Aside from a fortress for a shop, what do you recommend doing to your tools to discourage theft or help recovery?

I mean I've engraved all my wrenches w my initials. That certainly won't prevent theft but will make it a little more difficult for thieves to profit from them..........and easier to identify should they turn up elsewhere later. Sure the engraving could be ground down but it would also look suspicious.

Right now all my wrenches are Craftsman so I don't really care (but I also don't want them stolen), but do you guys engrave high dollar wrenches like Snap-On? This surely hurts resale eh? (again, it wouldn't even be worth re-selling Craftsman wrenches so for now I don't care)

Things that have serial #'s on them I've started keeping an inventory of model # and serial #...................but what's to prevent a thief from ripping the tags off? Obviously nothing, but do pawn shops shy away from tools with no identifying marks? I'm considering engraving the tool body itself w either my initials or the serial #............thoughts?

I'm not looking for input on alarms or security cameras.......just stuff that'll make it harder for thieves to profit from their pathetic lives. If someone really wants your tools they're likely to get them.... so I'm looking for ways to make the tools a little less desireable.

If they're gonna steal the stuff I've worked hard to acquire, I want them to have to work hard to turn them into cash.

My work takes a dremel tool with a really coarse bit and carves the company name right into the plastic body of power tools - usually two places, then spray painted with orange & blue. Ugly as hell, but tool theft/loss is down.

Small hand tools just get paint. Too tedious to mark individually with engraving. Nothing like Snap-on or Mac... always off-brand, like Craftsman, Westward, Husky, etc. Main thing is it all gets locked up. Either a strong lockable tool chest thats almost too big/heavy to steal and chained/cabled to the building, or a Jobox with custom reinforcements and similarly chained/cabled.

Seems to work from what I've seen.

My work takes a dremel tool with a really coarse bit and carves the company name right into the plastic body of power tools - usually two places, then spray painted with orange & blue. Ugly as hell, but tool theft/loss is down.

Small hand tools just get paint. Too tedious to mark individually with engraving. Nothing like Snap-on or Mac... always off-brand, like Craftsman, Westward, Husky, etc. Main thing is it all gets locked up. Either a strong lockable tool chest thats almost too big/heavy to steal and chained/cabled to the building, or a Jobox with custom reinforcements and similarly chained/cabled.

Seems to work from what I've seen.

I was going to be a smart ass and suggest bright pink, but there you go.

Engrave your SS# into the tools, that should help prove they're yours if you find them. My FiL has all his engraved with his name, which actually works out well if I take a tool and not realize that it's his. Prevents honest mixups.

Bryan

My neighbor engraves all of his tools with his drivers license number, and all power tools get some spray paint on them. Keep everything locked up in a tool chest that aint going anywhere (bolted to the wall, or too heavy to move). The other thing, is lock up tools that could be used to open said cabinets. A locked up craftsman rollaway isn't very good, if you have a crowbar and sledge hammer hanging on the side.

I'm wondering if it'd be better to engrave your phone number onto the tools rather than your initials. This way if someone would have some way to track you down instead of guessing what the initials stood for.

Engrave your SS# into the tools, that should help prove they're yours if you find them.

I'd advise against that. Then the thief has your tools AND your SS#... :eek:

Right now, my advantage is that the shop is such a mess that a thief would have to FIND the tools to steel them. :D Of course, that also means that I spend more time looking for my own tools than doing any work... :rolleyes:

Yeah, I was thinking w all the identity theft these days volunteering your social isn't such a good idea.

I didn't find it all that time consuming to engrave all my wrenches......but that doesn't address sockets, and I may not do anything w my Craftsman sockets. I got an engraving pen from Chicago Pneumatic and it seems to work quite well..... cheap too at $46 delivered.

to be honest with you i don't think engraving really helps or stops thieves ever been to a yard sale and ask if the guy selling the wrenches intials are?? alot of stuff that gets stolen never sees the pawn shop there is alot of guys like me and you that end up with it one way or another. and if the police get it as in a raid a phone # the only id that does any good is your SS# or dl# both of which i dont want a thief to have. as far as serial plates being removed if that gets recoverd the property is ussally destroyed.

my garage has a decent sized area in the front of the parking spots, perfect for a tool crib with padlocked gate.
but i really like a lockable tool crib space, it can be lockep up seperatley so you can keep the extended family out of it when they house sit.

