Mopar / Wood Shop Cave

[moparfreak]

Took a break from shop projects and made something off the Honey-Do list - a mountainscape. This is made up from different kinds of rocks / pieces we've collected at some of our recent trips to national parks (Rocky Mountain, Olympic, Big Sur). Grabbed a piece of scrap wood (love using scraps!), milled it up, put some shellac finish on it. Then used my wet tile saw to slice the rock thinner or into pieces that would fit the layout properly. Hot glue it together and ready to go on a display shelf. Turned out really beautiful, the pictures don't do a good job of capturing the different colors and textures.


And on the plus side this gets rid of a box of rocks that was taking up space on my workbench. I've seen things like this go for $150+ in souvenir shops (albeit probably with a bit more polish on the rocks).

Adam

 

[moparfreak]

Designed a few 3D printed doodads and printed them off at work today. Hope to put these into the drawer tonight!


Adam

 

[moparfreak]

Finished with this drawer for rulers and small T-squares. Scraps of wood, odds and ends and a bunch of 3D printed holders to hold everything juuust right. A lot of work with a caliper and Fusion360. My OCD approves!

Probably going to take a bit of a break from the drawers and focus on knocking out the new sanding station. Going to build a structure roughly modeled up like shown, which is around 4' square. There will be a 4' turntable on which I'm going to install all of my small benchtop sanders (oscillating, 2x48, upright belt, 12" disc, bench grinders). The turntable should allow me to access each machine ergonomically, as opposed to my current setup where it's hard to reach most of them. I've found that if a machine is hard to reach and use then I just don't end up using it at all. There's also going to be a lot more storage (bottom will be filled with 3 varying height drawers). This will help corral all the handheld tools and sandpaper supplies.


Fortunately, I now have an assembly table to work off of and when I bought the sheet goods for the table, I also included the sheets needed for the sanding station so should be able to get this put together rather quickly (but then, in hindsight I may regret to say those words....).

Adam

 

[moparfreak]

Switched to some outdoor L&G type work for a little while. Got in a mulching kit for my Scag Z, this makes parking it and getting into tight spaces a lot easier! Always had to use a bungee cord for the chute and was getting my hand too close to the deck when trying to flip it up and down. No bueno.

Pretty easy - put a few 1/4" holes in and it bolts right up.


Now to teach my teenage son how to do the lawn so I don't need to do it anymore!

Adam

 

[nicholam77]

Drawer organization looks killer. I like the hybrid approach of 3d printed bits plus wood bits.

 

[moparfreak]

Started work on the V2 sanding station. Here's my old one:

I built it to fit a space I had, and tried to make it two tiered so I could use both levels of machine but in the end it was quite difficult to access all the machines. The storage got filled up pretty quick, and I also did a poor job on the drawers so they never operated very well. Decent in concept but just not executed well and probably too many design flaws in the first place. That being said I do really like having the various sanding methods quickly at my disposal, I just don't have room to fill up workbenches with mounted tools, so I wanted to come up with a better way to have these machines ready to use at a moment's notice.

My thought then is to do a turntable style. The opening is 48" so that drives it to be a pretty big one, but it'll take up approximately the same footprint in width and it'll stick out about a foot more than it currently does. This area of the shop is basically a corner so I don't feel it'll impede walking and workflow too much and is worth the potential tradeoffs.

I started the sheet breakdown process, which is harder this time around cause it's 3/4" material, but also easier since my workshop is a lot more organized and better laid out since I finished the Assembly Table. Simple construction - just utilitarian stuff.

I'm salvaging the casters and the back off of the old one, but here's the basic frame put together and mobile, and sitting in its final spot. I know it looks like a pig at the moment, but once I continue the build it out per the 3D model it'll get loads of storage and utility.


I'm building a little torsion box-ish type of top layer, then will cut a big 48" circle and create my own "lazy susan" of sorts. Then I'll work out the details of dust collection and wire management, then mount the tools carefully. Finally, I'll be building 3 extra wide drawers, which I'm looking forward to having for storage of all things related to sanding and probably some other stuff as well. The width and depth of them makes me a bit nervous but I think it'll be alright and it makes me think of those old map cabinets that are so useful in shops.

