Technical How often do you clean your tools/tool drawers?

I usually wipe them off before use after I find them from wherever I used them last.
Yes,I am one of 'those' guys.
Good thing I am never in a hurry. Ever. Looking for tools can turn into a treasure hunt.
Last week I needed a large C-clamp and found a FE Ford aluminum intake I didn't remember I had.

 

I might wipe em off if they’re really greasy and I might clean out a drawer if they’re slides screw up and I have to pull it out.
Organization? Sure. The little wrenches go in the left end of the pile and the big ones go on the right end of the pile - everything else goes somewhere in between. Pliers? The ones I use often go on the left, the rest just get crammed wherever they fit. Screwdriver drawer - chaos, just shuffle them until the drawer will close. But I pretty much know where everything is at any given moment….

 

I like my shop organized.

 

My Roll - A - Way went in the ba*****t in 1983, one of the many projects I should get around to cleaning & organizing.
Bob

 

Nothing goes back dirty. Everything gets wiped down and oiled if necessary. If I finish a job late and I am tired, I will leave everything in a pile and clean and put them away in the morning.

 

My toolbox is clean because it never has any tools in it. A place for everything, and everything all over the place.

 

When I move. I last moved 23 years ago. I don't plan on moving ever again.
When I'm done they will get sold.
I have thought about cleaning the box. I think the dust and dirt are protecting the paint. It will look like new at the sale.

 

I knock the crud off of my tools before I put them away (not always the same day). They get thoroughly cleaned if they get dropped in the drain pan.

Gary

 

I figure if I clean the shop, put all the tools away, if I get robbed they'll just be able to roll it away.

The way it is now, it would take them a couple days to round everything up and have to do some cleaning along the way if they try to steal it all...


..

 

All my day job tools and equipment are at home now. Home was well enough put up and organized. The work box is a 46 year flat rate mechanics box that was a handful of different boxes over the years and now live with my last tool box. I would work with a roll cart that gets loaded up with the tool needed for said project. Those tools my or my not make it back to the main box because the next project will probably need the same tools. My problem now is I have a lot a doubles now as I was tooled up really good.
Tools do get cleaned before going in the box. The box can use a good wipe down though.
I did as a young mechanic learn to not clean and put up your tools before you test drove the car.

I managed to get this thing in my ba*****t.

 

I started on what is now my rolling tool box in 1979 and it has been in the current configuration for 25 plus years but I cannot open a drawer and grab the tool I need with 100% accuracy. more often than not I open a drawer with something else in it. sometimes more than once... my tools are very organized.
my brain has a short somewhere.

 

oh.. I keep them clean now that I don't use them... but cleaned much less when I was making a mess with them.

 

There it is tucked under the steps. I got real lucky it fit.

 

Wow, some of you guys have tool boxes that are worth more than all my stagnant project cars combined! My two tool boxes cost $175 and $295 and my wife bought me the $295 one.
Saltflats, I know how you feel. When I closed my shop and retired to NorCal I had doubles (sometimes triple +) of almost everything - home shop tools and hot rod shop tools, and they all landed in my new garage. I also inherited my Dad’s tools when he p***ed away. I have since re***embled a full set and a garage sale rollaway and took it down to my LA house so I have a fully functional shop in my vacation home now. You never know when the urge to build or repair something will strike. I’m prepared.

 

Once every cpl yrs the ratchets get pulled apart and cleaned, re-lubed. Sockets get wiped before they go back in. Wrenches hang on the wall in my shop on an old sales board. Generally wipe those off too.

 

I can deal with lots of stuff , but tools wiped off clean and stored each day , if the job is finished or not . Seems as if everything you touch you need to purchase a new tool to attack the project . I have discussed with family “ what do you do with all of this junk when I p*** ? “ I have tried to explain the value of, don’t push it out for the trash collector . I would love to donate to a younger hot rodder trying to get started

 

Tools always get cleaned and put away after every use. This is a timely thread as I am “thinning the herd” in my tool chest now. How many pairs of pliers, hacksaws, etc. does one man need? I’ve decided to draw the line at one for each hand.

 

Why is it always the screwdriver drawer that won’t close? Haha!

 

Looks like one of them hidden picture puzzles. lol! I’m sure there’s another engine in there somewhere that I missed. Haha!
I felt bad that I had an “extra” flathead block on a stand and it’s crank on the floor taking up space in my workshop and now I feel much better. lol!

 

I try to wipe down hand tools before they go back into the drawers... Drawers will receive a "blow job" of compressed air to remove debris as needed..

Tools lay on the bench? I do something dumb (perhaps).. I have thought for decades that it takes too many tools to do some jobs. In the back of my head I often count tools I get out for a project.. Then putting tools away I will count them too... Grab a hand full and I have 5 or 6 tools to put away ... then grab another hand full to put in drawers or hang on pegboard

 

My box gets cleaned any time I can't find a tool. It's been at least 5 years since my last session.

 

Ever notice how the tool box felt degradation smells like dirty socks when you open a drawer?

 

Depends! Wood machinists boxes, the garage one is kept clean and drawers closed. The house one, it’s in the living room! The mechanic boxes, the big roll around is mostly clean, neat and sort of organized, the little one, much better. Wipe tools off and put them away at the end of the day at a minimum, usually after I’m done with the tool. I’ve learned over time how much easier it is to have an organized toolbox if I don’t set something down intending to do it later. Now the workbenches, they are not very neat.

 

Quick wipe if it needs it and throw it back in the tray. No brand loyalty either, they all work pretty well.

 

After likely 10 plus years with the same three or four tools boxes, I still get mixed up which tools are in which drawers for the ones I don’t use often. With that many drawers, I would need an index card to kept track of where they were. Haha!

 

Years ago I needed a tool chest, but couldn't afford one, so I built one. I think I had $50 invested in it, made out of scavenged angle iron, plywood, wood boards, Sears casters (the big ticket item!) and kitchen drawer slides that I found in a junkyard. That was 35+ years ago. Recently I started replacing the well-worn kitchen slides with ball bearing tracks from Lowes. All my tools are in it; a bit crowded but kept clean and reasonably organized. I also have a tool box my parents gave to me when I was 16, and I have that filled with dedicated tools, most of which I had bought when I was building bicycles with paper route money - and those were originally kept in a plastic tackle box that I found on the beach!

 

Clean them before they go away and put them in the right spot. Having an organized box of clean tools keeps me from wasting my limited garage time searching for and cleaning tools, which I used to do every time.

 

Between 1965 n about 1990,it was fairly neat,in each shop ,I moved my little speed shop a few times { Do to rent going up to much. }
In 1990,I moved it all into my home garage [ 1 car 2 doors] an worked same as if I was in a reg. shop. Didn't matter much ,as most of my customers were long time repeters.
I added another 2 car garage in back yard. for racecar n hotrod< later as I aged [now 83yo ],I picked up n put away less=I still know were most is*,but its a mess!!

 

My wrench drawer kind of looked like that once or twice. Lol! Agree though, I waste so much time trying to find the needed wrench and more often than not, it’s not even in the drawer.

 

Lol, never. The only time I clean a tool is when I drop it in the lake, and it gets sprayed with wed40 and tossed back in the drawer. My hand tools are barely what one would even call organized. And yeah, I spend time digging for the right wrench sometimes, which is annoying, but whateva. I'm used to it I guess.

All my big tools are over at my barn. These are kept a LITTLE more organized. I only keep a small box full at my place, but I have enough in there to do most anything that doesn't require specialty tools.