I may have posted this before, but the biggest mistake I made when building my 32x54 garage in 2003 was spending money on storage trusses. I never go up there anymore, twenty some years later. Should have used that money to expand the footprint. I since purchased a larger building nearby for use as a shop. There’s a tint mez over the boiler / compressor room that works ok. It’s only about 8 or 9 feet above the floor, and I can keep sheet metal parts, glass, etc up there with access from two sides via a 10’ step ladder and never have to actually go all the way up. The palat rack as a combination bench / storage system works for me. It allows me to keep my spare 36 Ford cab on the floor, but still store things above it. One section has some kitchen countertop on top of the purlins and makes for a nice “clear room” workbench. I also have a couple of 8’ sections with short uprights that makes a pretty sturdy and inexpensive clutter accumulation / workbench area. I bought a two post 10k lift I dreamed about for probably fifty years, but by the time that happened my knees decided they weren’t going to cooperate. I took some of the proceeds from the sale of another property that had a garage I was using for storage and bought a couple of four post lifts and a bridge jack. Guess what: my knees love the four post lifts and the two post has been relegated to long term projects. Finally, make sure you have cell phone coverage in your shop if you work alone. Plus, make sure you have face shields strategically located near any wire wheels, and safety glasses with side shields, as well as a well stocked first aid kit. You’ll needed it. There should be a conveniently located fire extinguisher near any welding or cutting equipment, as well as a bucket of water. I’ve lost count of how many times I have set myself on fire over the years.
51504bat I have the same problem. took awhile but I figured it out, just cause I increased sq footage dont mean I got a needed shot in the ass with a wad of ambition, I still dont get much finished but its because life keeps gettin in the way, too many other things keep happening that I have to take care of now. I pulled the pan on my 71 long roof 460 over a month ago and its still sitting on the floor callin my name.
I get the look too, but its changed over time now its more often a look of pity . I dont know why god blessed me with such a wonderful woman for the last 52 years (54 if you count dating) but he did. faults you say dont know that I have any, no one ever explained to me what a fault is. You know its hard to be humble when your prefect in every way.
Well said. I take it a step further and try to hang tools and other things right where I will need them. You can usually get a lot of these things pretty cheaply and it makes things a lot handier. On the face shields.........I recommend that people send the $30 for one of these face shields. They are so much easier to see thru and just all around better than the cheapies from HF that I used for years. On my welding bench I took a couple of long rods and put them on the backsplash sticking out. The welding helmet and the face shield simply slip on them and they are right there when I need them. No going to find them......... When I go to the drill bit cabinet, I always have to double check the drill I get to be sure its the right size. So, a small drill size chart and a cheap $25 used micrometer and a small cable to make sure I leave it in the drawer for next time. Ever notice that when you need to change the cutting tool in your air grinders that you can't find a wrench to fit and different brands have different sizes? Then when you find the size.....its too thick to slide in the slot....or the little cheapie stamped wrench for an air tool is the wrong one? So, I found some cheap wrenches on Amazin that had "thin" jaws. Made me a little rack next to the vise where I usually fight with the air tools to change the bit. Now they are always there and handy and I don't get frustrated trying to find the right one. Didn't lose any floor space either. When I use my lathe, I have found that its really handy to have an electric band file ($50)to polish things to size or a better finish for a slip fit. Do that all the time. Then a cheap ($29 on sale) jig grinder for quick deburring or polishing the inside of a bore. I keep the part turning in the lathe and use the tools while its running. Works great. On my milling machine, I ALWAYS need wrenches to fit the clamp nuts and some are different sizes, SO................... a few studs made from bolts with the heads cut off and polished to a round end with a drill and a belt sander.....and the perfect handy tool holder for the mill. You can get the little brush on Amazin as well. I bought a bulk box of them because its cheaper than buying them one at a time somewhere. Then cut about an inch off the bristles . Perfect for getting chips out of the grooves or any place you need a small brush. Here is a small rack I bought off Facebook and modified slightly for the worktable for my lathe and mill. Most of the stuff I continually need is right there. Bought the wire rack and made cheap wooden trays out of some scrap wood I had. Not pretty, but efficient. Remember all those things on that rack would be sitting in my way on the table or stored in a cabinet if not for this cheap rack. The idea is that however you set up your shop, and whatever tools you have on hand, you can make your shop work better for you for a small amount of money and a little sweat equity if you just think about what you can do to your shop.....
