Finding My Toolbox

It's not every day that the well of your needs lay before you, poised to divest itself of the specific what you want. So who the heck is Craig of craigslist fame anyway? Spell it without caps and punctuation—an online miasma of everything you could want and much more than no one could bear to have, too excellent a resource for finding the exact plug for the leak in your dike. Frozen in time, at that moment my plug was a toolbox.

Why a Box?
A gearhead collects tools, every device necessary (and some unnecessary) to bring about a satisfying end to whatever the endeavor. Amongst hundreds of sockets, 1/2, 3/8 and 1/4, I have several different varieties of quarter-inch: deep and twelve and beat and shiny. Some hammers inhabit a small drawer, from ball-peen to four-pound. Ratchets, from death-bar to dainty 3/8 palm. Wrenches big enough for fire hydrants and small enough for switchgear. Devices with wires and bits, others with gauges and valves. More pliers and drivers than my deck has screws. Then there's weird stuff, some of which to this day what it's called I can't recall. All for one purpose, automotive and mechanical, but all scattered amongst at least four toolboxes, two large drawers, four nooks, two caddies and a dozen shelves. Consolidation was the order.


Proper mechanics' toolboxes are big and colorful. Many ball bearings help the many specialized drawers glide easily from receptive to reclusive, instantly reintroducing you to the thousands of dollars in tools you own, housed now in a toolbox worth at least as much. Some of these freakish mausoleums to engineering efficacy can stand six-feet tall and cost ridiculous sums more than encompassing the down payment on a small house. I hoped to find something a little less excessive, a toolbox that had seen a few tools, had outlived its owner, had come to a point where its appearance, though compromised, took nothing away from its functionality.

Where Is The Box?
Craigslist was the only place I checked (http://sandiego.craigslist.org/). Didn't think I'd need to look elsewhere, too lazy to hunt up another bargain-oriented source of bargains in need of reorientation. As I write, a check of Craig's produces 29 items for "toolbox," 127 under "tool box." A used Craftsman stacker, 20 or so locking drawers, $500. Some Snap-On boxes are asking $3,000 for themselves, while truck boxes call for less. I've seen Snap-On boxes, even used, advertised for $10,000-plus. Wow. You look long enough, you know a five-figure toolbox to be an alright deal if you own a car dealership, or a brain defect. I need something along the lines of 10-15 drawers, used and useful, a toolbox that doesn't mind living in my garage out of sight; 12-15 cubic feet, perhaps, with all the doors and openings working, if not a little sticky.


Justin's Home for Old Toolboxes just opened for charity cases. And boxes. Not charity, but some solidarity. I wanted to keep my automotive toolery in one general compartment, the less to keep track of the better, and a good box the aforementioned size would do it for 99 percent of my gear. With an expanding kit of woodworking and homeowner-style machinery, I didn't want crossbreeding to degrade the historic lordship my cars and their miscellanea held over the rest of the roost.