Thread: Chisel storage

I have some that are in a chisel roll, another set is in the "wallet" it came in. Irwin Marples High Impact Chisel Set With Strike Cap - 5 Pack - Bunnings Australia

I have also seen a cabinet maker mount his on a rack, with a wood box just underneath to catch them if they fell off. Open side up.

I've been going through this with a bunch of different tools I have in rolls.
Rolls are good because they provide protection, but the problem with rolls is typified by these spanners.

For tools I use open I dislike having to open/close rolls so I usually leave the rolls open inside drawers like this, which means they take up space and slip and then the innards slip and slide and make a mess, not to mention the potential damage for tools with edges.

spannersB4.JPG

Recently I 3D printed this spanner rack like this.
Rack can be placed in a drawer or mounted on a wall inside a cupboard
SpannerHolder.jpg

So now the spanners look like this
spannersAF.JPG

And after slightly modifying the design some of my files look like this
fikles.JPG

Next I'm going to print out a couple of racks for chisel sets but it would not be too difficult to make similar wooden racks.

Tools I don't use often will stay in rolls
setout.jpg

Nice plane floats Bob. Are they commercially available or shop made?

Originally Posted by Mountain Ash

Nice plane floats Bob. Are they commercially available or shop made?

Home made in 2008

Full WIP here
Floats

MA, Bob made those floats. I used them several years ago to built a plough plane. They were excellent.

Over the years I have simply hung chisels on the wall behind my bench. Here is the bench - behind it is the chisel rack ...



Recently, I build drawers (picture above) under the bench in which to store them. This is safer, but not as convenient as on the wall. I guess it comes down to how impatient one is ...





Regards from Perth

Derek

hmm maybe I should 3d print something

Derek - you have a lot of chisels! Curious when you choose to use the veritas ones on the walls and when you choose to use the japanese ones in the draw. Also, what are the huge chisels with the long handles for?

I had everything in one of these; chisels, files, screwdrivers, centre punch. Not elegant, but it works
WoodRiver - Red Tool Rack

Originally Posted by qwertyu

hmm maybe I should 3d print something

Derek - you have a lot of chisels! Curious when you choose to use the veritas ones on the walls and when you choose to use the japanese ones in the draw. Also, what are the huge chisels with the long handles for?

Pleased you think that is a lot!

The long handled Japanese chisels are "slicks", and are for paring. The short chisels are "oire nomi", or bench chisels. These are used with a gennou (hammer) for chopping.

The Veritas are allrounders. Excellent for dovetails (better than the Japanese chisels), but also great bench chisels.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Originally Posted by qwertyu

What is everyone doing for chisel storage? I never bought a chisel set that came in a box and have just been using the packaging it came with but I really need to make something where I have them all in one place. Looking for ideas from forum members

A large (relatively) wall cabinet - also stores drawknives on top (the one thing I want the kids to stay away from), and there's a pile of plane irons laying in the corner.

Two rows deep on the wall side, one on the door - inexpensive home store piano hinge and all of it is white pine trim wood from the home store the panels are just the same pine resawn and joined and then planed smooth.

This could be made organized, but I guess that's not my thing. The point of this cabinet for me was two things:
1) get something made cheaply that didn't take a lot of effort and required a minimum of hardware
2) use it to store chisels that might rust easily - the humidity of my shop is very high. Dewpoint here today is 74F right now and temp in the shop is 77 (my shop is halfway underground - good for some temperature relief, but anything unprotected would rust because the RH is way over 63%.

The rust has ceased on my tools since switching to oilstones without doing any other rust protection, though - even the ones that hang in the cabinet for a long time without use. I have another open frame version of this with more chisels on it - same story - oilstone use leaves enough of a film that they don't rust.

Cross piece holding the chisels is just two holes drilled in plywood and then a notch cut through them so that you can get a chisel in the back segment. Birch ply. No issues so far (scrap bits of wood in place on the door to make sure chisels don't fall out.

If you make something like this that takes more than two levels, lay some chisels out on your bench to see where handles and blades will be as the holding bars will probably end up being farther apart than you expected.

On the wall with a french cleat.

I made this box by building a closed box and then marking the outside and sawing it into the front and back half. 20210829_085354_copy_980x2016.jpg20210829_085341_copy_980x2016.jpg

David!

Where do you keep the new set you made? They are too nice to hang with the proletariat.

Regards from Perth

Derek

They're mostly laying around loose. This isn't a safe space for tools, I guess!!

