I almost didn't open the link because of the title and glad I did. I used to watch Norm's show after he split off from Bob Villa and This Old House show and haven't seen him for a while. I wonder how many years it took Mr. Studley to build and design that awesome tool cabinet and make the tools too? unbelievable. thanks for putting up the link.
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, some 75 years after his death, it remains in a class of its own.
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 a foot and a half 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 before 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 in the late 1980s and later sold it to a private collector in the Midwest.
The current owner loans the chest to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. from time to time.
