10 March, 2014

Some more minor shop organization, and an updated tour...

I didn't get much shop time this weekend, I was dealing with the issues of an elderly family member, and planting my wife's Valentines Day gift finally... She said she wanted roses after all!

What shop time I did spend was spent on the subject of my last post, moving the deep freeze into the shop in order to make good on a deal I made with my lovely bride to get power into the shop.

I did manage to eke out some shop time, albeint not much, and got a couple more actually fairly important organization projects done.

So I figured I would run through the updates, and present this in the form of an updated shop tour, so buckle up, here we go again!

Walking in the door, on the back side of the door you can see the 2 fresh coats of gloss white paint on both the door, and door trim, 30 years worth of grime, and wear took its toll on the first paint job, not to mention the horrid color, now it is bright and clean, and like before houses my safety (some of), comfort and control equipment. Specifically I have a thermometer mounted to the door, along with the remote for the air conditioner, the ambient air cleaner, a large Sams Club first aid kit, and a fire extinguisher.

In the spirit of Safety First, 
first aid and fire extinguisher are right ON the entry door!

Immediately to your right as you walk in, I repurposed the cross bar from one of the parts of the original clamp rack, mounted it up high, and screwed some cup hooks that I opened up a bit to pass through the handles and put it into service as a storage rack for brooms and dust pans. I was pretty desperate to find decent storage for that stuff so this, simple as it is, is a real God send... I should mention this wall is the one wall in the shop without any power outlet of any sort, and it is also the remaining wall without insulation. Part of my plan for the somewhat near future is to patch holes in this wall, cut the access ports for blowing insulation in, and insulating this space. This should tighten up the shop enough to make the space quite comfortable year round to work in...

Too simple to work this well.
Brooms and dust pans nestled out of the way.

Proceeding further down the wall, you see the lumber rack. I spent some time working on cleaning this out and straightening it up. Kind of hard to tell right now. I need to use up a bunch of the pine 2x... stock. I REALLY need to get a proper sheet goods and cutoff cart built. I have the plan ready to go, I just need to build.

Lumber rack. Yeah I need to do something about sheet goods.

Next along the way is the stack of totes housing automotive chemicals, drywall and paint tools, and misc stuff like the pressure washer etc... And of course the lawn and garden racks and equipment. A good deal of this stuff is slated to go into a shed once that is built, so I should be able to clear out yet more shop space... Sorry, no photo of that stuff... Now those that know me, know I give credit where credit is due, the design for the sheet goods / scrap cart came from a Lumberjocks member Jerry when he posted his build HERE.

My Sketchup 3D design with layout for the sheet goods cart.
I am no CAD engineer, hopefully the design makes sense.

Looking up you see the Grizzly G0572 which has been churning away for several years sucking the junk the DC misses out of the air very well... I have it mounted via 2 2x4s that are screwed directly into the studs in the ceiling.


Turning past the lumber rack, you come across the heater, and air conditioner. The heater is a 1600 watt oil filled radiator, and the AC is a 13.5K BTU portable unit. They both work well enough. For how cold it has managed to get in coastal Texas winters, the heater will get the shop too warm if I let it. The AC struggled last year to keep it cool, but I had a LOT less insulation last year... This year should be better. You should be able to make out from the photo the silver backed foam insulation packing the garage doors, that is R10 insulation with a radiant barrier. Not exactly ideal, but the best I can do with those giant heating / cooling leaks in my shop. I also have gaskets around the doors (that were NOT there when I bought the place!)

Next to the heater / AC is the recently completed rolling clamp rack with my collection of clamps, and the drill press. My plan and links to the Sketchup file for the clamp cart are in prior entries into this blog. The drill press table is one I built a few years ago after the particleboard Grizzly table I started with crapped out. I got the drill press on Craigslist a few years ago for $75.00, it was pretty rusty, and beat up, but it worked well. The top pulley cover was bent up pretty good, and the column, table, and foot were rusted, The belts are holding up okay, although there is some wear on them and I would like to replace them. I straightened out the problems, lubed up the seized chuck, added a auto return chuck key holder and accessory tray, and a Harbor Freight mobile base, mostly to stabilize it as it is awfully top heavy for the puny foot they put on this thing!


Turn yet again, and you see the Wonder Winder, a pretty basic cord reel, but effective.... And of course the lathe and its goodies, and both of my hanging tool cabinets. I keep many of my hand tools, and small parts in them. The lathe is a basic Harbor Freight clone of the Jet JWL1236. It actually works shockingly well.


And passing yet further down the wall you see my tool stacker, which is just a set of heavy duty closet standards, and brackets. The tools are mounted to 3/4 inch plywood panels cut to match at 18" x 24". I have my scroll saw, bench grinder with sharpening jig, lunchbox plane, benchtop jointer, and benchtop oscillating sander stored here. Makes for easy access, although makes getting the bench grinder down kind of a problem when my back acts up. Next to that is another wonder winder. I keep heavy gauge (10) extension cords, I have my spraying, sanding and misc supplies in the shelves above there, The small blue bins on the wall house spare peg hooks, misc work gloves, paint filter funnels etc... The scroll saw was another Craigslist score, I paid I think $20.00 for it. It needed a LOT of cleaning, and paint to make it tolerable. The jointer was a closeout from Sunhill Machinery. What I didn't know at the time was that Sunhill was going out of business, a pity if you ask me. This jointer was a rebadged Geetech 6-1/8" bench top jointer, and aside from the fact I would prefer a cast iron fence, there isn't much better they could have done with a bench top layout... I get some grief from tool snobs about having a bench top jointer, but as you can see, I don't really have space for a floor model.. 

