My shop gets cold in the winter. How bad is the cold for my tools and equipment? Do I need to move all my tools into the house for the winter?
John Brock: Cold isn’t the problem, it’s moisture. If your tools are cold and you go in the shop and work, condensation will form and you have to deal with that. If you can keep everything dry, it doesn’t much matter.
Michael Dresdner: Cold won’t hurt metal, wood or the plastics used in tools, but it can affect batteries. Battery-powered tools are the only ones I would worry about moving indoors.
Richard Jones: An alternative to moving tools out of the workshop might be to build tool cabinets with doors and fit a bulb holder. Then put in a low wattage bulb, preferably one of the extremely long-lived low-energy bulbs. The latter bulb type is what I use, rated at about seven watts ,and they last for a couple of years if run continuously. I have been using tool cabinets with lights in since about 1982, and they work very well.
