What did you do "IN" your garage today?

[kaymccampbell]

Now that everything is in its proper place, you'll never find anything you're looking for...........lol.

Not at all. You can't imagine the mental relief cleaning up and organizing has given me. Now it's all where I think it's supposed to be.

One more day of sorting through things, and I'm done. The shop will no longer be at saturation.

 

[Just_Steve]

Rummaging around in my tool box and found this picture from 1997 at work.
Looks like I was doing a head job on a Detroit Diesel 6v71.

 

[rayra]

I am going to make a beefy 48v pack out of one 140v bank to power a 3000w electric motor package with controller, gauges, and throttle setup I got super cheap, still not sure if its going on a 60's Kawasaki Coyote mini bike, 60's Honda S90, or some sort of Honda Odyssey type contraption made out of an old four wheeler. I might use the rest of the cells for smaller packs for the various electric scooters I have, and/or maybe a couple car jump packs. Not sure.

Friend of mine has a salvage yard and is scared of batteries so I can get hybrid packs for free from his wrecked cars. He has a couple of wrecked Prius waiting for me to get the packs out of now. Thinking making a big power wall type setup for my house at some point.

Excellent! That is my kind of screwing around! I'd love to build a big power bank / backup UPS at home, for lots of things.

15!!yrs ago I picked up a free batch of Deka UPS batteries from a contact at George AFB. Guy was their Armed Forces Network Disaster Prep guy, they had two massive banks of these batteries as a fail-over system and every 2yrs each bank was got rid of and replaced. They were paying companies to take away dispose these batteries. Well this guy got permission to give them away, then advertised their availability on a Prepper subforum and they got gobbled up in a hurry. I got 8, in excellent condition. I wired them up and got them on a tender but never brouht my bigger plans to fruition and ultimately they went to a HAM club for a mountain top (re)transmitter.

I'd LOVE the try it again, as part of my broader plans for electrical upgrades to this suburban house. But I've got a lot to do here before I can indulge in that.

 

[Jswain]

Made a new tailstock clamp for the South bend. OG one was previously brazed together and was slipping pretty good when I was drilling the holes for my levelling feet so cut some more plate out and spent some time twiddling this out of it.

About 1" longer so should provide better clamping force, glides along nicely under the tailstock

 

[rayra]

Almost done with the edge beveling and finish sanding on the dining hutch lower cabinet project. I ran a trim router around all the exterior edges and put a very small bevel to break all the sharp edges of the openings and corners. Then went back with a much bigger / deeper bit setting and am putting a more pronounced bevel of the four outer corners of the cabinet and on all the feets. I'm also taking a razor saw / chisels / sanding block to all the interior corners where a spinning router bit can't cut a square corner.
And at the top of the cabinet body, I almost forgot I intend to attach some trim molding undergirding the countertop. I'll fit the molding later today, but won't install it until the piece is done and installed.

Probably take another couple hours to complete the bevel detailing and sanding of the cabinet body, all the rest of the pieces are done and waiting for final blow-off of the entire garage and tack rags, before staining. which I hope to commence tomorrow after lunch.

 

[WildBill]

Excellent! That is my kind of screwing around! I'd love to build a big power bank / backup UPS at home, for lots of things.

15!!yrs ago I picked up a free batch of Deka UPS batteries from a contact at George AFB. Guy was their Armed Forces Network Disaster Prep guy, they had two massive banks of these batteries as a fail-over system and every 2yrs each bank was got rid of and replaced. They were paying companies to take away dispose these batteries. Well this guy got permission to give them away, then advertised their availability on a Prepper subforum and they got gobbled up in a hurry. I got 8, in excellent condition. I wired them up and got them on a tender but never brouht my bigger plans to fruition and ultimately they went to a HAM club for a mountain top (re)transmitter.

I'd LOVE the try it again, as part of my broader plans for electrical upgrades to this suburban house. But I've got a lot to do here before I can indulge in that.

