On-going shop reorganization build thread [updated 7.18.20]

[HarveyWildes]

Undoubtedly the nicest sandpaper storage I've ever seen.

[ear3]

Just finished up a new cordless tool cabinet, or at least the foundational elements of it, which will be tweaked a bit going forward to fit additional small parts and accessories.  The old one was functional, but didn't have much room for stuff other than the tools themselves.

I was a bit hesitant to proceed with the build, for fear of it becoming obsolete if I decided to add or subtract any tools.  So to maintain flexibility, all the joinery was done with DF500 connectors.  So if I need to add another bay or even swap in a board with another configuration of cut-outs, that can be done without rebuilding the cabinet.

Doors give me another surface on which to hang tools.  Chargers now hang from the side of the cabinet, with the wires strung through the interior of the cabinet via access holes to the other side where the power is. 

I'm now out of space on that wall of my shop, and will have to focus on building out the other side if I want to add any additional cabinet storage.

 

[Rob Z]

Edward,

I am always amazed at how much stuff you manage to fit in your side of the garage.

[ear3]

Part of the reason for building the additional cabinets was to add more surface area on which to hang tools, so that I could clear out the center bay of my handtool cabinet and update the storage to accommodate additional planes.

The center bay was where I kept the hammers, screwdrivers wrenches, etc:



It was kind of bittersweet to spread all those things out on the new cabinet doors and lose the compact configuration I had achieved:



But it was the only way to create the necessary space. 

I basically replicated the setup I have on the left bay, which places the planes on their sides to minimize the vertical footprint:



Added some drawers along the bottom row with bubinga fronts and wenge pulls for more small part storage:





Managed to build in a bit of extra room for a few reasonably sized future acquisitions.  Since the right sliding door covers the last few inches of the bay on the right, I left a gap between the plane shelf and the bay divider where I can fit a bottle of 2P10 and jojoba oil, along with some long measuring/layout tools. 







I think I'm good for a while on cabinets, and can now turn my attention to some other projects I have waiting.

[ear3]

I made a small but significant modification to the planer cart that I constructed for my 735, documented earlier in thread
 here.

I added a folding outfeed bed to the back of the planer, using a piano hinge and a sliding dovetail leg mechanism like what I did on the outfeed table for my table saw and the left-hand collapsible bed on my kapex cart.  It runs 28" out from the planer and so allows me to run somewhat longer boards without resorting to a roller stand.  I will still need a stand on the back end when doing the long boards, but this gives me a bit more slack running back and forth to grab the stock before it tips off the bed when running a number of boards in sequence.

This was another victory for scrap preservation.  I had a piece of doubled up cherry veneered ply that's been sitting around the shop for a couple of years.  I forget now why I had laminated it in the first place, but it now lives on, edged with white oak scrap, in the outfeed table.

The other bonus of doing this table is that I no longer have to return the planer to max height when I pack it up.  The metal extension on the rear of the planer did not fold up all the way when the planer was below 5", because it hit the chip outlet.  With that now replaced, I can just fold down the outfeed table and not worry about adjusting the planer back to it's full height. 

[ear3]

I just saw that it is the 5th year anniversary of this thread.  Things have come a long way since it began.

[ear3]

One of the legacy storage items I have in my shop is a pair of steel filing cabinets, that are 28" deep

 

Funny story how I got them.  I worked for a while in the mid-2000s as an installer at the PS1 museum in New York, and it was during that period that the MOMA museum in Manhattan had temporarily relocated to Queens near PS1 while undergoing major renovations.  When it came time to move MOMA back, they sent over a bunch of us from PS1 over to the MOMA Queens space to pick up some remaining items, but they also said we should go ahead and take any remaining furniture or accessories for ourselves, since it was just going to be chucked or donated some place.  So after we had made the run to deliver the desired items, we went back with the moving truck and loaded it up with anything we could get our hands on, and then spent the rest of the day delivering it to each others residences.  I got an early generation flat screen TV, a few ergonomic office chairs, some other random stuff that I no longer remember or held onto, and then these filing cabinets.  Still being in school and surviving mostly on Rice and Beans or Ramen, I felt like a millionaire getting that haul.  So the cabinets are a bit sentimental.

