Work Bench Tool Storage

[Dan]

i am planing on turning my work bench into a partial storage as well as a work surface. what i was thinking of doing was dividing it in half so there would be a cubard on one side to store air compressor and wood burner, air brush, finishing equipment ect.... but on the othere side i would store chisles, knives, gouges ect..... so what i was thinking was a series of thin drawers for carving equipment, burning handpieces, ect... this bench is used mainly for carving, and small work like wood burning, marqatry, inlay ect.... so i wont be storing large tools

 

one drawer would be thin and hold all my dremel stuff in small cubbie slots like a printers tray where the letters are all seperated by size and font.

 

another drawer would hold all my carving knives and gouges

 

one drawer for measureing tools

 

drawer for carving vises

 

and then a bottom drawers to hold my sandpaper and sanders

 

the measurements are 30 1/4 17 1/2 deep and 24 3/4 tall. i thought i would take off 5 inches of so since my table top has hole's in the top for bench dogs and hold downs. if my cabinet went tot the top be hard to clean any wood chips and i would need room for the hold downs to stick out the bottom of my bench top.

 

 

so what i need help with is knowing what tools would be most usefull right at the bench that way i can plan and set up the drawers for specific tools like demel drawer full of small squares and the hand carving tool full of slots like a silverwear drawer for each of my tools. so what tools will i run into most often? for example i wont ever use a circler saw on this surface but i would probably use coping saw.

 

http://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/g424/duckkisser/DSCN0249.jpg

 

as you can see i have a small surface for seting tools on so i will end up just puting them away as soon as im finished. but i have more room down below so drawers are perfect solution.

[Dan]

if you could recreate your work space or work bench how would you have your tools stored? what is something unusual that you store in your work bench that i might not think of like some mentioned puting some none drying clay in a container under the bench. that way when i need to rough out a sculpture i can just by reach down grab a lump make my rough practice and then actuly geting started with my wood block.