Adam

 

[moparfreak]

Continued progress over the weekend. Started adding some reinforcement to the top. Ran stretchers across the top to strengthen it from bending since there's no middle wall. Also installed a steel bar across the front to give more lateral stiffness. It helps a lot.

I'll make some long sliding drawers for the top as well, gotta use every square inch of space I've got! I'm using a 2" PVC tube with a mounting bracket to serve as the "pivot" shaft for the lazy susan. Mounting the tube down at this level means it'll be pretty rigid and well secured. The tube will also be able to feed the power strip so that cords can be managed pretty well up top.

Coming up next I'll get the top installed and then have to figure out how to cut a 48" circle. I figure to use the router here but haven't ever had to do anything that large so gotta noodle on it as to exactly how to accomplish this.

Adam

 

[moparfreak]

More time in the shop tonight. First set up the center pipe, used a hole saw to put a cut into the side so that I can snake the power strip cord through the center.

Top of the torsion box is installed, next up is the turntable.

I used a universal router base/jig that I had in the cabinet that was somewhat seldom used, but I realized it had a pivot and bars to be able to turn it into a large circle cutting jig.

Took a few passes, but once I got the big M18 9.0 battery on there it went smoothly, the turntable is cut!

Next up is to install the roller bearings and set the turntable into place.

Adam

 

[moparfreak]

Ah, next up is the roller bearings. Tedious work especially since I want them evenly spaced. Made a little marking template - think smarter not harder!

Then install the turntable and it freakin' works! Sort of expected something to go wrong with it. I snaked a power strip down through the PVC and installed a back panel to give it more stiffness and prevent racking and it is ready to put the machines back on!

Put things roughly into place, still going to have to mess around with positioning, but wanted to see how it operates with a couple hundred pounds of tools on it, and seems to turn well enough! It's not quiet when it turns but that don't matter.

The nearby low hanging ducting does create some height issues, and I'll need to play around with how to deal with that. Also want to mount the power strip and screw all the tools down. Then I'll need to figure out some sort of system to lock the turntable into position, probably will be some kind of pin/dowel arrangement.

And then of course gotta build 8 drawers!

Adam

 

[Jgaz]

Nice job on the sanding turn table.
I admit I had a hard time picturing all those machines on a 4’ dia disk but I figured you had it worked out ahead of time.
Excuse me if you’ve answered this before but, how do you like that Grizzly belt sander?

 

[moparfreak]

Nice job on the sanding turn table.
I admit I had a hard time picturing all those machines on a 4’ dia disk but I figured you had it worked out ahead of time.
Excuse me if you’ve answered this before but, how do you like that Grizzly belt sander?

Yeah, in the design phase I was playing around with a few different sizes. Originally thought I could get by with 3' but that Rigid horizontal belt/spindle is sorta large-ish. I laid them all out on the ground with a tape measure and played around enough to feel confident I could get the job done with some fiddling around. I plan to stack up the bench grinders to go vertical to help space. Should be fun positioning things over the next couple of days while I procrastinate building drawers (hate!).

I haven't had the Grizzly for too long, but I do like it for quick stock removal and a lot of free hand flexibility. I have a little 1"x30" that is just way too underpowered, and the wider 4" upright sometimes is too big for freehand curves. I know it's a "low-buck" version of some of the really nice 2"x72"s out there but those machines easily run $1K+ and up and are huge so that's just not for me. It seems decently powerful but I think the tables that comes with it is sorta trashy and flexes/bends a lot. I've seen some videos for remaking some bits and pieces of it to extract more performance out of it so once other projects are behind me I'll put that on the list.

Adam

 

[Jgaz]

Thank you for the review

 

[shortykorte]

So what type of music does that turntable play?

 

[Nolift911]

That's like a Lazy Susan of power tools....

 

[moparfreak]

A little bit more progress last night. Still fiddling with positioning. I swapped the sanding turntable with the standing drill press so that it wouldn't bump into the dust collection piping. Then I took some scraps and fashioned up a mount for going vertical with my extra bench grinders. A long while ago I came into a few extra grinders and put a few diff wheels on them. But then it was annoying to actually use them as I had to keep them up on a shelf and bring them down when I wanted to use them. Now having them all mounted and plugged in will be quite more convenient. I'm 6' so the height doesn't bother me. Making it out of scraps makes me happy, as I make more space in the scrap bin area and get a nice feature for free. One more of these to make.

