Finest example of a tool chest

[scootro]

http://www.wimp.com/toolchest/

[Lason]

Its hard to believe all that stuff was in that small tool chest!

[01lightning]

I enjoyed watching this...thanks for the vid!

[grove rat]

damn that was pretty cool

[scootro]

Massachusetts piano maker Henry Studley built his magnificent tool chest over the course of a 30-year career at the Poole Piano Company. The chest lived on the wall near his workbench, and he worked on it regularly, making changes and adding new tools as he acquired them. Using ebony, mother-of-pearl, ivory, rosewood, and mahogany -- all materials used in the manufacture of pianos -- he refined the chest to the point that now, more than 80 years after his death, it remains in a class of its own.

H.O. Studley's Tool Chest

Packing more tools per square foot than seems physically possible, piano maker Henry Studley's unrivaled tool chest also manages to be beautiful in the process. The chest stands as perhaps the most exquisite example of 19th-century tool-chest craftsmanship.

Considering how many tools it holds, the famous chest is really quite small; when closed, it is just 9 in. deep, 39 in. high, and just more than 18 in. wide. Yet it houses so many tools -- some 300 -- so densely packed that three strong men strain to lift it.

For every tool, Studley fashioned a holder to keep it in place and to showcase it. Miniature wrenches, handmade saws, and some still unidentified piano-making tools each have intricate inlaid holders. Tiny clasps rotate out of the way so a tool can be removed. In places the clearances are so tight that the tools nearly touch. The chest, which hangs on ledgers secured to a wall, folds closed like a book. And as the chest is closed, tools protruding from the left side nestle into spaces between tools on the right side. Amazingly, despite being so densely packed, the tools are all easily accessible.

Studley was well into his 80s when he retired from the piano company. Before he died in 1925, Studley gave the tool chest to a friend. That man's grandson, Peter Hardwick, loaned the chest to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. in the late 1980s and later sold it to a private collector in the Midwest. That owner again sold the tool chest to another private collector, where it now resides.

[scootro]

[scootro]

Studley Tool Chest Article

http://www.phoenixmasonry.org/masonicmuseum/studley_1993_tool_chest_article.htm

[03trubluGT]

I wonder how many hours of labor went into that incredible tool chest.

[Darren M]

Applicable name for the guy too!

[71chevellejohn]

Some serious attention to detail in that chest. Makes me feel bad about leaving tools lying about when I have a large toolbox and roll-cart to store them in...

[347Mike]

I saw that earlier and incredible immediately popped into my mind.

[Sgt Beavis]

I've known about the Studley tool chest for years but that was the first time I've seen it demonstrated. And by Norm himself to boot...

I would love to build something like that someday.

[Darren M]

Interesting..... Mason.