Uncle's amazing workbench!!!

[Sevenhills1952]

In early 60s I stayed with my Aunt & Uncle in upstate Pennsylvania for a while. He was a retired DuPont engineer. One day I go out to uncle's garage, we had some project we were working on and I noticed except for a vice his workbench was spotless!
"Where the heck are your tools?" I asked. Uncle points up to ceiling. Along the rafter was everything in a neat row, screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers, etc. Each one had a string tied to it, up to a row of small pulleys, across ceiling to more pulleys down to a fishing weight.
You'd use whatever you needed, release, it went back up!
I thought that was so amazing at the time.

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[454ragtop]

Alright if you have 2 screwdrivers, a hammer and a pair of pliers, but probably not practical for the typical GJer with literally thousands of tools. Might be worthwhile for a couple of seldom used tools that are a storage problem I guess.

 

[Sevenhills1952]

I couldn't do it either, but he had at least 50 tools. Back then three screwdrivers, 1/2", 9/16", hammer & adj. wrench is mostly what you used.
One bedroom upstairs was for ho scale trains, fairly new at the time I believe and he made most things for it, so he had other tools certainly. You opened the door activated a switch, a drawbridge went up so you stood in middle of a large train set.
I thought tool idea was interesting (now by next week I was pictures of everyone's string/tool conversion![emoji38]

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[jd_1138]

My OCD is such that I'd rather see my tools on a pegboard on the walls or in a toolbox rather than in the ceiling. Yeah today's handyman has way more tools than back then, so no one would do that now.

In factories though, they do hang power tools from cables above -- to keep them out of the way and easy to reach.