I am in a bad spot with this one, as I used to be an auto tech I have a lot of tools. To keep others in the shop from keeping my tools everything had to be engraved. I started originally using my drivers license number until one of my friends said "Well what if you move out of state, they only keep records for ten years?" So I switched to using my social security number. It is the only number that will insure the return of your tools. Identity theft can cost you, but not nearly as much as a loss of tools. Make sure to have an insurance policy on them too.

as far as serial plates being removed if that gets recoverd the property is ussally destroyed.

I don't follow?

And I agree that engraving hardly does anything, but it gives me a small peace of mind.

Get an alarm. :flipoff2:

But seriously, step #1 is to never let anybody know what you have. God help us when thieves figure out how to Google.

D60, I found your address, phone number, and an aerial photo of your house in about 30 seconds, despite you having an unlisted phone number. (A phone book search would have yielded results much more quickly).

BTW-- The photo was taken right after the shop went up. You hadn't backfilled the ditch for the power line yet. ;)

Keep a great record of your tools. Try a spreadsheet and keep details of "all" your tools not just the good ones. That will make it easier for the police to track down the stuff if it is taken to a pawn shop, the pawn shop records might just show "3, 17mm wrenches". The more detail the better.

In Colorado all the pawn shops are set up on a database and people pawning stuff need to prove their ID. This database is shared with the police. I busted our warehouse manager who was ripping us off blind by keeping details of all the computer equipment that I was in charge of. I figured that it had to be him steeling our stuff, computers, printers, tools etc. and the company president and I headed down to the police. We looked up his name in the pawn database and it pulled up a list of pawned equipment that matched my list. Busted!!!

dc

Our shop at work is reallllllly secure. Alarms, lasers, cammeras, motionsensors, all sorts of crap.

I had this drawer full of sockets stolen by the floor cleaners one night.
We just bought the machines to do it ourself and have our shop cleaner do it once a month.

Everything I own is inventoried to its fullest extent, pictures, descriptions serial numbers. All my equipment has my initials welded into the frame/rearend(big parts) stamped in the wheels, pins, youd only wonder where all ive got my intials on it.

I have all my tools marked as well , but the old guy I work with assumes everything is his and can see my initials so I am going to paint them . As for trail tools would definitely paint them .
Have you ever thought how much you haave tools & what they will be worth whe you cant / dont use them such as retiring .
.

Yeah alot.
prolly 75k at least. id bet its over 100 tho

do the initial thing and DL # and spray paint them multicolors w/ Hammerite paint. That's an easy way to make them look different from your buddies when you have a wrench party and everyone breaks out the Craftsman stuff. There'll be no confusion- and temptation will be lessened for them to grow legs.

I initial all of my tools and put my DL# on every 5th one. Also, when the shop I work at got broke into, the thief took a service truck and everything he could load up. He got every craftsman box in the shop. He took a torch to my buddys snap on box and cut circles around both locks. it didn't come open because the locks are really in the rear and the box was too heavy to take. We found mine with a couple of come-alongs hooked to it and a piece of plywood laying there for a ramp but it was just to heavy (big snapon box). The moral to this story is, get as big and heavy of a box as possible and lock up the torch head every night with it. Also, whenever I have a couple of pictures left in a roll of film I take them of garage things and put them in a file. As long as you don't use your tools to make a living your homeowners insurance will cover them.

I don't follow?

And I agree that engraving hardly does anything, but it gives me a small peace of mind.


when i worked in the rental industry alot of small tools where stolen and the idenity plates where removed so that it could not be traced back and since there was no way to trace it the owner would not know to claim it. and here in ca there is some law that states that if an item is to have an id plate and its missing then the item is to be destroyed or thats how the local pd presented it to us.


be warned all who has craftsman boxes sears has a call center where you get new keys or locks for your box all you need is the 3 or 4 digit number on the box. so somebody who wanted into your box would only need to take down the number and call for keys.

But seriously, step #1 is to never let anybody know what you have. God help us when thieves figure out how to Google.


That thought has crossed my mind a few times. A neighbor's son lost about $6K worth of stereo equipment in his car just after he got things to the point that he was taking it around to the local car shows and showing it off.