It would be great if I can get the drawer panels all at least cut and broken down tonight/tomorrow so I can start putting those together, as that's the last most tedious part of this. I have everything from the old sanding cart all strewn about the shop so it'd be good to get that stuff back into drawers and off the floor and worksurfaces!

Adam

 

[moparfreak]

So I'm halfway functional now with the sanding station. Took a bit of time to position the machines all just right and make sure it rotated smoothly. Stacked 2x2 on the grinders, and then got the power strip mounted and all the cords organized and fixed in place.

It's crowded but it does work as intended! Next I finalized the drawer sizing and positioning, and started with the drawer slide mounting. These are 48" drawers and the slides are pretty heavy duty (and were not cheap).

Next up I'll be cutting the pieces for and building the bottom three large drawers.

Adam

 

[zanyad]

Looking good so far! How will you prevent the power strip's cord from getting twisted as you rotate the top?

 

[shortykorte]

Looking good. Is there a stop to keep sander Susan from turning more than 360° degrees? I see the power strip’s cord is going down the center so wonder how much cord twist would occur over time.

 

[moparfreak]

Looking good. Is there a stop to keep sander Susan from turning more than 360° degrees? I see the power strip’s cord is going down the center so wonder how much cord twist would occur over time.

At first I thought I'd need to pin the turntable into place, but with all the weight from the tools on it, I can move it to any position and even lean some weight into the sander and not have any movement. So, I've pretty much dropped any plans for having a locking pin system. If I need to add that down the road I certainly can, but seems unnecessary so far.

As far as the cord, since it's just one single one going down the center, and there's ample slack on the backside, it seems to be pretty tolerance of the twisting. Since it's only getting turned back and forth one revolution at the most, it just doesn't get twisted enough to create any problems. I figured as long as I can have a single cord going down the tube and all the rest of the power tool plugs and cords are stationary it should be manageable. So far so good!

Drawers are tedious to make but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel on this one finally!

Adam

 

[moparfreak]

First drawer (the deepest one) is done. Glad I got the heavy-duty slides. This is gonna be tons of storage!


Adam

 

[moparfreak]

Got the rest of the big drawers done. SO much space. Going to start filling them up this weekend, and also got cut up and install the drawer fronts and handles. You can see that even with all of the supports I put and the steel bar, it has a bow in the center unsupported section, which I measure to be not quite 1/4". This was expected, and it's why I made sure there was a decent gap to the drawer so that it won't cause any harm, and it'll be covered up by the drawer front to some extent as well. No one will know!

Was going to start working on the filler drawers next but THIS one has decided to make itself a priority. I'll let you guess what my weekend is going to be spent on.....


Adam

 

[LeonardY]

Just finished your thread.
‘Everything is well thought out. Nice job.

 

[moparfreak]

Thanks Leonard! Shop is always a work in progress, it's always equipped to do projects in but I also like to make improvements to it as I go, as it's pretty much where I spend all my free time!

Speaking of which - The family van sprung a coolant leak this past week. Shop quoted $1300. Nu-uh. I bought the radiator for $150 and it's going in this weekend.

Here's the culprit:

Leaking at one of the sidewalls. It came out without too much trouble and I didn't even have to pull the front bumper off. Was able to unhook everything and slide it up and out. Unhooking it from the AC Condenser was probably the trickiest part. The new one is back in and tomorrow I'll finish installing the fan and other bits and pieces around it and it better work cause my wife needs this to go to work on Monday!


Adam

 

[moparfreak]

Long day, but ultimately successful. New radiator went in without too much trouble, and got it buttoned up around mid-day. Used a vacuum filling tool to refill the coolant system without letting air in, and then here it is burping and running for awhile. Was used for a few errands around town today and no apparent issues, so I'll consider this a win!

With cars that are >150K miles and <$5K like this one it just doesn't make sense to spend $1K+ per repair.

