Above 1200 Sq/FT Restart

[Honch]

Last weekend I skinned the drop box, it wasn't quite square so the very square sheets of aluminum I cut to skin it needed some adjusting.



I also managed to get the fan working it has very little vibration and works great. Some day I may clean it up some more, it has a lot of paint over spray on it.



I also knocked out a small project on the corvette, the buttons for the DIC had burned out bulbs which like many are soldered to the board. I keep telling myself I need to get a third hand fixture and every time I do something like this it reinforces why. While I had it out I replaced all the bulbs, they were a total pain.



This weekend I needed a break from the drop box, so I decided to clean up one of the infrared heaters I got at auction. This was actually attached to the paint cart I used to make the drop box out of. Like the drop box frame it was completely covered by multiple layers of paint.



Most of the paint took a few hours to scrape off to a point I could even use my blaster on it, the switch box was cast aluminum and the paint peeled off of it fairly easily.



The glass covering the heating elements took quite a bit of work to clean off even with chemicals.



It did clean up very well and should make the unit a little more efficient.



For the final test I had it plugged in for three minutes and it was already at almost 700. These heaters are very impressive, this one in particular is almost 30 years old and has literally been operating 24/7 for most of that time. I have a third one that the glass is broken on, I need to try and source it but Im not sure what type of glass it is. If anyone has any ideas please let me know.

 

[Honch]

My buddy is working on some Adirondack chairs and came over last Sunday to borrow the Wilton sander to finish the edges of his wood. I moved it outside using the extension for my welder and he was out there for for three hours sanding all the slats while I worked in the garage. While he was sanding the last few slats I noticed the sander was louder than it had been before. I thought it might be the belt slapping the pulleys, it was right at its sizing limit when I put the motor and its at least 5' long. Since Harbor Freight had a 20% coupon for Fathers Day so I decided to run over and us it to get one of their link belts, my plan was to just change it while I had it apart to clean out all the saw dust.



It would have been quick and easy to cut the old belt and put the new one on but I wanted to check everything on the main shaft. To get the old belt off the entire upper unit had to be removed from the stand to get the shroud off the 12" disk. This allowed the main shaft to be taken apart during which we found two set screws to be loose.

Everything was in good condition, the set screw marks on the shaft and keys would indicate it had never been disassembled before. Not finding anything other than the two loose screws we cleaned it up, put blue loctite on the four set screws and put it back together. The difference was night and day in how quiet it is, I have no doubt there was some minor ratcheting happening against the keys but the belt also obviously plays a major role as long as it is. It sounds like a new machine now the loudest thing being the back of the sanding belt sliding against the platen.

While he was outside sanding I finished the edges of my drop box and after three separate attempts to spray paint it over the weekend ended up buying a pint to roll on it.



I just need to finish up the lid, I have the sheet cut and the wood for the seat rough cut,

This week I got two more large bolts, they are used to attach the horizontal stabilizer on a 737, four on each side. They are 9" long and 1 1/4" diameter. Here is a picture of one next to the bolts I used on my shop stool.



I haven't decided what I am going to use them for yet. Over the years I have removed and installed them numerous times during maintenance, I never thought I would have a couple to use for something else.

Monday my garage door decided to stop responding to inputs from the wireless remotes, it worked fine using the wired button. After five minutes of troubleshooting found the main board had a large smoked area. The real downer is three weeks ago I installed a remote antenna which made the opener work like I would expect one to. Prior to putting in a remote antenna my vehicles with homelink would need to be in the driveway to open the door and that was hit and miss, the remotes that came with the door opener would work from the street, but only in front of the house.

The extension is homemade and only took a few hours to put in, it was as simple as running a coax from the existing antenna and on the other end cutting a tig rod 8" to work with 315mhz. I pushed it out between the door trim and the header in the center of the door.



The old opener is nothing special, its a builder unit branded "Overhead Door" and uses the same parts as many Genie units. I found a replacement board for it but I didn't feel like spending $90.00 on a opener that probably wasn't much more than that new. I ended up buying an inexpensive Genie from Lowes fro $70 dollars more than the board would have cost me. Its an "estimated" 1 1/4hp and was relatively cheap because it has no internet connectivity but it did come with a battery backup. It took me about 3 hours to install it, I had to change everything including the mount rails. The remotes that came with it are more like key fobs and I didn't find their range limit because after I walked about 200 yards down the street with it still working I didn't care anymore. The homelink range was activating it from four houses away.

 

[Honch]

I finally had some time to finish the drop box, I guess it was more that I finally made time to finish it. I had some rubber seal I was able to use to place around the lid in probably a futile effort to keep spiders and critters out of it.



About 20 minutes after placing it on the porch, I realized that I had not taken a picture of it. I walked out to take one and found an attempt at using it. Its not really a fair though because I didn't put any instructions for using it with the shipment. It will be interesting though because I think this will be the norm even with instructions.

