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Earlier, I posted about baselining my 16 x 16 garage here. Heating it has always been easier than cooling it. Not long after I bought the house, I picked up one of those single-burner, tank top propane heaters like this 15,000 BTU Mr Heater. It has worked fairly well over the years and...

A little over a year ago, I acquired an NOS, never assembled Craftsman Commercial 397.19591 bench grinder. The seller failed to cushion it properly and it was damaged beyond repair during shipping. I wrote about it here. I decided to strip it down and save all the undamaged parts. A few weeks...

I hit a few estate sales today and saw this little gem. I had no idea S.S. Kresge (aka K-Mart) sold bench grinders. Of course, when I was shopping there, I was just a kid and rarely went past the toy aisles. :)

One of the few non-machinist tools I acquired from my grandfather is a small-ish cutter mattock. Its light weight makes it relatively easy to use for long periods of time. The handle is about 3 feet long and the head is about 13 inches long. The opening for the head is very elongated compared...

On a recent web search, I discovered this link to a U.S. military technical manual on the use and care of hand tools. It appears to be from 2004 and can be downloaded. Hopefully, this will prove useful to someone here. https://www.liberatedmanuals.com/TM-9-243.pdf

I got this Craftsman Pro air compressor from my dad. He got it new as a Christmas present when it was manufactured in 1997. He mainly used it to fill car tires and occasionally to blow away dust. After each use, he would release the unused air and drain the water. The tank doesn't appear to...

I've got my grandfather's Starrett 12-inch square from somewhere around the 1960s and I'm getting it cleaned up and in working order. A company called J.W. Donchin out of Chicago had the parts that I needed. They also do business as eBay user "discount_tool". Their customer support has been...

My grandfather was a machinist who retired in the early 1970s and passed away in the mid 1990s. I didn't have much interest in his profession back then, but that has changed since I retired. A couple of days ago at my dad's house, I ran across the Starrett tool in the photos below. It is...

As I said in a previous post, there was a heavy gasoline / chemical odor that got all over my clothes just from being in the garage. The garage was not climate controlled and I had stored gasoline and other chemicals in it for about 20 years. My first choice was Kilz Original Low Odor primer...

I retired a few years back, but I've had this 16x16 external garage since I bought the house decades ago. I mostly used it as a storage area to keep my attached garage clear enough to park both our cars. It contained lawn mowers, gasoline, paint, etc. We are third owners and the builder was...

For those of you looking for some inspiration on what your garage or workshop could be, I'd like to recommend a book titled Guy Spaces (A Guide to Defining A Man's Personal Space). I'll include an Amazon link below, but I'm sure you can find it elsewhere. The first two chapters are devoted to...

I have been lurking here for over a year mainly to learn about vintage Craftsman grinders. I retired a while back and decided to build out my 16x16 external garage so I could work in it year round. I spent most of my career sitting in front of a computer screen (even the occasional vt terminal...

I started lurking here a while back so I could learn about vintage Craftsman bench grinders. I settled on a "block" grinder and kept trying to score one from local estate sales, but they were always gone by the time I arrived. I finally found a "mailbox" grinder for sale online that I couldn't...