Tool chests

[Huge]

Following Dave "patronising" Plowman's comment on my lack of imperial spanners, it occurred to me that I must have some, since as he so charmingly pointed out, I've been working on old cars for years. So, some head scratching led me to my late Grandfather's wooden toolbox tucked away in a cobwebby corner of the garage, and lo! There they were.

So, I want a better tool storage solution than assorted boxes, hooks, places on random shelves, etc., and I'm looking at a rollabout tool chest & top box. Prices seem sharply divided between < £200 for a multi drawer roll about & top box and > £600 for the same thing. I assume the former are cheapo Chinese and the latter are, well, beyond my budget. So, can anyone recommend anything from the cheapo end of the market? After all, I'm not a professional mechanic and this stuff doesn't need to last forever.

[Nightjar]

I bought a fairly cheap roll about toolbox from Macro many years ago, which worked very well. However, I found that I was carting about a lot of tools that I didn't need for most jobs. I have gone back to individual tool boxes and now have separate boxes for woodworking, decorating, electrical and general maintenance.

Colin Bignell

[Roger Mills]

Yes, I've don't that, too. Only problem is that there aren't many jobs which fall entirely into one category without overlapping into another.

For example, plumbing often involves woodwork - to lift and subsequently repair floorboards - and/or electrical work if boilers and heating systems are involved.

[dom]

I bought one from Machine Mart, probably about 1998, cabinet and small-drawer topbox. Still have it, still virtually as good as new - I couldn't understand why people bought much more expensive ones.

Advice - buy the biggest you can afford, and the rubberised matting they sell to line the drawers is very good.

[Huge]

This is just for car tools. The woodworking stuff (of which I don't have a great deal) will remain in the bench drawers, the power tools on the section racking next to the bench. The car tools are in about 5 different places round the garage and it would be nice to get them all in one place so Dave can't patronise me again.

I shall also keep the concertina toolbox (another motivator for this is that this box is now full to overflowing) for general DIY tools.

[Huge]

Following the recent story here about MM, I shan't be buying anything from them.

Yeah, I've already decided I need the matting, just from looking at the piccies on Ebay.

Thanks!

[Gazz]

Get one with roller bearing drawer slides, it really makes a difference even if you are not opening and closing the drawers 200 times a day, nothing screams 'cheap' on a roller toolbox than horrible stiff scraping metal on metal slides.

I got a roller chest and top box from halfrauds years ago, cost about ££400 i think, they did a thing where you bought the roller chest and got a top box half price, very good quality, came with the rubber drawer liners, just remember the little tool tray with a handle thingy that comes with it (so you can load up a few tools and take it to the car) does not work very well as a chock, well, it might if it wasnt infront of a 4.5 ton van's wheel when the van was driven back a few feet to get better access to something :) it took me a while to prise the last of my spanners out of the folded over metal.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

So not only incredibly touchy, but don't know what 'imperial' means in the context of threads and spanners.

Your post was about American threads. These are - as far as spanner sizes are concerned - the same as Unified. Spanners are marked in across the flat size (AF) in inches and fractions of an inch.

Imperial threads - most commonly BSF and BSF - have the spanners marked according to thread size - not across the flats.

Unified threads were in use in some UK vehicles up until relatively recently. The most obvious one perhaps being the Rover V-8. Which I thought you were familiar with.

True imperial threads (in the main) fell out of use in the UK car industry by about the mid '50s, after pre-war designs were replaced.

HTH

[Dave Liquorice]

This is true I have large plastic boxes that slide into a frame for the broad general areas. This keeps things "findable". I then have rigid tote bag that is filled with the required tools/parts for a job. Inevitably extra tools/parts are required but at the end everything is just gathered into the tote and returned to the relevant box.

I also have stock and some parts stored in cardboard lock or postal boxes:

They cost less than 50p each and provide good safe storeage for lots of bits and bobs and as they lock shut no risk of bits falling out when taking from stack on shelf or in cupboard.

[Huge]

Thanks.

The metal case for my impact driver suffered a similar fate.

[Old Codger]

You surely mean BSW and BSF.

Of course, there was also the smaller BA series which were designed in metric dimensions and standardised in the early 1900s From 0BA at 6 mm diameter (0.25 inch) down to 16BA at 0.8 mm diameter

[Nightjar]

I used to have a plate die that went down to 20BA, not that I ever found a use for anything smaller than 16BA.

Colin Bignell

[Ericp]

If you can get into Costco they have sometimes got a good range of stainless ones quite reasonably. (Large ones)

[Andrew Gabriel]

I was thinking this when I saw the thread. I've never had the space to store one (let alone move it), but I do recall one of them was rated for 100kg per drawer, 1 ton in total. A quick glance at the website indicates they are well up at the top end of the price ranges the OP mentioned.

[Huge]

I already looked on their web site. Molto wonga.

[The Other Mike]

For a cheap and basic cabinet I would in the past have recommended the HD ones from Machine Mart but won't, mainly because they are clearly a shit company for customer service and to be avoided at all costs.

For anything larger than an A4 ish drawer you really need ball bearing slides

Sealey are about the same quality as Machine Mart, maybe even sourced in the same chinese sweatshop, but they have a distribution network so there is a wide choice of supplier and thus the chance of some customer service, maybe even local, something sadly lacking with Machine Mart.

Lista cabinets are the dogs bollocks but significantly more expensive.

Beta are about the same quality as Lista and a similar 'scary' price