 

[Honch]

I have not posted to this thread in quite a while, I had been posting to My Build Tread because I had nothing new to put in this thread which was rapidly becoming projects and nothing really to do with the garage itself. Now however I do have something new to post, In June I was able to purchase a new home that had a much larger garage and an existing shop. This is a picture taken by the former owners.

The garage on the house is very large, it has a single stall that is approximately 20' wide and 17' deep that contains the geothermal heater and a sink. The other two stalls are combined 30' x 29'.



it could do with some better lighting, but I am extremely happy about the amount of space, my OBS looks like an S-10 sitting in it. If my old garage was this large I may not have moved.



The move itself was probably one of the most physically demanding tasks I have ever done, my last two moves were done professionally, and I had collected much more junk in the 10 years we were in our last house. Fortunately, I have a good friend who was invaluable with helping and I was able to borrow a nice car trailer from another friend and use it for nearly a month.

Here is just one example of probably 15 loads we moved. The new house was only six miles from where i lived all on county back roads so at least that part was fairly painless.



The shop itself is about 18 years old 30'x60' and appears to be Amish built. It's in good condition but will need electrical and lighting upgrades.



I was able to work out a deal with the previous owners that allowed me to start moving in before we had closed on the property. Because everything happened very quickly, and I really had no time to think about any type of shop layout we just placed everything in the back south corner. It's amazing that the entire contents of my old three car garage take up such a small area.



My old home sold two weeks ago, and I am slowly moving forward with making this my new workspace, more to come.

 

[MacTexas]

Nice house and garage.

 

[zmotorsports]

Very nice looking place you've purchased. Congratulations and looking forward to seeing the shop lay out completed.

 

[Honch]

Very nice looking place you've purchased. Congratulations and looking forward to seeing the shop lay out completed.

I haven't had much time to figure out where I want everything. I have some very general ideas but have been distracted by a lot of other things.

My first project was to get proper power to the shop, it has 70' of 3" PVC that runs to the house with a phone line, 12/2 romex and a nylon pull rope. The previous owner just used the shop for storage, and only had a 20amp circuit for the entire building. Because the breaker box in the house is nearly maxed out I had a line run from the pad mounted transformer in the neighbors yard and now the shop has its own 200amp service. The power connection was finished last week and I was able to quickly hook up my old compressor and add a NEMA plug for my welder.



My 30 year old craftsman compressor will be replaced in September when my new Eaton compressor is scheduled to be completed. I went way past what I needed for a compressor but I've never heard anyone complain about their compressor being "too big". I went with a 7.5hp, 120 gallon tank that produces 31CFM @ 100 PSI / 26 @ 175 PSI.



Last weekend after power was connected, I was able to start working on some of the existing lights in the shop. The exterior light on the front of the shop was connected to a switch and would stay on whenever it was switched on. Not being familiar with this type of light I went on the roof to see how it was mounted, my initial plan was to replace it but with some troubleshooting I figured out the photocell was bad and it apparently defaults to on. Ten dollars on amazon and another trip on the roof to plug the sensor in and I had the light working as intended.



While I had my Lista cabinets apart for the move I took out some very old T12 lights and replaced them with some inexpensive 5K led lights that I cut down from 4' to fit in the 3' wide cabinets.



The lighting that I'm most excited about is what I purchased from prime lights. Based on their light map below I purchased 12ea six bulb stingrays to meet my goal of 125 foot candles, their map states that it will make my shop 139fc but that is based on ceiling, floor and wall reflectivity that I don't necessarily agree with. Many people say lighting the entire shop to this level is a waste of money, I don't care I am still going to do it and I will possibly even add some task lighting when its all done.

The lights came in Monday night and I plan to start installing them this weekend if my buddy has time to bring over his skid steer.

 

[Honch]

My buddy had family visiting last weekend so instead of putting in my new lights I spent Saturday changing out someone's idea of a proper dryer vent.



This corrugated nightmare had five different duct sections spliced together, three of them were actually even taped inside the insulation. After rolling around in the crawl space most of Saturday I spent most of Sunday relaxing.

Friday night we brought the skid steer over and today we got 7 lights installed. If you read my previous post that would have been just over half but due to layout limitations 12 units just wasn't going to work like I wanted. One option was to go to 9 and the other to go to 15. I went with the latter and the three extra lights showed up today. Below is a teaser of the 7 lights installed.

I should have some finish up shots tomorrow.

 

[Honch]

I initially thought putting in my new lights would take about 8 hours, I was only off by about 12 hours, but with 400 feet of 14-2 and 350 staples consumed, I am done with lights in the main shop area.

One of the former owners added 4x8' areas to the loft on each side. Having the extra loft space was nice but it was done very poorly and they blocked the location I wanted to use for the last row of lights, so we removed them this morning. A side benefit is it makes the shop look much larger.



The lights themselves are quite a drastic difference, the old lights were very high-quality sealed units. I could have added more of them, but they were closer to 4k and I wanted 5k lights, plus I would have spent much more to get to the same FC rating.

OLD

NEW


This is a picture of the darkest area of the shop being one of the corners. I don't know of a good way to take pictures without the camera on my phone compensating for the light. I think this best represents how well they light up the shop with very little shadowing.