I would be all over those batteries, what a cool find. I am starting to plan a big setup for my house based on Prius packs as I can get lots of those free. I also have a whole 280v electric car conversion kit with everything but batteries designed for a geo metro, but a pretty universal kit. Thinking about making my Porsche 914 electric, but not doing anything permanent to it. The whole ICE drivetrain drops out in about 15 mins with four mounts, quick fuel disconnect, some axle bolts, and one harness plug, could have an electric setup pop in the same way.

 

[Magnum440d100]

Lots. Just not all in MY garage Lmao

Got the international carb installed.


Worked well enough we were able to move it around. Bossman scraped his driveway to fill in low spots and such.


Have an opening we are going to retrofit/rebuild for a customer. Gettin the door sanded and cracks repaired


Got late, called it a day. Then in MY shop, looking for my glass cutter, I needed the drivers rear door on my truck to open (I was thinking the cutter/pouch was under the rear seat there). Pulled it apart to just pull the rods, and found a loose bolt. All is well now. Still didn’t find my (oil) glass cutter. Found my Diamond tip though. So there’s THAT.

 

[Old Man Roger]

Almost done with the edge beveling and finish sanding on the dining hutch lower cabinet project. I ran a trim router around all the exterior edges and put a very small bevel to break all the sharp edges of the openings and corners. Then went back with a much bigger / deeper bit setting and am putting a more pronounced bevel of the four outer corners of the cabinet and on all the feets. I'm also taking a razor saw / chisels / sanding block to all the interior corners where a spinning router bit can't cut a square corner.
And at the top of the cabinet body, I almost forgot I intend to attach some trim molding undergirding the countertop. I'll fit the molding later today, but won't install it until the piece is done and installed.

Probably take another couple hours to complete the bevel detailing and sanding of the cabinet body, all the rest of the pieces are done and waiting for final blow-off of the entire garage and tack rags, before staining. which I hope to commence tomorrow after lunch.

I’ve been watching your progress, and even if I had your skill, you’ve convinced me I’m way too lazy to ever be a cabinet maker..lol

 

[stuntman]

Interested in seeing more detail of the handle section. I see the bottom is square. What does the transition look like?

Zanyad, here is the underside.

 

[Bob Heine]

The 50 year old version of myself would have muscled it up there.

@GrayFlattop, I know exactly what you are going through. The 36-year old wooden attic ladder in the garage was making louder creaking noises than my body was. The guys who took it down to fit a new air handler in the attic put it back in with way fewer [drywall] screws than it had originally and decided shims were a waste of time. Bought a new aluminum ladder just like the one I installed in 2001 (when I was 56) in another section of the garage. I was still game to put this one up but all the busybodies around me said no. This past Sunday our son (60) and his oldest son (32) came over and did the install. They were finished in 90 minutes.

My wife congratulated them and suggested they take down the last half of the tree I've been taking down over the winter. They used my Wen 16" electric and Milwaukee M12 Hatchet 6" chainsaws to take the tree down and cut it up. Carried the trunk pieces and branches out to the curb. Another 90 minute project and they were on their way to one of their remodeling jobs before noon. I have a Poulan 20" gas chainsaw but didn't even get it out. I'm absolutely certain that would have been a two-day project to get it running.

 

[rayra]

I’ve been watching your progress, and even if I had your skill, you’ve convinced me I’m way too lazy to ever be a cabinet maker..lol

So am I! I'm more of a design / problem solver / 'Creative' kind of guy. Once the real drudgery kicks in I'm over it and ready to move on to something else. But there's this giant hunk of unfinished furniture clogging up my garage. 'Shikata ga nai'. So I'm working hard to get it over with. The completion of my projects is usually anticlimactic for me. I'm usually already working on two other things.

It's a bad habit, I cannot recommend. If I could afford to pay someone else to do it - or increasingly, even FIND someone else to do it - I probably would.
I grew up with more Time than Money and by necessity learned how to do a lot of things. Then when I made good Money, I had no Time. Now I'm back to more Time than Money.

/there's an epitaph in there somewhere, something like 'He finally ran out of Time and Money.'


