#rolling tool storage

[thesteveyates]

Once more dear friends……onto the workshop bench.

Also : my new facebook group page : https://www.facebook.com/groups/524455598277075/

I was going to follow that one up with a line or two from Macbeth ; “is this a dagger (board) which i see before me” and use that as an introduction to the next stage of my rudder repair….oh come on people it could be a daggerboard !.

However, before i can get the rudder cheek assembly on the bench to work out what the new problem is iv’e first got to sort the bench out, before that iv’e really got to move the alien queen and yes, before that iv’e got to clear all the crap off the bench, and the floor just to give myself space to work.  Honestly, in the workshop nobody can hear the screams (that’s from Alien by the way )

Right then, lets try and make some sense around here.

It’s that time of year when i really need the workshop because iv’e got several boat jobs and projects to get on with : i really do need to get the rudder on the bench, it’s already off the boat and i think i can see what the problem is, aside from that iv’e got the new sprit-boom to make and modify the old mizzen-sprit, the engine box to build and then the new icebox cum fridge to design and build.  Unfortunately i really do have to move the alien queen (pillar drill) first and she is a heavy old thing and i might have to modify the entire bench to really make it work.

Moving the alien then.

I really like my pillar drill but i made a bad decision when i fitted it on the second bench, which is the one at the low side of the lean-to workshop.  Even after lowering half the bench that side and reinforcing it for that much weight i just can’t get really long work pieces , the sprit-booms for example, under the chuck.  Each of the sprit-booms needs several holes boring through them as square as possible and i can’t do it with the one tool that is best for the job so this month i decided to bite the bullet and move her to the central bench to see if that will work.

I had to lower the side bench top about 100mm just to be able to mount the drill there and when i checked there was about the same amount of top clearance on the standard height central bench so it would just go.  It would mean that the whole drill is mounted higher and would still be a bit difficult to access the gearbox, that is without modifying the main bench as well.  At this stage iv’e got a feeling that i am going to have to alter the whole of the main bench as part of the job as i think that it needs to be wider and lower….the problem being that we’ve done all the wiring to that height and all of that would have to be altered as well…..not a big job for Sparky-Mark but it would put everything out of action for a while.

I did think about doing a more complex job than i have done ; basically in that i considered having a cut out at the far end of the main bench and building a new, lower section for the drill.  When i looked at the job it would have been just about possible, although messy and would have entailed a lot of fiddly cutting and fitting so on the day i just went with the simplest solution i could, even that was a bit of a pain because i had to partially dismantle the drill before moving the very heavy bits and then put it together on the main bench as below.  At end of day, day 1, the drill is back in use : the height is a bit too much although not extreme, i can just about access the gearbox and i think iv’e left just about enough space/clearance off the end….time will tell eh ?

My main job though is to clear the low side of the workshop (workshop left) and completely rebuild that side as dedicated storage and then i can dismantle the old, end wall storage rack and give myself the maximum length and width space that the floor can give me….just about big enough for a small boat project.   As is my usual way i did too much thinking about what should be a simple job (make some storage shelves) and then hit the internet to see how someone who really knows what they are about would do the job.  I just happened to be surfing my Youtube feed after finishing the Christmas cleaning and watched the very excellent Laura Kampf’s end of year video during which i got very excited by her heavy duty storage rack project, link below.  I got so excited by that job that i rushed out, measured up, designed my own one and even made up a materials list which i would have taken into the builders merchant today….except.

Then i thought to check the floor because what Laura’s design seems to rely on is a level floor and then very accurate cutting of the components as it’s a partially cantilevered system : what i found of course is that the workshop floor is about as level as everything else around here ie not a bit !.  I could spend a lot of time making custom bottom sections and boring lots of big holes through the block work or i could just build some shelves…..

Laura Kampf video.

I really like what Laura Kampf does but her rack design just wasn’t going to work without a lot of headache and at least one new expensive tool (radial chop/mitre saw) so i just took the simple approach of attaching rails all the way around the ‘U’ of the left side of the workshop.

My 2 bench set-up never really worked and all that happened is that the second bench, under the window, always just got covered in stuff that should be on a shelf : well there’s a shelf there now !.   Instead i decided to concentrate on getting the maximum function out of the one central bench by making it as long and wide as i could and mounting the pillar drill in a dropped section just to the right of centre of the main bench deck.

The last part was a bit of a sod : if anyone has had to handle a 1″ sheet of plywood on their own in a confined space they’ll know how heavy and awkward the material is. On a dry day i would have borrowed my partner and we would have heaved the sheet outside to work with it on the outside bench (ex garden bench), however it wasn’t just raining but chucking it down here so i had to do it all inside ; luckily the workshop is just about at the stage where nearly everything is off the floor so i just about had the space to lay the 1” plywood sheet onto some sheets and get marking out.

The very last stage was heavy and tricky as i had to get the new bench top up and over the pillar of the drill, whose base had to be already bolted in place, and i had to get the cut-out for the shed roof support post in the right place as well.  Finally with the new bench deck on and ‘looking good Houston’ i decided to completely go for it, finish the job etc etc, by heaving the drill’s motor-head back up and onto the pillar.

I thought about it, it’s a heavy lift, got the head up onto the bench, got myself into position, did a very big heave and just got the head up onto the pillar, carefully balanced it and dropped it down over the pillar……..great, done, i thought……and then looked around and realised that i hadn’t put the drill table over the pillar first and it took me 5 tries to get the motor-head off again.

