Recent content by rarevair

Bib overalls and a T-shirt. When it gets colder throw a sweat shirt on top. Very comfy and I stay covered. The frequent visitors to the shop appreciate that.

Hadn't been out to the shop for the past couple of days. Single digit lows and highs in the 20's. 35'x30' little insulation, drafty windows. Fired up the 220 electric heater and put a fire in the wood stove. Moved the morning projects near the stove. Put the oil pan on an engine, put new...

If you tear down the interior wall and the car is a project, is there any immediate need to have the second door opening? Remove the interior wall bring the project material thru the working door and get to work on the '32. I'll bet by the time you have the car project near finished, you will...

Thanks for the responses. The crack filler I used was a cement product, rigid. Will check for drainage issues. There is a downspout at the low corner. The tube from the downspout to carry water away from the building was off when I took possession of the building. I have since replaced it...

Last February I purchased a property with a house and a 24'x41' garage with 12' ceilings. The garage was built in 1960 and had a about 1/4-1/2" wide crack running down the length of the garage. There were no expansion joints cut in the floor when it was poured. I figured 1/2" over 50 years...

Looks fine to me. You can make it look any way you want by tilting the camera. Trees are vertical in this version.

Jeze . . . five pages, I was expecting to see photos of the building by now. The pad is level, but the OP thinks it looks funny and fears the building will look funny also. Looks like the choices are: Give up on the project and waste all the money preparing the pad, have the builder build the...

Years ago a three drawer tool chest was taken from my car. State Farm insisted on depreciating all the Craftsman tools. Since they also gave me the responsibility to list the missing tools and price them. So I simply priced each tool individually and when the insurance paid, I went out and...

Retired in '09 and spend a lot of my time working in my shops. 99% of what I do is work on Corvairs. Have enough projects to last until I am 140 years old . . . maybe longer because I get slower as I get older. For a long time I wrestled with trying to balance work in the shop with work on...

Looks like you have a great space for working on the Pantera or doing machine work and fabrication . . . but not sure if you will ever have enough room for both. The large machine tools and band saw are able to take on some mighty projects, but can't think of very many projects to get the car...

Both sets of lights are plug in, not hard wired. The new units have a 5' cord. Why am I dropping the lights? Inverse Square Law . . . simply the lower the lights the brighter they will be on the bench. Dropping 4' should about double the brightness of light on the bench. I am over 65 and...

Just purchased a 24' x 40' garage (with 2 bedroom house) The garage has 12' ceilings and has sheetrock. Replacing some old T12 4' 2 bulb fixtures with similar T8 fixtures. The old fixtures are surface mounted, plug in. The new fixtures came with a single 10" chain for each end. There is...

Actually a right triangle with both legs equal is easy. Multiply the length of one side by the square root of 2. 1.41 might work . . . if you need more accuracy you can look up the square root of 2 to however many decimals as you need.

A similar thing happened to me a few years ago. After a bad storm I went to my shop and one of the three lines from the transformer to my meter pole was down on the ground. Part of the process of the repair, the power company put in a new meter box and meter. Well that required that my...

I host three events a year for my local club at my hobby garage. Usually there are 30 to 40 people present. We work on cars, BS and have a pot luck lunch. Been doing it for the past 12 years. It is good for me because I have to clean up the shop at least three times a year and often get a...