Most people buy hand tools a few at time, but a small number purchase master sets, complete sets of tools for particular trades or types of work. Master sets are typically sold in a case or cabinet; a small set might contain 100 or 200 individual items and a large one 1,000 or more. 

I recently saw a large Proto master set at a Stanley Black & Decker media event and was intrigued by the idea of buying so many tools all at once. Proto is owned by SB&D (along with several other industrial tool brands) and is one of many that offer industrial scale master sets; I've seen them on the websites of Snap-on, Armstrong, Wright, and others.

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I can't tell you how many tools are in this cabinet. All I know is there are a lot of them and they are incredibly well organized. Master sets of this kind are aimed at industrial users, companies that operate mines, shipyards, factories, and the like. Individual users, such as tradesmen and contractors, could never afford the $25,000 (list) it would cost to buy this particular set.

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The drawers of the cabinet are outfitted with shadow boards, foam panels with recesses cut to fit individual tools. Each tool fits into a particular recess; if one is missing or in use you will know it the moment you open the drawer.

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Foam shadow boards are a relatively recent development. Early shadow boards were boards with the outlines, or "shadows" of tools painted onto them. Old-school shadow boards have not gone out of style; I saw the one above while touring a tool factory outside of Chicago a couple of years back. Tools hang over their outlines so you can tell at a glance if any are missing. Properly used, shadow boards enforce the time-honored mantra, "a place for everything and everything in its place".

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Mostly box wrenches in this drawer

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This is a closer look at the top drawer of the cabinet. The pieces with the square holes through them are crowfoot wrenches—and I suppose they do look a bit like the foot of a crow. They're designed to connect to a socket extension and be turned by a ratchet, a setup that allows you to turn nuts and bolts that are inaccessible to other tools. A crowfoot wrench can be a lifesaver when the nut or bolt is in a recessed area and you can't get at it from above with a socket or from the side with a standard length wrench.

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Here is the same type of cabinet with the drawers removed. You can tell by looking it's heavily built. The slides are rated for 200 pounds per drawer. The tool cabinets found at big box stores might only be rated 50 or 100 pounds per drawer.

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The top drawer runs the full width of the cabinet and is equipped with two sets of slides to double the weight it can carry. Those black knob-like pieces at the front are used to adjust the tension of the slides—to make the drawer easier or harder to pull open.

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It seems like they could have fit more in this drawer. The nut drivers look good but I'm not a fan of old-school hex keys because it's a PITA to get them out of an index.  I find it easier to use the straight ones that fit into the end of a screwdriver handle.

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More wrenches here—box and open end on the left and flare nut wrenches on the right. Those curved handle wrenches are for reaching around obstructions that prevent you from using a conventional wrench.

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A nice selection of screwdrivers in this drawer.

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A mix of wrenches above: open end, box, offset box, combination, and my favorite—ratcheting wrenches (the five in the front row with the black "jaws")

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This is one of the more comprehensive selections of socket drivers I have seen: ratchets, speed handles, sliding T-handles, hinged handles, and more. It'd cost a fortune to buy all the tools in this drawer.

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Tin snips and all manner of adjustable wrenches and pliers. The black thing in the black right corner is a chain wrench, which wraps around pipe and grasps it for turning.

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The items near the center—the black threaded piece all the way over to the three silver ones with holes through them—assemble into a puller that can be used to pull gears, pulleys, or other components that have been press-fit onto a shaft.

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This drawer contains cold chisels, a variety of punches, and every type of hammer one could ask for—except for the kind designed to drive and pull nails. And who would want that kind of hammer in a machine shop?

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Of all the drawers in the cabinet, only this deep one comes empty.

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This is one of the more interesting shadow boards I have seen. It's from the kitchen at the prison on Alcatraz—a place where knowing that each knife was accounted for was a matter of life and death. Alcatraz has been closed as a prison since the early 1960s. I can't help but wonder who ended up with this now missing cutlery.