Ogberi's Shop

[ogberi]

Hi All,

Cut my finger while rummaging in a drawer for a T handled hex wrench. Stopped work right then and there, and went to the big box store for a 4x8 sheet of pegboard, furring strips, and 2 packs of pegboard organizers.

Got home, unloaded the truck.

Then I volunteered to help my wife decorate.
Then I folded and put away 2 loads of laundry.
Then I got my big pot 'o beans going with the ham bone from our Thanksgiving day ham. (oh, yeah!)
Then I took out all the garbages.

Then I sat in my shop, had a beer, and smoked a cigar while I stared thoughtfully at the wall for awhile.

An hour later, I had a 2'x8' pegboard mounted on the wall behind the lathe. I cut the board in half, because I'm short and wouldn't be able to reach the top half over the bench anyway. The other half will go above my regular workbench.

Then I organized my organizers, and organized my lathe stuff. Now I'm happier. Things are within reach, organized, and clea...uh... well, two out of three....

The metal cabinet the lathe is currently on will be going away. I need to build a heavy wooden 8' bench for the south bend I'll be lugging home after the year end. It and the Taig will share the bench and pegboard. Stuff for the Atlas horizontal mill occupies the far left of the pegboard, but most of it is still in the totes you see on the far right. I store my extra organizers on the pegboard, out of the way. If you use something repeatedly, it's only a moment's work to grab another hook and put that tool in a convenient place. I find if I have to dig through drawers for the organizers, I'll neglect to use them at all.

Ignore the electrical disaster at the top of the pegboard. I had to remove a florescent light to put up the pegboard, and the resulting lashup is extremely temporary. As in, it'll be fixed tonight. I should have proper electric in the shop sometime around the beginning of this coming year.



Here's my Atlas horizontal mill and little Horrible Freight grinder I use for touching up HSS tools.


No beef about the non-Atlas pulleys, please. Eventually I'll put something less "redneck Engineered" on there, but for now that's all I got. It works, and works darn good with a DC motor. Speed control is the grey box holding up my apron and cigar. It's shared between the Taig and the Atlas. The Atlas sits on a discarded Grizzly mill stand, with a home-made wooden top of laminated 2x4's. It's solid and really helps with the vibration when running. The funky looking widget in the bore for the overarm support bar is a mount for my Taig spindle to do light vertical milling. One of the projects in the totes is a dedicated vertical spindle for the Atlas, using an old Taig spindle I have on-hand. Should be a bit more rigid than the current vertical attachment.

I use the little grinder for touching up HSS tools. I actually use a Dremel with a fibre-reinforced cutoff wheel to shape the HSS. Cuts faster than the 6" grinder. I then refine the shape on the 6" grinder, sharpen it on the little 3" grinder, and hone it on a diamond hone.

I use the little deburring wheel on the HF grinder quite a bit too.

I'll post pictures of the rest of the workshop as the cleanup progresses. It's been a general storage area for nearly a year, and I'm sick of not having a clear place to do what I want to do. Need to nudge my buddy about cleaning out his garage so I can get rid of a whole bunch of crates of equipment he's storing here at the moment.

FWIW, my shop is an old 50' extra-tall refrigerated semi-trailer. It's insulated (barely), has a high ceiling and a heavy-duty wood floor. Bit narrow, though. I've got it cribbed up on PT 4x4's, and just waiting on my brother in law to get time to come run my electric and whatnot.

 

[mattthemuppet2]

sounds like a very productive day! I'd do the beer thing in the shop, but right now it'd likely freeze before it got to my lips

the Taig vertical spindle for the Atlas sounds like a really cool project, I hope you post a thread when you get started. Is it one with the ER16 or 20 collet chuck? That would make the Atlas into quite the versatile hobby mill.

As for grinding HSS bits, I found the biggest difference was getting a decent white Norton wheel - grinds much faster than the 6in concrete disks that passed for grinding wheels before and a lot cooler too. For less than $25 shipped it's a worthwhile investment. I re-ground a bit with it the other day and the edge came out much cleaner off the wheel and needed a lot less touching up with the arkansas stone and diamond hone. The edge held up really well in relatively heavy cuts in steel (enough to periodically stall the spindle on my tiny lathe) too.

 

[ogberi]

I actually have a bunch of white Norton 3" cup wheels. They were on the "get rid of this crap" shelf, marked at $10. I grabbed one, thinking 10 bucks isn't going to break the bank....then the guy behind the counter said, "no, the whole *box* is ten bucks." I got a burn on my butt cheek from wallet friction. Ended up with 10 or so, IIRC. Gave some to my buddy, because you know, share the good fortune.

I still have to build an adapter for my HF grinder, or just build a grinder to use them. It's on the to-do list. If I run across them this evening I'll grab a pic.