The very first thing that I ever made (other than making a mostly ply case at the shop of a guy getting me into the hobby) was an attempt to do dovetails with red oak. That was a stupid idea, but it still holds a large number of long chisels. More than OK to make fun of it - it's overstuffed, though, too. 20210829_092216.jpg

And there are perhaps another 200 in a rolling cabinet and a carver's tool bucket (one of those things with a caddy inside so that the chisels go into the bucket and the handles stick out on the top - someone gave me one of those).

It's probably time to start getting rid of some things.

There is one set of my own chisels in the long wall cabinet, though - it's just hard to tell what they are (I looked at the picture and put dots on above chisels that I made - I guess there's more than a set - I keep the rejects and the trial pieces - they're still good chisels to use most of the time).

20210829_085341_copy_980x2016-red.jpg

But almost all of the "good" ones have gone elsewhere. It's a luxury that people will pay the cost of materials and consumables as it allows making more and getting better at it. First group of planes that I made I was getting better at them and kept them around for a while (this is pre-double iron). Eventually I realized they weren't good enough for me to expect someone would pay anything for them and put them in the scrap bucket and they met the same fate as the scrap does (fire pit).

Steve voigt has my very first file chisel. It was really really ugly!!! I sent it to him to for any reason - it should be thrown away - except to see if he agreed that it was more crisp and usable than one would expect for recycled junk. That started all of this - I thought there would never be a real point of making chisels as cheap as they are and as usable as many are. There may still not be a real point other than just making them and seeing if they can be made indistinguishable from really good ones in use.

When I made my first dedicated tool cupboard 40 plus years back, I hung my then rather modest chisel collection, screwdrivers, awls etc., in a door, like the above examples. Version 2 had more space for the (expanding) collection, and an important safety upgrade - I included an L-shaped piece to cover those sharp ends! These weren't entirely satisfactory because my chisels were of many different makes & ages & the lengths didn't match up well when I put them in any logical sequence of types, so there were still a few bitey bits exposed here & there to keep me alert when retrieving tools.

After tolerating that cupboard's shortcomings for 20 years or so (& envying the grand creations often featured in FWW), I finally built the cupboard that was to house all of my woodworking tools for the rest of time. I allowed plenty of room for a little future expansion, even though I told myself I had more than enough already & was only likely to add a few more (which has proved one of my least accurate predictions!). Anyway, to cut to the chase I'd decided that I was tired of chisels, screwdrivers, etc. rattling about in their racks whenever doors were opened & closed, so I put them in drawers. That turned out a much more satisfactory solution in several ways. It's more compact, yet each tool is easily accessible, & by using loose inserts made from whatever convenient bits of scrap available, it's highly flexible & easy to modify if circumstances demand.
Chisels a.jpg Chisels.jpg

As a bonus the drawers also keep the tools a bit further from circulating air, which in my neck of the woods is often very humid - I've had far fewer rust problems with my new storage system.

That's what works for me, but there are many other possibilities and as I always say, do allow for growth!

Cheers,

Wow amazing Ian. And DW - thats a lot of chisels!!

I have bought 4 chisels + 2 inherited construction grades ones good for opening tins haha

Ian - what type of bench chisels do you have? The ones in the A photo bottom row. What is that smallest size it looks tiny

Derek - do you prefer using western style chisels or japenese ones?

Thanks for the ideas everyone. I probably wont be able to get anything as elegant as what some of you have done at the moment but its good to keep these in mind for when I build myself a workbench

Originally Posted by qwertyu

...Ian - what type of bench chisels do you have? The ones in the A photo bottom row. What is that smallest size it looks tiny.....

Qwerty, the shiny BE chisels are Lie-Nielsens, the two wider ones lying across the drawer (1 1/8 & 1 1/4") are a Black diamond & a Marples that I inherited from my father. I bought the set of LNs (1/8" to 1") in the last few years of my salaried life when I could still afford to indulge myself. Didn't like the bland Hornbeam handles they came with so I made a new set from She-oak.

The little ones on the right of that row I made from 3/32" & 1/16" HSS tool blanks. They aren't really socket chisels, I turned up tapered ferrules so they sort of match the LNs: Mini BEs.jpg

The other drawer has a couple of Sorby patternmkers chisels and the other long chisels are mostly "New Havens", a long-defunct brand which I acquired when I was living in Canada (they're virtually unknown down here). The steel in them is a bit hard & tends to be brittle, but they make the most wonderful paring chisels and I wouldn't part with them for any amount of money!

I'm embarrassed to admit there are 3 more drawers of chisels, a set of butt chisels, mortise chisels, odd specialty things (many home-made for particular jobs) and a very basic carving set. Perhaps the most interesting is my set of Titan socket firmers, acquired over many years of diligent searching (the socket type are far less common than the tanged ones), and with the help of a couple of fellow forumites: Titans.jpg

No amount of money would induce me to part with these, either.....

Cheers,