 

[Honch]

Just a small update, while the skid steer was at my house, we were able to take down some particle board that was behind the loft extensions. It looks a lot better with it removed and gives more reflectivity.

 

[Honch]

This weekend I worked on quite a few different projects. When the power company ran service from the pad mounted transformer in my neighbor's yard, they left me with a massive mess of ruts and roots for 70 feet. I wasn't home when they trenched it and you would have thought they did it with a backhoe as large of an area they disturbed, Including damaging every tree within 20 feet.




Saturday morning my buddy brought over his roto tiller, and we broke up all the ruts, then raked it all out with a landscape rake, I had to move four trailer loads of dirt from one end to the other to get it level again. There were literally piles of dirt 20 feet from the apparent trench. After we got it leveled out I pulled my lawn roller over it to pack it down again. For five hours of mostly manual labor, I am really happy with how it turned out. I am most likely going to rock up to near the trees and replant grass up to the transformer.



My next project I tried to work between rainstorms on Sunday. I purchased 150' of CAT 7 LAN cable to get internet access up and working in the shop. It is for streaming music over my ROON server and Wi-Fi calling with my cell phone. My hope was to pull the LAN cable through the PVC that appeared to be running from the shop to the garage. It had a pull cable in it along with the 12-2 that was powering the shop and a twisted pair phone line. When I started messing with it, I quickly realized the wires were stuck at both ends, the other thing that was interesting is the PVC in the garage was 3" and the PVC in the shop was 2".

The PVC in the garage is 12' from the closest exterior wall and when I looked down inside of it there were cut off copper lines for an air conditioner when I saw them, I knew where it would be running outside of the garage. In this picture next to my geothermal unit, the liquid tight conduit contains the 12-2 that was powering the shop.


At the corner of the garage on the backside of the house was a concrete pad that never made and sense to me as to why it was there. I feel stupid not realizing the house was originally heated with propane and had central air. I started digging around the pad and found the 3" PVC with 12-2 coming out of it and running under the pad. The pad served no purpose for me and actually created a problem by the former owner making the water from the roof drain onto the driveway instead of running a tube under the sidewalk where the pad was.

I spent the next hour busting out the pad only to find the 12-2 went into a 2" conduit and runs 15' under the driveway before it turns 90° and heads towards the shop.





I pulled the 1/4" copper line out of the 3" pipe and pushed it through the 2" pipe to see how far under the driveway it ran before going towards the shop. Then I was able to dig along the edge of the driveway and find where it came out.

It was at this point that it started raining so I headed into the shop to work on the last few lights I am putting up. I got three put in place before I called it a day. I have five more to put at that spacing across the bottom of the loft then I am going to pull down all the shelving across the back and paint all the OSB under the loft white. This will be the area most of my equipment is set up.

 

[Honch]

This weekend I finished mounting the last five lights under the loft. Initially I was a little disappointed by the output of the lights. I then thought it might be all the wood absorbing the light and creating a closer to 3.5k color.



After installing the remaining five lights, I felt a bit better about the overall lighting but still didn't like how it looked. I debated putting metal on the walls but I'm not really good with the cost of it right now. Instead, I'm going to paint the OSB, which is about as fun as changing oil on a diesel truck in a dirt driveway.


Today I got two of the areas primed and I can see some benefit even with the primer being flat.


Before I painted the area I took down shelves and hanging shelves under the loft floor, There were three cart loads of wood being stored there, Next I need to take out the oak shelves in the middle and the massive shelf on the right side. This is going to be the area I have my belt sander, drill press, band saw etc. Ill look at possibly salvaging the shelfs for another area of the shop but right now I don't see reusing them.

 

[Honch]

This weekend I finished the second coat of KILZ and gave all the panels a white topcoat. I may paint the posts dark grey along with the baseboards, although the point was to give the walls some reflectivity and that's done.



I also worked some more on figuring out how to get a CAT7 cable from the house to the garage. I borrowed a professional grade tone generator from a buddy and was able to trace the buried Romex to within 12' of the shop. As the Romex got deeper, I could not follow it any further. I did some reading and found that some people were having luck using the wire tracer from HF so I bought one and it got me two feet closer but still not close enough. I did some more research and found that Suncoast rentals has buried cable finders but none of the rental stores within 50 miles of me had one available nor would the anytime soon, they were all out on long term rentals.

Based on the direction the wire was headed and what little I could see from the service pipe in the shop I took a gamble and dug a hole just off the sidewalk next to the shop. After digging three feet down and getting no tone I gave up, time for plan B tomorrow.

 

[Honch]

Plan B was a very nice little lady that traces sewer pipes brought her Rigid line scope and after five minutes and $180 told me where to dig and how deep.

I could see the service line going into the shop going down almost 3 feet and then at a 45 for 11 feet, thus the big hold I dug. The lady running the scope confirmed there was only one turn where the pipe dropped down but somehow it is going off at a very strange angle.

