A Proper Place For The Tinker's Workshop Spade Bits

As with most workshops there are always tools that are laying around that get moved from place to place and they never quite find a home.  The Tinker's Workshop is no different other than the fact that now I have the capability and space to equip the shop with some unique tools to remedy this problem.  Point in case here has been my collection of spade bits that I have acquired one by one over the years and have stored in of all worse things...... a plastic bag.  I finally got fed up with this arrangement and designed a proper storage box for these invaluable bits.

The box I designed I knew would be put into the workshop and did not have to be a work of art.  But I could not resist the temptation to design a few features into the box that would make it easier to find and give it a little style at the same time. 

The box needed to hold eight bits ranging in size from 1 1/4 down to 5/16 inch.  This presented some interesting design problems as not all of the bits were the same length and definitely not the same width for the holes they are made to cut.  I originally was going to lay the bits out flat as shown in the photo above but this only made the box even larger and more difficult to design and make. So I placed the bits on edge to reduce the size of the box needed for the project. Along with the bits being placed on their side I made a recessed area that ran across the width of the box to make it easier to get my fingers between the bits to select which one I needed when I was using them.  

As you can see the bits slid nicely into the 7 1/4 x 4 1/4 inch enclosure.  Like almost all of my projects, I had to make some test parts to make sure the bits would slide in and out of their respective slots easily.  Everything looks to be a perfect fit. 

One last thing that was needed in the box was a simple display to help me figure out what bit was what while they were placed on edge inside the box.  I solved this problem by printing a bit size chart inside the lid of the box in the order that the bits are lined up in the container.  The bars that run vertically in the lid  are there to hold the bits in place while the lid is on the base.  The box can then be rotated in any direction (upside down and side ways) without having the bits fall out of their assigned recessed slots.  

The lid for the spade bit box fits firmly in place and with the black painted base stands only 2 1/4 inches high.  The embossed lettering on the lid will make it easy for me to identify what is in this little case when I need the bits for the next project that comes along.  Far better than trying to find that awful little plastic bag these bits have hidden in all these years.  Score another one for my Makerbot 3D printer!