 

[ogberi]

Been shoveling out my shop, organizing and rearranging to make room for a new workbench I have to build. There's 6 large crates that will be going away soon, which will free up a bunch 'o space.

Yeah. It's a mess. An 8' wide, 50' long mess. :whistle:



I'm not scared of spiders, but holy crap!!! It's a jumping spider the size of the end of my thumb. I don't care that he's there, so long as he does thing and lets me do mine, and he doesn't bite me.


Progress.


More progress.


And a bit more progress. This time towards the door.


Until I can get the big crates out of the way, it's a case of shove everything somewhere else, and start organizing things into the area I just cleaned up. Shove everything out of the way from right next to where I cleaned and do it again. So far I have most of the shop cleaned up. There's the big shelves left to do, which unfortunately will have to wait until the crates are gone. I've emptied and put away the contents of most of the totes. Once the crates are gone I can put up more pegboard and empty out the last couple of totes.

My workbench. The top is Brazilian Cherry. It was pretty cheap when I bought it. Right after I got the benchtop finished, it went on the non-import list, and tripled in value. The boards are laminated together with Gorilla glue and lengths of 1/2" allthread pull it all together. The legs are doubled-up 2x4's, the lower frame rails are 2x6's mortise and tenon joined to the legs. It weighs a lot. It takes two *really* determined men to pick it up and carry it. I had nearly a thousand pounds of weight in the middle of it for several months, and there was no detectible sag in the top. One fully dressed VW Type 4 engine & transmission, a type 4 long block, two loaded Kennedy toolboxes and assorted sundry parts.


A quick lick of the sander with 80 grit takes the stains right out (and the wood is so tough it comes out baby-butt smooth even with 80 grit). I've got very few hammer marks in it, despite the fact that I've flailed the crap out of some parts on there. The wood is incredibly resilient. Unfortunately, it's hell on tools. Went through two carbide tipped saw blades ripping the boards to size, and a set of planer blades getting them all uniform in size and thickness. You can see where my vice was mounted, and I'll put it back on there soon. Been searching for a nice 6" vice to replace my war-weary 4" Wilton, but so far nothing worth getting.

And a teaser on the progress of the MFC.


Unfortunately, I've caught the creeping crud that's going around the plague ward we call an office. My super is going on vacation starting Wednesday, and I do his job while he's gone. Means no sick time for me. Gonna need a lot 'o daytime cold meds, and by this weekend I'll be flat worn out. Not sure there'll be any progress this weekend.

 

[34_40]

Good on ya for such a great shop! And thanks for making time to share all the pics with us.

 

[Randy803]

Love it! I an tell you get er done in there to!

 

[ogberi]

I dropped the ball a bit on updates. Been crazy busy at work, busy at home, and not too much shop time. What time I did have, I didn't waste taking lots of pictures. But, pictures will be coming! Been dang sick since Saturday morning too. 102-103 fever isn't fun, especially when working hard. But, things had to get done. (feeling better now, btw. Took a day and a half off work, slept most of it, let the fever burn itself out.)

First, last weekend my buddy Dave stopped by, and we got a whole bunch of crates out of my workshop. It literally gave me 50% more open floor space. He then gave me a kicka$$ 10" rotary/indexing table, with the understanding that it was mine until I don't need it anymore. He has no machine tools, and was impressed even with the sorry present state of my shop. He advised that I look for a 'Big Honkin' Mill' to put it on. Which I will be doing. All he asked, is that if I want to sell the table, to give it back to him instead. I'm perfectly fine with that.

So with lots of floor space freed up, I took apart the massive 4x8 steel shelves, and will be cutting them down to only 2' deep. My shop is 7'8" wide, and 4' wide shelves take up entirely too much space. 2x8 is much more manageable, and still deep enough to hold my totes.

Good news is that now I have enough space to put together the lathe bench for my SB9A! Woohoo!!! I've had it since January, and haven't been able to do anything with it. Soon, it'll be on it's bench proper and making chips.

Great news is that my brother in law is coming up *TOMORROW* to wire up my shop!!!

NO MORE EXTENSION CORD RUNNING TO THE HOUSE!!!!

I'll have dedicated service to the shop, with a proper sub panel, outlets, 240v drops, *light switches!* and holy mother of machinists, *MUSIC!*

Yes! I'll be able to finally have a decent stereo system out there! I have some hand-me-down Bose speakers, a really nice radio, and finally I'll be able to use 'em!

But most of all, I'll have good, reliable, professionally installed electric. All the lights will be on their own breaker, along with a couple of battery powered emergency lights. I'll have 240V right by the rear doors for an air compressor or welder, quad outlets scattered all over the place, and a 240V drop (which will be in a blank junction box) at the front of the trailer for when I manage to get my big 'ole compressor moved outside of the shop. (need to build a pad and shed for it... that thing is *LOUD*.)

