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What's in your shop apron?

If you spend any time in your shop, you've almost certainly spent too much of that time searching for your pencil, your six inch ruler, your tape measure, or some other frequently used small tool. In any shop, tools, especially very small tools and pencils, tend to disappear. In fact, the probability of your not finding something you need seems to be directly proportional to how badly you need it!

This particular apron works for me because of how the pockets are arranged, and the number of pockets available. This vest was designed by woodworkers for everyday use by woodworkers. But, like anything else, it will be of little use unless you make a deliberate effort to store the small tools you use every day in the same pocket in the apron. More importantly, you must put the tool back in its pocket as soon as you have finished with it. I've made great strides improving my ability to quickly put my fingers on a frequently used small tool, but I still sometimes become distracted and leave my six in rule or my tape measure on a bench and walk away. Still, most of the time I seem to remember and most of the time I have the tools I need at my fingertips.

So, what do I keep in my apron? Obviously, this will be different for each woodworker and will depend a lot on the kind of work you do. For me, here is what I keep and how I've organized it:

Top Pockets:

• The leftmost pocket contains the control for my central dust collection system. My particular control has a pocket clip designed to help it stay put in a pocket, and I've found that since I'm right handed, reaching up to my left-most top pocket to turn the dust system on and off is very natural.
• The middle two pockets are small, narrow and designed to hold a pencil. I do keep a standard pencil in one of the pockets but reserve the other "pencil pocket" to store two small rulers. The one I use the most is a six inch Starrett ruler. This is a high quality easy to read ruler that I use often because it is more accurate than a tape measure for measurements of six inches or less. The other small ruler I keep in the same pocket has a metric scale. I have a few tools (mostly Festool) that use metric measurements and I use this ruler when I need to measure in millimeters.
• In the rightmost pocket I keep two high quality mechanical pencils. One uses .5mm lead and the other uses .7mm lead. I use the .7mm pencil the most for marking and layout. I use the .5mm for my Incra ruler that has tiny slots cut into it to precisely locate layout marks. These two pencils are somewhat unique because each will totally retract the lead into the body of the pencil when you push a button. This is very important for pencils with tiny lead because otherwise it is very easy to catch the small lead on the apron fabric when you are putting it away. I got mine at Dick Blick Art Supplies. I mentioned that these are very high quality pencils that I paid over $10.00 each for. You may find something you like for less but you will probably not be very happy using the very cheap mechanical pencils. My experience is that these are simply not well suited to the dirty and dusty environment in most workshops. On the other hand, you can by a dozen of the cheap ones for what one high quality one costs. But once you convince yourself that you can use the same pencil over and over again and not loose it because you always put it back in the same place in your apron, you may eventually opt for the higher quality one.

At waist level the apron has three pockets.

• Since I'm right handed I reserve the rightmost pocket for larger tools I use the most. The first is a twelve foot tape measure and the other is a folding utility knife. I find it surprising how often I reach for the folding utility knife and having it handy saves me a lot of time searching the shop for one of these easy to loose tools.
• The center pocket contains two layout tools that have become indispensable for the kind of work I do. The first is a small high precision machinist square. Years ago I purchased a set of three such squares and the smallest one is the only one small enough to carry around all the time. This little square is very handy to check that fence on the jointer or that two edges are at 90 degrees. The second tool is the one I use most often, and that is the Veritas Saddle Square sold by Lee Valley. It is surprising how often we need to transfer a line from one surface to another perpendicular surface. This little tool has become the single tool I use most often for layout.
• The left most pocket is the one I have the most difficulty reaching with my right hand, so it is reserved for a couple of items I use the least, yet often enough to warrant being with me all the time. The first is a small woodworking calculator. I'm quite good at adding and subtracting fractions, but I do, from time to time, pull out the calculator when I'm a bit tired and prefer to not rely on my math skill. The second tool I keep is a small magnifying glass that houses the glass inside a leather pouch. I don't use it often, but when I need it, I need it and I always know exactly where it is.

Once you find an apron you really like, you have to strike a personal balance between what you decide to keep in the apron and how much the apron will weigh every second you have it on. How well the apron fits your particular build and how it distributes the weight it is carrying in all those pockets is something that is very personal and probably can only be resolved by trying and discarding a lot of aprons. I certainly did exactly that but I do still keep a couple of those rejects around the shop for use by a visitor.

I hope this little monolog gives you some good ideas about how you can better organize your shop time and spend more of it doing happy and productive work and not searching for that d*&m tool!

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