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Went down a tool bag rabbit hole this morning. HomeDepot lists 462 and Lowes lists 250 of them. I bought a small $20 Craftsman duffel shaped bag from Ace Hardware for work but a duffel bag type design is a catch-all so I'm looking for something a little more custom fit. Tool bags are either designed for carpenters or electricians for the most part.

There are two types of CNC machinists at work. Those for whom it's a career and those for whom it's a decent paying job. The former tend to have a mechanic's roll around tool box and work at one machine all the time and the latter walk in carrying a set of calipers and their steno pad and bounce around 3-4 machines. I'm somewhere in between. I'm new and at 60, won't be working there for 30 years so a big tool box doesn't make sense but I'm fully blue collar and like my tools.(and enjoy a 2 hour tool bag search with morning coffee)

An electrician's meter bag type seems like it will work.(meter as in multimeter, amp meter etc) The height is the larger dimension and they're small - 8-in W x 13-in H x 3.5-in D. A tool pouch basically. I need it to hold a set of 6" calipers in plastic case and a 6" x 9" stenographer's pad and not have those get buried. That and a few small tools and 2-3 pair of gloves.

Once the calipers, steno pad and gloves come out, they're out for the day. Pull those out and hang the bag out of the way. There's not enough work bench room to even set my little duffel style bag. They've got some really strong magnet hooks at work so I can hang it by the handle attachment rings right on the sliding door of the machine. There are enough external pockets to hold an assortment for any milling job and not have to take a single step to grab anything. Company has a 5 year warranty and nearly 5 star reviews everywhere.

Another rabbit hole that I did not think would be such an impossible thing. A ring binder in A5, A6 or A7 size with the rings on the short edge so it's like a pad of paper or clipboard where you flip the pages up. Unobtainium.

Gonna have to make one. I can buy just the ring mechanism. Sheets of A sized paper all have the long edge as the same dimension of the short edge of the next larger and size and visa versa. I don't need a front cover or even a bound edge. It can be a flat panel with the ring mechanism which is something I also thought I could buy. I guess phones have negated the need for a lot of things.

An A7 mechanism used with the short edge of A6 card stock, printed, laminated and holes punched will give me what I want. Cheat sheets and check lists for the CNC machines and other programs and procedures at work. Tabs to group them is easy enough. Glue a magnet to it and stick it right on a machine.

Only thing bound on the short edge is 4x6 photo albums but they're all so pretty.