CTR 10: Garrett Wade Gimlets

No, not the drink.  The old-fashioned hole-maker and screw-starter.

Where, and How Much?

These were a gift, but they came from Garrett-Wade, and are $25 for a set of seven.  You can get them here.

(photo from Garrett-Wade)

What do you get, and What's the Construction Like?

They come as a set of seven, from 5/64" to 3/16".  Construction is traditional, robust, and very simple:  it's simply a piece of wire, with threads and fluting cut at one end, and the other end bent into a handle shape.  They've been made this way more or less forever, and it's utterly reliable.

 How do they work?

These work beautifully.  I'll be honest, I didn't really have high hopes for them.  I've used gimlets a few places before, and didn't much like them.  They didn't cut well, they bound in the wood, and they didn't seem to make starting a screw any easier.  I decided I wanted these because Garrett Wade has a good reputation, and I was sick of trying to drill pilot holes with an eggbeater drill.  I made a very good choice, because they're fantastic.

Here's how they work.  Once you know where a screw is going in -- say, to install a hinge -- you mark where you want the hole.  You could use an awl, a marking knife, or the gimlet itself.  Pick a gimlet that is the same diameter as the core of the screw, or just a touch larger.  Twist it into the wood.  It shouldn't take much strength or effort, because the threads at the point will draw it in.  When you're done, twist it back out in reverse.  That last bit is important:  you'll end up with the ghost of a thread track in the wood, which means the screw will go in with practically no effort at all.  At this point there's no tool I'd rather use for drilling pilot holes.  This is another technology where I don't understand how it got lost:  sure, if I have a thousand holes to drill I'd rather use a power drill, but how often does that happen?  In my shop, probably never.

Final Thoughts?

They're well worth the cost, and if you ever need to drive small screws, order a set.  They are a little harder to use in hardwood, but they still do a pretty good job.  I've recently run into a number of tools like this:  things that seem like they should never have fallen out of style.  The mid-size Yankee screwdriver is another.  It produces more torque than my electric drill, while weighing less and being easier on my wrist.  More on that in another entry, though.  For right now, the important information is that it's well worth buying a set of these, and they'll make your life easier.

Would I buy another?

Absolutely.  They're cost effective and efficient.

Dutch tool chest, details

Yesterday I promised some details and photos of the chest.  Let's start with the outside.

The paint was dry enough this morning for me to re-assemble and repack the chest.

It's now very blue...

You can also see how cramped my workspace is... I'm squeezed in next to the clothes dryer.

Top open.  You can see the rack for small joinery saws at the top, the tool rack, and the top of a couple of large saws.    Below is a closeup of the joinery saws:  I'm working on rehabbing a nice old dovetail saw, but I haven't finished re-cutting the teeth yet, so this little gent's saw does the job for now.

The inside of the top section.  The rack holds screwdrivers, chisels, odd bits for a brace, and a Yankee screwdriver.  Bench planes and large saws are also stored up here, along with a box holding a full set of auger bits.  I somehow forgot to put the tenon saw back in before shooting.  Oops.  The tool rack and saw till I'll probably replace at some point... they work OK for now, but they're not ideal.

Fully open, with the bottom pretty empty.  There are two more shelves that go on the right, which you'll see next.

Almost entirely packed.  A few more things got added to the top along the way, but this is pretty much what it looks like in daily use.  I'm considering a shallow drawer (maybe two inches deep) for the top of the open section.  The shelves are really over-filled, and it would be nice to have a safer place for things like scrapers and blades for the combination plane.

Finally, the front panel.  The 16" square and coping saw fit pretty perfectly, and the slats to hold the panel in place slide behind the square just about perfectly.


All in all, I'm happy with the way this came out.  Even freshly painted it looks a little battered, but I don't mind that:  it was made from recycled lumber (previously a nearly unusable workbench), and I enjoy that it shows some history.

I doubt I've finished my changes to it:  I'm pretty sure I'm going to build a drawer for the lower section, and I may well rebuild the tool rack and saw till as well... I'll have to use them a little longer, and see what other tools I acquire.  At this point I think I mostly just need things like moulding planes, so there shouldn't be much change necessary in the top section.

In any case, there it is:  my completed-for-the-moment tool chest.

Thoughts on the Dutch-style Toolchest

I've been using my Dutch-style toolchest for over a year now, since early October 2013.  In that times, I've learned some things about it, some good, some bad.

