Shop Growing Less Chaotic

My newest metal fab project is taking shape. I’m making a cart for my belt grinders, and the basis is a Harbor Freight 44″ US General tool chest.

Here is what I have so far.

The more experience you get with fabricating, the faster things go. I think I got all the metal together around a week ago.

When you have a 2×72 grinder, you have long metal arms holding various types of tooling. As of now, I only have a flat platen and a small wheel holder. A platen is a flat thing that sits behind the belt so you can grind things straight, flat, and true. You can do a lot of other things with it. A small wheel holder holds several different wheels that allow you to grind small semicircular recesses into projects.

I should buy a large wheel and a medium-sized wheel as well. Each of these will need its own arm.

The two main features of the cart are the arm holder and the platform the grinders will sit on. The holder is done. The platform will be a piece of 3/4″ plywood, and both grinders will be screwed to it. It will sit on top of the cart.

I was considering buying a dustproof variable frequency drive (VFD) to replace my old VFD and the big shopmade enclosure I made for it. In the end, I thought I should avoid spending $430 for nearly nothing. When you can fabricate, you don’t have a lot of excuses for refusing to improvise and save money.

I had a piece of 11-gauge steel plate which was scrapped because I made some mistakes altering it for another project, so I cut a 6″ by 10.5″ piece out of it and made a little shelf for the enclosure to sit on. I welded it to the lower horizontal bar on the cart attachment. The box seemed floppy when I bolted it on, so I welded a little arm onto the vertical part of the attachment and ran a bolt through it into the enclosure. Now it’s rigid.

A $430 dustproof VFD would look better, but it wouldn’t do anything this one won’t do.

Wood prices are crazy. They went up, and then they crashed. Some things are getting cheap. Others are still expensive. I found I could buy excellent hardwood plywood, precut to 2′ by 4′, for not much more than low-grade plywood, so I bought it. I could have bought an entire sheet and saved a little, but I am tired of keeping large pieces of material around for no purpose, and bringing a big sheet here would have meant a certain amount of exertion.

If I had bought cheap plywood, I would have had to spend time filling in voids and sanding it to prevent splinters.

I usually paint my workshop creations with black truck bed coating, but this time I decided to go with tractor paint in John Deere green. Tractor paint is not as tough as truck bed coating, but it’s very tough by paint standards, and the cart will look nice with a green attachment. I may paint the wood green, too. And the enclosure.

Drab colors are customary for tools, but I am moving away from that. I guess it’s because I have three Harbor Freight tool chests, and they come in vivid colors. A little color makes a shop look less like an archvillain’s lair. Also, when you get old, color helps you see what you’re working on.

After this, I have to finish the rolling kitchen island I started. I also need to paint two tool stands and a mobile base, all fabricated by yours truly. Then I should put a real mobile base on the Powermatic 66 and get rid of the one I bought.

With those jobs behind me, I should get rid of the silly 4′ by 8′ shelves in the shop. The previous owner used them to hold materials and so on. Shelves that big are stupid. It’s hard to reach the middle, especially on higher shelves. They kill a quarter of the shop and don’t provide a good return. I think I may buy steel tubing and make cheap, strong shelves for the south wall. Jamie Hyneman, the Mythbusters guy, did this in his shop, and it works well.

I thought I needed to build a new shop, but the more I get this one in order, the more I think I should wait. This shop is now so efficiently arranged, I can get the lawn tractor and utility cart inside. I should probably get a cheap shed for materials and certain outdoor tools, since they don’t need to be in the shop, and then add a pole barn for the tractor and pickup.

The real dream is air conditioning. I already have enough power. I just need insulation on the doors and roof. One of my doors is a roll-up, and that’s a problem. It’s not possible to insulate an old roll-up. You have to buy a new one with insulation built in. That would run about $4000.

If I had air conditioning, I would never leave the shop.

Maybe later today I’ll put primer on the cart attachment and cut the plywood and prime it. Paint takes forever to dry properly, so I will be lucky if I can get this project truly over with in two days.

I feel like God is helping me get this place together. I’m making progress much faster than before.