Had some time this evening so I knocked out the drawer fronts and handles. Now time to fill them up!

Last piece of this project is to build the sliding drawers that will go inside the cavities in the quasi-torsion box. Going to take advantage of every sq. in. of space for storage. Should knock that out in the coming days.

Adam

 

[nicholam77]

Great job on the sanding station, you sure packed a lot in there! The double-decker grinders is great.

Last piece of this project is to build the sliding drawers that will go inside the cavities in the quasi-torsion box. Going to take advantage of every sq. in. of space for storage. Should knock that out in the coming days.

Putting some interior supports going the other way more like a true torsion box probably would have helped the bow, but maybe it would have screwed up your drawer plans. Like you said, no big deal it's just shop furniture!

 

[moparfreak]

Great job on the sanding station, you sure packed a lot in there! The double-decker grinders is great.



Putting some interior supports going the other way more like a true torsion box probably would have helped the bow, but maybe it would have screwed up your drawer plans. Like you said, no big deal it's just shop furniture!

Yeah, I decided to let it bend a bit in order to get a few more square feet of drawers. Also making those big drawers so wide not only makes it easier to store things into it, but also reduces by half the amount of drawer slides and I found that once you're up in the 40-48" extension range for drawer slides, they get hella expensive! So by eliminating the center rib I saved a good amount on the build!

Adam

 

[moparfreak]

Put the first upper shelf together. My strategy here is to make a close sliding fit and apply slick HDPE tape on the underside. Not going to be a ton of weight in here.

Fits great into the first pocket. Suuuuuper long. Going to use these drawers for hand sanding pads, blocks and paper.

Now that I've got the basics dialed in, it should be quick work to batch out the remaining ones. Already have the sides and ends ripped to width, just need to dial in the cross-cuts and tune the sizing for each pocket, as there can be small 1/16" deviations across them. I learned long ago to always measure to fit before cutting final dimensions on drawers and cabinet work. Hope to knock these out by end of week and THEN start cleaning the shop back up from all these constant improvement projects!

Adam

 

[shortykorte]

Looking good.
On the long top drawer, some slots would be nice so you could have dividers.

 

[moparfreak]

Last bits on the sanding unit. Was making drawers and somehow carried through finishing an entire drawer and being an inch too big. Hate when I do this. It was all nailed together to, oof. See - I share the mistakes too!

Fixed that, and batched out the others, including a skinny short one, mainly cause I didn't like seeing that gap there, not cause it'll hold much of anything. Looks good and I think I can call this project to a close!


So, what's next? Well, I'll spend some time filling out and organizing the contents of the drawers. Like Shorty mentioned it'll be organized with dividers/3D printed things just to get it all fitting nicely without shifting around. But, that'll happen slowly over time.

As far as next projects coming up - I'd like to build a few smaller improvement projects such as a station to permanently mount my pocket hole jig and screws and accessories since I use that all the time, and a few other things for the new assembly bench, and just generally focus on improving drawer organization in all the new stuff I just built.

On a bigger front, it's time to start turning towards some house projects. I'm prepping to start an outdoor lamp fixture, so I'll build the post for that, and then start sketching up a kitchen table, which should be interesting, as I'd like to incorporate metal legs, which is new stuff for me. Should be fun!

Adam

 

[69charged]

Just went through the thread. Good job on all of it. Particularly like the R/T stripe around the shop. I had a yellow 69 charger back when. Sold it in 2008. Just didn’t have time for it like it needed. You could ask me if I regret that decision, but you probably already know that answer!!

I also really like the V2 of the sanding station. Good idea on the rotating platform to save space. Might have to jack that idea!!!!

 

[moparfreak]

Just went through the thread. Good job on all of it. Particularly like the R/T stripe around the shop. I had a yellow 69 charger back when. Sold it in 2008. Just didn’t have time for it like it needed. You could ask me if I regret that decision, but you probably already know that answer!!

Thanks! The Charger stripe adds a lot of character and although it was a lot of extra taping I'm glad I did it! Really makes the space pop.

