28/10/2013 – Over the past year I have realised how useful a tool the file is. During my plane building phase, which took up almost all of my shop time over the past 6 months the file became a real asset. It shaped the totes and created perfect stopped chamfers.

The way my files were stored until the weekend frustrated me with a vengeance. It was a quick fix when I first started setting-up shop, but not really doing the job anymore. In the picture below you can see this first attempt at storing them. They frequently fell out of their handles and ended up banging against each other when I tried to grab one or return it.

I then came up with the following plan. A small space became available when I moved my planes so I thought of building a type of beehive with PVC pipe to store each file in it’s own sheath. I bought 7 x 1 meter lengths of PVC pipe as shown below.

They were then each cut into 2 x 300 mm and 1x 400 mm lengths giving me 7 x 400 mm and 14 x 300 mm pieces. I drilled 4 holes into each end of these piece to accept cable tie.

The pieces were then tied together using cable tie as shown …

… and voila, a filehive. The next step would be to replace these horrible plastic handles with shop made Witpeer handles. I am in the process of documenting that project, so keep an eye out for the post.