Between 485 & 705 SQ/FT Dollar Special - 20x20 from 1971

[frojoe]

To finish the functional aspect of the door install, I cut a quick 2x12 step out of some boards that were left in the garage when we moved in.. perfect!

Then it was time to organize the room a bit, and start making a work bench! This is using the free Ikea cabinet that someone was previously using as a kitchen island. The drawers are nicely big, so I decided to use it as part of the bench.

 

[frojoe]

To make the bench a bit more of a fun project, I wanted to screw it together entirely from the backside, so no screws were visible from the front.. which made it a bit of a mental exercise to figure out as I went.













It's 39" high (good for my 6'2" height), 25" deep, and just shy of 10ft long...







I'm pretty happy with how the two independent tops lined up, considering they have both lived questionable lives and were bowed in opposite directions...

 

[frojoe]

Some more updates on the garage+workshop. Got the Garage fully cleaned out, and Nova pulled out, turned around, and slammed hard passenger side against the far garage wall, for maximum moving room in garage for the winter.

I forgot how low the rear bumper is on departure angle leaving the garage.. oh well... clearance is clearance!

Cleaned up this wall so it is variable free floorspace...

This was all in an effort to receive a 1978 Citroen GS Pallas, that I will be doing some floor metalwork on over the winter...

Loads of room all around the car, and it will get put up on the wheel dollies shown on the right wall...

As well, did some more purging and organizing of the next door workshop. I ended up installing a pegboard since I've really come around to the flexibility and storage capability, especially the quick-access for key tools. It's 48" high by 84" wide.

Installed 3/4" thick, 1.5" wide strips on the studs, to provide room on the backside of the pegboard for the hooks to install, as well as running cords or other stuff behind the pegboard if needed in the future...

 

[frojoe]

I have a friend that went thru a divorce, and she got the house and garage, and he had to move a bunch of stuff out of the garage with haste. Since he's now doing apartment life, I apparently get this stuff!

Almost-brand-new Ingersoll Rang SS5L5 single stage 5hp 220V compressor....!!!!!.......





A free sandblaster, which maybe I'll use at some point in the future, who knows...





And a Yamaha 4-speaker 2-channel receiver that I'll eventually hook up to 4 old 70's/80's tower speakers I have, waiting to go into the garage and workroom...





Also since buying a house, I seem to get given a lot of free, usable wood, that friends don't need anymore...



All this...





And this 5ft high stack of Western Red Cedar 2x6 24" long offcuts, from a friend who works at a mill. I plan to turn at least some of this into a garden shed that I have planned in my head...

 

[frojoe]

One of the first things I did with some free clean wood I was given, is make a tablesaw & circular saw dolly, to easily move them around...







As well, I finally brought over 3 of the 4 toolboxes from my parents' garage. Left is the 37" width Husky boxes that don't seem to be available anymore in Canadian Home Depots, and right is the 46" unit that is still readily available in stores.

Updated 3D renderings for the toolbox layout and the pegboard install....











And the real life version. I previously made a wood top for the 46" cabinet, out of SPF 2x12's that I planed and screwed+glued together, and added a Danish stain to. It looked good enough, and lasted, but was realistically too soft for a usable hammer-able workbench.



So cruising Craigslist, I found a guy selling some more lengths of the matching 1" thick, 25.5" deep Ikea butcher block counter top (that I made my actual work bench out of), so I picked this up for $40, and now have more than enough matching wood top to complete probably close to two full walls in the room.

 

[frojoe]

And last update of today is a tour of the toolbox, starting with the top drawers on the left 37" tool chest, then the top drawer of the 46" tool cabinet, and then the big drawers under the work bench.

 

[frojoe]

The most meaningful/rewarding progress yet... deleting the salmon wall color!!!!

Covered up that color with Kilz3 Premium primer. It was decently smelly, but had really good coverage, and despite the "60min dry time", I could practically roll over the previous coat after like 10mins, without the 1st coat lifting up. Bit pricey, but it worked well.

And wall color of choice was PPG "Mt. Rainier Gray". It's strange that it appears more grey with a bit of dark green, if under 3500K light, but then under whiter 4000K light it's very much a baby blue. It's all good, since I have plans to replace the ceiling 4000K T8 bulbs with more lumenous 3500K LED strip fixtures.

 

[frojoe]

My 37" tool cabinet+chest was going to cover up the only outlet on this wall, so I bought off Amazon a 3-pack of these low-profile 12" socket extension cords, and the fit the bill well.

One of the wall cords is plugged into this aluminum body surface-mounted 6-outlet power bar, which has already been a hugely helpful accessible power source....

