Maybe I'm ocd but I am tired of having a tool box looking like someone puked in it. Everything has its place....but it is chock full of stuff so I started shopping for the foam inserts. Everywhere I looked it was going to cost in the neighborrhood of 90 bucks just to get it. Here is my solution.

I bought 48sq ft. of anti fatigue mat tiles from Sears for 36 bucks and got two packs of craft foam from wally world for about 12 bucks. I will post up pics of how I did it just in case people are interested.

The mats are in the mail currently so in a week or so I should have results...or at least progress.

 

If you put two different colors of foam in your tool box, cut out the top one and leave the bottom in tack it will let you know as soon as you look in the box if a tool is missing.

 

wheres the pics?

 

I did something similar with a blue foam sleeping mat from a local camping store:

 

very nice, I have way too many tools in each drawer to do this...

but wish I could

 

i was thinking the same thing id post a pic of mine but it looks like a bomb went off in sears tool department

 

I am still working on mine honestly. It is kinda split between fixing the truck and organizing it.....in other words I have one done....and I can't find time to finish it.

 

i just bought a cheap set of roll up wrenches to trhow behind the seat the otherday cant beat $10 flea market

 

How's that for tool organization?

 

Ummmmm yeah I can't afford that....but I could fill it up with tools lol.

 

I have mine full of tools, but snap on and matco tools, not sears specials

 

Agree. That's similar to the silhouetting method aviation folks use to quickly alert them of missing tools, and help prevent FOD (That's Foreign Object Damage. i.e, a pair of missing pliers sucked up into engine, killing it and worse yet the crew).

 

That's exactly what I'm doing very slowly. I just have to find a new place for all of my woodworking tools that happen to share my toolbox lol.

 

Problem with foam is that drawers can hold way more then with the foam I started to do it and it just eliminated so much space it was stupid. Just get wrench holders socket holders screw driver holders if you want organization. And with those you can fit more in a drawer trust me.

 

I havent had that problem yet. I've been able to tightly organize the tools without stacking.

Beamed from my dumbphone

 

I had shadowed tool boxes while working in the aviation industry for 17 1/2 years. At a glance you can tell what you need to put away. Where is that damn 10mm? Naturally I had to shadow my own box. There is no other way. It helps if you have different color foam than your tool drawer. I don't like it for sockets however, socket trays work just fine.

 

F.O.D. Walkdown! Lol!

 

I guess it all depends on the type of foam and the climate.

Here in Pa some types of foam soak up water like a sponge just from Condensation

Needless to say with my luck I used the wrong type of foam

At least good tools clean up pretty fast

 

I've got 3 sets of 26 inch wide boxes. Top, middle and bottoms. I could still use another set.

No room for any foam.

My road box is a .50 caliber can.

 

I know I've gotten into this a little late but....Down the line, all CDQ'S and CDI's to QA!!!... I am actually at work right now and we just had a missing tool.

Yup the foam thing works real well for aviation, not so much in the garage though. You never really know how many tools you really have until you lay them all out and try to make them look pretty in a box. I prefer the plastic organizers in my home box.

I do use foam for two things at home. For some reason I have never bought a big set of driver bits, with an organizer, but I have a metric ton of them accumulated over the years. So they just rolled around in one of my drawers for a long time until one day I went in there to get a certain size. The job needed to get done rather quickly, and I was frustrated having to look through all of them to find it. So I acquired some heavy foam used for parts packaging here on the flightline. Used a butane torch to heat up one of the oldest bits and melted holes in the foam on a grid pattern. Bits are nice and neat and lined up by size. Also keep a piece of it on the shelf for bolt patterns. If I am taking something apart that has multiple length and/or sized bolts, I poke them into the foam in the general layout of the holes on the part that I pulled them from. Takes the guesswork out of bolt placement when reassembling.