Project of the Week

After sitting on it for a month, I finally decided what to do with the Christmas money my parents gave me. It took me a while to decide, but after looking at my pitifully inadequate toolbox I finally resolved that it was high time for some organization.

So I headed down to Lowes and after drooling on all the neat tool tool chests I finally accepted that one of those still isn't in the cards for me. I settled on a nice portable toolbox with some drawers in the front to accommodate my sockets. There was some money left over so I also bought some drawer liners.

So I brought it home and started putting all my tools into this great new toolbox. It was clear, however, that the sockets weren't going to stay put. I had to figure something out. Sure if you want to spend some money you can get some nice little "socket rails" that organize those for you, but, since the Christmas money was exhausted, and I'm a new homeowner, I wasn't interested in spending the money.

I had a better idea. At work we assemble specialized tool kits for the Navy and we use this white foam to pack it into nice pelican cases, so I went scrounging for foam. It wasn't hard to find a scrap big enough to do the job. After all, I only needed a piece about 17"x7".

Next I laid it out how I thought it would look and measured all the sockets. Then, at work, during my lunches, etc., I laid it out with the CAD software. Here's a pic of the miniature:
There is a list of all the sockets on the back of this card, and each of the numbers corresponds to the socket that lives in the hole. That way I can keep track of it if there are any that go missing.

I plotted the layout at actual size and used these special punches at work to cut the round holes for the sockets. The other stuff I just cut at home with the Xacto knife. Here's the finished product. See, way cooler than socket rails.