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O.M.D.F. Once more dear friends......onto the workshop bench. Also : my new facebook group page :

[thesteveyates]

In my recent post titled ‘I need one of those’ i started to build a new mobile tool storage rack that would carry all of my hand tools, my most commonly used power tools and all of the extra stuff like glue and sandpaper that i tend to use when i am working on projects.        In a much older blog post i photographed and talked about the building of a very quick and crude wall storage rack for tools which didn’t work very well and which is replaced by the new one.  As with the previous one my intention for this one was to build as much of it as i could from workshop scrap.  I hope to be using the workshop a lot more again now that i am more mobile, right now it needs a big tidy-up and clean-out, then a major re-organise and after that i want to build new bench tops inside and out with better vices, better workability and much better ‘stuff’ storage.

The new tool storage solution is a rolling stand that i can wheel outside because i do a lot of work outside especially when i am making stuff on the old garden bench which i use as my cutting bench for full sheets of plywood.      That really came into it’s own when we did the bathroom build because we were able to mark out and cut all the plywood for the floor and walls on it but i noticed even then that there was nowhere to put tools , except on the ground, in between using them.     I did think about building a much larger tool rack on the inside face of the workshop door, as it is that’s where i store the garden tools already but it does tend to get wet so that wouldn’t be good for my woodworking tools.

The new rolling rack , first version.

The solution came up accidentally when i was watching the Adam Savage/Tested youtube channel  and his great looking mobile tool stand.  I immediately thought ‘i need one of those’ and quite literally started building my own version the next day and just out of scrap plywood from the bathroom build.  The version that you see today is already the mark 2 , although it’s the same case, as i considered that the first stage build was only a full size working model.  Initially i didn’t build the rack deep enough, not necasarily in terms of tools but in that it wasn’t stable enough in that plane when i was wheeling it around on my uneven workshop floor.  There were also several mistakes early on : one was that i hadn’t considered having braked casters…..everything is on a slope here….and secondly that i tried to do the whole storage system with fixed dividers for ease of build.  After the first session and first look at the mark one i stopped and re-started the project by making a series of modular boxes for the top of the rack.

Top modules in place on the un-modified stand.

Starting over from top and bottom : first look at the bottom modules.

  And that’s where we pick up the story.

So, this is the new version of the blog posts  in which i try to use writing, photography and video all in the same post and about the same subject.  I like to build stuff but i’m not very good at it, in fact i had one skipper years ago whom said something along the lines of “woodwork really isn’t your thing is it” and he was right.   Although i did have a formal education in woodwork at school from an excellent teacher i think even then that i was the kind of bodge-artist that made him despair.   We did learn the basics but it was all based in high-end cabinet making rather than the practical stuff that might keep a boat afloat or produce a level shelf so aside from some basic tool skills i really don’t have much in the way of valid skills.   One side of my school life that i kind of regret, although not my fault, is that i went to a grammar school that was attached to a comprehensive school and there was definitely a division of subjects even at workshop/crafts level : we got ‘clean’ woodwork and the pikeys got ‘dirty’ metalwork…..i wish now that i’d got a mixture of both.

I will say that i can slop epoxy around with the best/worst backyard boatbuilders and that a lot of backyard boatbuilding has nothing whatsoever to do with high-end cabinet makery that is square and exact….rather it’s all about weird compound curves, building light and simple structures that float….and just getting the job done most days.  I did learn epoxy/ply/glass construction through finishing a ply/epoxy catamaran and i guess that because of having put that effort in that is now the way i tend to do things even though it’s not the right approach in a cold and damp workshop.  Even when i did the Wanigan project a few months back i had to store the pieces in the house first to warm up and dry out and ‘cook’ the work in the greenhouse on a sunny day.   As many readers will know i took on an old gaffer with the intention of completely refitting her, one of my first jobs would have been to laminate some 30 or more new frames and i was in the process of learning how to do that when i came to the realisation that it just wasn’t going to happen on my new knee and very old back problems.  Today i have several projects in mind for the little Liberty as it looks as though i will be keeping her, a lot of that can be done best in the workshop.

Going back to my school days again and the other thing we got instead of practical metalwork was an opt-in to do engineering drawing so i did also learn how to produce plan/elevation and sectional drawings and basically how to design ‘stuff’……with this project i completely ignored any of that and just got on designing it by building it !            I must add though that i took the rough size and shape from the one in Adam Savage’s video but even then started by taking a piece of plywood about that size and slicing it across the diagonal to make the sides.  That the first version has come out at about the right size seems purely accidental and much more down to the size of scrap plywood i had laying around.  What i did sit down and design , one evening, were the modular boxes that form the top storage units and that was by the simple process of grouping those things together and working out a size and shape that fit most of them in groups of similar tools.

The first very obvious mistakes were that the stand wasn’t deep enough in the front to back dimension or too high in proportion, that meant that it was far too easy to push over on my uneven workshop floor.  The second obvious problem was that i used plain castors for the base and they were neither big enough wheels to cope with the cobbles in one section of the floor and then the whole thing started to roll off down the drive when i took it outside.    The next mistake was to try and build all of the top storage first by adding fixed dividers and that seemed to waste a load of space.  In the second version i started over by building the storage boxes for the top first, then working out the bottom storage and crucially by making spreader plates to deepen the footprint for the new braked castors.

Getting there.

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The thing from the workshop goes live !

The thing from the workshop. In my recent post titled 'I need one of those' i started to build a new mobile tool storage rack that would carry all of my hand tools, my most commonly used power tools and all of the extra stuff like glue and sandpaper that i tend to use when i am working on projects.