And to finish off the toolbox final installation, I "paint matched" the gross Husky chrome casters, and the supporting SPF blocks...

 

[frojoe]

The workbench wasn't back in place 5 minutes before I was already using it again, to make some tote dollies. Have to be diligent in making sure that "if it's on the floor, it has to either be on wheels or too heavy to be move"!!

Here is the workroom reassembled, and ready for some more bench/toolbox things to be added to the walls permanently.

Excuse the poor low-light quality of the phone camera pics.. in order to capture a decent field of objects in a single pic in this small room, I have to zoom out, and the fisheye lens on my phone camera is terrible for low light conditions. I'll have to remedy that with a better camera.

 

[frojoe]

I'm a big fan of filing cabinets for chemical storage.. they're readily available used on Craigslist or Marketplace, and from many different makers in a few standard widths and heights. This one being $60 and is very good shape from the brand Storwal, with a few stickers I still have yet to remove.

I also painted the 2x4 SPF workbench frame black to match the drawer faces and toolboxes, and am in the midst of testing several stains on a test piece of SPF, to get the workbench right side legs a closer color to the Ikea drawer legs on the left side (from their current uber-pale raw SPF color).

And added drawer liner like the rest of my toolbox drawers, to keep the Milwaukee tools from sliding around.

 

[frojoe]

I also ordered some lamp bits to create a custom overhead 5-shade light for the workbench, which I'll use Sylvania 100W-equivalent (13W actual) 3500K bulbs which I've had good success with.

It's mainly comprised of 10" spin-steel shades, and an 8' piece of extruded aluminum 2"x1" channel at the cross piece, and 10"x8" generic Home Depot braced brackets and chain as the hangers.

 

[frojoe]

And here it is installed, with mockup wiring to get power to the bulbs, while I adjust the height for light spread and line of site to my eyes.

Initial [too low] height....







Raised up higher....



Just daylight entering room, as a reference....



Just the workbench lights on {no ceiling T8's)...





And still have to make a matching-style two shade light over this bench....

 

[frojoe]

Handful for organizational updates, here.

I broke yet another multi-use inside/outside snap-ring/cir-clip plier, so I decided to splurge and invest in a set of dedicated non-adjustable pliers from Knipex.

Naturally this meant that my "pliers and vice grips" single drawer was going to be too full, so I finally had justification to break these hand tools down into two different drawers.

Before...

After (drawer A)...

..(drawer B)...

The Milwaukee collection has strangely been growing (oops), so had to finally dedicate a 2nd big workbench drawer to the cutting tools, with the previous drawer dedicated to rotary/impact tools and batteries...

When I got my filing cabinet, I couldn't figure out if I needed the organizers/separators it came with, then I noticed that the slots in the drawers were almost exactly 1-can wide. I tried it out, and oh man do these can separators hit the spot.....

Also found the last of my oversized tools that I don't want to put in a toolbox drawer, or simply can't fit, so figured some room for them on the pegboard...

Needed some accessible way to store a few markers and a knife in the garage, so got crafty with a recyclable....

As well, was tired of tripping over raw material on the floor, but couldn't figure out a good way to store vertically. Wasn't expecting the 5gal bucket to work super well, but it actually holds the material decently...

 

[frojoe]

Finished the wiring, switch, and 2nd lamp install over the 46" toolbox top. This switch is wired to a plug that's plugged into a wall outlet, so as far as I'm concerned this whole setup is just a wall-plug-in "temporary lighting apparatus".

 

[frojoe]

Still hadn't loaded the 27" tool cabinet on the left side of the workbench, since I haven't been completely sold on its location.

Then realized that the Bosch miter saw is 26" wide, the tool cabinet is 27" wide, and its wood top is 29" wide and could be trimmed a bit. If I moved the 27" cabinet to under the Bosch saw, then that would leave enough space to access the corner of the room, and hang all my long woodworking clamps in that corner (as well as ladder, step stool, and shop vac).











I could then move the ~50" wood top over to the left side of the workbench, mount the drill press on that, and have simple legs and leave it open underneath for storage of the tablesaw, etc.







Definitely super happy with how this room is taking shape!

 

[Ford52PU]

Nice job setting up your shop. Some great ideas on organization that I plan to copy.

 

[Unruh]

Looks great so far! That is a huge score on that compressor! I also really like how organized your toolboxes are. I can tell you put a lot of thought into organizing.

 

[T-handle]

Great job building the shop and the tool room!