I don’t know about you Williebill……but EK is just way too organized! How do people organize that much? I bet EK has 30 hours every day…you think! No, really I wished I was more organized, but I will never reach the level of EK! ( I can’t spell it either)! Bones
Hello, The best thing I have in my garage is a comfortable back support rolling wheels seat. A simple rolling chair with a perforated mess back and a comfortable seat. Nothing fancy, just a simple rolling chair. Around $32. Not your fancy office chair for your computer desk usage. We have a couple of those upstairs in our office. They are the most comfortable seats when doing computer desktop work, filing, paperwork, etc. We are leather seating folks and a lot of our furniture is leather. We tried leather office chairs and even the most expensive ones on the market were not as comfortable as these two air flow seats. Think adjustable, Recaro bucket seats versus a standard factory no adjustment GM bucket seat. Big difference... But, those larger office seats are too large for any garage, well at least for our small two car garage. Once these get adjusted for counter height work, standing for long time periods leaning over to do the work is history. Now, you are sitting even with the height of the counter for working on the project at hand. Since you have roller cabinets drawers for tools, it is a simple roll away to get to the drawers without bending over deciding where that particular tool is located. All in the comfort of the rolling chair. Long gone are the crawl on the floor days. But, if I have to vacuum out the cars, the roller seat is comfortable enough and the accessories are long enough to do an excellent job. So, no more leaning over and in to get the difficult spots cleaned. Jnaki If it is one thing, the rolling chair is it. If necessary some have locking wheels to keep the chair from sliding on the concrete floor. The coolest thing is that the seat can be adjusted for any level of drawers or counter height work. There is no longer a leaning over to do counter work. It just makes life easier for me. If you need access to the area between the cars, or in the narrow aisle in front of the counter for a pass through, just roll the chair off to the side. No more lifting the standard 4 leg chair to move anywhere. YRMV I once had my laptop out on the counter. I was looking up various stuff needed for a project, coordinating with what was in the drawers. The seat was raised to be level with the open laptop and easy keyboard access. A mini-office in the garage. I could even use the built in speakers for music if necessary. Although I have wireless Bluetooth speakers for that purpose.
Good point @jnaki, I have picked up several office chairs in my travels. I have one upstairs in the office area of my shop, and another downstairs that I use for general tasks. It's just a lot easier to roll over a couple of feet to pick up a tool, grab a part etc. than to get up. I used to favor the roll-around shop stools, but found that the office chairs, being adjustable are just better. Having a back helps, too. I bought a better quality chair that I have at home. I'll bet I use that one when I'm there over 95% of the time.
I have found one benefit of getting older. Over the last 5 years, I've lost almost 3 inches in height. Just enough so that I no longer hit my head when walking under my lift. It used to be quite the painful and sometimes bloody experience, but no more.
That picture over there to the left was when I was 19. Couple of my friends called me hair, teeth and eyeballs! Never dreamed that I'd be joining in on a discussion about geezer-izing our shops! And I had the use of a 24x60 garage back then, and small barn for the winter months. It was easier to heat! Of course I didn't have most of the tools I have acquired, but I made do...
I am old, just made 75, in sept. I have been fastening wheels to every thing I can in my shop. I have a 30 year old Milwaukee band saw. I always was a rather stout fellow. I could hold the saw with one hand and extend my reach no problem. Now I struggle just use it at my table. I also don't ride my Harley much any longer due to balance issues. Thia is greatly annoying especially regarding I am an Ironworker by trade. Walking steel at elevations was what I did for 50 years. This year I returned to work for a special project. After six months when the project was complete I do realize why guys my age are retired! Frankly I think all those years of perpetual motion has stood me in good steed physically. These days I spent as much time in the shop as I can muster. Stay active Sir. Once a person of age stops it seems that it very difficult to regain enthusiasm to ramp up activities again. That is what I have observed in friends and acquaintances of vintage DOB. You appear to managing the whole affair well.
Here are some pics of "Geezerizing my Drill Press. Simply drill and tap the head of the drill press and insert some studs to hold the commonly searched for things I always need. A cheater bar to tighten the chuck on the larger drill bits, a place to keep the chuck key.....oh well, just look at the pictures. The magnet is really handy for getting chips quickly. Its one that you can turn the magnet on and off.
Mike, I always take interest when you start posting pics of your shop space. Lots of good ideas to learn from. I like that you stencil painted where everything goes instead of using those printed labels. More work, but I like the industrial look.
@Dave G in Gansevoort "I still say he's got a future in professional shop organization." I got a deal on a couple of stencil machines years ago, and it just makes it easier to remember whats supposed to go where. An empty spot sticks out like a sore thumb and reminds me I didn't put something back. I thank you guys for the compliments, and I hope it gives some of you ideas for your shop. My shop is a working shop not a show place, and thats the way I like it. I'm an admitted "toolaholic".
