Using a mechanic's workbench in the kitchen + ramblings on tool history
Now we're cooking with gas
I recently moved into an apartment with a large kitchen/dining area, at least large compared to the 3’x6’ galley kitchen in my old place. I cook roughly 70% of the meals I eat, so this was a big win for me. However, the new kitchen didn’t have a lot of storage or counter space, so I knew I needed a kitchen island or table to augment prep area and storage.
After some research, several hundred dollars spent, and a somewhat treacherous hauling process, I ended up with this:
This is a mechanic’s tool chest style workbench, which is supposed to be filled with socket wrenches and the like. I mostly associate this type of chest with car mechanics and machinists, who have lots of fairly flat tools I guess? I don’t remember where I originally saw the idea of using one as a kitchen island—it certainly wasn’t an original idea of mine—and it’s seemingly become a micro-trend in recent years.
I actually do a decent amount of DIY work (though not much mechanical or automotive stuff), so the idea of having a workbench as normal furniture instead of shop furniture was intuitively funny and appealing to me. The red color was chosen to make you think I have a really persuasive Snap-On dealer who expanded his Total Addressable Market to include the kitchen (at least until you see the logo of the cheap Harbor Freight house brand).
I’ve only been using it for a week or so, but I can already say that the design of this box is fantastic for a kitchen. The “killer app” is definitely spice storage:
The drawers also are strong enough to hold heavy dishes and implements - they’re rated for 100-200lb each (depending on the drawer):
The particular box I bought is available from Harbor Freight, and is currently $350 plus tax. I believe Yukon is a house brand from HF. I am generally wary of buying equipment from Harbor Freight based on their reputation as the Dollar General of tool vendors. I wasn’t going to spring for Snap-On though… their own reputation appears to be well-earned based on a price comparison.
So I did some research in the sub-$1000 niche. The Yukon boxes were surprisingly well-liked online compared to similar priced and incrementally more expensive models. I found this head-to-head teardown video with a Husky box from Home Depot particularly informative:
The one downside I’ve encountered so far with this kitchen island is physically getting a hold of one. They weigh close to 200lb and are quite large. The entire thing in packaging barely fit in the large SUV rental car I was driving on the day I picked it up. The staff at HF had clearly encountered problems selling these before because they asked me about 3 times if I was sure it would fit in my car (I had measured). I was able to get it home and into my kitchen, but it wasn’t trivial. Delivery is available, but it was expensive when I looked, and I’m not sure if it’s doorstop or in-home.
I tried to learn a bit about the history of this style of tool chest - there are a variety of similar styles, including rolling/stationary, low/high, and in modular systems for kitting out a full shop. The company Kennedy claims to have created the first roller cabinet in the 1940s, but I’m not sure whether to trust this. Based on a quick search for antique tool chests available for sale, boxes similar to the kind I bought started appearing around the 1950s or 1960s.
Much more ink has been spilled, apparently, to the history of the workbench—I’ve personally built a low roman style workbench based on Christopher Schwartz’s book Ingenious Mechanicks, one of my favorite books of all time. It combines a fascinating history of workbenches and workholding since the earliest recorded practices of woodworking with actual DIY instructions on how to create workbenches modeled on the designs we can infer from ancient Roman and German sources.
One of the major sources of information for these benches comes from frescos excavated from Herculaneum and Pompeii. I was recently listening to an interview from last year with Nat Friedman, who created the “Vesuvius Challenge” (aka the “Scroll Prize”) to motivate the decoding of high-resolution scans of scrolls from a villa in Herculaneum. Just a few days ago, the first prize was awarded to a team that has shown success decoding the scrolls!
One goal of this effort is to motivate the excavation of more scrolls from the villa where the current collection was originally found. Between the possibility of more excavations, and the contents of the scrolls archeologists have already recovered, my personal hope is that we might soon learn something new about the history of workbenches, woodworking, and other artisanal crafts. But, I’d settle for a lost book of Aristotle or something like that.