Based on a couple friends looking at it with me we all thought it followed the path of the red arrow, when its actually three feet away going off away from the building (green arrow).



Regardless of how, I can now access the service line, so the rest of the day was running the CAT7 cable from the router in the house through the garage and out to the stretch of lawn between the house and shop. I had planned to trench it tomorrow to finish the project, but an emergency arose at work.


I also had 2yd³ of #8 driveway rock brought in to fill in the transition between my driveway and where they paved the road in front of my house. They dropped it off in a big pile and I spent almost two hours with the wife unit spreading it out.


My good friend felt sorry for me and brought over his skid steer to smooth out the other 7yd³ I got for the parking pad. I decided to widen it where they trenched power to the shop. I think trying to grow grass there in the shade would have been very painful. I am so glad I didn't have to do that by hand.

 

[loganb]

Coming right along! Skid steers sure are handy to have around or maybe better yet nearby but not yours!

 

[Honch]

Coming right along! Skid steers sure are handy to have around or maybe better yet nearby but not yours!

Thank you, and yes that's an amazing machine I could never justify owning.

 

[Honch]

Saturday I finished running the Cat7 cable into the shop. I have a seven year old Nighthawk router I set up as an endpoint and was pleased by the speeds I was getting anywhere in the shop.


Sunday I was setting up to do some more painting when an opportunity arose to sell the Goalrilla basketball hoop in our driveway. Its something that wasn't going to get used and I have come so close to hitting it on more than one occasion. Since the skidsteer was still at my house taking it down was simple and my buddy offered to pull out the pad as well. That's where things got a bit difficult, the pad was five feet deep and the ground wet enough it had some suction. We finally got it free and I spent about an hour busting it up to use the chunks to fill in the five foot deep hole.


The pad had a three foot diameter ring around it covered in mulch and as I started backfilling everything I hit more concrete. Initially I thought it was over run from the pad we removed but as I cleared out the mulch I found there was another pad next to the one we just pulled out.


The picture is a bit deceptive the pad is almost flush with the edge of the driveway so I'm going to need to bust about six inches off the top to be able to plant grass over it. I hit it about six times with the sledge and all it did was vibrate the fillings in my teeth. Tonight I may try the air chisel on it.

 

[Honch]

Small update:

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights I spent a few hours each evening trying to finish up the hole. My buddy managed to bust off a big chunk of the concrete and get it out of the hole with his skid steer.


The piece that remained in the hole I broke up until it was small enough to lift out, I was then able to dig the hole much deeper and drop all the pieces back in.


This allowed me to cover all the concrete with fresh dirt at least a foot deep so I can plant grass again. I have had enough of digging holes and busting concrete for a while.


In the middle of all this we had some random rainstorms, so I did a little inside work by starting to paint some of the trim around the walls in the shop.


As I was closing up tonight, I had a visitor stop by.

 

[Jon69RagTop]

Keep the posts coming, great progress.

 

[slodat]

Nice work on all of it! The paint is a true game changer. I'm so glad my shop interior is painted.

 

[Honch]

Keep the posts coming, great progress.

Thank you

Nice work on all of it! The paint is a true game changer. I'm so glad my shop interior is painted.

Thanks, I would love the inside to be metal but I'm not willing to pay the price it is right now.

Not much in the way of pictures today, I installed another 5lb extinguisher in the back of the shop and ran a 12/2 20-amp circuit along with an 8/2 40-amp circuit. I'm going to put seven 110v outlets across the back wall and three 220v outlets. Once that is done, I can start moving some of my equipment in place. It's crazy the prices of wire right now, those two runs are almost $400 just in wire.

 

[Honch]

This weekend I secured the wire run along the wall. I initially thought I would just let is sit on the girt until I got enough of my stuff moved out of the way to get to the wall. I used a fish tape to pull it the 50' along the girt from the breaker panel to the back of the shop but now I needed to somehow secure it. I ended up moving stuff and getting to it with a ladder, this let me staple it every 16" of the run. Code was for above 8' high which let me run it on the girt just above the window.


I did a couple gradual bends and probably ended up with an extra 2' in the run this will give me enough wire to splice in future drops along that wall.

In the area under the loft I added a 220v outlet on each side. I can power my welder from either along with being able to move the sander.


The drill press I hardwired and added another outlet which is switched through the VFD this powers the light, tach and water pump.


During the last few weekends while I was waiting for paint to dry or it to stop raining I started cleaning off my drying table. In June of last year I removed the infrared heater, took it all apart and cleaned it. During this time the table has been sitting outside behind a buddies shop because I didn't have room for it anywhere. Now's the time for me to get it cleaned up and use it. My wife saw it and was interested in how the paint on it was chipping off, next thing I know she has a hammer and chisel and is going to town on it, so I let her.


The paint on the table was over an inch thick, this was one of two drying tables I bought from an auction that took place where I work. I know these tables were in continuous use for 20+ years. It took her almost three hours to get it all off and she did a great job. Now I need to decide if I clean it up any further or just use it as is.

