a girlthing

So, forgive me for going all Article on an at-least-partial-shitpost, but I don't really understand publicly mocking these perfectly reasonable designs that many hobbyists build and are satisfied with. It's like making fun of someone's pottery for being lumpy, when they aren't trying to sell it or put it in a gallery, it's just what they made for themselves and they're sharing it. What is gained by making other hobbyists on here feel bad about this very popular and useful practice so they go into shame and self-analysis spirals instead of continuing to practice their hobby?

People who already have a table saw and a dado setup (or the extremely commonplace sled which enables you to do it with a normal blade), and a drill press, and bins and bins of scrap wood that's just sitting there taking up space, can slam these projects together in like 20-30 minutes with no up-front planning. There are tons of people with "full" shops, and if you don't have one, then these suggestions seem as absurd as "simply cut four 2x4s to length" sounds to someone who doesn't even own a skilsaw. You don't make fun of a recipe for suggesting you use walnuts just because you don't have walnuts, you go "ah, I guess this recipe isn't for me," or you go buy walnuts.

Who cares if you don't have the same tupperwares? They'll last years, and if you lose or break them, just pull the shelf down and remake it, or widen the slots a touch and put it back up. It's four bucks of wood, and less if you got it by knocking apart a shitty cabinet you found on the street, as many people do. It's not "go out and buy $60 of plywood to house these specific tupperwares, then continue buying those quarterly for the next 10 years", it's "what do you have? make it fit together."

I would build that router bit holder exactly as-is, because I am incredibly bad at cutting angles. I would ruin 12 consecutive pieces of wood trying to get it right and it would only ever be "close enough." The pull-out trays seem fine to me, and I can cut the slots into a piece of Select Pine that's twice as wide as the finished product, then rip it down the middle and be assured it'll all fit together, without anything more than some rough pencil marks. I'd make the handle a touch bigger, but that's a great thing about making something yourself: you don't need to follow the instructions precisely.

I frankly don't understand the complaint about the wrenches. They come in standard sizes and every set sold in the last 30-40 years comes in a holder with one slot for each wrench. The value of that holder is that it makes it much easier to determine if you're missing one and need to look under the bench for it. If for some reason you keep acquiring wrenches you can throw the spares in a drawer or a bucket, but generally speaking there is a logical definition of a "complete set" which most people like to be able to visualize. Also, rakes with rotted off handles are an incredibly common form of trash; I have like three in my shed and I'm tempted to use this idea.

Likewise, the screwdriver holder is just... fine? I like it, because if you stick anything in the back rank that's shorter than what's in the front, you can flip it around to see what's back there instead of having to pull each tool out one by one to find what you're looking for.

I'll give it to you on the chisel holder, it sucks, but chisels are an unsolvable problem and nobody has ever found a good way to store them for easy access. You can't put them blade-down, you can't put them blade up, and if they're in a drawer then they'll bump into other tools, so you're going to risk dulling the blade no matter what. But then, it's just normal practice to be extremely careful when handling chisels, and an alternative school of thought holds that people are way too worried about dulling the blade and should calm down about it. The same argument has been had over the very similar hand plane holders people build and the consensus among the more seasoned hobbyists is "oh who cares, you're going to resharpen the thing every other day anyway"

These look absurd because they don't fit your exact needs, but the entire nature of the wood toolholder 'ecosystem' is that it isn't an ecosystem at all, you just do whatever fits the level of effort you're willing to put in and the tools you own. I got rid of my table saw because they terrify me, but I still have an enormous bandsaw; that means none of my solutions would be useful to you, since most people don't have enormous bandsaws, but also that most of the common design ideas online won't work for me at all.

That's my fault for getting rid of my tablesaw, then reading tablesaw-based recipes. It's no different than Popular Woodworking, 30 years ago, saying "cut a rounded curve" without saying "for this you will need a bandsaw, router, coping saw, scroll saw, etc." You're supposed to know what your tools are capable of, and if you don't have the right tools, either buy them if possible or find another design.

The saw holder is a problem, though. Oof.

That's wonderful! ❤ I'm really glad to hear that this storage solution worked for you. Really, I'm just having a bit of fun with a shitpost. The sliding doors issue sounds like a user experience (UX) one, honestly. If your coworkers consistently failed to close them, perhaps they would have preferred a drawer instead?