to a line- safe enough and they learn some craftsman ship Rasp short of the marking line . clean up with OSS.

Nail holes push in by hand are a little loose. You will end up putting them in and out a few times and there's nothing more embarrassing than having the wheel fall off when running down the track.
I drill two sets of holes at each location (look at my pictures) once I get the drill press set up - a prime and a back up in case I wear out the holes. I drill holes when the block is whole... easier to jig up than when you cut the block every which way,

[twistsol]

Finally had a little shop time and made the ramp to the dog wash and the hinged mounting block. That is ready to be painted and hopefully installed before I head to Sioux Falls for my grandaughter's 5th birthday party.

I also made the end panels for the bookcases from reclaimed birch and had a host of problems with the build.

• The rail and stile bit cut right through a couple of the old nail holes in the birch and I got a bit of splintering.
• The wood conditioner didn't completely solve the stain blotching on the birch ply panels
• Where I filled nail holes the putty didn't take stain in the area around the holes even though I thought I had sanded and scraped it completely.
• The wood conditioner kept the birch from taking stain so I couldn't get the color to match the bookcases.
• The first coat of poly accentuated all the flaws, and these are now destined for the burn pile. I'll have to try again in a few weeks when I have a free weekend.

[dbhost]

Sorry it was giving you fits. Sometimes you eat the bear sometimes the bear eats you.

[LCHIEN]

those look like perfectly good dog ramps.

[dbhost]

I stopped being productive since I got some calls from the family just trying to catch up with me.

The drawer that had the drill bits taps and dies apparently had a bottle of refrigerant oil and tracer dye in it from about 30 years ago and it busted open and messed everything up I've got it all in a Box I just need to clean that drawer out something desperately and Move on to the next drawer to get it completely empty.

I think the friend that is receiving this stuff has a solvent wash so I'm not gonna worry about cleaning these things up.

[dbhost]

Quick update. Took some CRC Brakeleen to the inside of the messed up drawer, which took out the abundant goopy lubricant and tracer dye mess quite easily, the bumpy junk on the bottom though was not dirt, and debris mixed with refrigerant oil, but rather the finish on the drawer bubbling up...

Not sure I am going to go back with a proper color match. Might just finish cleaning up up / paint prepping it, and then hit it with some gloss black and then new drawer liners.

It occurred to me that the chain saw, is too big for the deep drawers, which is fine, it is a lawn and garden tool anyway. Out to the shed with it!

Noodled around on the pinewood derby cars with a file trying to even out the cuts. Getting close, then I slope the noses...

[dbhost]

Work for pay, took the bus home, found the Amazon package with the msising size wrenches at my stoop, finished reloading the wrenches in the toolbox, took the mismatched badly sets of SAE and Metric and put them in a wrench roll up to stow in the truck for roadside repairs as part of the emergency kit. The full sets (except extended sizes which are a different brand) were kept in the shop cabinet. About to do dinner

[twistsol]

Today after work I spent two hours trying to get the Zwift app to get heart rate data from my phone, power and cadence data from my bike, screencast that through an old AppleTV box to an LG TV and then have everything upload to both Strava and Apple Health when done.

About 25 miles of bike riding stats evaporated into the bit bucket, tut the last 13 miles were recorded everywhere they were supposed to be recorded.

I guess I'll paint the dog wash ramp tomorrow.

[dbhost]

Spent some quality time working on the pinewood Derby cars almost there.

I Swapped out the lock for the toolbox not the cabinet but the upper chest with a key to match lock from the manufacturer so that both the cabinet and the tool chest match.

The old 1990es I still know where the key is it fits in somewhat turns I don't know if it's a problem with the latch assembly at the back of the Box or a problem with the lock itself but is loose as lock feels I think the Tumbler is falling apart. 30 plus years of relatively hard use will do that I guess.