I'll be running two Cat5 drops out there as well, so I have proper networking. Being an IT professional, that's right up my skill set. Besides, I have crap wireless signal out there, and even a repeater to boost the signal drops packets when doing light-duty jobs such as streaming music. Two runs of conduit were buried around Fall of last year, just need to expose the end near the shop and bring it up into the shop.

It's been a long waiting game for me, but my shop is coming together, finally. My Atlas horizontal mill is close to being running, the SB is awaiting only a workbench to sit on, and by Sunday evening I'll be able to simply flip a switch and have lights out there!

Exciting times indeed! Of course, my shop is a bit of a disaster, and will be until I get it squared away in the next few weekends. But, I figure if I do it as I have been, plugging away whenever I have a spare hour or two, it'll get done. I'm patient, and want it done correctly, and how I want it done.

I'll try to remember to get pics this weekend. For now, I'm off to clear off spaces for us to work. And to try to figure out how to re-arrange, now that I got more space.

 

[Dave Smith]

sounds like you are really making progress--especially getting your electrical done professionally--I have that to do in my shops also--tired of being without 220 and only limited 110. I do have my music though so not all is bad----keep up your progress and pictures----Dave

 

[ogberi]

I'm really lucky that my brother in law is a commercial electrician. He normally despises residential work, but for Christmas he got me the sub-panel, breakers, and loads of other goodies. Piggy-backed the order on a commercial build-out, got less than rock bottom prices on it. He's an absolute perfectionist when it comes to his work, and 99% of his profanity is related to the incompetence of the previous electrician that he's mopping up after. He leaves enough wire to change things later, arranges breakers and wiring in sensible order, labels *EVERYTHING*, and leaves no mess when he's done. Honestly, I could care less about the mess. I'm gonna clean anyway. But, he does a superb job wiring stuff up.

Added bonus - He's a 3-phase guru. I swear he talks about Delta-Wye almost as much as he talks about his kids. He's itching for me to convert *something* to 3-phase so he can help me set up the VFD.

 

[ogberi]

Hi All,

Well, we didn't get as much accomplished as we set out to do, but still made good progress. The conduit was buried last fall, and we brought it up into the shop. The subpanel is mounted, and there's two junction boxes right next to the rear doors. One will be a quad of outlets, the other a 240V outlet for a compressor or other 240V tool. There are 3 junction boxes plumbed along the north wall, landing about every 8' or so. That puts one at the left side of my main workbench (where the drill press lives), one between the workbench and where the lathe bench goes, and one at the end of the lathe bench. I have some leaks to fix at the front of the shop before we add another junction box up there.

The south wall will get boxes next, spaced between the ones on the north wall. We also have to run the boxes for the lights. I did purchase two battery backed emergency lights, so that if I manage to trip a breaker, I won't be standing there in the dark. I recommend them to everybody. They're only about $40, easy to install, and do a dang good job. One goes at the rear doors, the other on the opposite wall halfway up the shop. That won't light the entire shop, but they will provide enough illumination to keep me safe.

I got my 4'x8' metal shelves cut down, as well. Now they're 2'x8', and take up a *lot* less of my meager space. Already got 'em filled up with totes.

Now that we've done the hard work behind the workbench and where the lathe bench goes, I can move forward with getting my bench put together. Which is one step closer to having the SB lathe up and running.

We still have to measure and run the feeders from the garage panel out to the shop, but we wants to get up there and measure it thoroughly (running 80A service about 200' isn't cheap!) before we purchase the wire. We'll also need his sons to help feed the stuff, as we'll have to pull 4 in hand (hot, hot, neutral and ground.) I need to beg, borrow, or rent a Hiltie to drive some ground rods for the shop as well. Those rods aren't terribly cheap either.

All in all, I'm pleased with the progress, despite the fact that my shop is an absolute disaster. I've been shuffling things from place to place, but not really trying to organize it. Mostly because it'll have to be moved again so we can get to where we need to on the walls to get conduit secured, junction boxes installed, etc.

Dan was awesome in the fact that he purchased the subpanel, breakers, some switches, and provided all the wire to wire up the shop interior. I'm paying for all the conduit, boxes, outlets, and the feeders. He's also providing the expertise as a commercial electrician to wire everything up right. He's a bit 'retentive' about his work, and I have no problem with that.

For now, it's getting late, I gotta do some cleanup and get the shop shut down for the night. Can't wait to throw some shop time at the lathe bench this weekend. Gotta get a buddy to help me move the lathe when the time comes.