What did you do to your shop today?

[CopperNick]

Milwaukee vice grips? Y'all must have deep pockets to afford them. Mine are mostly Irwin from before they got bought out. Chicago Pneumatic air tool is good; have one of their products kicking around in the air tool box. Bought it before I even had a garage, never mind a compressor that could drive it. Hey thinking ahead or a target of opportunity Had the money and pulled the trigger on the buy.

How do well do you find those tear drop mallets work for panel shaping/ Looked at them once or twice but I don't do any panel beating from scratch so never added any of them to my tool stash.



Nick

 

[Turbo Zach]

I moved my car lift from my Mother's to my house.

I did get roped into doing some dirt work for my Mom while I had the skidsteer there.

 

[Wraith]

Finally built a stand for my new vise that's been sitting for several months

 

[Hurricane77]

Been a couple weeks. But have made some significant progress on the shop. Finished up hanging steel on the walls and me and a few buddies managed to get the whole roof on in one weekend. The biggest pain was getting the insulation on the roof before putting the panels on. Insulation rolls for the roof are 6' wide and 40' long. One roll was about 100 lbs and rather awkward to try and maneuver and unroll on the roof. A friend of a friend had a few stages worth of scaffolding that he lent me for a couple weeks which was super helpful. Could have rented it, but free is always nice.

Got all the trim done too. All that little stuff is such a pain in the *ss. Doesn't feel like you're making much progress at all.

Progress pic with back wall completed, but no roof yet:

Unrolled first piece of insulation on roof:

Also got the electrical sorted out. Had to trench about 50' from the house to the garage. Was originally going to rent a mini excavator to get it done quick. I didn't want to use a ditch witch just because every time I've had to do digging on my property, it seems like I run into some fair sized rocks - size of your head or bigger. But before going to Home Depot to pick up the rental, I figured I'd expose by hand the part where my trench needed to cross the buried service wire coming in from the power company. Was pretty easy digging and I only needed to go down about 2' So I ended up trenching by hand. Probably got about 2/3rds of the way to the garage and the soil turned really rocky and I started encountering quite a bit of rock and making progress with a shovel became really slow. I should point out that when my property was built, a whole bunch of fill was brought in to raise up the yard from the surround wooded area and to provide better drainage away from the house/yard. Or at least that's what I assume - I didn't build the place 🙂 So the composition of my soil can change quite quickly just depending on where a particular truckload of fill came from. As I was digging, I came across a rather large piece of asphalt - probably 4" thick and 12" x 24". Had to widen the trench just to be able to get that out. Probably made about another 6" of progress and bang! Another big piece of asphalt. Same thickness, but this one was probably 2' x 3'. Boy was I cursing my decision to dig by hand. And at this point, with the vast majority of the trench already dug, I was cursing two things: 1 - my decision to hand dig this rather go and rent the excavator like I had originally planned and; 2 - the jackoff who decided to dump a crap load of asphalt in my yard as fill material, which is totally not allowed as asphalt is not considered 'clean fill'. Anyway, after who knows how long, I was able to finally get that piece freed and then it was just a matter of pickaxe and shovel to get the rest of the way towards the building. I had the electrician come in, lay the conduit, pull in some 1/0 AL cable, install the sub-panel and a single GFCI outlet (minimum required for the permit). All he's got left to do is install the breaker in my panel. He was supposed to do that yesterday. But I wasn't home (my wife was) but he wasn't sure if he could kill power to the main panel to install the circuit breaker for the garage. Was weird cause he didn't even ask my wife - but I have some servers running in the utility room and he wasn't sure if he could just shut off the power and I guess he assumed my wife wouldn't know either. Anyway, he's got to come back and finish up and I'll have power out there. Then I'll go ahead and pull another permit and go about install all the lights, outlets etc and start moving some stuff out there.

Trench progress, I think I had reached the point of the asphalt chucks at this point.

Conduit run with warning tape over top. Tape got pulled up and buried only ~6" down instead of right on top of the conduit.

