One day I decided that enough is enough and now is the time to do something about it, a tool tray for the headstock was in the making. I dug out a piece of 1 mm steel plate from the too-good-bits-to-throw-out bin and cut it to a size that precisely fit on top of the headstock. After checking squareness and de-burring, I started by drilling a 1.5 mm hole where the inner corner och bend will be, and then cut out the corners.

Then I deburred the cuts and checked that the cut-outs also was square, and then off to the bender. At this stage the small holes are now a very good guide when setting up. The bend is 90 degrees and after all four sides are bent, you will have a shallow tray. The corners may be welded or simply left as they are since the thickness of the plate makes it tough enough anyway. I filled out the cornes with a little plastic padding just to make them smooth and less proned to scratch anything coming too close.

When the plastic padding had set, I cleaned everything up and painted the whole tray twice in my shop color. When dry I stuck six of those double-stick foam pads on the bottom and positioned the tray on the headstock. Job done! As a final touch I put a small piece of anti-slip matting, the kind often used in kitchen drawers, to avoid the stuff placed in the tray to skid around.

This simple little item has proven most useful, It provides a home for both the chuck key and the extra jaws for the 3-jaw chuck together with other stuff as required.