I recently purchased a 5-compartment tool tray from Grizzly, looking for something to better organize my collection of stones and clean up my continually cluttered bench. It probably wouldn’t work for those of you who need portability, but it has turned out to be a very pleasing improvement for me, so I thought I’d share it with you fellows.
The tray is made of oak, with the exception of its bottom panel, which is a fiber-board material with a flocking of green fibers made to look like a pool table felt. Actually it’s pulled off rather well. The left side panel had been knocked loose when it arrived, but a little Titebond II adhesive and a couple of clamps solved that nicely. With shipping, the cost was $25. About.
As is obvious from the photos, I lined the bottom of each compartment with the same foam drawer liner material I have on the bench surface.
As soon as I attempted to set a pair of stones into place, I could see that there would be a problem with the grit on the stones beating up the margins of the compartment. I solved that by covering the edges with clear packing tape. Except now the stones are a tight fit when laid back-to-back. Easy solution is to lay the stones side-by-side, with a common grit facing up. This turned out to be a non-problem. Probably better for the stones not to be banged against each other.
The major benefit so far is the ergonomics of the thing. The stones are presented at a very comfortable angle and the transition from laying one set down and picking up the next is very smooth. Best of all is that there’s no danger in reaching to the back of the bench to retrieve a set of stones.
As you can see in the photos, I keep four sets of stones in their respective compartments. From left to right they are: 100/200, 400/600, 800/1000 and 1200/1600. In the fifth compartment I currently have my angle cubes and my Carson 10X loupe. When I get my new micro-fine ceramic stones, they’ll take their place in the fifth slot.
I’ll continue to keep my strops in separate containers to protect them from cross-contamination.
Since the photos were taken, I’ve done some rearranging, moving the stone tray to the left front and placing a blue-tooth mouse and mini-keyboard on the right. I’m left-handed, but after 25 years of running a mouse right-handed, I had to put the mouse on the right. The laptop has been moved to a lower shelf.
The laptop is obviously for the microscope, which I’ve upgraded to a Celestron Handheld Pro. The camera is 1.3 to 5MP. The pictures aren’t really any better, but it really does make handheld use possible. You can adjust the focus to fall on the plane of the clear plastic shroud. Touch the camera to the knife’s edge and presto! You’ve got a clear picture, or something very close to it. Slide the camera along the edge and look for nasty stuff, like chips and nicks. The software is also a big improvement over the no-name clone of the Veho. Measurements down to 2-3 microns is a snap. Snap! Oh yeah, there’s a separate image capture button conveniently located in the cable.
Any questions or suggestions would be very welcome.
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