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Old Tool Chest Help


Codejack

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Sorry if you've seen this elsewhere, but I haven't found any help, yet.

 

I had to leave my tools with my brother for several years, and when I got them back, lots of stuff was missing, of course, including the lock bars. Now, I have replaced all the tools, but I'm not sure what to do about the lock bars, and I am applying to service jobs so I need to be able to lock up my tools :)

 

Does anyone know where I can find replacements, or what kind of bar stock I should get to cut and bend to fit?

 

Here's the box (plus some tool porn :) )

 

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And here's the tool porn; look at all my crap tools! :)

 

ab36d32a7ad8da74af4f226220e5214f.jpg

 

2c2ba4ab2495b1fe80a36f051de9d3c9.jpg

 

dfe5e54eabcf2a43f4a33b3fe83384d0.jpg

 

02357eabaea2fa10fab39562505a634c.jpg

 

b209e9ce10b1c8d69e619f4733538d80.jpg

 

ec991c54aa96efa2fbde66b208578224.jpg

 

538257dd5a2baec7d4365530ae2e798b.jpg

 

f3484624fea3ba18188b8515de789d58.jpg

 

If you're curious, I have a completely separate box with sockets and plain combination wrenches.

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9 hours ago, Codejack said:

OK, well, in case anyone is curious, I went and bought a 3' length of metal bar stock, cut it to length, bent an elbow in the long piece and ground a notch out of it.

 

It's ugly (maybe I'll paint them), but it works.

 

That's pretty much what I would have done.

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I just thought that it was weird that I literally could not find any information on the subject; surely I'm not the first person to lose the lock bars to a chest, has everyone else just thrown the entire box away?

 

Or is the solution just so obvious that no one else has ever asked? :o

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In some cases people probably bought replacement parts because they were available (I know that Craftsman seems to have replacements readily available online), took it as an opportunity to upgrade to new chests, just ignored it because they don't worry about their tools being stolen, or just decided to try and make their own. If you search long enough on the internet you'll probably find someone asking the same thing.

If I was looking to replace bars on a chest I'd probably search for replacements, post somewhere about finding them for the specific chest, and if I can't find them try to make my own just like you did. Some people probably do the search, find no results, and then skip right to making them.

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> If I was looking to replace bars on a chest I'd probably search for replacements, post somewhere about finding them for the specific chest, and if I can't find them try to make my own

 

Yea, I was just surprised because I did search and didn't see anything. I was actually tempted to make a video of it :)

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It's pretty much an antiquated design and you can't really buy parts for those chests other than locks(because they're pretty universal). You'd think there would be tutorials of how to fix it, surely people have lost them by being cut for theft...or just lost bars. It's cheaper than buying even the cheapest replacement box, so why wouldn't someone want to fix it?

 

You will probably want to upgrade that box at some point, something bigger and thicker steel so you can load more but definitely the right thing to do until you get a steady service job...it's sad to see all the big boxes being sold because a job didn't pan out, you know those guys are losing tons of money on those.

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3 minutes ago, BMack37 said:

You will probably want to upgrade that box at some point, something bigger

 

Yea, it's already too small; I don't have room for my Dremel, tap & die set or angle grinder, and my entire socket set is in another 3-drawer box. Plus I still need a bunch of big stuff: Bearing kit, compression tester, radiator pressure tester, brake caliper wind-back kit, slide hammer, etc.

 

I've got to make some money before I spend too much more money, though :)

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