Shop Cleanup

[Lumberjackprince]

After lurking in awe of all the awesome stuff going on here, I decided it's time to finally join in.

I have a lot of hobbies, motorcycles, woodworking, music and more. The only unifying characteristic is I make a mess doing all of them. This year was an explosion of tool buying for me but the reality is most of it has been a long time coming. I had just a MIG welder for years and now I have a TIG as well. I got a fancy dust collector and I finally got a bench top mill and lathe. With a two car garage and the equivalent of a 1 car shed I'm still short on space, which really is ridiculous; people have done much more with much less. It's about time I get my stuff in order.

Here's the shop a few days ago (sorry for the inconsistent pics, some are on my phone but I'm not much of a photographer either way)

The table saw was from my uncle, who had a large outfeed table, so it takes up the most space, with just enought room to get a full 8x4 sheet on it. This is one piece of equipment I don't think I can really move around much, anywhere else interferes with something else or limits my ability to use it.

My house is a disaster but I managed to remove the two free standing shelves to the left of the door in the back right. This is probably the cleanest it will ever be so I had to commemorate it.

I was also fortunate enough to get a few long florescent lights from my dad and finally hung them so I'm not working in a cave. Seeing the difference, I'm not sure how I put up the darkness for so long. Maybe it's because I'm a programmer professionally and am literally used to working in the dark.

The mill and lathe are on top of freshly built work benches and the overblown halo of light properly sets the tone of how I feel about the setup so far.

For years I just had free standing shelving, I hated the idea of going to all the work of installing cabinets and then buying some tool and being unable to rearrage the shop. The problem is even when shelves are at their cleanest, seeing everything generally still makes it look like a mess. Fortunately lilscorpion has the answer with french cleats.

There is one long cleat above the workbench and the one cabinet partially finished up there. I still need to give it a door but at the time I finished the carcas, I just needed space so put it up and was able to move around again.

The bigger pending organizational projects are:
* Finish and make the other cabinets
* Make rolling stand that lives under the drill press holding all my drilling stuff
* Figure out better clamping storage
* Chopsaw stand (that takes up less space with folding leaves)
* Scroll saw stand (that has storage below)

I'm sure I'll want something for the mill and lathe as well but haven't used them enough to have an idea what I want. There are other ideas and things I have but this is a good start. My computer crashed twice trying to do this one post, which might be a reason to just head back down and keep on cleaning.

 

[Thumper68]

Good start, I was there a year ago, just keep working on it and it will get where you want it.

 

[sean Buick 76]

Great project.... One little step at a time and you can get it how you want!

 

[Lumberjackprince]

I'm super happy with the Rigid combo oscillating belt/spindle sander but only 87.3% happy with the stand I made for it. I had the brilliant idea to make the inside of the door pegboard. But I couldn't stop at just one sheet of pegboard, I used two overlapping pieces, thinking to maximize squarefootage. Big mistake. Since the walkable shop area is pretty low, I could never open it up all the way and it was nearly impossible to easily get at everything unless I did wheel it out of garage. It's footprint is something like 1.5' x 2.5'

I still haven't pulled off the hinges on the right but it's much nicer to use now. One clever bit is that I can get behind the pegboard and use twist ties to keep the hooks from falling out. It all rattles a bit while moving but works really well. It's hard to tell, but on the right I made a holster of sorts for the circular saw, it's super easy to get in and out, I actually put it away now after using it!

There are two rails on the underside of the top that holds the jigsaw up there. I have couple hand sanders, and dividers for sandpaper. It's really nice having all this stuff collected together. Now I need to add another set of rails for my other jigsaw and do some shelves or something at the bottom so it's not a jumbly mess.

If I was to make one from scratch, I think I'd do double doors instead so it was easy to open in narrow spaces. The other thing I've been thinking of is to partition things depth-wise, where infrequently used accessories are in the back and the regularly used tools are in the front instead adding more shelves. For example, I have a bunch of belts and spindle grits but rarely change them out. I think it makes sense to put them on the back wall, which will make a it a bit harder to get to them, but then make it really easy to get at whatever I keep in front of them.

 

[1/2 Cup]

That's a great start, just keep chipping away at it.

Thanks for posting and are looking forward to following your progress.

Regards

 

[Responder]

I had a shop that was just full of a bunch of "stuff". Like many others on this forum, I would walk in and look around and walk out.

Keep plugging away at it and you will get there. I found the "rule of 10" worked for me. Before I would do anything, I would put 10 things away or in their place and yes, 10 sockets counted! It was fairly easy in the beginning but it gets difficult as your shop gets organized and cleaned.

One other point I took away from a member on this forum is to clean up BEFORE you leave the shop. Quit earlier to get this done. Difficult to start but it gets easier and then you have a clean space to start the next time you are in there.

 

[Nowater]

When I had less space, I placed my table saw so that only a narrow walkway was left between it and the garage door. then, raise the door to cut plywood or a long board. That way you can keep your out feed table and make use of an "infeed" table that extends outside.