Starting to do a little bit of small organization projects. As I've been putting some of my sanding stuff into the drawers, I had these little rubber detail sanding blocks, and wanted a nice way to hold and present them for easy grab. Thought about a few ways to do it and the quickest and simplest was setting the TS blade at an angle and running it through with about 3/4" gap between each one.

Sets them at an angle and fits nicely into the drawer!

Will slowly keep filling up those drawers. Just don't want to throw them in as a mess and then not revisit for 3 years, so organizing them as I fill 'em.

Next is to tackle all the dog-hole accessories for the MFT style top on the assembly table. I've got some purchase ones and also printed a TON of these from Thingiverse HERE - a very extensive catalog of options that anyone who has an MFT table and a 3D printer might have interest in. Did some fine tuning on the scaling to get sizing just right to have a snug but not wobbly fit (ended up scaling by 0.75%). You should always check your actual printed result with a precision caliper and then check and adjust, because it's not uncommon to have +/- 0.010" or so just based on printer settings, material shrinkage, etc and that needs to be accounted for. This drawer will hold all the various dogs, stops and clamps that work with the hole pattern. I have some ideas but at the moment it is just an annoying unusable mess.


Have the long labor day weekend coming up so hope to get some decent shop time in!

Adam

 

[nicholam77]

Was making drawers and somehow carried through finishing an entire drawer and being an inch too big. Hate when I do this. It was all nailed together to, oof. See - I share the mistakes too!

I've been there for sure... looking at the finished drawer, dumbfounded, wondering how on earth I managed to do that after triple-checking the measurements

Hey, at least you didn't cut it too short!

I've got some purchase ones and also printed a TON of these from Thingiverse HERE - a very extensive catalog of options that anyone who has an MFT table and a 3D printer might have interest in.

Thanks for the link, that's a pretty good collection. I've printed some simple dogs I made myself, but there's some interesting stuff in here. I might have to try the cam clamp and some of the stops. My holey-top isn't 90mm centers or perfectly orthogonal (I used pegboard as a template), so a lot of the stuff designed for the actual Festool MFT is tricky for me. I did pick up an LR32 rail so next time I make a top I'll give the perfect grid a go.

---

The sanding station turned out nice. Please keep posting your drawer organization even if it comes slow. Looking forward to the kitchen table build.

 

[moparfreak]

Had some time in the shop so far this weekend, so I jumped into the dog / clamp organizing project for that messy drawer. Job #1 was fixing the slides. For some reason that I haven't been able to figure out the slides have been really rough and grindy-sounding. Was worried maybe I had my gapping wrong or maybe it wasn't aligned properly. Closer inspection revealed that a screw from the other side had penetrated the slide, just the point of it, and was causing the noise. Yeesh. Ground that down with a roloc and problem solved:

Next I laid everything out I was trying to fit into this drawer. It's gonna be tight....

So, time to get started. For the bigger auto-locking clamps I found a rod and created sort of a "hanging" storage in the back. I don't use these as much, and they're big and clunky so can go in the back. Simple way of holding them in place and FREE.

Next I laid out a scrap piece of hardboard to serve as an oversized "pegboard" of sorts for the various dog styles. I'm making it a bit bigger than needed. Drill them all for the same 20mm holes that are in the bench. Just put some standoffs underneath it - simple.

Fast forward several more steps as I created custom holders from scraps for a few different styles. I also had this metal shelf that I repurposed to use for the various bench cookies and related accessories. Some of the clamps also I directly drilled 20mm holes into the shelf itself to get them to fit in there snugly.

It's pretty busy, but it's organized and everything's in there. Not much room to grow but I also don't need anything more.


There's one more step where I need to 3D print a bracket for the track clamps and that'll go in the open spot up near the front, should have that done in the next day or two and can call this one complete. WAY nicer to have these clean and organized for the next project!

Adam

 

[zanyad]

Not much room to grow but I also don't need anything more.

Famous last words. This *is* Garage Journal, after all!

 

[moparfreak]

Famous last words. This *is* Garage Journal, after all!

LOL! This is true. Garage Journal has broken me and my wallet.

