Spent some time tonight doing one of my least favorite things: Sorting through tools, eliminating duplicates and unneeded.
I'm like most guys my age (I'm past retirement, though I'm still working). We needed tools to do the things we wanted when we were young. Always needing something else, and it always seemed to cost more than we could comfortably afford. We tried cheap tools, and soon found that was a fools errand as they didn't work, wore out quick, or were hard to use. So, we picked up nice tools when we could afford to, and slowly, that became somewhat of an obsession. I got so I never pass up an estate sale, especially with a nice shop, and nearly every sale yields a handfull of quality tools at an affordable price. You drift on for 40 years doing that, and all of a sudden you realize you can't work in your shop, because of all the tools, materials, projects and scrap in the way. The answer is quite clear, and seems so easy it's amazing you didn't think of it before! Just sort out, throw away or sell or give away the excess, and you'll have enough to last the rest of your life, plus you'll have space to work, plus you'll have some spare cash to buy the things you've always wanted. You start in, and it is soon apparent that it's painful and difficult to sort, decide, and ultimately dispose of the excess.
I've been at this process for about 5 years. I've thrown away the trash, used up or disposed of excess materials, sold most all the car parts and machine parts and projects, sold all the Craftsman stuff, trashed or scrap metal'd all the asian junk, got rid of all the excess household stuff stored. Organized my personal mechanics tools into one complete set, with a road box and workbench tools also, and set the rest aside as surplus to sell. Slowly going through woodworking, gunsmithing, jewelers, machinists and other specialty tools and sorting them out. All this has produced a large lot of stuff that needs sold. Last year was my biggest year on ebay, I sold nearly $100K worth of excess there and with some local sales. My net worth went down by several TONS of steel. I used the proceeds to buy a new pickup. Cash.
Tonight I went through my Kennedy rollaway, that has more than 3 drawers full of files and rasps. A few hundred. All types, cuts, shapes, sizes. My goal is to get down to 3 drawers, laid flat and no stacking, assortment of unique sizes, shapes, cuts all set out and ready to use. I can't believe how many mill bastard nicholson single cuts I have in excess. And, how many 4 way universal rasps. I got the drawers all cleaned out, most of the files sorted and stacked, and 2 drawers out of the 3 nearly laid out. Got tired of making too many decisions and had to quit.
I'd like to get my shop all cleaned out, neatly arranged and laid out ready to work effectively before I retire. Not sure that I'm going to get there.