Since I'm going to be in this thing cleaning and painting I'm going to take the lock assembly apart and possibly see if I can't get a matching keyed to match lock assembly so that all of my tool boxes match with one key.

Craftsman paint close match for refinishing,
RustOleum Gloss Colonial Red.
Krypton Metallic Black Stainless

[capncarl]

Did you compare the Harbor Freight US General tool chests to the Craftsman?

[dbhost]

Yes I did. In many ways better, in some not so much. Thicker metal and higher load capacity well beyond what I would ever do, closest size they had is the 56", great box, no liners, no soft close slides,, and $500.00 more for the combo. I know this Craftsman isn't what my early 90s box is... but it was ideal for my setup and will likely outlive me.

[dbhost]

capncarl and anyone else interested in the current Craftsman tool chest / cabinet.

I compared features, prices, and build quality looking at Craftsman, Husky, and US General and probably some others I am forgetting...

The Craftsman S2000 Series, and there are higher and lower series that vary in quality, features and price, this is their middle of the road box set, 52" was $958.00 before tax. Cabinet has 10 drawers, chest has 8 drawers, integrated power strip with 2 USB charging ports. Metal is thinner than the competition, not up to the same gauge and the 90s Craftsman, but still more than good enough for what I expect it to endure. I have seen demos where someone loads weight into the deeper drawers and they flex and scrape. I have loaded mine up and tried the test, no issues. Of the competitors this is the only one with soft close drawer slides which is oddly enough important to me as it keeps tools from smashing around in drawers when I close the drawer a little too hard. The drawers on this seem to be just drawers from a standard 27" tool cart / chest. Just put into a bigger box. Not a bad idea, but there are no extra wide drawers, so for example My inner tie rod tool HAS to live in the top shelf area just because it is so wide.

The US General 56" Double bank roller cabinet and chest pair are $1499.98 before tax. Caibinet has 11 drawers of wildly varying sizes. Chest has 8 drawers, wide, and narrow. Top shelf area is short and would not allow storage of say cordless batteries and chargers, or even deep sockets in trays. The overall build quality of the US General is honestly amazing, on par with what I remember Snap On toolboxes back in the day, but this thing also is loaded with back in the day features or lack thereof. IF I were a working full time mechanic, I probably would have paid the extra and gone with this one, but again, higher cost, less features, and odd, but probably very useful drawer arrangement. No drawer liners included, but are minimal cost items.

The Husky 52 in. W x 21.5 in. D Heavy Duty 15-Drawer Combination Rolling Tool Chest Top Tool Cabinet, was somewhere between the Craftsman and the US General, and priced at $1198.00. The metal seemed about the same gauge as the Craftsman, with some flex but not bad to the drawers. Soft close drawer slides. Wide and narrow drawer, and included drawer liners. The outlet strip is mounted to the inside right side of chest, making it less convenient of a location at least in my usage than the Craftsman.

The question about comparing really has me scratching my dome. There are a LOT of good things to say (and bad) about all of the options, and the US General IS a good option. I will not say the Craftsman is poorly made, because it isn't, I keep thinking back to when i spun wrenches professionally in my 20s. I had a Snap on cabinet and my existing Stanley Proto top box / chest. I had more problems with that "overbuilt" Snap On cabinet and up until recently I have NEVER had a problem with my old Craftsman 9 drawer. And honestly I think my issue has to do with 30 years of abuse and next to no maintenance. The snap on had literally a caster punch through the bottom of the box with about 1/3 of the load the Craftsman carried, my Snap On dealer replaced it under warranty but still... The locking rod mechanism kept jamming, drawer slides didn't stop and overextended letting the drawer slide all the way out and nearly hit the floor if I hadn't caught it...

Yes some MFGs, even high dollar high end MFGs make duds...

I know Craftsman of 2023 is not Crafstman of 1993, or was it 92? And in some ways that is a good thing. The basic construction appears more or less the same with some upgrades. better locks, better drawer slides, integrated pegboard IF you want that sort of thing...

