Tool box crash! What a mess.

I don't remember what I was doing, but I was in the shop with her at the time. Lil monsters will get into everything. Shes 20 now, and her sister is 24, but we just started round 2. I have a 6 week old grandson to come out to the shop.

 

I brought my rolled change to my bank and it happened to the gal behind the window. Money all over the floor

Not so funny when it happens at home.

 

My tool box system is two pieces....both Craftsman and both pre-1980. The top, 3 drawer portion, I was given as a kid.

The bottom rolling portion, I found sitting in front of a dumpster at a storage locker place. It was dented and twisted. You could tell it had fallen or something that slammed into it.

But...it was Craftsman....and not the new garbage....it was heavy gauge and the Craftsman lettering was an old style. So, I took it home, took it apart, straightened out all the panels and put it back together. I've had it for many years now and use it every day.

 

Can you imagine if it was a high rise box? Never mind the cost,I could never understand having to climb a ladder to get tools.

 

hey hey happened to me in vegas,,,i was gonna chuck the whole f n chillada..i chilled .took a breath and got busy...shit hell i found some tools i hadnt seen in year..

 

snap-on boxes have the world's worst drawer retainers. a friend caught a hoist arm under my box years ago and the drawers all rolled out before i could barely yell at him and it fell on it's face. although he apologized profusely and offered to help clean up, i told him to get the fk out. took probably 1/2 the day to get it up and somewhat organized. i had to wrap motorcycle tie-down straps around it to hold the drawers in and a cherry picker to get it upright. grrrrr.

 

A few hear back I was following a pick up on a highway here in Connecticut that had a nice shinny Snapon roll away and upper box strapped to the back of the cab.He hit a dip in the road and I could the strap coming loose allowing the box to move around.Before I could pull up along side him to warn him about the problem the strap let go and the box rolled back and hit the tailgate. The bottom box stopped but the top one kept going.All I can remember was seeing what look like hundreds of diamonds glinting in the sunlight as his shinny Snapon tools bounced down the road in every direction followed by the rapidly disintegrating box as it did nonstop cartwheels and barrel rolls.Foutunatly I was in the outer lane and managed to escape the carnage but I'm sure either he or his insurance company ended up with a nice replacement bill.

 

hey hey moose ,,,the glittering part was fun...for me

 

oh man..i feel ur pain...this happened to me in the shop..i had the biggest snap on set up..lift caught the drawer and tilted the box over,makin a mess and bending drawers..never had it happen again !!!

 

Doh!

 

We were loading for a race at Thunder Hill .... our garage at Sears Point .... Boys were in a hurry and got the wild hair to take a Lista full of AN hardware - over it went $$$$ all over and a forklift needed to up right
Dopes

 

That's some kind of strong magnet on that nut/bolt tray still stuck to the side.

 

The gizmo that prevents all the drawers from opening at the same time is........


... a cable. Yep.

You would think if you pay a gazillion $$$$ for a Snap-On they could run a cable along th back of all the drawers.

 

Sounds like a total. Hope you saved the steering box!

Bob

 

that bites.................

 

I have a large old (late 60's) Craftsman. In the early 80's I had in the hall outside my bathroom. Opened too many drawers and was traped in the bathroom, I could reach the phone and had to call a friend to help so I could get out of the bathroom.

 

When my middle son was about 6. He was out in the garage the next thing I know there was a huge crash and he comes running back inside and goes straight to his room. I use, emphasis on use, to keep my floor Jack under my tool box. He had been pulling up and down on the handle and tipped over my tool box. Luckily he was okay. But the tool box was a mess. Had trouble getting the drawers open. Some twenty years latter he still gets leery of using a jack!!!

 

Some people only come to this thread to see a toolbox crash........


Anybody ever try to catch an engine???????????

 

Been there done that as well. Broke a finger as well.

 

yep a pos honda engine it was my own stupidity i pulled out 2 boolt from the engine stand to mount something was just about to put the bolts back in and the other two snaped. about four guys came running and we managed to get it back on the stand i thnk or the ground slowley one of the two. the the metal around the bellhousing snaped so the engine was junk. but the engine was a junk engine anyways and the new one was in the car already

 

I saw a co-worker mechanic do that with a box about the same size. Hopefully your box isn't seriously damaged.

 

I worked at a restoration shop Berkeley CA about 20 years ago. One of the body men had just finished metal finishing the 1/4 panel on a 57 Ferrari Testa Rossa. He had one of those huge roll around tool boxes, and it took off across the shop and creamed the 1/4 he just finished. It was worse than when it came in. He worked all night on his own time metal finishing it again.

 

Twice: First time I came to work and felt like the pied piper with every employee following me. Walked around the corner to my work station and there is my tool box. Top and bottom box. I was a diesel mechanic so it had a lot of stuff in it. Only now it is was only 12" high. Seems a dip wick didn't line a bus up right on the rack next to my station and if fell off right on top of my tools. It took me a whole day to air chisel the box apart to get the tools out. Only broke the lense on the compression gauge and tweeked some other things. The good news was the company had to buy me a brand new tool box set.
Dan

 

Hey, bedfordboys;

The quip about the JD tractor weights is good. However, instead of hanging the weights off of the back, it's better to lay them down on the floor of the box, under the 1st drawer. If not enough room, use sections of 1/4" -> 1" plate.Filll it as full as possible. I've heard of using old chevy/ford/etc heads for the same purpose, but think they'd take up too much room. Could use old ford flatheads, etc. Could also bolt them. or the tractor weights, to the bottom of the boxes' floor. Snapon has a good amount of weight in the floor area, but I don't think it's near enough...

My 1st Snapon (lowboy) didn't have the drawer locks, which are little more than cheap plastic slides under the drawer finger pulls, so mine went partway over when a fellow mech bumped it, as it was sitting on concrete that was slightly inclined for "drainage". No damage, but I was very wary after that. Still am, I don't like "stackers", & am borderline paranoid about having to move them. My current lowboy is wider, & more stable, but I'm still very unhappy about moving it needlessly.

FWIW.

Marcus...

 

Second time was at Irwindale. The crew forgot to latch the tailgate tight. I blew a trans and hit the wall lots of smoke and sparks. They freaked out and the driver hit the gas. You guessed it the box hit the tailgate and it popped open and the tool box went flying. Funny part was it didn't do that much damage to the box. I still have it complete with Lions, Irwindale and OCIR pit passes glued to the lid. The drawer lock never work as good after that though.
Dan

 

when i was moving into the new shop a couple of years ago i was too laxy to unload it. it broke a tow strap on the back of my wrecker boom and came down hard! it took a while to sort it all out, but i didn't loose anything. the box wasn't damaged bad either.

 

Got to post #5 (and JimC avatar) ... What was the question ?

 

yeah I forgot what we where talking about also!

oh yeah your badluck. It happened to me awhile ago when we off loaded from the truck tools everywhere days to get it all back.
I feel your pain.

 

I had a coworker watch his brand new box do that the second week he owned it. The bottom drawer was twisted like a pretzel.

My box got tipped over about 45* and pushed against my Stude PU when the tornado took apart the barn and house around us. Still need to clean all the dirt and junk out of the slides.

I like the idea of anchoring the box to the wall/floor. I can see my 6yr old son trying to scale it looking for something.

 

Students used to do that too ! There was a KRA63 smashed about every other season lucky none of the dummies fell out.