Shop Aid - Assembly/Disassembly Tool Caddy

[egnald]

Hello all and greetings from Nebraska!

In addition to the Pen Turning Caddy I use to organize and carry pen parts around my shop, I also made a caddy to organize and store my pen Assembly/Disassembly press and the associated tools that I use along the way. I made this more so I could store all of the associated tools in a designated spot in my shop and move them all in one swoop to the table I use for woodworking and assembly. It also provided a heavy, non-slip holder for my PSI Pen Assembly/Disassembly press which liked to slide around when using it -- the instability also lessening the "feel" of how hard I was pressing when assembling pens.

The entire thing is built out of scrap pieces and cutoffs that I had laying around the shop. I didn't really plan too much, just took empirical measurements and built it on the fly. There is a storage area right under the press for extra disassembly tubing and other bits and pieces and spare materials. On the outside I cut some sides with handles out of 3/4-inch pine and fastened them to a 1/2-inch piece of scrap particle board I had laying around. The dividers and such were just little bits of scrap wood hot glued into place.

It holds my press, a Soft Rubber Barrel Gripper (PSI), along with a set of punches (PSI) and a soft faced mallet for disassembly. (Although the press has tooling for disassembly, I find the aforementioned combination much easier to use - and unlike using the press no setup is required. It also holds a small plastic box of rubber bands and a box of Foundation Wax (that I use to plug the tubes when they are being glued in). Also an assortment of sticks, cotton swabs, some thick CA glue, and a couple cans of wax. On the far end stands some sticks, a Sharpie marker, an insertion tool, a hand reamer, a round rasp, and a round chainsaw file each. There is also a pipe/straw cleaning brush which is handy for cleaning dust and stuff out of the tubes, and a handy tool/gauge that I made for pressing Slimline and Designer NT transmissions in to a precise depth.

The pictures explain it much better than I ever could. - Dave

PS. I put 4 of the large 2-3/8 grip pads from a FastCap TracPad kit on the bottom. With just a little weight these things grab the workbench and keep things solid and amazingly stable. I highly recommend that you check them out along with all of the other wonderful FastCap woodworking products. (I'm not affiliated with them in any way, but I sure do like their stuff!)

Here is how it looks empty (Click on Thumbnails to Enlarge):



And here is how it looks all loaded up:

 

[jrista]

I believe you are the most organized person on these forums! Thanks for sharing!

 

[crokett]

That is great work. How do you organize drill bits? I got a bunch of plastic strorage tubes and keep the bits in those but they're all laying on my bench because I haven't figured out the best way to store them. I need a solution that keeps them near my lathe. I do my drilling on my lathe

 

[Gareth Roberts]

Hi guys, from a cold and wet U.K. I use expanding tubes. I use the square ones for all my bushings and round ones for my drill bits. I'm always trying to improve the organisation of my shop, so no doubt next year I'll be changing it all….again! Happy holidays to all and stay safe. When you are offered your Covid jabs, take them, PLEASE!

 

[egnald]

That is great work. How do you organize drill bits? I got a bunch of plastic strorage tubes and keep the bits in those but they're all laying on my bench because I haven't figured out the best way to store them. I need a solution that keeps them near my lathe. I do my drilling on my lathe

Hi David,

I use the square plastic tubes I get from PSI (and other suppliers) for my bits. I put a label on each side so I can easily identify the bit regardless of how it is laying. I color code them with a dot to indicate the bit type and I also put the fractional (SAE), decimal, and metric sizes on each so I can quickly determine how close they might be to a bit that I don't have.

I keep the tubes in a plastic divider box. I put a drawer pull on the box and keep it on a shelf in the lathe stand I built.

I have toyed with making some kind of drawer for them along the lines of what Robert Blanford (RJB Woodturner) did for his bushings, but I just don't have the right space in my shop for something like that. (Link: RJB's Bushing Storage Drawer)

Regards,
Dave

Here are the thumbnails:

 

[crokett]

Thanks. I just write on the tubes with a sharpie but I think we have a label maker somewhere.

 

[howsitwork]

Very organised Dave

I have several drill stands and a large metric/ imperial equivalent chart on the wall. Really handy when you just want to look up an alternative if it's a bit tight or a bit slack depending upon the material.

Eg I found I had to ream ou Lignum Vitae with a drill 0.1mm larger as although eg 7mm worked perfectly for every other timber the Lignum closed up on me and tubes just did not slide in.

As for bushings - I tend to make my own and keep them in marked little bags that come with the pen kit parts in . Every bag has its own measurements written on it . They then go either in the container holding that kit or in a multi compartment box next to the kit they fit ( usually but not always)

 

[crokett]

I keep my bushings in the small brown bottles that prescriptions come in, at least here in the U.S. I write the name of the pen kit(s) the bushings are for on the side and cap of the bottle.