Over the weekend I got myself involved in 2 build groups. The first being the wood build to store and display the various tools and their accessories at the makers asylum. The other is a very interesting track called synthetic biology or bio hacking which we have begun, with an easy build. More details in another post.
Wood build group – Storage and display unit
As you know, after much thinking, thunking and procrastinating we have finally decided to throw some "green" at the storage problem we have at the wood lab.
Problem statement
We keep running out of space and then "growing organically" which ends up with interesting ideas, but still a hodgepodge of hastily executed day long projects, which anyway run out of space all too quickly.
The main problem though will always remain this, "Where is the quarter inch chisel".
Solution 1 (Organic)
Build a rack for all the chisels.
Done that. If you remember Akshay the speedy spaceman at the mumbai asylum, built a pin board for the chisels, the hammers, the spanners and screwdrivers. All in one place. This turned out to be good for a month and THEN more chisels arrived. The wood working class build mallets and suddenly all the chisels were competing with the hammers and the poor mallets never even had a chance to get in on the quarrel. Lucky the clamps and the saws had their own area, which they are slowly growing out off.
This now begins to sound like the development plan for our lovely Mumbai, doesn’t it.
Solution 2
In comes Mr "inorganic growth", I’m not very sure what these terms mean. So if I’m using them wrong let me know.
Lets build at least 1 but preferably 2 large units where we can store the tools. But having learnt exactly how blatantly racist the tools can get, we will segregate them into classes. for example, Measuring and marking section will contain the scales, rulers, guides, try squares, tape measure, scores, pencils, sharpeners, protractors etc.
There are about 7 sections. 8 when you count power tools. And a few sections are going to need to be broken into subsections.
So our first order of business was to design something which
- could easily house more than one section.
- could be moved around the wood lab.
- could allow tools to be accessed easily.
- and most importantly, would be intuitive regarding where to find and put back a tool.
Build activity
On Saturday, we discussed various designs and came up with something that looks like this.

The build is going to take a bit of time so we’ve broken it up into a few logical sub-builds, that can exist in isolation.
Mini-builds
- Base with castors.
- Main frame 4 feet x 5 feet x 1 1/2 feet deep.
- Section 1: Measuring and marking.
- Section 2: Clamps and vices
- Section 3: Pounding
- Section 4: Cutting – saws
- Section 5: Cutting – chisels and planes
- Section 6: Finishing
- Section 7: Nails, screws, bolts
- Shelf for Power tools
Each of the 7 sections will have the same basic structure, but will need to have different hooks knobs etc to hold the specific tools hence each will have to be made separately.
Ideally we would like to have had a 2 person team for each sub section, that way the build would be done in a couple of weeks. But 20 persons didn’t show up.
So get up, step in and help out.