@ekimneirbo , just make sure to explain that the cheater bar is not to force the drill into the work! That's for loosening and tightening the locks on the table, right?
If I had only known better back when I worked in the small machine company back in the 70's. I could have made phenolic plastic name plates for labeling things. We had an engraving machine, and I was its operator. And I had plenty of scrap material!
My drill press is a large Harbor Freight one. It won't hold smaller drill bits so I have a smaller one that I use for drilling things under 1/2 inch..........and use the larger one for 1/2" and up. The keyed chuck is often difficult to get it to hold a larger bit without the bit slipping, hence the "small/short" cheater to slide on the chuck key and snug the shank of the bit. One of the things I like about this drill is that the belt usually slips if the bit gets overloaded. I consider that a safety feature to save me from my ownself......so I don't try to get it super tight. As for the levers to pull the drill down into the part, NO....I do not use a cheater there. I do have an old machine shop vice on it thats pretty heavy and also resists letting the part spin if the bit bites too much.....as when exiting the opposite side of the part they often grab...so the slippage works well for me anyway. The table has a crank lever for raising and lowering and it has slots if I want to use T nuts to clamp the part or the vice to the table. I almost never do that because usually the slippage of the belt prevents any problems with grabbing...and usually the holes I am drilling are "close enuff" stuff. If I need more precision, I use the milling machine and clamp the parts to the T slot table or a vice clamped to the table. Some of the old quality drill presses won't slip when they grab, so if someone has one of them, clamp the part before drilling. They can hurt you if they grab a part and spin it. Thanks for asking that question though, because I should have said that when I posted.
When I was a young teen, there was a guy who was about 10 years older and hung out at the mechanic shop. I ran into him about 10 years ago and asked him if he stilled fooled with cars. He replied, "Nah, it got too hard". That stuck in my mind, and motivates me........... Glad to hear you haven't given up either.
It's good, I knew your work habits didn't include that! I saw that your feed handles have the little balls on the end, so the cheater wouldn't fit anyway. It's just one of those things that keeps a new person from seeing it and not fully thinking it through! Every drill press and drill normally spin clockwise looking down. Meaning that if it grabs, the part spins away from the operator and toward the stand IF it's sticking out to the left. I take care to hold the item being drilled so that the open part of my grip allows the part to pull free, not pull me in. One of those things you either learn the hard way or listen to a one minute explanation. Many pro presses have reverse and left hand drills exist, but hopefully by then the operator knows to take this into account. I also prefer the belt slip rather than the full torque of the motor be transferred! This may sound like the first day in shop class with Safety 101, but it's good to remind even this group of grizzled old veterans that safety stands and fire extinguishers along with basic tool handling are important.
Learned the drill press duck in a slightly different way. One of the old timers way back when I worked for the machine company in the 70s was "demonstrating" the way he stirred up stuff, like Neverseez, you know the giant industrial size where the oil separates out of the silver goop. He'd chuck an Allen key in the drill press and hold the can up over the slowly spinning hex key. Only problem wad, he didn't turn the speed down! And the hex key bit into the side of the can, flinging Neverseez all over both of us! Yeah, I never tried it on my own... Do you know how to get Neverseez out of a beard? Yeah, neither do I! That was about the same time as the picture over there to the left. Grizzly Adams had nothing on me, beardwise
Bet your beard didn't get stuck in anything for quite a while! There's a joke in there about things in the '70s it could get stuck in, but I'm not touching that!
This sounds like a good idea, but when I tried it, the piece of plywood just prevented the basket (or whatever) from coming up all the way. The way it is now, the basket nestles right in the corner of the mezzanine railing, which actually stabilizes it for loading/unloading.
Way back when computers first came out.....and we had to come up with different usernames and then try to remember which username for which thing, I came up with that because I figured I could remember it. If I was doing it today, I'd have just used it the way its written.........but I already have too much computer history to attempt changing it. So Ek or Mike or anything but Sue is fine with me. /www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=Johnny+Cash+Anything+but+Sue+video&refig=de9ab65efe924690b5dfab9f0d21dc2c&pc=LCTS&ru=%2fsearch%3fq%3dJohnny%2bCash%2bAnything%2bbut%2bSue%2bvideo%26form%3dANNTH1%26refig%3dde9ab65efe924690b5dfab9f0d21dc2c%26pc%3dLCTS&mmscn=vwrc&mid=816F1E13C3585637D539816F1E13C3585637D539&FORM=WRVORC
The Jalopy Journal
