Clarke's Black-and-Gold Seven-Drawer Cabinet Pairs Looks With Workshop Build

Tool cabinets usually get little thought. You pick one for capacity and sturdiness, park it in a corner and forget it until you need a spanner. Clarke's CBB217BGC HD Plus is trying to change that, with a black-and-gold finish that recalls 1970s Lotus Formula 1 machinery. The colour will be the first thing people notice, but for a buyer the real question is whether the build backs up the looks.

Steel construction and locking

Clarke builds its workshop cabinets with extra-thick double-wall steel, and this seven-drawer unit follows the same approach. A reinforced base carries the load and absorbs the knocks that come with a working bench. That matters more than it sounds once a cabinet holds heavy sockets, impact tools and a full set of spanners. Thin panels flex and dent, and once a drawer front goes out of true, the whole cabinet starts to feel cheap.

Security is handled with a single key that locks every drawer. One key for the whole unit is a practical choice for a shared garage or a home workshop where you don't want tools left out on the bench. Ask anyone who has lost a key ring and you'll hear why a single key is easier to live with than several.

What it's like to use every day

Cabinets often disappoint in the drawers, not the carcass. Here each drawer runs on ball bearing runners for a smooth, controlled opening and closing action. A push-in soft-lock holds each drawer shut and keeps it steady when you're leaning on it, which is the kind of detail you only appreciate after a few weeks of use. Full-width plated pull handles spread the grip across the front of each drawer, making them easier to pull with gloves on or with greasy hands.

Each drawer also comes with an anti-slip liner. That stops sockets, bits and small hand tools from sliding around and clattering when you wheel the cabinet across the floor. Loose tools rattling in a drawer are a small annoyance, but over time they scratch the tools and chip the finish on the drawer base. The liner handles that problem without any extra effort on your part.

The top is an anti-slip work surface, and Clarke has sized it to take its CBB209BGC Tool Chest. That's a useful detail if you're building a modular setup, because it suggests the two units were designed to sit together. If you already own the tool chest, the cabinet becomes a more natural extension of your existing kit.

Mobility and the castor question

A cabinet this heavy only earns its keep if you can move it, so the mobility details count. The plated handle can be fitted to either side of the cabinet, which helps whether you're working left-handed or setting up a corner in a tight garage. Four industrial-grade five-spoke castors do the rest, and they're finished in gold to match the rest of the colour scheme.

Castors are where budget cabinets often show their cost-cutting. Cheap wheels bind, flat-spot or pick up grit, and eventually the cabinet becomes something you drag rather than roll. Industrial-grade castors are built to take repeated loading and turning, and that's the spec that matters if the cabinet will sit on a workshop floor that isn't perfectly flat or clean. Here's the thing: the colour is a bonus, but the castors decide whether you'll actually reposition the cabinet when you need to.

Price and how it compares

At £269.98, the CBB217BGC sits in the middle of the market for a seven-drawer steel cabinet with this level of finish. Buyers comparing it with rival cabinets will usually weigh the same handful of things: drawer count, runner quality, locking, castor spec and steel gauge. On the details Clarke lists, this model covers each of those points rather than leaning on one strong feature to carry the rest. That said, the real test is how the drawers hold up after a few years of use, and that's something a spec sheet can't tell you.

The cabinet is available through Machine Mart, which operates superstores across the country along with a mail order department and a 24-hour website. For someone who wants to see the cabinet in person before buying, a superstore visit is an option. Anyone ordering online can compare the listed specification with the one on the product page before committing.

My read is that the black-and-gold finish will sell the cabinet to a lot of people, but the steel body, the ball bearing runners and the industrial castors are what will keep it working. If you're kitting out a garage that you actually use, that's the combination worth paying attention to. The next time you're choosing storage, look at the drawers and the wheels before you look at the colour.