/
All the beveling and sanding is done. Stopped for dinner and heading back out there to finish adding (4) threaded inserts to the back of the cabinet body. (2) centered vertically on each of the middle 'hoops'. They'll be the lower attachment points for the upright struts that will tie the upper and lower cabinets together.
Trying to get the lower cabinet stained and finished so it is drying off in the garage next week while I go to a raft of medical appts. Then we can move it into the house and I can try to whip out the upper cabinet in the middle of March. The other matching buffet is going to have to wait until May.

 

[Old Man Roger]

I understand that anticlimactic feeling. I’ve had a few cars that I sold once they were “done”. Getting them to that point was the goal, then I just saw them as something that was going to degrade unless I maintained them..lol

 

[zanyad]

Zanyad, here is the underside.

Thank you, looks very nice!

 

[rharman]

Saturday's project...

My wife wanted 3 of these broom clips installed in the rebuilt closet. The space is pretty tight and it would be really tough to get 3 of them lined up square and properly spaced.	Took a 7"x3" piece of matching almond melamine in 1/4" thickness. Drilled 8 holes and recessed them. 2 recesses on the front for mounting screws. The mounting screws will be covered by the clips
The 6 recesses on the back are for 8-32 tee nuts to hold the clips.	8-32 tee nuts glued in to hold the clips. I had to grind a bit of length from the shank a bit so they would be just below the front surface.
Mounted in place with 3/4" truss head screws to mount and some 1/4" stainless steel machine screws for the clips. Easy to get the whole assembly level.	In use...
Also got the other 1-3/4" grommet I needed for the power cord.	This blew me away. Look closely - Made in USA. Quite a surprise.

 

[bugnut]

Shuffled storage totes, put shoe boxes into a storage tote and rearranged.
Spent a couple hours removing a single broke bolt from a VW head on the motor for the baja project. Tried welding-didn't work, drilled and tried EZ out no luck, then just drilled and tapped back to the correct size. I guess it'll work for holding tin in place.

 

[DGersic]

Took advantage of the weather (75* and sunny, in northern Illinois in February) to clean off the tools and cart that have been piling up in my living room while working on the remodel project. Restacked everything on the cart, and wheeled it in to the garage.

Final sanding was last night. Next up is prep and primer, then paint. Working on that today. Wanted to be done by the end of February, but won’t quite make that due to o problems that needed to be dealt with.

 

[Snip]

Yesterday I finished up the north wall in the shop. Painted the gray border at the top, touched up the orange where the black bled under the tape. Hung the clock, framed posters and carried those heavy *** MCS speakers from the 80's up the ladder. Started the clean up and put tools and supplies away. Only thing left is to mop up the last of the drywall dust and put on some baseboard, thinking some of that gray vinyl 4 or 6" self adhesive stuff ? By no means is the finishing or painting professional but It's only a one man crew, me, but its done. I'm not sure what the going rate per sheet ( I'm betting 14' tall increases the cost over a 8' wall) here is for hanging and finishing drywall is but I saved that. Only about 145' of wall left. Plenty of time/wall to hone my skill set.
The black line looks wavy and grainy in the picture but it did come out pretty true, straight and with sharp edges.

 

[GrayFlattop]

Not at all. You can't imagine the mental relief cleaning up and organizing has given me. Now it's all where I think it's supposed to be.

One more day of sorting through things, and I'm done. The shop will no longer be at saturation.

I get it. On Sunday, I spent way too much time looking for some washers that I KNEW I had, but things are still in disarray in my efforts to bring order. The painful part is because there is just too much stuff in too small of a space. Started making a pile to recycle and pitch, and while that made me feel better, I still could not find the washers in the garage, so I went to the basement shop and found a substitute right away.

I applaud your efforts and your results for restoring order to your shop.

 

[GrayFlattop]

And we were ALL wrong!

Started working on the Castrol Motor Oil sign today. Not finished yet as I still have to letter the words 'motor' and 'oil' in black paint and then outline the green with a black pinstripe. Shown right now is just a basic black marker outline to see how I want the letters to look.

I originally painted the large wood CASTROL letters green but after some color sketches on paper, I went with red CASTROL letters and a green border with a white panel and black motor/oil letters which are all the colors of Castrol Oil. I'll get back to it soon sometime later this week. Meanwhile I want to paint the old wood cabinet I got for free for the office.

