The Old Barn.

frenchyd said:

In reply to gearheadmb :

If you raised the miter saw up you can use the counters as feeding tables 

Looks like it is the right height to me

frenchyd said:

In reply to gearheadmb :

If you raised the miter saw up you can use the counters as feeding tables 

The picture is a little deceiving but the miter saw surface is level with benches on the side for that reason. I actually spent probably way more time than is necessary shimming under the saw feet to get it just right.

This is pretty minor but I had some spare time today so I whipped up a little shelf to for all my boxes of nails and screws. They were scattered all over the upstairs and down stairs I never if I had what I needed. This will help with that and make things a little tidier. I made it from leftover  fence picket cutoffs from my chicken coop project.

gearheadmb said:

The picture is a little deceiving but the miter saw surface is level with benches on the side for that reason. I actually spent probably way more time than is necessary shimming under the saw feet to get it just right.

I had planned to do the same with mine (but ran out of space!) so I knew by the picture. But then anyone who read your post would have known 

In reply to gearheadmb :

Love the narrow shelf. Its perfect 

In reply to 03Panther :

On the miter saw bench, it worked out well but right after I finished it I saw a design I liked better. The guy made a long flat bench and just bolted the saw on it, and then made a set of shallow drawers the length of the bench on either side of the saw to make everything flat. Very simple design with lots of storage. On the other hand I dont think it would be as sturdy and durable as my simple setup, so I can beat on my bench pretty hard without worrying about it.

Found some goodies while cleaning the stairs up to the loft. 

Craftsman square that is not square. If anybody knows how to adjust these let me know because I would love to put it back into service.

Missouri sales tax coin from the depression. 

In reply to gearheadmb :

I've found that the most important asset of everything is mobility.  Can I set it up quick enough to use?   When finished how quickly can I move it out of the way. I have more than 2200 sq.ft. Of shop space.  But it's absolutely amazing how quickly  it fills up. Then I'm walking sideways or on top of things to get to it.  

Today is supposed to be about cleaning, organizing, and rearranging. I am hilariously bad at that. ADD kicks in and I do hours piddling, poking, and daydreaming without accomplishing much. But I did zone in on one problem and came up with a solution. The problem being a bunch of funnels just sort of laying around, with a sub-problem of them leaking the remaining fluids after I use them. So I came up with a solution.

I made this out of some spare 1/2" plywood I had laying around. Funnels go in the top, catch bottle goes in the bottom.

I mounted it to a post. I dont know if I like where it is, but its held up with two screws so it will be easy to move if I change my mind.

My current area of frustration that I am addressing is hardware and small parts storage and organization. I started a separate thread asking how you guys handle that and got some good ideas. What I had been using were a couple of this type

They worked ok but the drawers were overflowing and I still had a pile of stuff that needed sorted and put away. Also I had them inside a cabinet that was two feet deep and I couldn't put anything in front of them, so not an efficient use of space. This was the cabinet they were in

It's a real mess, I want to fix that. 

I decided to move the hardware organization to the outside of the cabinet. I went with these from HF

$15 for a 20 pack, comes with mounting rails. I got three packs so 60 total bins. That goes from the bottom of the cabinet up to eye level. Here it is with the mounting rails installed. 

One topic of discussion in the other thread was keeping dirt out of the bins. The barn does get pretty dusty, plus I like to be able to hide my clutter, so I built a locker to go around it.

I made it out 1/2" plywood. I still need to make the door. I have some features I want to add and I need to figure out what I want for a latch, I will update when I get that done. 

Here it is with the bins

Today I made the door and put it on. I put pockets on the inside to hold spray cans or whatever. 

Now I just need to figure out a latch and a way to support the weight of the left side so the hinges arent holding all the weight when the door is closed.

I made a major upgrade to the "center piece of the woodshop".

It's a delta 36-725T2. My old saw was a cheap second hand craftsman jobsite saw that sucked at pretty much everything. Assembly and adjustment took a little time but the smoothness of running that first piece was so satisfying. 

I was either going to buy this or a used unisaw. The unisaw was pretty much THE saw to have before sawstop came along, I've used them before and they are fantastic. In the end I went with this for a couple reasons. First was weight and mobility. The unisaw is about 500 pounds with a fixed base. The new saw is around 225 and has a decent caster system. This allows me to move it easily when I need to. Plus with being on a wood floor on the second story I feel better about it not falling through the floor. The second thing was I just didn't want to deal with the hassle of buying second hand. I walked into lowes, walked out 15 minutes later with a new machine under warranty. 

I like the organizing stuff. And nice saw. I have an old Craftsman table saw that I wish I could fold up and hang on the wall. I don't use it that much and it takes up a butt load of floor space.

I picked up some new shop goodies from an online estate auction this week. First is a 15" planer. No markings but appears to 1980s vintage Taiwanese knockoff of a delta. It's got a fair amount of rust and the gearbox is leaking so I need to go through it before I put it into use, but I did plane one board and it worked great.

The next is an old lincoln tombstone welder. I bought it more for nostalgia, I learned how to weld with a similar stick welder and I enjoyed it. I thought it might be fun to mess around with. Plus nobody else seemed to be very interested so I got it pretty cheap.

In reply to gearheadmb :

I added a 50 amp breaker and put in a welder outlet today. The old lincoln I got at the auction works great. I haven't used a stick welder in 20 years so I'm pretty rusty, but it's not the worst weld I've ever seen.

I'm a little mad at Lowes. I paid $25 for a five pound box of welding rods and the flux coating was broken off of most of them.

In reply to gearheadmb :

I think I'm gonna steal this idea from you- I just got ~18 of those uline containers for about $9 total but the racking they use for wall mounts are literally hundreds of dollars each(!). Heck with that, I'm building shelves 

Speaking of the old Tombstone, are you keeping it AC? Or would you ever consider adding a full bridge rectifier and choke setup for DC potential?

GIRTHQUAKE said:

In reply to gearheadmb :

Speaking of the old Tombstone, are you keeping it AC? Or would you ever consider adding a full bridge rectifier and choke setup for DC potential?

I dont know anything about that stuff. What are the advantages of having DC? 

gearheadmb said:

I dont know anything about that stuff. What are the advantages of having DC? 

It's something I hyperfixated on a year ago. Opens up stick welding to include things like stainless,makes a smoother weld you can reverse polarity, and if done right reduces pop and splatter and makes striking an arc a breeze. But it demands the rectifier, an inductor to smooth current, and maybe a capacitor or choke to smooth voltage. I watched this video on it, I know.

I built a workbench for the mechanical section of the shop this weekend. 96x32 top, 36" high. The frame is all salvaged hardwoods from the house and barns, the top is 3/4" plywood only held on with a few screws to make it easy to replace as it gets beat up.