I thought about getting rid of them when I did the shop reorganization, and instead installing some more efficient wooden cabinets, but decided in the end to keep them.  I built my bench to accommodate them, and left enough clearance to still get my hand in to secure knobs from the underside above the cabinets.   Even if they are a great place to put tool manuals and file away receipts, for most other things the drawers are horribly inefficient, and so they have gotten cluttered up over the years with random hardware that I have to fish through every time I need to grab a hinge or a strap.

I think I've solved the space issue now by building stacking, removable trays:

Clamps and bench accessories on the top level



Then miscellaneous hardware and fasteners in the middle and lower tiers





I've mounted the top trays on some runners so that I can leave the smaller one in and slide it back and forth to access the middle tier.





There's one more drawer that I can do this storage system on.  The remaining two are devoted to actual files and then large items that wouldn't benefit from the tray system.

[Michael Kellough]

Those look like good quality file cabinets with drawer slides that can handle the alternative use.

I’ve got a bunch of Steel Case cabinets that became surplus to the operations when Dia was transitioning from 1.0 to 2.0, way before your gig at PS1. I was the first art handler at Dia starting before the beginning while working for Heiner Friedrich.

Heiner’s gallery became the first iteration of DIA and Heiner the first director. The first exhibit I installed under the Dia monicker was Walter De Maria’s Broken Kilometer in the spring of 1979 and it’s still there (all 19 tons of it) and you can still go see it, virus permitting.

[ear3]

@Michael Kellough How about that!  You were on the scene then when it WAS the scene.  I'll make sure I check out your handiwork next time I go there, but when that is who knows?  I know of at least one big gallery down in Chelsea already that is going to have to close up shop permanently, though DIA obviously has a storied tradition that it can lean on while going through these hard times.

One of the cool things about working at PS1 was that since they did not have a permanent collection, I got to learned a lot of techniques in a short amount of time with the constant install-deinstall cycle.

These filing cabinets are definitely solid -- here's the manufacturing label:

[Jiggy Joiner]

Looks great Edward, it’s tidy but, hasn’t lost the workshop character that many modern workshop have. 

I recently went to the premises of an old friend I met when I first started out. His workshop resembles a hospital. Don’t get me wrong, I was jealous of all the top end machinery he has but, on the day I visited he was closed for business due to some building work going on but, it never felt like a workshop, I never saw a hint of sawdust or shavings, and it smelled more like an engineers workshop than a joiner and cabinet maker.

Still one of the best kitted out commercial workshops I’ve ever seen though. So all credit to him but, I like a bit of character.

[six-point socket II]

Love the stackable trays you built for those amazing filing cabinets!

Kind regards,
Oliver

[ear3]

Few minor upgrades.

First, I decided to create a small dedicated cabinet for saw blades.  They are currently stored in the bottom drawer of the miter saw cart, and whenever I need to switch blades I have to remove a bunch from the drawer and open them up to find the proper one.

Edged some 1" BB with maple and created a mitered box out of it, then once it was glued up, I cut the back to fit in between the exposed studs along the wall where the miter saw is









Since I previously hung the dust collection hose between the Shop Vac and Kapex from above, I currently have a temporary setup until I can figure out something more permanent.



The benefit of this new setup, even in its temporary state, is that I don't have to unhook the hose every time I open or close the garage door.  You can imagine what has happened the couple of times when I forgot to unhook.

Secondly, I needed to create a bit of room in the cabinet above the workbench to accommodate some additional hand tools that will be coming.

I had originally made the swinging doors in the right hand bay come only about 3/4s of the way across, for no other reason than I had already placed the scorp in the upper right hand corner, which blocked out that space.



So I decided to shift things around on the bay wall and remake the doors to go almost the entire width across the bay.

Doing the small middle drawers in bubinga gave me the idea to use that wood for the new door panels, so I resawed and bookmatched a 2 ft. piece from a bubinga board I still had stored in the loft.



Resulting panels bear a strong resemblance to an owl





With the scorp moved to the bottom, I now have a bit more space in the upper right of that bay wall and on both sides of the swinging doors