Bench Wars 1

My work bench was in terrible shape. Disorganized, invariably messy and absolutely slowing me down. My main problems seemed to be as follows:

• I have a ton of tools and my methods of storing them were bad.

• I was mostly using small caddies of the type used for storing kitchen utensils.

• I also was using small artist's carousels, which are typically used for pencils and brushes. They also have a small tray along their lower edge.

• Many tools were hard to get at and many went unused as a result.

• Some storage was created with small IKEA metal cabinets nearby, but this kept tools a fair distance from the bench.

• Nothing ever seemed to get put away. During work sessions a big pile of tools would form to my right (I'm right-handed), making it even more difficult to work and find things.

BTW, my basic work bench is an IKEA wooden kitchen "butcher block" counter top mounted onto two inexpensive kitchen cabinets. These were purchased at a home store (Home Depot) as boxed kits.

One day we received a small paint rack in a sample package from MiG Ammo. This was intriguing because it was laser cut fiber board. It came as a small kit and once assembled it was quite sturdy. It accommodated different sized paint bottles and clearly had some thought behind its design.

Although it was a promotional item, with the MiG Ammo logo on it, it also had the initials "HZ." After a little investigating, I found this stood for Hobby Zone and that information lead me here:

http://www.hobbyzone.pl/en/