I had to categorize my storage and build shelves for storage, some that even hung from the ceiling. There are a few items that I store at the dump, but I don't remember what they are.

 

[Mike Miller]

When you get it organized you find out you can do more with less. Keep up the good work.

 

[PanelDeland]

You might consider grabbing a file cabinet off cl or somewhere. I use them for battery and corded, even pneumatic tool storage and one drawer holds sandpaper in file folders. The back of that draw has grinding disc and belts etc.

 

[Lumberjackprince]

Thanks for all the encouragement, I think I've made more progress in the last few weeks than I have in the last few years. In addition to "just keeping at it", one thing that really helped was letting go of the "perfect" storage solution. Inevitably trying to make a home for stuff gives me a better idea what that home should look like. Now I try to come up with (relatively) quick to implement ideas to get things better.

The thing the pictures aren't conveying well is that I can actually walk all the way around the table saw, which is pretty rare. The biggest eyesore to me is now my scrap wood. I don't know how other people are but I loathe throwing anything but the tiniest scraps away. It really is absurd and I recognize it as a problem but I've decided that it's easier to embrace it than spend the energy fighting it.

Here is the section in question earlier this week:




I built a bin, essentially a collection of shelves, a couple of them vertical for longer pieces, to hold things that aren't sheet goods. About 4 hrs (spread over a few days) later, it now looks like this:



That's where my ninja is! I've been looking for it! Things still look messy, and the ninja might as well be exercise equipment since I manage to just hang stuff off of it but that area is in much better shape now. I think I want to get all the stuff on the shelf distributed elsewhere and turn that awkward wall recess into my materials area. Full sheets will live against another wall but I bet I can get all the partials and leftovers where the shelf currently is.

I took some pics of the bin in progress but they are so bad as to be worthless. I'll sketch out what I did and post that here in a bit.

 

[Chart]

Great start to your organizing effort! You are inspirational, but I may just sit here a while until that goes away....

You are right about open shelves looking messy, but they are helpful and fast. Two suggestions regarding them:

1. If you have the ceiling height, raise the shelves up on strong shelf brackets, so they are off the floor as high as possible. That way you still have the floor space for storage under them. I have a dual drum sander stored under one shelf, a jointer under another, and shop vac, floor jack, and big battery charger under a third. Going up can help a lot in the organized storage war.

2. A buddy also uses open shelves, but he bought a bunch of storage containers to standardize the contents. On one set he uses bus boy tubs, another storage totes, and elsewhere square ice cream containers for hardware. He favors the cheapest ice cream from Wal Mart, and it comes in those containers, so he's made a serious effort in the dessert department just to organize his shop.... And, that ice cream really is good, surprisingly so.

 

[G McKay]

Like they said- great start!! Get stuff up off of the floor is the best way to make more room. Keep us updated. Good luck.

 

[Lumberjackprince]

Going up can help a lot in the organized storage war

I totally agree! Unfortunately I can't go up very much since the garage height is that of a regular room and half the ceiling space is taken up by the garage door and a large beam but my plan is to get more cabinets up on the cleat in the coming months. The other big idea is getting rid of all the stands that came with my tools, like the scrolls saw and chop saw, and put them on rolling cabinets so I can rearrange as needed. I do have lots of stuff in plastic shoe boxes but I really want to have things more organized. Which, to me, means spending a bunch of money to make mediocre things.

 

[Lumberjackprince]

Here's a junky drawing of a cutaway of the bin with the rough dimensions.



It's about 20" wide. Basically it lets me collect up all my small to medium scraps; the longer stuff goes in the back and shorter stuff in the front. Another thing I have been working on is a soldering station. My wife inherited a secretary style desk that I think was more about her grandma cleaning out stuff but it actually turned out to be really nice. Normally I'm against horizontal surfaces but since you can close it: out of sight, out of mind. Seeing this gave me the idea to make a soldering station from a secretary style desk. Then I saw this: http://www.lovehulten.com/tempel.html and knew I had to actually follow through. Mine won't look as nice but I'm ok with that.

I can't remember where I read about a train company (possibly in Brazil) that was on the verge of collapse but came under new leadership that saved them by making lots of long term sacrifices for short term gains. The long term is normally what I think about but can sometimes get lost in "making it perfect". I also must admit that to get the shop where it is, I filled the rest of the house, temporarily, with everything from the shop. An understanding wife and no kids or pets made this doable but I don't want to tax her patience too much so I decided that I would start storing the things that would go in the soldering station now even though it will be more work later to finish it.


It's 33" wide, 14" deep and nearly 36" tall. The the middle sections will have doors and have holes for adjustable shelves. The bottom section will be divided horizontally and vertically and each section will get 3 drawers. I obviously have a ways to go but am extremely pleased with how quickly I was able to clean up my office. Hopefully this won't be on hold too long; I have one other large piece of shop furniture I want to do before I come back to this and start adding more fun projects (like my half finished guitar) back into the mix.