The tool stacker idea came from a 
BT3Central member DonHo years ago.

Further down the wall we come accross the R.O. system (Reverse Osmosis, as in water softener / purifier), and following that is the hot rodded Harbor Freight band saw, and a simple shelf mounted above holding "Shop Rags In A Box",  The blue tote in the photo is table saw and router bits, blades and accessories.  Hidden in the corner is the Harbor Freight dust collector fitted with Wynn filter, and pulling through a side inlet Thien separator.


The HF 2HP DC is resting on a shop built stand, just cobbled together out of scrap wood found in my lawn anfter hurricane Ike blew through in 2008. Underneath I store my 8 gallon HF air compressor, spare air filter for the air cleaner, and infrequently used auto tools (Ball joint press specifically). I should mention although I don't show many pics of it here, my DC ducting is 5" through the separator and DC, and then split to 2 4" circuits, an upper along the ceiling, and a lower run along the floor. The lower for the table saw / workbench pass right by the tool stacker, so careful footing is MANDATORY!



Of course the heart of the workshop is the table saw, mine is a fully outfitted Ryobi BT3100-1, with a wide table / fence rails, and router table built into the extension. The shop vac and shop vac separator live under there. The table saw is outfitted with a Shark Guard blade guard and riving knife. A worthy investment of every penny and this is coming from a guy notorious about pinching pennies on equipment if he can...

If there is a compatible one for your saw, you really should do yourself
a favor and check out the Shark Guard!

Hiding behind the mortiser bench is a 29 gallon 2HP Harbor Freight air compressor.The 8 gallon got winded a bit too easy when spraying, so I got the 29 gallon. I am pretty happy with it.

Nice compressor, good capacity, good price!

One of the other storage projects taken was painfully simple, I needed someplace to store the extension poles I use for painting and other work around the house. A couple of regular bicycle hooks and some careful placement are all it took to store those poles along the ceiling. I just needed to keep clear of the dust collection ducting.

Not fancy, but certainly functional!

Turn along the last wall and you have the workshop library cabinet, a simple open cabinet / wall mounted bookshelf of sorts built to house documentation, mostly my woodworking magazines manuals and books.  I will have to owe you a photo, not sure where my pic of it is...

Under the library cabinet is of course the mortiser / miter saw / hand held power tools cabinet. I built the dust hood on to it and plumbed it. It works way better than the stock bag, but honestly, dust collection off of this is still not that great, too much air volume to cover with a 4" duct... the pull at the port is great, and it IS way better than without, but I just don't see how to make this any better...  The mtier saw and mortiser tables / fences line up just so, and long stock can feed into both without hitting the newly moved in freezer.


I have included accessory storage onto the sides of the cabinet, most notably I just used a scrap cutoff of 2x4 milled and drilled to accept the accessories for the mortiser. Not a super elegant solution, but it sure works! The mortiser was an unusually great deal. I scored a free to me as it was a trash day curb find from a neighbor that could never get it to cut right, Delta 10" non slide compound miter saw that needed a new blade and to be cleaned up. I did the clean up work, painted the steel, and polished the aluminum, threw an Irwin Marathon 80T blade that I hated on it, adjusted it out, and tested it out, it cut great, but was just an extra saw. A friend locally had this HF mortiser in his garage he got as a gift, and never used, so we traded. It cost me maybe $5.00 in marterials if you don't count the blade that as I mentioned, I hated... so no big loss to me. I haven't used the mortiser a lot yet, but from the little use it has gotten, it is spot on.
The table with the T track was my addition. I ddin't like the particleboard table, and wanted additional clamping options. 



Turning around and looking up you see my ladder storage solution. My 10' A ladder is stored off of a heavy duty pair of garage hooks, one of which is mounted to a hunk of 2x4 cutoff that was put there to push it down so that the ladder could clear the garage door track supports. I can walk under this, but my clamp rack with the 6' clamps has some trouble clearing it... I also have the 6' ladder pulled tight against the ceiling with a pulley / rope / eye bolt system.


Lastly, looking to the middle of the shop, behind the table saw, you see the workbench. A basic little bench based off of the Fine Woodworking Magazine Get Started in Woodworking series videos. Not super complicated, I made mine a full foot longer than theirs, using plywood instead of MDF, I hate MDF, so it isn't in my shop. The vise is a Central Forge 9" Quick Release vise from Harbor Freight. It is a bit wonky, but it works. I do wish for a better one. I honestly never liked this bench much, it always flexed way too much, and was too light to be really useful, but then I added a shelf made from literally plywood scrap. I simply cut and installed plywood cleats, then cut the plywood scraps to span across the cleats , drilled and screwed it all down... Then I loaded on some of my heavier handheld power tools. The bench is now rock solid, and I am really growing to like it...


Hopefully this long winded, and honestly somewhat redundant shop tour was able to better organize the tour itself, and to showcase some of the storage ideas. Like me, so many of you are dealing with shop storage space issues, and hopefully some of my ideas can be useful to you!

So now that it's done and ready to work in, I was able to manage to just sit in the shop with a mug of hot tea, and select just the right bit from my collection for a commission for a friend... Building a replacement false front for a vanity in a rent house. I know overly simple... But it works.. 

I have a couple of projects I need to do in the shop, including planter boxes and the like, but for at least the next week, I need to be working on my truck, and knocking out the thin set in the living room. Once done, I will start on my next project, I need Cedar for it though. I want to build a planter box / bench for the living room that will give me some storage for pet stuff, and a planter and sunning platform for the cat, and her cat grass... 

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