Love the Nova and maybe even more the Pallas. Citroen pallas or cx would be a nice daily driver for summer. Something strangely interesting about those

Keep up the good work Frojoe

 

[frojoe]

Thanks guys! Slowly coming along.. it's a space that's vastly large than what I started my car hobby with (a 12'x23' single car garage), but it's still vastly smaller than many other builds on this forum... so spacial efficiency is key!

 

[getbentMUSTARD]

Love the garage and cant wait to see more content on the nova! Do you have a build thread for it? Looking to go 6.0 ls for my 70 Tempest as well!

 

[frojoe]

Love the garage and cant wait to see more content on the nova! Do you have a build thread for it? Looking to go 6.0 ls for my 70 Tempest as well!

Thanks! I definitely have a build thread, haha. The posts that sums up the car best are probably these:

https://ls1tech.com/forums/conversi...-into-3rd-gen-1972-nova-114.html#post19972290

https://ls1tech.com/forums/conversi...-into-3rd-gen-1972-nova-116.html#post19995028

https://ls1tech.com/forums/conversi...-into-3rd-gen-1972-nova-118.html#post20057186

 

[frojoe]

Added the Fuel gen2 leaf blower to the mix since I wanted the bigger 8Ah battery anyways, and decided to tack on a Fuel 4.5" angle grinder too.

I was originally skeptical about trying the M12 1/4" die grinder, but as soon as I used it I knew I needed a 2nd... to avoid constantly switching arbors out for cutting vs sanding/grinding.

The die grinders also quickly confirmed that I really don't want or need compressed air anymore, and and along with that is the realization that I really don't want cords anymore either... so the addition of the angle grinder rounds out that move to cordless metalwork.

 

[frojoe]

A few incoming updates on stuff I've been doing with tools and around the garage.

First up, is a custom Milwaukee M12 belt sander that I made (3 of them, actually). I've seen a few links to adapter kits to graft a Harbor Freight belt sander (for a 3/8" x 13" belt) to a Milwaukee M12 Fuel 3" cut-off tool. I liked this idea, but I've used 3/8" belts before and generally much prefer the larger 3/4" x 20.5" belt size, which we have air-powered units at work and I use frequently.

I'm not sure who was the originator of the adapter idea, but it seems like a handful of companies make the adapter kit now...





So I eyeballed the larger 3/4" belt sander body next to a M12 3" cut-off tool, and figured there had to be a way to make the bigger tool frame fit on the M12 body.



I first had to remove the backing plate for the guard that comes on the cut-off tool, then I made a turned cylinder to mimic the air-powered belt sander's body, for the sanding frame to mount to and rotate about...









Next I machined a clearance chamfer to the stub base of the driving pulley, to clear the above shown torx screws. In hindsight, I'm not sure this was needed, but it was 'just in case' to make sure the pulley fit without rubbing...



Next I had to turn a pressed-in bushing to reduce the pulley's ID from ~1/2" to ~3/8" to fit on the output shaft of the cut-off tool...

 

[frojoe]

Next up was figuring out a welding bench setup in the garage, so I'm not just balancing things on a piece of plate clamped a ladder etc.

I thought it'd be convenient to have it collapse, and wanted to see if it'd be rigid enough if made out of aluminum and be collapsible. It also happened to be a fun idea to try and mount it to the e-tracking on the wall, since the lower tracking strip was at just about the right height by pure coincidence.

First initial mock-up..



I had these 2x4 brackets lying around that clip in to the e-tracking, which I got a while back thinking I may eventually want to make a removable shelf that clips into the e-tracking. Well this folding table was just as good of a reason to use them for...







The hinges are spaced off of the wall/track just enough to the shelf to hang vertically when collapsed, and have the legs tuck up tightly under it without hitting the wall...



I also notched the tabletop plate between the hinges, so that it mostly fills a gap to the wall when the table is deployed...





Because I wanted the legs to be relatively thin and light, to reduce the hanging load on the tacking as well as the stacked thickness when collapsed, I came up with an idea to make the hinges more rigid. On each leg/hinge, I turned a solid bar to have a 1/2" hole, to widen the "hinge width" as much as possible. I essentially made the hinge as wide as I could drill it from both sides, using the longest 1/2" drill bit I could find. With the drilled bar welded to the 1" leg, the hinges is ~8" wide and is plenty stiff.

 

[frojoe]

For the hinge pin itself, instead of sourcing an extra-long 1/2" bolt (and the undersized nature of 1/2" threads) I found some precise 1/2" thin wall tube, that I then welded a bolt onto one end of for tightening, and a small plate on the other end to act as a keyed nut, for 1-tool adjustment of the hinge friction...

















And some threaded inserts for the bottoms of the legs, so I can fine tune their heights individually...

 

[frojoe]

Fully collapsed and ready to go on the wall...

