Anyone still rocking those old school cabinets in their garage? I love the iconic look of a parts cabinet with hotrod stickers! Sent from my Pixel 3a XL using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
When I was a teenager my mother bought me a rolling tool cabinet for Christmas and then freaked out on me when I started putting racing stickers on it. Even now I'm in my fifties and still remember that every time I look at that cabinet.
That brings back memories! My wife bought me a set of Craftsman roll around tool boxes for our first Christmas, in 1972. I would never put a sticker on the out side, had a few under the lid. Never did like the sticker look, back then. I even polished my boxes. Used them for years, my son has them now. Kinda like the sticker look now, if they are straight and somewhat organized. Most of my friends did the sticker thing and I guess that’s what turned me off to them, they would just plaster them all over willie Nellie. Didn’t like that look. Bones
The last set of boxes I drug home about a month ago is a triple Kennedy machinist set, with tooling, that had belonged to a retired old-school machinist from Mare Island Naval Shipyard- has some cool stickers from the nuke subs he worked on. I also have an old Plomb rollaway that's just cool
I love the old auto cabinets! I call this one the patina cabinet. This cabinet is newer but I have had the Bardhal stickers since the 60’s. The Texaco cabinet probably came from a dentist office. It has that 50’s hospital green look about it. I tried to disguise it as a Texaco gas station cabinet, it has 30 cubby holes inside and it,s great for small items. The disc brake one might not be hamb friendly ...the silly chrome on the wheel wells looks like 70’s. I keep my Rodders Journal inside of it. I have no idea how the two doors aged so different but I like this one anyways. I store rattle cans in it.
I never got any of the true old parts cabinets but I sure have my share of decals. I've always said "I spent 90% of my money on hot rod parts..........the rest I wasted".
I know isn’t exactly what this thread is supposed to be about, but these pics go well with the other posts
Funny stuff...I traded a dirt bike to a guy in the early 80's for his Proto top box with tools. It was his Auto-tech school issued one. Anyway, opened it up and full of Wynns, STP, etc stickers. I spent hours with a razor blade and heat gun getting them off. I still don't like stickers on any vehicle I have either.
I am with DDDenny on not getting any of the vintage cabinets .Basically because if you see them in an antique store or auction , for the price my first thought is I can buy these cool old parts and that floats my boat more .
When I bought my red box above^^ I said I wasn’t going to put any stickers on it, that didn’t work out so well...
Any one else notice the note on the wall to the left of the cabinet? You’re doing something right Cleveland coupe!
I have vintage AC Delco items like metal brake line assortment shelves, roll around seat with drawer ,parts catalog holders but cabinets will come when the timing is right, I guess.
No stickers, just an old AC spark plugs rack of some sort that a good friend/mentor just gave me. He's battling cancer and passing on many of the items in his shop to his son and close friends. Not sure where I'll hang it but I do know that I wish it would be hanging in his shop not mine for many years to come. Unfortunately that isn't to be.
My poor contribution by comparison to to others, however I've plenty of other tools that are too large and won't fit in there. It's packed tight and weighs a ton.
I need to take some time and organize this box as I think it is a bigger mess now than when I took the photo a few years ago. I think a couple of those decals/stickers got put on the first week I had the box in the early 70's. T In the mid 60's when I started trade school one of the stipulations was that we had to have our own rollaway and top box and a set of tools. The school got us a deal through the local Napa store and I got a Duplex top and bottom box and a set of Challenger tools that I actually have a few left from 54 years later. One reason was so that our tools showed that they had some experience after we got out of school and went out to the first shop that we got hired at. The instructor told the story that when he graduated from a mechanics program at a college (either in Idaho or Montana) that he had gone down to a tool store and bought a brand new shiny top and bottom box and a set of tools and shined it all up and headed to the first job he had been hired for and when he unloaded the new box the older mechanics kind of snickered and they gave him a bit of a hard time and he ended up leaving in about a week and found another job where pretty much the same thing happened. When he decided that he was leaving there an old timer took him aside and told him that with that new shiny box and shiny tools he just flat looked too new and inexperienced and that was the reason he was getting a hard time. He said he went home and set the box out in the driveway and took a log chain to it and beat it up a bit and then sprayed water on it while throwing some salt on it and dumped a lot of the tools on the gravel and scuffed them around a bit. A few days later he went to a new job and when he backed in to unload the tool boxes several of the mechanics came over and helped him unload them and get them to his stall (s) He worked in that shop for a few years until a better job came along. On my box most of the stickers have a story to go with them either from a road trip to a speed shop or putting the part that the decal came with on one of my rides. I've got a couple of wall mount cabinets out in one of the sheds that will get put in the shop when it is done.
Very sad. We've lost so many great ones that way.... Sent from my Pixel 3a XL using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Tool boxes are like boats. Somebody always has one bigger and better. I wonder what the next bigger one would be?