Really, that's all you have to do. Once you start to have some lumber stacked up and a pile of tools at your disposal plus an even partial level of knowledge in how to use it all, things get easy. Well, easier. I've had 3-4 different places that my general hand tools are kept. This is everything from chisels to awls, squares, rulers, dividers, screw drivers, etc. I'd been wanting to do something about that.
Not long ago I watched a video series on 5S is the shop. It was about how to apply the 5S methodology first developed in the automotive industry to your own shop. Some primary tenets of the method are that your things are organized, most commonly used tools are the closest and items are always put away clean and ready for the next use. I knew that having one, good, solid place to keep my tools was necessary.
Thinking about this is when I realized my tools were a mess and jumbled because I had no good place to always keep them. It should be much easier to always replace a tool when doing so means little more than turning slightly. This tool rack will hang near my bench, probably almost within arms reach. My hope is to never leave the bench covered with tools. The evenings I've put away my tools and swept off the bench really did make it easier to get back to work the next day. Everything was just ready to go.
Now, can I go the next step to clean and sharpen every tool before it's put away?
This tool rack is currently quite a bit bigger than I need. The slot for storing the tools is about 48". The top is 52" long and 10" deep. I will add pegs to the front and quite likely a row of small dowels along the bottom (great for small items!). I made the gap for the tools a bit over 9/16" which fits a variety of my tools. A few can fall this gap, but I knew that. This is all oak - it was bits and pieces I've had around for way too long. The top has a hole part way through and a big blue stain (when metal is driven in live oak, that's what happens) so I figured it's work fine here. Coming up, I need to make some additions so we know this belongs to Cryptic Woodworks!