Still have to hook up everything for radiant heating system. I was originally going to run propane out there for it, but with how the price of propane has spiked this year, it appears that using an electric boiler will be cheaper - but to install and to heat. Plus electricity prices here are regulated (but still high) whereas propane isn't , and propane supplies are expected to get pretty tight over the winter. I'm running a 100A service out there so should have enough to power a electric boiler for the heat. I maybe won't be able to weld or use the plasma on the coldest days of the year, but other than that I should be fine. The other outstanding thing is the overheads doors. Those aren't expected to be ready for pickup until Dec 30th - lead time on those have been crazy lately.

As it stand today. Need to get some crap cleaned up. Before the snow comes and covers everything up.

 

[airboatgreg]

Finally got the lights up in the shop, I put in 8 of the 10 Amazon LED 8' strips I bought. I am thinking the last 16' will go above the work bench.

THESE ARE F'N BRIGHT!!!

View attachment 186779

I bought 200w LED High bay for my shop. Like daylight

 

[CopperNick]

Dontcha just love trenching by hand? Got to do that Twice, once for the electrical service to my garage, and the second time for the gas service-same destination. Biggest hassle is getting the them to come out and identify anything else that is already buried. Each outfit, gas, water, etc has to have their own cute markers or unique color of spray paint. They did all that and still missed the dry well for my sump system because it is PVC and has no tracer attached to it for show and tell.

Anyway, the second trench hurt. i was eight years older and knew what it was going to take to move all that soil. Only mitigating factor was that I knew where the old trench and the new one were going to intersect that there was a 100% probability of unearthing the Tech Cable for the garage's power feed and did not want some gopher banging around with a shovel to just casually whack that feed. That Tech supply cable is expensive and, were it to be damaged, it would have to be replaced as one continuous run. $$$$. And, of course, Covid screwed the timing, got the trench dug and was waiting on the installers. Took 6 Months and a WTF phone call from me before they finally showed up. and by that time it was cold and the ground had frozen. Tore hell out of a couple of muscles while filling it all back in by hitting a mound of soil with a shovel blade and it didn't move.

Anyway, nice looking dig. Isn't it wonderful to find hidden surprises? I get the rock thing. Actually decided to build a screen frame to sieve the soil that I was digging up to catch and hold the rocks and stones. More work, but clean soil and easier to shovel on the back side.



Nick

 

[CopperNick]

A while back I scored an adaptor for turning over an engine that didn't require removing the crank pulley and assorted other bits. Basically it looks a lot like the frog foot shaped pullers that you use to pull axles.

Anyway, when I got to test fit it I found that it would only fit in place if I used a stock center bolt for the balancer, which I isn't.

For a solution I decided to split it apart and add in some additional length to create a deeper pocket to both clear the bolt head and get the drive end of things further away from the pulley to gain more access for the breaker bar.

At that point it got chucked into the lathe and I proceeded to discover that it was a hardened tool and that my cutter hated it to the point where it would dull out after just a few passes. Total bummer.

Left the whole business still chucked into the lathe on the off chance I might come up with a Plan Q and finally just paid a visit to my local tool and die store to see if they had the tool bits that I needed; they did. So yesterday and today I spent some time at the lathe, cautiously introducing tool bits to their fate and, in the process, increasing the width and depth of the relief that I was cutting in the drive end wall until it got to the point where I could move it over to the vice and introduce it to a large solid round object sufficiently capable of tolerating being whacked with a hammer. Point being to see if I had removed enough material that the drive end would pop free; and it did.

As I said above, the original plan was to split the tool apart and add a short section of thick wall tube to it to gain the needed room. After some further thought, and a quick visit to some adapted sockets that I had made for other various specific purposes, I decided to kill three birds with one welding pass and use a deep impact socket as both the body extension and the new drive end. At that size, the socket becomes a 3/4 drive which lets me use a 3/4 breaker bar, or an adapter.

Another variant would be to add the section of heavy wall tube but cap it with an open hole piece of flat plate that has the square drive hole offset in it; thinking along the line of the tool used to secure the cross bearing housing when you are torquing the pinion nut here. Gut it out internally and weld the outer perimeter to the extension on the foot and get a way to both secure the tool in place while still having access to the balancer bolt to torque it and to use a breaker bar to turn the motor over to pre-oil the bearings and time it for a dizzy drop.

