Oxy/Map Tool Caddy & Fire Table

[PJs]

I was inspired yesterday by Toolmaker51's posting of his Un-Bucket Tool Bag to post this little caddy I did last year. These kinds of tips and tricks help us with all the different things we do and thought I would share this handy one for me.

Basically I picked up one of those BernzOmatic OXY/Mapp kits a while back to do some silver brazing and Mapp alone isn't quite hot enough for some of the thing I wanted to do. I won't go into rating it's worth but leave it to say the O2 tanks don't last long and are pricey. But for getting into tight places and portability it's pretty good. The kit came with a little wire rack to hold the tanks but it was basically worthless IMHO...always coming off because of the short hoses. Felt more like I was dragging the tanks around and made it difficult to use and store. After a couple of uses I came up with this idea to hold every thing I might need on a small job, Stable, and stored well.

I made it from some scrap 1/4" acrylic I picked up at our local Tap Plastic's, remanent bins for couple of bucks. It won't survive a 15' drop but its quite robust...acrylic glue is a very strong bonding agent and might imagine most of the joints would stay stronger than the acrylic itself. I could have made it from plywood but then there is the whole painting thing, And Honestly don't care if it gets scratched up. It only took about 4-5 hours to build, mainly cleaning up of the edges and cutting the hand slot in the back and legs. The brass Pivot pins are from and old ground rod I salvaged. They lock the legs in place with only a slight torque and were easy to make.

Here are a few pics of the caddy I came up with.



Here is a drawing I did to keep it straight in my head when I laid out my scraps to maximize the use.



While building it I decided that I wanted a small fire brick table that was (semi) portable and had some fireplace bricks I picked up for $2 apiece a while back. So with some scrap 3/4" Angle Iron, a piece of 1/4" ply and a little construction glue I put this together. I've thought since to put some folding legs on it but don't use it often, so it hasn't been a priority. The nice thing is it stands on end up behind the Caddy when it's stored. A bit heavy but works!



Over all it fits my need and was a fun useful project. Hope it helps others on this great forum also.

~PJ