[Shop-talk] Socket holders

[Chris Kantarjiev]

I have *never* found a socket organizer that I like. When I started dealin
with my personal case of British Car Disease, I bought a socket set at
Sears. It had 3/8 and 1/2 drive ratchets, English and metric sockets,
a few deeps and extensions. It came in a well organized blow molded case.

All my other tools (such as they were) lived in the single-tray toolbox
I had bought in high school. That slowly overflowed into a stack
of shelves next to my bench.

When I had to move, I bought a rolling cabinet from Sears and the 
matching extra deep top chest (that is, it's 18" deep rather than
the normal 12" - only one of the full-width drawers is what you'd
call deep at 2" or so). Extra deep allowed me to get my longest
wrenches in, but I wasn't willing to give up entire drawers for
a particular socket style/drive size, as some of my buddies did. 
I put the specialty sockets (8 point, screwdrivers, deeps) on clip
rails, lying down, along with extensions and extra ratchets and such.

The basic set of sockets is still in the blow mold case, heavily
duct taped at the hinge, sitting on the cabinet's shelf :-)

I think that sockets pretty much have to be stored horizontally to 
make anything like efficient use of drawer space. I have used the
pre-arranged racks in other shops, and they require you to use a tall
drawer that could better be used for large tools, and never have 
just the right combination of slots/posts/whatever. I mean, if
I'm going to lay things out by size, where do I put the 8-point
sockets, or my extras, or the articulated ones, or the three styles
of spark plug socket, or the drive size adapters, or the Whitworth
sockets, or the one I ground thin to get past the bumper,
or ... there are never spots for these, so I am always going to
need to organize my own.

Wrenches are almost as bad. Early on, my organizing principle was
that I wanted to be able to take the top chest with me to the track,
so things that were in that category went there, and 'other stuff'
went below in the rolling cab. That meant, as a side effect, that
metric tools (mostly wrenches) were in the rolling cab, and shared
space with some other stuff. That continues, even though I'm
now at the point where the majority of my cars use metric fasteners.
That drawer is a real problem, but there's no good fix. It got
the foam wrench organizers and that helps; the non-metric wrench
drawer has many iterations of the tapered ones, in plastic and metal,
to hold all the various sets and styles of wrenches that have
attached themselves to me. Again, a single style of organizer
where the designer "knew" exactly what wrenches I have, would
be a disaster.

Everything else, pretty much, relies on being in small enough
drawers, or being a big enough item, that it doesn't get lost
when just tossed in.