@ajbz81:
Welcome to the Forum. Your Grandfather's collection certainly sounds interesting, and if your are wanting to sell all or part, it's possibly quite valuable (or maybe not, it depends).
First, you say your Grandfather was a Toolmaker. If that means that he was a skilled, time-served bloke working in a production factory somewhere and responsible for making and "fettling" tools for (as an example) punching out shapes from sheet steel press machines then your Grandfather was a highly skilled man - probably in the top 5% of all the blue collar workers the factory employed, with a pay rate to reflect that.
If so then the first thing to think of is that tool chest - I'm imagining a hardwood chest measuring something like 20 ins wide X 15 ins high x 10 ins deep; fitted with a lockable full width compartment at the top and a lockable drop-down flap at the front. Dropping that flap would reveal probably 2 X full-width drawers at the bottom plus probably 3 X 2 "columns of half-width drawers above tho lower two. When new the drawers would have been lined with green baize and the whole thing would look like what it was - i.e. a pretty high-end example of the cabinet makers art, and including decent locks (probably brass), corner protectors, a leather carrying handle, the whole bag. These are worth quite a lot if in good condition and especially if made by famous names such as Chesterman (like the one I inherited from my Dad). They are also capable of restoration to a nice standard and I've seen one or two offered for sale at the couple of hundred quid mark (empty, NO tools inside). Sorry, I would post a pic of my Dad's but am presently unable (nothing to do with the Forum anti-spam rule about 3 posts before you can post pix).
The purpose of the chest would be to store high precision instruments as used by toolmakers and others such as tool room fitters, including (typically) micrometers, vernier calipers, feeler gauges, plug and screw thread gauges, trammels, vernier angle protactors, DTIs, parallels, maybe slip gauges, etc, etc. There would no doubt have also been some special "one off" tools and gauges that your Grandfather made to suit specific jobs/machines that he was responsible for setting up and maintaining.
In short, as above, according to what's inside this may well be a quite valuable collection and/or a nice "memorial" to your Grandfather and times now largely gone by.
One point re items such as micrometers, verniers, etc. These will not be modern digital items of course, but they can always be cleaned and adjusted (micrometers can anyway) and provided they haven't been used as hammers or G cramps they will still be capable as measuring accurately today as on the day your Grandfather bought them. And learning to read a "mechanical" micrometer is very easy. Maybe something to keep in mind for your own use?
An earlier post suggested a photo of the tools laid out and that is a good idea - there are plenty of people on here who know what they're talking about as soon as they see what you've got.
Krgds
AES
