toolboxes

I like old mechanics' toolboxes. They are very tactile: the tools and often the boxes themselves have a very substantial feel. Old tools have resonance, or radiance, particularly when they have been well-used. Without getting all Irish about it, the ghosts are there. Few men would willingly sell their own toolbox: so the men who used these toolboxes and tools are probably dead. And of course the boxes and the tools have a beauty that's not hard to see. Tools, and other things that people use in their work--trucks, lobsterboats, paintbrushes, western saddles--have always been (mostly) about form following function, a good design principle to go by. It would have surprised Romantics in the early 19th century that old, humble machine-made objects could be beautiful, and resonant, but they are, aren't they?
    
    

        I found this sort-of-green toolbox in Lancaster, N.H. a couple of weeks ago. It came with an assortment of tools--mostly drill bits, punches, and screwdrivers.
        I bought this narrow blue box with a socket wrench set at Liberty Tool in Liberty, Maine last summer.  This one gets a lot of use, on the Sierra.

The grey box is quite utilitarian. I found it in Blue Hill last week, and I think I will be using it for most of my amateur-mechanic tools. The previous owner lined it with linoleum--early Seventies, I'd say, from the pattern.