Too funny - for the life of me, I couldn't quite figure it out. I kept coming up with "scrotal", LOL. I'm certainly not one to judge, but I thought that you were putting forth a lot of effort to come up with a sign that said "scrotal". At least you would have used "proper" terminology as opposed to slang...

 

[niget2002]

Ran out before work. Tapped off the hull of the kayak and set the deck in place on the forms. Everything is all ready for glassing the deck this weekend. I just have to find time to do it. Son's soccer screwed up Saturday by having his first game scheduled for 1:15pm. And it's in the next town over. So that knocks out about 3 hours of the middle of the day.

I'll probably try to glass the deck Sunday when we get home from church. We usually get home around 1pm. If I can start glassing before 2pm, I should be able to get 3 coats of epoxy on by 9pm. 1 to wet out the weave and two fill coats... assuming 3 hours to 'tacky' between each coat.

 

[Motorman55]

Yesterday I finished up the north wall in the shop. Painted the gray border at the top, touched up the orange where the black bled under the tape. Hung the clock, framed posters and carried those heavy *** MCS speakers from the 80's up the ladder. Started the clean up and put tools and supplies away. Only thing left is to mop up the last of the drywall dust and put on some baseboard, thinking some of that gray vinyl 4 or 6" self adhesive stuff ? By no means is the finishing or painting professional but It's only a one man crew, me, but its done. I'm not sure what the going rate per sheet ( I'm betting 14' tall increases the cost over a 8' wall) here is for hanging and finishing drywall is but I saved that. Only about 145" of wall left. Plenty of time/wall to hone my skill set.
The black line looks wavy and grainy in the picture but it did come out pretty true, straight and with sharp edges.

Looks great. Nice Harley colors.

 

[Snip]

Thank you. Kinda the look I was going for.

 

[DGersic]

Only thing left is to mop up the last of the drywall dust and put on some baseboard, thinking some of that gray vinyl 4 or 6" self adhesive stuff ?

I used a roll of black vinyl baseboard in my garage. Love it. Not self adhesive, had to be glued with construction adhesive, but that wasn’t hard. Used a wallpaper seam roller to make sure it was stuck to the wall.

 

[kaymccampbell]

Only thing left is to mop up the last of the drywall dust and put on some baseboard, thinking some of that gray vinyl 4 or 6" self adhesive stuff ?

Don't. Use the glue on type. The self adhesive **** peels off in the middle of the night, and you come down to mildly sticky wiggle worms.

 

[Snip]

Thank you Kay and DGer for the advice on the baseboard. I will go with that glue on style, other than beer and shots I hate doing things twice

 

[Snip's]

Worked on my wife's 2017 Ford Explorer today... 76K miles
Last year I attempted to change the rear differential fluid but just couldn't manage to get the fill plug out... Doesn't have a drain plug...
It does have a vent on top of the casting, but decided not to try and fill it through that fitting...
The drain plug gave up and I was able to remove the plug using the anvil on a 3/8" ratchet...
I used my HF vacuum sucker that runs off my compressor... Worked great...
The drain plug has a magnet but the end that should have been wet was dry...
Manual says it takes 1 liter to fill and about 1/2 liter came out... Probably 7/8 liter of fluid went back in...
Strange thing... No sign of leakage anywhere around the differential... Is FORD skimping on the factory fill??? IDK

I fished the suction hose down and around inside the case while the HF Holt fluid Extractor did its thing... This tool made the job easy...


After filling until some fluid just started to drip out of the hole, the plug got a coating of Permatex high temp thread sealant...
FINI...

I'm curious about the low fluid level...

 

[rayra]

Committed now, no turning back...

 

[kaymccampbell]

Sorted, flung, organized in the metalshop. Found and made up another little welding supplies locker. Swept up. Purged the scrap bins in the milkhouse. Made firewood.

 

[PWC Repair]

I practiced some cast iron braze-welding on a freeze cracked 350 block.

 

[kaymccampbell]

I practiced some cast iron braze-welding on a freeze cracked 350 block.

Are you going to try to run it?