 

[Lumberjackprince]

Holidays and cold are among my common excuses for why I don't get much done in the shop and I'm trying to remedy that. After debating for months about how to best reclaim floor space, I decided to make a flip top stand for my scroll saw so I can slide it under my outfeed table. I was reluctant undo the well-packed boxes below the table (years of Tetris skills at work) but the fact is that those boxes were full of mostly junk. After deciding I wanted a movable flip cart and having a few ideas on how to achieve it, I found this video on retractable casters that was a big help:

Here is a shot of the wheel linkage in progress. The long arm helps press the short one so the whole thing lifts the cleats. I continue to be surprised how well it works. I ran out of 2in screws so those are 3in just to verify everything worked.


The side that opens:


Flipped down:


And tucked away!


I still have work to do on it, like the side that opens need a latch to ensure it doesn't fall off, and I have room for a few drawers on the bottom. The important thing is that it works enough so I can use it. I am comically happy putting it away, which I hope is a sign of things to come. I never thought I would derive any pleasure from cleaning up but I suspect now that is key to actually bothering to clean up.

 

[mrodgers]

That's where my ninja is! I've been looking for it! Things still look messy, and the ninja might as well be exercise equipment since I manage to just hang stuff off of it but that area is in much better shape now. I think I want to get all the stuff on the shelf distributed elsewhere and turn that awkward wall recess into my materials area. Full sheets will live against another wall but I bet I can get all the partials and leftovers where the shelf currently is.

I took some pics of the bin in progress but they are so bad as to be worthless. I'll sketch out what I did and post that here in a bit.

Love reading these shop/garage cleanup threads as I really need to do the same. I can walk through my 24x24 but that's about it. My bicycle is still in the back of the work runner car from October and if I want to put it away, I have to pick it up on my shoulder to carry it into any space to store right now. I'd better dig out the snow blower sometime soon too which will be quite a task.

I just found that above statement "That's where my ninja is!" hilarious. I was scrolling through those pics and didn't notice the bike sitting amongst the scrap wood at all until you wrote that, LOL.

I'm the same way with scrap wood. My father-in-law recently sold his lumber mill and I have a ton of wood littering around the garage piled up here, stacked up there, and leaning over yonder. The wood and scrap wood is my most detrimental problem of cleaning up my garage (aside from the 135° temp in the summer and the whateveritisoutside temp in the winter leaving me no motivation to work on the cleanup.) Most of my wood laying around is large pieces and I need to get some brackets made to stack it shelf-like on the wall.

I covered 1 wall with french cleats the length of the wall and every 9 inches vertically up the wall and plan to do all the rest of the walls to hang shelves, hangers, cabinets, whatever I want where ever I want. A lot of that wood I have laying around was cut for the french cleats or is laying there waiting to be cut but it's now freezing cold out in the garage to give me lack of motivation. So one wall organized and it's still a freakin mess, LOL.

I like the idea someone posted above in cleaning up or organizing just 10 things. I should get in there as soon as I get off work just to do that and get more done than trying to go out there and freeze for hours and get nothing done.

 

[NUTTSGT]

If I didn't have a wood burner, I'd hate to think how many wood scraps I would have laying around.

Keep plugging away man, little by little, day by day, it'll get finished.

 

[Dancing Bear]

Each step you take is a small victory...and enough small victories will win you the war!

 

[ScottsGT]

Awesome thread. I'm kind of in the same situation. Starting to get the wood working bug, but limited space and only a small portable 10" Delta table saw. But also have a router table, oscillating drum sander, chop saw and a **** load of wood working power tools along with my mechanic tools for car repairs. throw in a floor jack and 4 jack stands and the 44" HF box with two side cabinets, a couple of bicycles and a 42" cut riding mower with bagger, and you can see my space issues.
I'm having to make everything portable and set it up as needed and stored away when not needed. Real estate and all that...
I do have a 16' X 16' deck beside the garage that was converted to a screen porch years ago. No water can get through, but it is open on the sides, so it is exposed to the elements and the thieves. I think one of my goals for this year is to secure this area with some kind of steel tubing and a secure gate so I can park the riding mower and bikes under the porch, and maybe my shop press to free up some much needed garage space.

 

[GarageWarrior]

If you are still looking in to setting up a lathe/mill - I would NOT recommend them for a small general-repairs hobby shop. Metalworking machines are rarely needed for general repairs, take a lot of space, are hard to move; and you have to buy (and store) expensive tooling and stock, plus the learning curve.

In my experience I was better-off bringing occasional machining/fab jobs to a machine shop - they rates are affordable (~$60/hr, had them re-grind 8 exhaust valves for $40, brakes rotors about $15/piece, cylinder heads $40-$80/a piece, etc). Work was better quality than what I could have done at home.

Also for storage - look in to file cabinets. You can get them for under $20 for 4-5 drawer units. That's a lot of enclosed, accessible, durable, high-density storage for the money. They are easy to move with a hand-truck. I also moved them by removing drawers (with contents) and moving frames and then reinserting drawers - very easy to do compared to restocking shelves.

 

[Wuaname]

I like that bin you made... coming along good