We all have had the experience of going to a garage or estate sale and finding a great tool for a criminally cheap price. Also, we may have heard the adage, “My biggest fear is when I die, my wife sells my tools for what I told her I paid for them.” Both of these things have happened to me and as I get older and impermanence rears its head, I would like to help my widow, should the day come, to be able to sell my tools for a fair price and not loose the ranch because she gave them away too inexpensively.
On that note, I would like to find a PC-based bit of software that will let me list my tools with various fields that include what that tool is, what I paid for it, what it might sell for, as well as whether that tool has other parts that may not be stored with it that relate to it, such as an additional router base than the one that is currently on it. I found the My Collections app for my phone, but I hate doing lots of data entry on my phone and would prefer a laptop to do this work.
Does anyone have suggestions for an out-of-the-box piece of software that works for this purpose? I suspect that some customization might be needed if there is not a specific app for tool inventory, but it would/should be simple enough to use by a codger with limited computer programming skills. Thanks for any suggestions.
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This would be easy to set up as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or a Microsoft Word table. Excel would be easier for sorting when looking for something when the list has grown long.
FreeOffice is another option with an Excel compatible spreadsheet application that is free. It is more limited than Excel but would work fine for what you are describing. Google Sheets is another free option. It also supports excel files with some limitations. Excel compatibility is nice because it is pretty much universally supported if you change your mind about which software you want to use.
I’ll add that if you have Gmail, then you have Google Sheets and GDrive. You can set it up on your laptop and then use your phone to add things as they come up. Also, as long as you have a valid Gmail the google sheet will persist in the cloud.
Unless one puts tags on all ones tools, or photos on the spread sheet, a simple spread sheet of tools will be of limited utility to a non-tool using surviving person. What does a spokeshave look like?, a drawknife, a mortice chisel, a dovetail jig, and so on.
Especially if you have multiples of each. I couldn't even tell you how many spokeshaves I own. Chisels? Fuhgettaboutit.
I use an Excel spreadsheet. It's easy to take pictures of your tools and link to them in one of the cells.
Beware trusting something you might care about to someone's "cloud". Terms of use can change after a lunch meeting. Years back I dumped my ages-old yahoo email (when yahoo was sold) because the new guys' terms gave them unlimited access to anything you pressed send on. In theory they could have used your grandchild's baby pictures for any purpose at all. If you sent one more email you were agreeing to the terms.
The trade off for "free" email is viewing their ads and that all your stuff gets used to train the AI models. If I recall correctly anything left on a gmail server past a fixed time frame becomes fair game for their use. You have the option to delete, but hardly anyone does.
Beyond the security issues, will you wife have easy access to your account and know how/where to find this useful info? If you're going to make the effort it should be on a thumb drive in the tool cabinet and marked clearly.
A local woodworking club recommended this... Take a video or multiple videos and show each item and talk about the price/value of each item. As high or low tech as you want. I started doing this while showing the model number in the process for insurance purposes. My agent recommends it. It wasn't until the club meeting that I thought about end of life use. There is a hand written list that resides in a safe also. The video is save in multiple places but not on any server.