 

[zmotorsports]

Welding area is coming along nicely and great equipment.

 

[Honch]

Welding area is coming along nicely and great equipment.

Thanks Mike I appreciate the comment. I see you purchased a "new to you" Camaro, congratulations it looks to be a very nice car and I really like the color. I came so close to buying one in 2009 I walked into a Chevy dealership in Scottsdale AZ with plans to order a 2010 SS and after driving a 2009 SS, I bought my Corvette instead. I have never considered myself a "Corvette guy" but I didn't like the window belt line of the Camaro or its visibility, especially after driving the Corvette. The Camaro is a very nice car, and my dislike is really a personal preference thing.

 

[Honch]

Over the last couple weeks I have been helping a friend prepare for a move. Saturday we moved all the mirrors out of his personal gym onto a rack we built a coupe of weeks ago.


Out of the 25+ mirrors, the majority are shatter resistant 5'x6' panes, a lot of the smaller ones were normal mirror glass. In this shot we attached a wooden crate full of more mirrors to the stand we built.


The benefit of transporting them this way is at his new house he will be able to wheel the stand into the gym and not need to carry the mirrors more than a few feet. Once the stand is off loaded it will become a work bench with the bottom being the bench top and the uprights being the legs.

I also acquired a radome shipping crate and we loaded just over half of his plates into it, in an effort to keep the weight of the crate below 4k lbs. His skidsteer will lift 6k but the movers equipment will only do 4.2k.


Saturday night I was relaxing and looking at ads on CL when I came across a 7" Grizzly horizontal band saw for $50. I contacted the seller and he said it was sold, I was disappointed but there was nothing I could do about it. Sunday morning I got a text from the seller saying the buyer had never shown up and it was mine if I wanted it. I drove over to a buddies house to borrow his trailer and the saw was located in a small town machine shop about 10 miles from where I live.


The saw is well used, filthy and has a worn out worm gear, but the motor runs fine, and the drop cylinder works. The seller also had three brand new bimetal blades for the saw which I gave him another $50 for.


Since I have more than one way to currently cut metal, I am debating on taking this saw apart and replacing all the worn parts versus just replacing the worn worm gear.

After I got it unloaded and dropped off the trailer I was driving home and saw this sitting on the side of the road.

It has a new bar, chain and after I put some gas in it, it fired right up. The problem with it is it has a massive fuel leak, so its basically another project when I have time.

All in all a good weekend, even though I got nothing done on the shop.

 

[Honch]

I got a few things done since Saturday. One of the big ones was getting wheels under my last cabinet, now everything but my tables are on casters. If I had it to do again, I would have made the caster frame a lowboy with the casters off to the sides. I'm so used to making things with space in mind and now I have room to do it a little differently.


Now that I can move that cabinet where I want, I started putting my two Lions benches back together. The one that was in my old garage was fairly intact, the one I had in my basement was completely disassembled. Once I had the top back on it, I started looking for the sheet of stainless I had or at least thought I had to put on the top before I installed the back shelf. I had no luck locating it and while I like the properties of having Masonite as a covering, I really truly hate how it looks. This sheet being a prime example with 25 years of stains and use.


I debated painting it but wouldn't have any durability, instead I sanded it down and it still looked horrible, so I am experimenting with staining it. This was after the first light coat, I'm not sure what caused the really light spots but that's how it dried. Tonight, I sanded it again and applied a second coat, if I can get it to look like the left side does, I'll be more than satisfied.


I also experimented a bit with some flags/banners I had, I was hoping to block much of the view of the loft in the back of the shop. I haven't decided if I will leave them in this orientation or hang them lengthwise, so they block more of the opening. I also got my TV mounted along with a HD antenna and fire stick. I don't have it turned on much in the shop, but I do occasionally use it to watch YouTube or recorded endurance races.


Lastly, I got my back-channel speakers mounted, wired and the amplifier moved to his permanent location now I can start tearing apart the 18' built in bench at the front of the shop. While I was running the speaker wire, I cleaned up some of the previous owners wiring. I actually found a 12-2 romex with a plug on it to lengthen a wire run.

 

[Honch]

Last night I worked on some more of the speaker wiring, I should be able to finish it up tonight.

Here is the outcome of staining the Masonite on the work bench. It's not quite as even as I had hoped for but for 15 minutes worth of effort, I'm more than happy. I did find some .100 7075-O material that I will never use or heat treat, it would be thick enough it wouldn't dent easily and soft enough it wouldn't damage items put on the bench.

 

[Honch]

The in-laws were visiting this weekend, so I didn't spend much time working in the shop. I was able to finish clearing off the 18' built in bench. This bench was really poorly built and the top which was 1/4" plywood was broken or very week in many spots. The top alone was over 10 separate pieces patched together. Basically, the bench was only good for piling junk and giving off slivers.


After I got it tore apart and removed the two small shelves above it, I redid the wiring to the outlets to bring them up to code. They were basically Romex wire runs just hanging loose under the bench. With it removed it freed up space for me to move my toolbox and one of the Lyons benches. Everything is still a mess, but the major items are getting put in place, and every time I'm able to put something in place it frees up the area it was formerly occupying.