 

[red61cj5]

Wire wheeled, then etch primed my old (1996 at Home Depot for 99$) diamond plate truck toolbox. Decided I want a toolbox on my new to me truck. Was just going to paint it black, but am now fighting the urge to go body color. Which would be inferno orange. Too much?

 

[rayra]

It's FAR too late now, but I'm feeling kinda ambivalent about staining it black. I put a lot of work and cost into making the piece in oak and trying to have a nice woodgrain finish. And I've just obliterated it.

Anyway, black is provisionally 'done'. Minwax semi-transparent 'True Black'. I might make a 2nd application on the exterior surfaces tomorrow morning. Dunno.
The countertop and three interior shelves are still nekkid. Probably getting hit 2x with 'Provincial'.

Probably using a wipe-on satin poly as a topcoat.

 

[nadogail]

Picked up my Surface Tablet from the Repair Shop, it had displayed an unusual screen and become unresponsive. My IT Guy got it running like a new one and didn’t charge me excessively.

 

[PWC Repair]

Are you going to try to run it?

I'm going to send it to the machine shop and get it baked and shot peened first. It all looks ok..........but it might spider into 20 more cracks, who knows?

 

[PWC Repair]

It's FAR too late now, but I'm feeling kinda ambivalent about staining it black. I put a lot of work and cost into making the piece in oak and trying to have a nice woodgrain finish. And I've just obliterated it.

Anyway, black is provisionally 'done'. Minwax semi-transparent 'True Black'. I might make a 2nd application on the exterior surfaces tomorrow morning. Dunno.
The countertop and three interior shelves are still nekkid. Probably getting hit 2x with 'Provincial'.

Probably using a wipe-on satin poly as a topcoat.

I think it looks great. And I'm sure the grain will be a bit more pronounced after poly.

 

[Wiz02]

It's FAR too late now, but I'm feeling kinda ambivalent about staining it black. I put a lot of work and cost into making the piece in oak and trying to have a nice woodgrain finish. And I've just obliterated it.

Anyway, black is provisionally 'done'. Minwax semi-transparent 'True Black'. I might make a 2nd application on the exterior surfaces tomorrow morning. Dunno.
The countertop and three interior shelves are still nekkid. Probably getting hit 2x with 'Provincial'.

Probably using a wipe-on satin poly as a topcoat.

I have been enjoying watching your build and was a bit disappointed that you chose a stain that hid most of the grain, but I figured that you didn't need any criticism from the peanut gallery.

No point in second guessing yourself, I am sure that the final result will be great and well worth all of your work.

 

[Outlawmws]

I'm going to send it to the machine shop and get it baked and shot peened first. It all looks ok..

Is it that rare of a block? Not sure I'd put hat effort into a freeze cracked block.

 

[PWC Repair]

Is it that rare of a block? Not sure I'd put hat effort into a freeze cracked block.

Not really. It IS a high nickel 4 bolt main that's still std bore size though, and with hardly any core shift to boot! Mostly just thinking I don't mind paying the machine shop if it worked. And if not......then I paid for my schooling of how NOT to weld cast iron lol!

 

[Old Man Roger]

I practiced some cast iron braze-welding on a freeze cracked 350 block.

Are you going to try to run it?

I'm going to send it to the machine shop and get it baked and shot peened first. It all looks ok..........but it might spider into 20 more cracks, who knows?

Is it that rare of a block? Not sure I'd put hat effort into a freeze cracked block.

Not really. It IS a high nickel 4 bolt main that's still std bore size though, and with hardly any core shift to boot! Mostly just thinking I don't mind paying the machine shop if it worked. And if not......then I paid for my schooling of how NOT to weld cast iron lol!

I was going to say that 350 blocks are a dime a dozen, but everyone else kind of beat me to it.

I get the idea of wanting a high nickel content, but that one is already cracked. Doesn’t that kind of defeat the point of having it?

All that being said, I can’t count how many times I’ve spent more time and money repairing something that I could have replaces easier and cheaper..lol

 

[Pileit]

Bought this top box I beleive in 95. Was way too tall on roll cab. Finally took some scrap wood and cobbled this together. Usable instead of just junk in there.