Adam

 

[moparfreak]

Finished up some small things tonight. First printed some brackets to hold the track clamps, which was the last thing for this drawer:


Next I turned my attention back to the sanding station details. I decided the belts for the various size machines I have (1x30, 2x42, 4x36) would end up being messy in the drawers so I decided to fashion up a quick hanging rod to keep them up and easy to access but also out of the way. It's not fine furniture but it was made with scraps I had around.....

Then I turned to the dust collection for the machines. Not all have ports, but 3 of them do. I printed some adapters so that I could fashion up a flex hose from the gate and plug into whatever machine I was using. I had some of those nice magnetic couplings in the Woodcraft cart and then when looking at the $50 price tag I decided to take some careful measurements, print adapters and just press fit them together. Free.


And finally turning my attention to a parts caddy I have by the tablesaw. I fashioned it up from a monitor mount and it holds stuff I use for the TS - push sticks, marking and measuring stuff. I've had this for a little while, but I finalized with adding some accessories to the sides. First I put a bar across on one side to hold a tool pouch that I didn't know what else to do with:

And then I 3D printed a model I found that is designed to hold a standard and trim sized square.


And it's all finished.


Nice to get some nagging smaller things taken care of. Continuing to set and organize the sanding drawers, it'll be good to get that over and done with, should have some pics of it soon.

Adam

 

[shortykorte]

That post holding table saw accessories is just clamped to the fence guide bar?

 

[moparfreak]

That post holding table saw accessories is just clamped to the fence guide bar?

Yep, I clamped it on the very edge so it really doesn't affect the travel of the fence by more than an inch or so, and with the hinged arm I can still position it nearby where I can reach stuff easily. So, if I ever need to move it, I can easily unclamp it.

Adam

 

[moparfreak]

Alright, a few small-ish things moved forward this weekend on the assembly table. First, I needed to finally add one intermediate step of dogs to allow it to work with the benchdogs fence and the Milwaukee track. This allows the track cut to line up perfectly with the replaceable insert that I fashioned. Here I'm lining it up and then using the Parf system to get the holes line up in relation to the existing pattern, I'm going to use the "48" hole on the ruler.

Here it is all drilled out, using the dogs and clips as it will when doing a cut.

This is another way to add utility to the MFT style tabletop, especially when doing cross-cuts that would be awkward on the TS.

The next thing was a quick little project. When I installed the end-vise, there's a little cast pop-up dog in the vise jaw that was rendered useless since the wooden jaws extend above the metal jaw by 3/4" or so. So, I drew up a new one that had some added length to compensate and 3D printed it. Installed a heat-set threaded insert for the threaded hole, and then put that into the vise. Now the dog can go up above the table surface by 3/4" or so, which is just what's needed to use that utility.


Adam

 

[moparfreak]

More stuff for the table, lol. Just working through my original list. I really liked the Ruwi system that was shown in Hooked On Wood's youtube videos back when I was designing and concepting out the MFT style table. But $h!t is it expensive. I guess that's typical for the high end European MFT stuff. Anyways, obviously I wasn't going to drop $1K on a setup so did some research and poking around. I was happy to find someone who had modeled up some angle brackets to work with these. Link is here. Basically just used standard hardware and some 40/40 aluminum extrusion. Found the extrusion pretty cheap on Amazon, along with some hardware and then printed a ton of the brackets and end caps.

First staging the extrusions. Going with four 4' sections and four 2' sections. Also drilled and countersunk to install the 3/4" plywood sacrificial riser.


Ripped the plywood to 1-1/4" and set some spacers to clamp it in the center. Then installed it with some small head trim screws so it fits down in the channel.

Install some stick-on weatherstripping to create a soft foam layer and make it anti-skid. I'm sure the real product comes with something that is much more grippy but this was cheap and does the job. I can always play around and try other foam topper's later on if I feel it needs to be more grippy and things slide around too much.

Then installed some printed endcaps, just to make it a cleaner edge. Didn't fit exactly perfect but it's OK. Also printed out the angle brackets.

Two brackets per rail secures it quite easily. Not bad! Put the whole thing together with scraps and probably $120 worth of stuff once done with the extrusions and hardware.

These can be used as fences, risers, supports for sanding / routing, and can also help clamp up casework at right angles as the track clamps fit into the channels as well. Now I just have 7 more to make!

Adam