I also got my new airlines delivered yesterday, I bought 2ea 100' kits, but I won't start installing them until the new compressor is in place. My compressor is scheduled to be delivered to the dock at work today and I'll probably bring it home on Saturday.

 

[Honch]

I had to travel to Miami this week for work, on Monday before I left, this was sitting in our shipping / receiving area. Just to put it in perspective the 60 gallon flammable cabinet to the left is 6' tall.


Wednesday when I got back into town, my friend helped me load it up to bring home. I needed to keep the shipping container fairly intact because my friend has a very similar compressor that is just a little smaller and he wanted the pallet / container to put his in for his move. Because the container was designed to strap to the side of a trailer wall we had to cut some small openings and feed straps over the 4"x6" pallet slats.


Last night I had some time to open it up and get it off the pallet. After I disconnected my old compressor, I got a shot of the two of them together. I originally thought about keeping my old compressor and putting it in the garage, but I since have decided to put it on CL and just run a line from the shop to the garage. I will probably try and get the new one wired this weekend, I have a few other commitments, so I don't know if I'll have time to start running the rapid air lines.

 

[Honch]

Yesterday I wired up the compressor #6-gauge NM was $4.69 a foot. but #6-gauge UF was only $2.13 a foot. I only needed 15ft for the run and even though the UF was going to be a lot stiffer to run I went ahead with using it. Once wired up I was very excited to hear the new compressor run, and five minutes later when it filled the tank, vastly disappointed when I heard it leaking. It was late enough in the day that I decided to shut it off and look for the leak the next day. This morning when I went out it had dropped from 150psi to 50psi and after about 30 minutes of thinking it was the tank drain, I was able to unscrew the entire bung on the bottom of the tank by hand.


I tried cleaning up the threads and applying pipe sealer but at best I'm able to apply maybe 80ftlbs of torque to it. The plug is 2.5" across and I have nothing other than a wrench that will fit on it. with the limited access it will probably need at least a 3/4" drive and a socket to tighten properly. Tomorrow I'll contact their tech support and see how they are going to resolve it. I can't express how disappointed I am after waiting three months for this to be built and the effort it took to get all 1200lbs of it to my shop only to have something so simple be wrong with it. I also don't understand how this would pass any type of testing during the assembly of the compressor, unless it wasn't actually tested.

This afternoon a friend of mine from work stopped by, he had asked me last week if I would look at changing the headlight housing in his Model S Tesla. He is not a mechanic, and he bought a headlamp from a wrecked Tesla. Because he chose not to purchase a new headlamp for $1800 the Tesla dealership refused to change it for him. Him and his roommate attempted to change it last weekend but ran into problems with the "one bolt no one can reach", he facetimed me to ask what to do and my answer was to bring it to my house, I couldn't see or understand anything he was trying to show me. Convinced by a Russian language YouTube video that it would only take an hour, he was confused when I started taking off the front bumper and an hour in, we still hadn't removed the headlamp.

It was all to get to that "one bolt".

As I was taking it apart, he asked me numerous times why I couldn't just cut the bolt or break it apart, he also explained how hard it was to find a headlamp with all the tabs not broken. I helped put the puzzle together for him when we got it apart and he was able to see it was easy, just time consuming and why others might be willing to break it out. In the end it was repaired properly, and then I realized I hadn't taken pictures of anything. I have worked on this car at least four times and this is the only picture I have of it from today when we finished.


He left about 4pm and I headed over to my buddy's house that had texted me earlier, just as we were starting, asking if I could help him move some things. I owe him for all the times he has helped me, so I went over and helped him move stuff till after 7pm. He has a moving truck showing up tomorrow morning and over the last 6 months he has palletized all his belongings. Today he was moving everything to his driveway in preparation for loading it tomorrow.

One of the last loads we moved out of his pole barn were 4ea Southworth hydraulic lift tables. He bought these at an auction 10 years ago and they have been sitting on a pallet rack in his pole barn since then. He didn't have room to set them up and over the years has offered to sell me one a few times. They are very cool but I could never really justify the cost of one. New they are around 5k and he was asking $1400 for one which is basically what he paid for each of them. Today his price was $500 so I bought one.

They are 3'x5' can lift 2000lbs, use a hydraulic lift pump that runs on 110v and are built like tanks, the legs are 3/8" plate and the top is 1/4" plate.



I'm still not really sure what I'll use it for, but I own one now.

 

[Honch]

It has been almost a month since I last posted. A week of that time I was sick with a massive head cold, I actually missed days from work for the first time in probably 4 years. To make matters worse I had some very expensive plane tickets to Delhi India, and then on to Nagpur for a work project that took two weeks. Postponing or canceling the trip was not an option.