For the first possibility, Napa says they have a socket that matches the OD of the shoulder on the foot itself. For the second, I might have some heavy wall tube out in the shop on the press deck that I could face and use as the new body. Would have to scare up another pinion torqueing tool but that should be simple enough. I can't mill or broach a square hole so just starting with a blank plate is not an option.

At this point the game plan is to score the bits and pieces for both possibilities and see which design is a better fit what I want. Not sure when this will move ahead again; I have already received a warning call for Monday rotation in to work.

Item two on the basement shop agenda was to see if I could repair that new foam sleeve that I had just purchased for my small Shop Vac. Brand new foam filter and it tore right along the seam while I was trying to wrestle it into position. Not expensive but new, and faulty to boot? Decided to see if Crazy Glue could repair the seam but didn't want to spend the money for a large tube of the stuff for just a small repair but, surprised, they make a single use mini-tube that comes in a four pack plastic bottle. You get about an inch or two of glue and the tube is finished. That small amount was all I needed to get the seam edges all nasty sticky and have them bond to each other. Finally read the label while waiting for the glue to tack and learned that it doesn't work on foam LOL. No amplification on what kind of foam so will just have to wait and see how the refit into the vacuum works.



Nick

 

[86LK]

took the whole week off from work since I had leave to burn, "gonna get stuff done!"

Mon- in exchange for a donation to the team, my co-worker brought his kids Select basketball team over at 10am to help empty all the stuff from inside to outside. took us 3 hrs of making 3 piles (keep, donate, don't know/recycle) on the back deck and in the driveway but got it done; emptied half the garage, the stuff upstairs, the stuff downstairs, and the stuff in the driveway storage unit (grab a box/item, lug it out, come back for more). even got the g-body axle out of the back of my truck that's been sitting there for the last 18 months and hauled a bunch of unused sheetrock to Habitat for Humanity, what they wouldn't take gave to my friend.

Tues- hauled more stuff to Salvation Army, went and picked up 10 used Metro Shelving units from Craigslist for $60/ea (they're $110 new!), got home and started assembling after cleaning them. finally got 4 units done and in the garage and started moving everything put outside yesterday to where I wanted it on the shelving. all the stuff I kept either went there in the garage or back into the driveway storage unit. finally finished at 2am (was supposed to rain, had to get it done). I can't believe we actually got everything left over back in the garage and up on shelving!

Wed- slept in because this old guy is sore and tired, took the day off. moved the axle from where we dropped it in the driveway into a

Thur- hey, it's T'giving. I moved turkey and sweet potatoes from my plate to my belly. also went and picked up an exercise bike from Craigslist (yeah, the doc has been gettin' on my *ss about exercise...) and looked at the Black Friday ads

Fri- Black Friday, now that I can actually reach the blinds where the stuff inside was blocking me, the wife says "can you install those replacement blinds we got a year ago?"......sighhhhh.......so I take down the old blinds and install the new ones. called in to the Window Fashions retailer for the other blinds with a lifetime warranty to have them replaced. they sold us blinds 25 years ago and seem shocked we are making another claim for replacement (3rd set). hey, whenever you offer LIFETIME warranty there will be people like me using it, even after 25 years in the same house!
I finally get to go BF shopping at 5:30pm to my toy stores of HD and Lowe's. pickings are slim this year and the deals are few and far between. barely spent $150 combined when in years past it would easily be triple that.....sad. but now I'm browsing Summit Racing and they FINALLY got stuff in I've been waiting 8 months for, AND, it's on sale!

All in all, not a bad week!

 

[motorheadmike]

Finally put a keypad dead bolt on the shop... remembering the key was getting old. I am spoiled.

Then I set to work doing more cleanup and organization. I am tripping over far fewer things now.

Hopefully by the end of the day today I will have chosen a solution for 220V power in the garage and a contractor to put it in. If I can have this done before Christmas leave I should be able to get some stuff done on the Monte.

 

[airboatgreg]

Looking for stuff to equip outdoor kitchen. Went to 2 restaurant supply places looking at stainless sinks and tables. Way to much money. Stopped off at a scrap metal place on way home and found a 6 foot table with a built in double sink on legs and high dollar commercial faucet in near pristine condition for $150.00. Also found on Farcebook stainless 30" stools in awesome condition for $15.00 apiece. Good day for outdoor kitchen and wallet.