All in all, I fully expect this tool cabinet / chest combo to outlive me consideing my original Craftsman seems to be more or less the same quality and it is already 30 years old and aside from cosmetic issues and some lock rework that I need to do, I don't see why I can't get another 30 years out of it... And so let's say 60 year lifespan and honestly I don't expect to make it to my one hundred and teens...

[capncarl]

I really do like the HF US General tool chests. Last year I replaced my old Kennedy chest with the 56” US General. The Kennedy was a good box but the drawer arrangement wasn’t great and it had a side cabinet on each end . Way too many 10” wide drawers. It had 2 Craftsman top boxes on top and another row on top of that consisting of a Craftsman box and a Snap On box. Plenty of tool storage but the new US General box is about 8” deeper than the boxes on top. That provided a great place to pile all manner of clutter and that irritated me to no end. Last week I went to HF and noticed a US General 56” top box in the reduced price area. It was marked down to $475 from $699 because of a dent on the back. The manager accepted my offer of $450 and we loaded it up. I put the Snap On and the Craftsman box on top so I now have get a ladder to access the 2 top boxes, but I no longer have the clutter catcher. These 56” HF tool boxes are seriously heavy. (250 lbs.) I had to use the shop crane to lift it out of the truck and onto the bottom box.

[dbhost]

The US General ARE great boxes, but didn't suit my needs is all. Honestly if I had money, and space, and they had soft close slides, I would LOVE a US General 72" cabinet and chest combo...Nowhere near Snap On money, definately high quality. On the 56", I didn't like the wide drawer / narrow drawer layout and the shallow top shelf is the main thing... The 52" Craftsman top box is about 1" shy of being full depth, an odd quirk I know, but it is WAY better than the old 12" deep boxes like my old Proto.... The way the handles on that go I couldn't put 2 side by side on a 56" cabinet if I tried! I know what you mean about the clutter catcher in front of the top box. I always hated that.. Not going to lie, It was a tough call on the US General, VERY nice box, VERY well made, but effectively 50% higher cost with a layout I wasn't super in love with, and missing 2 features I REALLY liked about the Craftsman. That being the top shelf height / layout and the soft close slides... Honestly if the price had stayed the way it was, and the top shelf was laid out like the Craftsman and the drawer slides were soft close, I probably would have paid the extra for the build quality, but I don;t regret it, or do I expect to... Not going to lie though, I do plan at some point on adding a side cabinet / shelf unit to hold tall items, notably jack stands and the AC vacuum pump. https://www.harborfreight.com/16-in-...q=side+cabinet Not sure if this will fit, but something like this mounted to the left since the handle is on the right...

[dbhost]

Sloped the noses of the pinewood derby cars, and managed to get my finger caught up in the oscillating sander... Ugh...

Pulled the top 2 drawers of my old tool chest, took out the lock and compared it to the new one. A key matched lock from a new one will fit the cabinet and lock rods. The old lock assembly itself is where the failure is, it is simply falling apart after all these years. Tried calling the actual MFG, Waterloo to get a replacement, but they are closed today. Will have to try Monday or Tuesday.

Went to Harbor Freight and swapped out my recalled jack stands as they scare the snot out of me...

Got a US General wrench holder. My old Craftsman had too few slots for my metric wrenches... Their sizing on the holder is wierd, but I am not going to pay any attention to that, and just jammed them in, working well now... More organized.

[capncarl]

On my last visit to HF I looked at their jack stands. One model in particular was the Daytona aluminum 3 ton. If that one doesn’t scare you nothing will! The ash tray size base plate was so small it would barely stand up on the display table. I can’t imagine it holding up a car while I was working on it.
Many years ago I had a jack stand fail while I had a car standing up on its side while I was lifting it with an engine hoist. The car flopped and rolled around and finally landed upside down while I danced and jumped around trying to avoid getting mashed.