When I got back, I took a few days to reacclimate, the team I was on basically worked three weeks with no break. The first thing I needed to do was put the Corvette in storage for the winter and make room for my truck in the garage. It's much easier to push a garage door opener than open and close the sliding doors on the shop. I had some rough guesses on how the vehicles may fit but I never really measured anything. it was relatively easy to move the Corvette to the front of the garage, and not have it be in the way of anything. I had plenty of room to put it between the truck and Caddy but putting it up front takes up less prime space and there is a good three feet between it and the front of the truck.


Last Tuesday Eaton Air sent a technician to fix my compressor, they would have done it sooner, but I wanted to be home when they fixed it, so I had to postpone the appointment till I got back from India. During his visit I found out that the tank had been pressure tested "prior" to powder coating which makes sense, why powder coat something then find an issue. Apparently, the vendor accomplishing the powder coating was instructed to remove the bung from the bottom of the tank, which didn't happen, exposing the O-ring to 400+ degree heat. The red powder I found when I removed the bung was the remnants of the O-ring. The Technician stated this happened to an entire batch of tanks.

I also finished the last of my wiring in the shop on the north wall, I now have 22 outlets on the walls and 5 in the ceiling. I also started loading bins into my bin cabinet and while I was away some of the 6'x4' flags I ordered to block the view into the loft came in, so I hung them as well. They fill the area much better than the 5'x3' flags I had laying around. I am going to let them hang for a while and decide wither I connect them to each other at the bottom.


I had a 1"x5' flex hose come in yesterday for the compressor, so this weekend I can start installing the rapid air lines.

 

[Honch]

I spent the last three days running the rapid air lines around my shop. I'm sure there are plenty of in-depth posts on installing these lines on the net so I'm not going to go there. What I will do is post some of my thoughts on using these kits.

To straighten the lines, I used a PVC pipe, it helped but worked better once I slid the PVC in a steel pipe to keep the PVC pipe straight. This line is stiff enough that it would actually curl or bend the PVC.


Even though it helped straighten the line, it was far from being straight, so if you are OCD or crooked things bother you, this is not the system for you. If you don't care, have hours to make the lines straight or have them running inside the wall, it's a great system. I bought two each 100ft kits and ran a complete loop around my shop with three drops. I have enough line left for a fourth drop and 4 more manifolds.

The first drop was off the main feeder line from the compressor, I found a 1" x 5' flex line on Zoro to tie the compressor to the rapid air lines, I hadn't completed the loop when I took this picture. I angled the entire loop to drain back to the compressor tank. It has an auto drain that I plumbed out the side of the shop it's the blue PEX line at the base of the wall.


The second drop is at my work benches which are both plumbed with multiple outlets in copper. I put a loop at each of the drops to help with potential moisture.


The last drop was in the back corner of the shop, for my sand blaster.


Pressurizing the system was fairly uneventful, I have not found any leaks. I have it pressurized now with the compressor off to see if it will hold pressure. Overall, I am happy with how it turned out, but if I had it to do again, I would probably buy the hard line system, I think it would be easier to install trying to move a 100ft semi rigid line around is a bit more difficult than using 12-20ft rigid lines.

This was the last of the big projects I had planned now I can start cleaning and organizing some more, I am slowly getting closer to what I want the space to be.

 

[littlebean]

just read through and wow, nice shop

 

[Honch]

just read through and wow, nice shop

Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it.

Tonight, I went out to check the pressure in the lines, it had dropped 4psi after 24 hours. Some day i might be bored enough to find that leak, today isn't that day.

When the Eaton repairman was here last week fixing the leak on the tank bung, I asked him about the high oil pressure I noticed when the compressor started to refill the tank. it had spun the needle completely around and hit the back of the peg. He explained it was because the pump was so cold, and it was hard on the pump and seals to have that high of pressure. He recommended that if I was not going to keep the shop heated all the time that I add a block heater to the pump to warm it before starting the compressor. I'm not fully sold on the necessity of this, but a heater blanket was cheap enough that I decided to give it a shot.

When I started this tonight, my thermometer in the shop was indicating 48° and the side of the pump was reading 47.5°.


The only area of the pump large enough to attach the blanket to was on the underside.


In less than 10 minutes the temperature on the side of the pump case was 73°, this was on one of the access plates which is 1/4" thick.


The end result was oil pressure probably 40 to 50 psi lower than when it was completely cold.


It doesn't take much effort to plug this in for a few minutes before using the compressor, I have no idea if it's truly necessary or if the pump had no pressure gauge would I even know about it happening.

 

[Weldman]

Since you are running a straight viscosity oil instead of a multi viscosity oil it will do what your compressor is doing. Essentially instead of running 5W 30 in which viscosity starts off at 5 and works it way up to 30 it's going straight 30 in cold temperatures which equals higher oil pressure.
As for reason on running straight viscosity oil is it's detergent free since you don't have oil filter on the pump, multi viscosity oils have detergents that clean engines in which makes the oil dirty and needs a filter.

