Some Shop Shots

Once the beer fridge was removed from the garage, I was amazed to see how much space had opened up. I decided to take the opportunity to clean the shop and rearrange things, again. An added bonus was a trade with my dad for an old workbench he salvaged from a high school woodshop over 20 years ago. He got some drawer storage units that I couldn't figure out where to put. He's happy and so am I.

The first pic below is how the shop looks as you walk in the door. The lathe area is way in the back and can be seen better in the third pic. I need to get a few cabinets made and put up on the walls and then it will be time to get back to turning and making the shop dirty again!

So Long Old Friend...

When my wife and I moved into our house almost 6 years ago, the frig in the kitchen stuck out like a sore thumb. It was almond, we wanted white. The inside had wire shelves and some of them were rusty. When the compressor turned on, it made a terrible noise. The day after we moved in we had a new shiny white frig delivered and put the old one in the garage that would become my shop. The frig has housed many things, water, veggies, fruit, meat, etc. but its primary purpose was to keep beer cold. If we needed to use it for overflow from the kitchen fridge, we would take it to the "beer fridge".

I decorated it with my magnet collection, stickers, and a poster or two. I stacked an old 20" TV on it when I ran cable to the garage. The TV hasn't worked in over a year, but the beer fridge didn't mind. It has a layer of dust on it that would choke most shop vacs, but it didn't mind. I put a few dents in it when projectiles from the lathe hit it, but it didn't mind. Because of the freezing temps and snow this winter, I hadn't been out to the shop much since Thanksgiving. I hadn't opened the fridge in over two months. I thought the beer fridge wouldn't mind, but...

This past week, the beer fridge cooled its last beer. The light inside still worked, but nothing else...

Beer Fridge, you had a good run and you will be missed...

A Shop/Studio In Progress....

Over the past few weeks, I've been cleaning out the garage to enable my wife to park her car in it. Still not there, but I just finished a new workspace along the wall of the shop area. The bench is attached to the studs of the wall on the back edge and then a simple 2X4 frame and legs. The compound miter saw (CMS) is built into a dip near the center and has worked quite well. I have about 5' to the left and almost 7' to the right of the saw. The top is just 1/2" plywood as it won't see much abuse.

Under the CMS is where my air compressor will go. There will be air lines to the right for the lathe and upward to the 50' of hose on a hand crank roll up. To the left of the CMS is a salvaged 2 drawer set from work that stores my skil saw and other power tools. It is on wheels too just in case I might clean behind it. To the right is a mobile assembly/finish table that is 46" wide and 23" deep. It tucks away very nicely and hold hardware, old mags and other assorted junk and such. The top is still a work in progress but will be 2 layers of MDF and 2X2 fir edging. Above the bench are two cabinets (also salvaged from work) that I cut down to 10" deep from 18". They house finishes and paint.

This picture shows what I had on the wall prior to building the bench. Basically all the salvaged stuff mentioned above, just all crammed together. I think this is an improvement! Once again thanks to my frugality, I managed to make all these improvements with out spending much at all. About $5 for some of the 1/2" ply material from the cutoff bin at the local HD...they have pieces marked from 50cents to $2 all the time and it's hard to pass it up.

I have more updates to do soon in the lathe area, but now I need to get back to the lathe, I haven't turned it on in almost 3 weeks!

Cleaning and Rearranging

Over the past couple of days and weeks I have been cleaning out the studio/garage in order to get my wife's car out of the upcoming winter weather. This is what I started with.....

I've rotated the lathe back to the east wall, it's original location, and moved plus added to the tool storage. I also added some new storage to the wall above the lathe. The salvaged cabinets along the north wall have also been rearranged to make everything more efficient. An old dirty tarp is being utilized for chip control and barrier from my wife's car once it is moved in. A few updated pictures are below.

Removing three 40 gallon trash cans of "Fine Curlies" from the floor of the shop was the most time consuming part so far. I will update more pictures once the cabinets are moved into their final spot.