The Bad

On the bad side, in one respect the design is a complete failure.  Part of the idea was that I should be able to pick it up and move it, fully loaded, on my own.  That's just not going to happen.  It weighs far more than I can comfortably carry, and I suspect the handles would tear out of the sides if I tried.  If I replaced all my metal planes with wood it might be different, but I don't think that would be enough of a change to solve the problem.

In addition to that, I'm running out of space, and some of my tools (the combination plane being the primary offender) just don't fit conveniently.  The combination plane is too long, tote to toe, to just slide in, so I have to put it in sideways, at which point the adjusting rods inevitably trap something else behind them.  I've also accumulated more tools than I really expected to want to store in it, and I'm going to have to make some hard decisions sooner or later, or else build an auxiliary toolchest and try to split things up into "used frequently" and "used rarely" categories.

The Good

There's far more good to say about it, though.  The primary goals of a toolchest, in my mind, are to keep tools safe, and to keep tools easily accessible.  This chest accomplishes that, and in far less space than I would have expected.  Things do get tangled up in that combo plane, but other than that everything is easy to reach.  I can grab a chisel, screwdriver, saw, or a plane (mostly) without having to move anything else.  The top compartment holds a full set of bench chisels, a 1/4" mortise chisel, screwdrivers (including a small Yankee drill/driver), bit adapters and a countersink for a brace, rip, crosscut, carcase, tenon, and dovetail saws, along with #3, #4, and #5 planes, a block plane, and an old transitional jointer plane.  I've also got my box of auger bits in there for the moment, for lack of a better place to put it.  Everything in there can be grabbed without having to shift anything else, and those are the tools I use most often.

The lower case holds moulding planes (what few I have), a hammer, the brace, an eggbeater drill, squares, a coping saw, scrapers, and various other bits and pieces that don't make sense to store up top.  They're more or less just tossed into the chest, though, so finding things can be a bit of a challenge.  Still, it rarely takes more than 30 seconds to find something, and at worst another 45 seconds to extract it.

The biggest advantage is in the convenience of cleanup.  Every tool has either a defined place or goes in a pile in the bottom.  That means putting everything away takes a few minutes, and there's no real thought involved beyond "does this need to be cleaned?".  As a result, my tools spend more time put away, and less time sitting out on the bench.

What's changed?

It looks like the last thing I published about this chest was in 2013 (here), and some things have changed since then.  I plan to do a more thorough breakdown, but here's the short list:

• I did, in fact, add a shelf stack to the right end of the lower compartment.  It holds a Stanley #78 rabbet plane, my squares and gauges, blades for the combination plane, and scrapers.  Getting the small stuff out of the way has helped organization a lot, and makes it less likely that something will fall out of the chest when I open it.
• The lid was completely replaced with a frame and panel arrangement.  The lid now has safe storage for a cacase saw and a dovetail saw, which has been really nice.  It's now one step to get to either one, or to put it away.  I used the lid for about 6 months without any glue (the frame is a pegged mortise and tenon arrangement) and it worked great:  this morning I knocked it apart, added glue, and put it back together... I'll paint it tonight, and reassemble it for the final time and photos tomorrow morning.
• I've moved the tool rack to the back wall, gotten rid of the divider in the top, and added a saw till.  I just couldn't find a better way to store long saws, and it seems to be working quite well.
• I painted it bright blue.  I like blue, and I found some cheap paint in a remarkably bright shade.  Yes, there will be pictures.  I ended up not priming it first, and I really like the sort of battered appearance the re-used wood has, and the slight variations in color from old stains on the wood.  It doesn't look like a show-piece, it looks like a chest that has had a long and productive life.
• I build cleats to hold a 16" combination square and a coping saw into the removable front panel.  It means I need to keep that panel accessible when I take it off, but it works beautifully.
• I gave up and bought something for the chest:  handles for the sides.  They're cheap steel chest lifts, but they fit and they make it simple to just grab the chest and move it (at least when it's empty...).

Once everything is back in it, I'll get some pictures to show the current layout.


Overall, I'm thrilled with the chest.  I admit I still love the idea of doing a big traditional tool-chest, but there's just no space.  My "shop" space is still only 6'x6', and a 2x2x3'+ chest just wasn't going to happen.  Someday I'll get my garage insulated and heated, and maybe I'll build one there.  Or maybe I'll just stick with the chest I have and am used to.