 

[Honch]

Since you are running a straight viscosity oil instead of a multi viscosity oil it will do what your compressor is doing. Essentially instead of running 5W 30 in which viscosity starts off at 5 and works it way up to 30 it's going straight 30 in cold temperatures which equals higher oil pressure.
As for reason on running straight viscosity oil is it's detergent free since you don't have oil filter on the pump, multi viscosity oils have detergents that clean engines in which makes the oil dirty and needs a filter.

I never put much thought to it being straight weight oil, that would explain the very high cold pressures. As far as detergent versus detergent free that would only really matter if there was gas and a combustion process. More to the point though i was being a bit satirical. My good friend has a "Badboy" rebranded Eaton with the same size pump. It is what turned me on to Eaton compressors and has been running in his unheated garage for 10 years with no issues. It doesn't have a pressure gauge so who knows what pressure it's at when it's cold or if it even matters.

 

[Honch]

I was able to accomplish some more organizing this weekend. Clearing out areas allowed me to position and set up my blast cabinet and dust collector. After getting it connected, I replaced the 14CFM nozzle and jet I had purchased to so it would run on my old compressor with the original 27CFM nozzle and jet. The difference between the two is quite drastic, and the speed at which it works is directly proportional.


My new compressor has a valve on the side which you can open to allow it to run continuously for sand blasting. I didn't bother with it as it would run for a few minutes and then shut off easily keeping up with the 27CFM nozzle.

 

[Honch]

I had some vacation days I needed to use up before the end of the year, so I got to spend some time working around the house and in the shop.

The last items of my air compressor / air line project were to get an hour meter installed on the compressor and my work benches plumbed in. For the hour meter I just bought a cheap one off of Amazon and installed it on the side of the mag switch box, it was a simple 30-minute project that will let me keep track of when I should service the pump.


For plumbing the benches, they already had 3/8 copper runs, I just needed to connect them to each other and then one of them to the rapid air lines. For this I bought some 3/4" hydraulic lines from Tractor Supply and connected them with malleable unions. I used 3/4" lines because the ID is only 1/2".


Part of getting the second bench connected was actually putting it back together. It was previously in the basement of my old house and I had to take it apart to move it. While it was apart, I added some led lights I purchased from the locally though the power company for $1.00 each, I removed the T8 lights that were on both benches and installed 3ea of the LED lights.


Once I get the far bench cleared off I am going to move them closer to each other, basically just enough room for my cold saw between them. I will then lower the stand the cold saw is on to match the benches and use them as feed tables for cutting long pieces.


I also had some time to finally finish getting everything put back in my hanging bin cabinet. That cleared off my material cart and got rid of five boxes that were taking up floor space.

 

[Honch]

With all the work I have been doing on in the shop, I haven't put any time or effort into the garage, so I decided to give the sink area some attention. The previous owner had installed a towel dispenser and a small soap dispenser. Unfortunately, the soap dispenser was broken and required using both hands to hold it closed for it to work. They had also left about 8 refills for it, so I searched and found a new one very cheap on Ebay, problem solved.

While I was searching, I came across ZEP TKO hand cleaner, based on what I had read about it, I decided to order a gallon to try. I like it enough that I ended up throwing away the remainder of my GOOP jug and buying a wall mount pump to dispense the TKO.

I also decided to repurpose one of the old lights from the shop. The ducting on the heater prevented me from mounting it where I wanted on the ceiling, so I found some scrap pieces of aluminum extrusion and welded them together as brackets to mount the light. I'm not sure if I'll leave it that way permanently but for now it works well to light up the sink area.


One of the things I spent a lot of time debating was how I wanted to use my new space. I went from a slightly oversize three car garage to a very large three car garage along with a pole barn. I decided, at least for now, the extra space in the garage would be used for "house stuff" the mower, trailer, pesticide sprayer, lawn sweep, shovels etc. While I was deciding where I wanted to put what, I mounted a charging station I bought during black friday. I have some older Kobalt cordless tools I'll keep at the house, my newer ones will be in the shop. it also works out for keeping the cordless weed eater and leaf blower in the garage. I'm going to mount a gladiator rack next to this to keep them on.


The racks came as a two pack and I installed the second one on the shop near the man door.


Its only 60' from the house to the shop but I can't believe how annoyed I got every time I have made that walk to just grab an impact or a drill for something I was doing in the house.

 

[Honch]

My back was bothering me this weekend, so I didn't spend much time in the shop. I got through another five moving boxes of "stuff" and now I am down to five left to go through. I also made a bracket to mount my porta band to one of the columns under the loft.

I didn't take any pictures of the bracket while I was making it, it's just two pieces of angle iron welded to a square tube section.


I had originally made the mount for the saw to keep it on one of my benches and I can still utilize it there, but I think I'll use it more if I can just walk up to it near the rest of my metal equipment.


It has around 18" of clearance from the blade to the wall and if I need to cut something deeper its easy enough to move back to one of the work benches. I did have to move the wall outlet back against the OSB so the plug would clear the saw. I was going to move it to the other side of the column, but this worked with a lot less effort.


The only thing I have left that I have needed to do for quite a while is find a plate to mount the foot pedal to, it's too light and easy to accidentally kick out of the way.