 

[frojoe]

Other random stuff... I made use of a chromed wire shelf that matches my other ones, and was given to me for free. It fits just perfectly in this otherwise underutilized corner...











Also made a quick-access ziptie holder. I used a holesaw to punch out round wooden slugs from a piece of 2x4, and then pressed+glued them into the bottoms of this ABS tubing, then screwed the angle iron baseplate into the wood. I used angle iron as the baseplate, because I wasn't sure if I might want to attach it to a wall in the future...







And made a 'semi-floating' small shelf to make use of the wall space between the two windows. I was thinking about welding rod to the wall plate, then drilling blind holes into the back edge of a piece of wood.

Or use this flat plate design but also use the router to make channels on the underside of the wood to totally flush/hide the steel bracket.

But at the end of the day, the quickest and easiest way was to just place the wood on top of the bracket, and the 1/8" steel thickness makes it barely visible.



Also added a bin to store "slightly dirty" rags that aren't minty clean, but also don't deserve to get tossed..

 

[frojoe]

I made a Milwaukee charging station, because my chargers had just been resting on the edge of the workbench for far too long, and it was annoying to have them shifting around when I'd try to quickly pull a charged battery off one-handed...



I contemplated mounting them vertically, but something about the look of this didn't really work well with me. And I decided I may want to put a shelf above them, so I chose to mount them horizontally...







I drilled a few holes in the backside of the charger bodies, and screwed/bolted the chargers to this piece of 5/8" plywood I had lying around.



This was the most out-of-the-way place for them that was still super easy to always access...

 

[frojoe]

And lastly, I added a whiteboard for notes, calculations, quick sketching etc. I found I could kill two birds with one stone if I placed it over the breaker panel, since the door and frame currently covering the breaker panel doesn't close properly, and it's kinda pretty ugly.







I got these loose-pin hinges, so it'd be easy to remove the whiteboard entirely if I wanted, but also because they have some slop, to allow easier hinge alignment and reduce the chance of binding. I cut one side of the hinge narrower to keep the hinge pin within the border of the whiteboard, to hide the hinges...



I drilled both holes on the one hinge plate, then only 1 hole in the whiteboard frame, then used a 2nd drillbit as an alignment pin to more accurately drill the location of the 2nd hole in the frame..



I'm not sure how thick the aluminum extruded frame is, or the thin mild steel sheet under it, but I managed to drill+thread both, and the threads catch nicely to an M4 screw.. there's probably 3/32" thread engagement, and I added some Loctite to the screws for good measure...





To keep the whiteboard 'closed' on the wall, I used two simple magnets bonded onto plates, and spaced off the wall to get the whiteboard to clear the breaker box. The screws go into studs, so no worries about ripping a magnet plate off the wall...







As a bonus, the white helps reflect light from the above two lamps, and working on this small 46" bench top is just a little bit brighter now...

 

[frojoe]

I also had to do some repairs to my import 4"x6" bandsaw, as it stripped the worm gear. It occurred to me as I was pulling it apart that I had never once changed or even checked the oil level in it, since I bought it ~2013... and it spends a LOT of time in the vertical position, so I bet that oil level was too low for the gear to dip into, and the heat over time just turned the gear into metal dust.







I ordered a bronze gear off of Amazon, shipped out of the states to Canada, from a place called Hamilton Tool, and it was very well machined and fit well..



Created a dipstick to measure the oil level, for a level that the gear will dip into in both the horizontal and vertical orientations...



At this time, I thought I might as well do a couple upgrades too. Every so often, if the blade tooth count is too coarse for something thin that I'm cutting, the blade had the potential to snag and pop off the drive pulley. So I drilled+tapped the spokes of the blade and cut a disc to mount to it, to keep the blade on the pulley.

I also dialed the blade tension back some in combination with this, so that if a blade tooth gets caught, it should theoretically just spin the pulley...





I also had this bigger round handle from an old dead bandsaw at work, so I turned an adapter to make the handle fit the leadscrew shaft, for better/quicker clamping...



I also added an easily-manipulated tab to the blade tension bolt.. the old plastic handle was pressed+glued onto the hex head of the bolt, and the hex socket in the plastic eventually failed and cracked, so I had to replace it regardless..



And lastly, for more support of pieces when cutting stuff in the vertical position, I made an oversized table out of angle iron.. essentially made it as big as I could fit, without it then interfering with the bandsaw body and preventing the bandsaw from lowering fully...

 

[frojoe]

I also decided to upgrade the welding cart. I decided to delete the MIG off the welding cart, and turn it into the ultimate TIG-only welding cart (at least in my opinion, for my needs).

