So with bloody machete in hand, in full Rambo style, I finally hacked and chopped a path through the jungle today and discovered that I actually still have a couple of workbenches buried in the pile of debris that I once called a workshop. I had feared that they had succumb to the entropy engulfing the remainder of the shop and that all hope was lost of ever seeing any clear horizontal surface ever again.

With war paint on and the Ninja Kitty at my side for protection, I ventured in to the abyss once called a workshop to evaluate the damage. I had to pause for a while to fight off a bout of malaria, but quickly came back to my senses just in time to be chased about by a pack of piranha. The Ninja Kitty wasn’t very much help, aside from entertainment, as I had to stop every now and then to peel him off the ceiling or other high place during his explorations. I actually found him crawling over the tops of the sheet goods in the new vertical rack.

The shop has sat stagnant for almost a year since I gutted it to lay down floor tile. It was in such an utter state of chaos that I didn’t even know where to begin.....so I never began. Last weekend, with my son, I finally made the first expedition down to the shop and assembled the new SysPorts I picked up in Indiana. This actually lead to the breakthrough for finally making progress in the shop. I rebuilt and relocated “The Wall of Shame” and that led me to finally making some progress in the mess.




It’s not finished. The speaker doesn’t belong on the Wall of Shame, and I need to come up with some storage for all of the accessories that don’t fit in the Systainers, like the 3 different router fences for each of the routers. I think I might even put up some pegboard above the SysPorts. (I am way to symmetrical to allow a missing Sortainer like you see in the picture. The missing one is actually up in my office for the MGS guides.)

Lest you foolishly assume that I am out of the woods yet, no, no, no, I have a long way to go before that. As I said, I cleared a “path” to the first workbench--that doesn’t mean I have managed to clear that workbench. Only that I can now reach it.

The first workbench is just a matter of cleaning the crap off of it and putting it away, and in this picture, I have already taken a huge chunk out of it. The second workbench (in the background) hasn’t been cleared in 15 years....and yes, I relocated that whole bench, including the 15 years of junk on top of it, all in-one when I did the tile.




Even though I made a big enough dent in the shop where you can see the floor surrounding the workbenches, that by no means, means that I am even close to finishing. The machining area of the shop is hardly even passable, and yes, that is a tablesaw buried under several feet of scrap lumber that I don’t know where to store.

I figure that I might get started on this room by 2010 and I might get it wrapped up by late 2011. Rumor has it that Gilligan and the Castaways are lost somewhere in this room. No one would know, as there are too many black holes still unexplored back there that anything could be happen.

Attached Thumbnails

     

Rick

Great looking shop, and yes I'm envious of the space to say nothing about the wall of shame.

Jay

Nice job, Rick. I know how satisfying it is to re-discover your tools and workspace.

As for your "wall of shame", I'm thinking it's more like a "Wall of Wow!" That's a pretty amazing Festool collection. Not that I wouldn't expect it of you, but still - one has to be impressed. You have more $$ tied up in Sysports than I have tied up in Festools!

Best of luck in clearing off the table saw. I think the best advice I could offer is: don't stop now! Keep going while the momentum's with you. I came up with a solution to the extra wood problem last night: burn it. That nicely dried and aged cherry made a great fire...

Don't stop clearing. Gilligan needs you!

__________________
I don't have as many Festools as Fred. Or Marcou's, or Brese's, or Lie-Nielsen's, or Lee Valley's, or Blue Spruce's, or Harold and Saxon's, or...

Just awesome!!!

Woo hoo! Nice work, turkey boy!

Seriously, what a great space - I know you'll have it all shipshape in no time.

Just curious - what's the green thing on the left side of the bottom photo? No, NOT the roll of electrical wire... I mean the cabinet-shaped thing that the level (or something that looks like a level) is sitting on.

__________________
Laurie
TS 55, RO 150, DTS 400, CT Mini, Pile o' Card Scrapers, Sextant, Abacus, Chocolate Temperer, 4 Candy Thermometers, Bench Cookies (Double Batch), 15 X-acto Knives, Leatherman Tool (Blue), Various Wire, 3 Fids, A Few Ideas Too Many, 287 Pencils, String

[quote=hasslefactor;40664]Woo hoo! Nice work, turkey boy!

Seriously, what a great space - I know you'll have it all shipshape in no time.

Just curious - what's the green thing on the left side of the bottom photo? No, NOT the roll of electrical wire... I mean the cabinet-shaped thing that the level (or something that looks like a level) is sitting on.[/quote]

Rick will ask someone & get back to you...

Ooh, you are so bad.

(in a good way)

__________________
Laurie
TS 55, RO 150, DTS 400, CT Mini, Pile o' Card Scrapers, Sextant, Abacus, Chocolate Temperer, 4 Candy Thermometers, Bench Cookies (Double Batch), 15 X-acto Knives, Leatherman Tool (Blue), Various Wire, 3 Fids, A Few Ideas Too Many, 287 Pencils, String

"Wall of Shame"

It's a shame I don't have a wall like that....

Laurie,
That's my wide belt sander. It is used for surface sanding wood, and I got it to reduce the sanding time necessary for finishing raised panel doors, but also any stock.

Here is another picture, except I am using it as a press (not its intended purpose of course) when I was laminating the veneer for the Expanding Dining Room Table. I removed the sanding belt and was running the conveyor motor, but not the sanding motor (letting it coast). It allowed me to apply a lot of pressure to the veneer without killing my back in the process.

The sanding belt goes over the two rollers behind the red frame. The bottom roller with the diagonal lines is the drive roller. There is a little black switch inside the square red frame between the two rollers. That is a pneumatic valve, and when I flip it up, it sends air pressure to the cylinder supporting the upper roller, pushing the roller up to hold tension on the belt. It takes only a couple seconds to switch belts. There is a tiny white rod sticking out just above the pneumatic switch. There is one of these on each side of the machine, and it is a safety switch. If the sanding belt looses tracking and goes too far either way, it shuts down the motor and activates a disk brake caliper on the motor to shut everything down in a fraction of a second.

It uses an active tracking system to keep the sanding belt on the rollers and not drift off the ends. The upper roller gets pushed crooked for a second, causing the belt to move toward where I am standing. Then the roller relaxes to its normal position and the belt drifts back toward the inside of the machine. There is a little sensor inside that detects when the belt has returned all the way back to its relaxed position, which again causes the roller to get pushed sideways again. So the belt keeps oscillating back and forth, and that is what keeps it centered on the rollers.

Oh, there is supposed to be a door on the side, but I prefer to keep it off.

What you thought was a level is probably just the edge of the conveyor belt frame.

Ron, even I got a chuckle out of that one.

Great explanation - thanks!

And very clever use with your table, too...

__________________
Laurie
TS 55, RO 150, DTS 400, CT Mini, Pile o' Card Scrapers, Sextant, Abacus, Chocolate Temperer, 4 Candy Thermometers, Bench Cookies (Double Batch), 15 X-acto Knives, Leatherman Tool (Blue), Various Wire, 3 Fids, A Few Ideas Too Many, 287 Pencils, String