the decommissioned coffee mug

Can be a sad happening. Perhaps a hairline-crack in the handle makes you paranoid that your private's might be scolded, should the handle separate from the mug whilst sipping. A foul-grip on the way from the dishwasher to the cabinet.. resulting in multiple broken pieces. It's your favorite mug too.. (of course) and now it's broken. It can live-on by reassembly with super glue.

I keep a decommissioned coffee mug on my bench, with an assortment of items.. that I find are particularly handy often.




The tweezers and awl get the most use.. but the pin-vise is a great little tool. It takes up the same amount of space as the small flat-head screwdriver.. (both "General"-brand) The brushes are another handle/stem tool worth having handy. Toe-nail-clippers.. can't say enough about how well they work... The paper-punches have a few particular modelling functions. The purple-handled punch is 1/8". Using it first.. to punch a hole in heavy-paper, followed by the punching-out squarely with the std. 1/4" punch, produces a perfect Cox tanked-Bee venturi-gasket. The 1/8" punch was a splurge-purchase.. but I can make my own venturi-gaskets.. Another use for the std. punch is in the making of washers from thin sheet-goods. Shims.. spacers.. hubcaps.. whatever.

Then there's the "pepper" or "pepperoncini" jar for common writing-implements. A round piece of foam at the bottom helps keep pencils sharp. Another "staple" for my work-area.



Finally.. the third station takes-up the space of 1/2 a paper-towel. A blotter that I change-out when it starts looking ragged.  Upon it I keep razors/knives, a scribe, "Leatherman's" (a recent gift from my brother..) 6" rules, a good eraser.. for my penciled drawings, an eye-loupe and a penny for size-reference/photo-shots.



I try to keep all other model-tools organized... but there are so many categories. Some cross-over to general-use. Soldering.. adhesives.. lubricants.. paints.. and all their associated supplies.

I half-heartedly started an inventory-system consisting of an alpha-numeric grid/footprint of my space. Seriously... I need to do that at some point. I also need to get stock off the floor. It's in the basement.. and a plumbing issue could spell disaster. I need to build racks into the overhead floor-joists for my kit-boxes and wood.

What's in your coffee-mug?