It's a shame. You work hard at something, are proud of it, and want to show off what you've done. But to some it is just an advertisement of what you have and an invitation to come get it... :rolleyes:

You could alway lock those two dogs of yours in the shop. But they would probably only lick the intruder to death ;) We could set up an alarm system with video monitoring for you but that would take some $$

dc

All my tools are engraved with my initials, only helps when I bring stuff to friends to wrench with so I am sure I'll get them back. Otherwise all my tools are secured in my toolbox, locked in my shop, which is surrounded by fencing and a padlocked gate, all under the supervision of:

In the past two months, there have been four or five shops in the industrial park where my shop is that were broken into-one in the same building but downstairs, one right next door. Yesterday, there were four armed robberies in the same industrial park.

The only way I can sleep at night is knowing my wife paid the insurance bill last week.

The shop burglaries that have occurred, the thieves drove trucks into the shops, took all the time in the world, loaded everything they wanted into the truck and drive away.

The armed robber apparently walked into any open building, waved his gun and demanded wallets.

Peace,
PT

Laugh if you want, but I have a florescent pink job box for construction projects... my wife calls it the "pink dumpster". It is ugly as hell - hopefully so much so that it will discourage theft. Spray painting larger stuff and locking everything up is the best bet, but insurance is the only way to ensure that you won't get screwed in the long run... If someone wants your junk enough, they're gonna get it.

D60, I found your address, phone number, and an aerial photo of your house in about 30 seconds, despite you having an unlisted phone number.I want to know how you did this. I've googled my info of all kinds and couldn't find anything.
Travis

Your social is prolly the best, just leave off the first three numbers, or the middle two. Still very distinct identification, and you don't have to worry 'bout a thief having the whole #.

I want to know how you did this. I've googled my info of all kinds and couldn't find anything.
Travis
There are limited free sites that you can sometimes use to piece info together if you know how to go about it. It's like links in a chain, take one piece to find another, and use that to get another, and so on. But the information posted likely comes from one of several paid membership sites that aggregate information from various federal and public databases to members who pay a fee. Primarily this type of site caters to PIs, bounty hunters, and other "legitimate" interests, but it's possible for most anyone who is willing to pay for the info (or knows how to piece together the free info) to get access to most all your electronic data.

O.K. Let's have a test. Do mine. This should be good.
Travis

Your social is prolly the best, just leave off the first three numbers, or the middle two. Still very distinct identification, and you don't have to worry 'bout a thief having the whole #.

This is not necessarily true. Take a very close look at your credit report and you will see that there are references to partial SS# (social slavery number), and analogues, homologues and anagrams of your SS#. If your SS# is ever unreadable by a machine, the erroneous number ends up on your credit report.

Lastly, SS# are not all that secure. My ex-wife had several and none of them were good. I got many nasty letters from the IRS after filing our taxes and having her number come up as incorrect, unassigned or otherwise suspect. Thank God for the innocent spouse defense.

This is not necessarily true. Take a very close look at your credit report and you will see that there are references to partial SS# (social slavery number), and analogues, homologues and anagrams of your SS#. If your SS# is ever unreadable by a machine, the erroneous number ends up on your credit report.

Lastly, SS# are not all that secure. My ex-wife had several and none of them were good. I got many nasty letters from the IRS after filing our taxes and having her number come up as incorrect, unassigned or otherwise suspect. Thank God for the innocent spouse defense.

HUH? What's all that got to do with ID'ing a tool? If your shit get's ripped off and is marked with 5833298 or 973298, and your social is 583-97-3298, that's pretty good ID if ya ask me. Without doing any research at all, I would guess chances are less than 1 in 1,000,000 that someone else has that same exact number engraved into their personal belongings. It being a partial of your distinct social, cops, pawn shops etc, are pretty likely to believe you if/when your stuff turns up. You could probably just use the last 4 and still be safe as far as positive ID goes.
Otherwise, I agree w/you about the insecurity of personal information. I was just talking about ID'ing a tool :flipoff2:

Otherwise, I agree w/you about the insecurity of personal information. I was just talking about ID'ing a tool :flipoff2:

Agreed, I was pointing out what I was more than a little surprised at having seen on a credit report I received last week.

Insurance is the only way to protect your tools. Everything else is just a feel-good measure.

It costs me 200/month for garagekeeper's liability, general liability, fire, car lot, and tool insurance. To me, that is very cheap peace of mind. Very, very cheap.

My father used to engrave on his tools..

Stolen from... And then his name.

It made it kind of tough to sell off some of the stuff I couldn't use after he passed away though.