Here's the cart in the old garage, when it housed the Dynasty 200DX and 125 cu.ft. Argon tank, and a Lincoln 140 with a 80 cu.ft. tank....



With all the MIG stuff removed for good...



I have the TIG wired up to a 3-pin coupler, and then from there it has two separate adapter cables, one to a 120V plug, and one to a 240V plug. I wanted to tidy up the power cables, so added a hook to hang them and some tabs to contain them, on the back side of the welding cart where the MIG tank used to be...





I also made an Argon distribution manifold, utlizing two floating ball flow meters that I got from work. One meter goes to the Dynasty, and the other meter goes to an air line quick connect coupler.. so in the future, backpurging is as easy as coupling an air line up to it.







And if I'm going this far to better meter the gas flow, I might as well upgrade the cylinder pressure regulator, going from a standard style single-stage flowmeter output, to a dual-stage pressure output...

 

[frojoe]

Next on the welding cart upgrades... might as well add a cooler to the mix!

I've always felt the bottom shelf of the cart was a bit of a waste to just haphazardly throw the pedal on it, so I figured it'd be a good place to put the cooler instead...







I decided to try a holster for the pedal instead, and just stuff the wiring for it behind...

 

[frojoe]

And last upgrade for the welding cart.. I wanted to have all the torch accessories onboard too, so I wouldn't have to walk to the toolbox to get different cups/collets/tungstens etc...

I figured tucked under the top shelf would be the cleanest spot for it...





I couldn't find any double-extended slides in a short enough length for the depth of this plastic tacklebox, so I just got 4X 7" slides and doubled them up on each side...





And made a tray to place the bin in, and tie the two sides together...

 

[wreckdiver1321]

I've got to say, that workshop area is exceptional! I'm really impressed by your organization, ingenuity, and use of space. A few of those ideas will definitely be used in my shop.

Sub'd for more!

 

[Mpower5266]

Great thread, I love the e38 shorty. I miss mine.

 

[rusty1161]

Great build! I really appreciate the M12 belt sander details the most, but everything you‘ve done is top notch.

Thanks for sharing.

Rusty

 

[rusty1161]

And lastly, I added a whiteboard for notes, calculations, quick sketching etc. I found I could kill two birds with one stone if I placed it over the breaker panel, since the door and frame currently covering the breaker panel doesn't close properly, and it's kinda pretty ugly.







I got these loose-pin hinges, so it'd be easy to remove the whiteboard entirely if I wanted, but also because they have some slop, to allow easier hinge alignment and reduce the chance of binding. I cut one side of the hinge narrower to keep the hinge pin within the border of the whiteboard, to hide the hinges...



I drilled both holes on the one hinge plate, then only 1 hole in the whiteboard frame, then used a 2nd drillbit as an alignment pin to more accurately drill the location of the 2nd hole in the frame..



I'm not sure how thick the aluminum extruded frame is, or the thin mild steel sheet under it, but I managed to drill+thread both, and the threads catch nicely to an M4 screw.. there's probably 3/32" thread engagement, and I added some Loctite to the screws for good measure...





To keep the whiteboard 'closed' on the wall, I used two simple magnets bonded onto plates, and spaced off the wall to get the whiteboard to clear the breaker box. The screws go into studs, so no worries about ripping a magnet plate off the wall...







As a bonus, the white helps reflect light from the above two lamps, and working on this small 46" bench top is just a little bit brighter now...

An FYI, your breaker panel shouldn’t be covered and hidden in the event circuits need to be shut off in a hurry, you know the location of it, but others like firefighter or electricians don’t.

Rusty

 

[rusty1161]

An FYI, your breaker panel shouldn’t be covered and hidden in the event circuits need to be shut off in a hurry, you know the location of it, but others like firefighter or electricians don’t. If you want to leave it setup the way you have it, perhaps add a label or sticker to identify it’s there.

Rusty

 

[frojoe]

That's a really good point, that I hadn't considered. I'll see what kind of label could work, or maybe just move the whiteboard.

To your knowledge, the way it was before with a simple wooden door covering it... was that still frowned upon, or based off the size of the door was it "obvious enough" that there was likely a breaker panel behind it?

 

[rusty1161]

That's a really good point, that I hadn't considered. I'll see what kind of label could work, or maybe just move the whiteboard.

To your knowledge, the way it was before with a simple wooden door covering it... was that still frowned upon, or based off the size of the door was it "obvious enough" that there was likely a breaker panel behind it?

In my eyes the original version was conspicuous enough, the whiteboard not so much. Neither one is ideal, but it’s completely up to you.
Rusty