Thanks, guys.
That's excellent news. Because it wasn't the string that had me worried for the boy. It was the building with the 6 grinders, a drill press, a welder, a circular saw that can cut metal, a band saw, etc etc etc, that has me worried for little kids. But that's only for the next, oh, 17 years or so, that you have to worry about him getting an eyeout or a fingeroff or burning the garage, wait, lot, wait, this is SoCal, entire neighborhood to the ground.
So for the time being, I'm glad you have a boy that listens. Of course, you built that, too. (For now. In ten years...)
I've got a deadbolt lock ready to go that I'm going to put up and out of his reach. He doesn't go out there without permission right now, but I'd rather never find out the hard way that he disobeyed me when I wasn't there. I got away with a fair amount of stuff with my own dad, and it's fine if he isn't always 100% straight with me. But I don't want him to lose a finger or an eye that way.
I enjoyed the video and thought of the contrast of your life to mine. If you ran that camera a 1000' above my place you might see 6-10 houses and 3 of those would be mine. I cannot fathom living in such a densely populated area. One of my cousins married a musician from Chicago. She brought him out here and the quiet drove him nuts, and the concept of going to bed and getting up with the sun was totally foreign to him. Glad your teaching your children though. It is a hard thing to do in this day and age.
lg
no neat sig line
It's true. Even by the standards of where I grew up, 1/8 of an acre is a TINY piece of land. And my neighbors sleep less than 20' from where I'm cutting steel in the garage. I try to be courteous with my schedule as it relates to them. And I have to say, they're great people -- very tolerant of my quirks.
I'm not sure which one was the little boy in the video. I think they both are under the care of the Mrs.
She's the boss. There's no doubt about that.
Jack, the video of the balloon camera was cool, especially since it involved your son. Just think, this may be his introduction to 'space travel'; who knows, he may be on a future Mars mission.
When he is just a bit older, I can imagine you two constructing the 'Blimp-O-Cam' and flying it all over L.A. lol Before long, Max will be 'piloting' a videocam over your race track, getting Dad and his car racing the circuit!
There's a video out there of a father/son that sent an HD camera and an iPhone up into low-orbit space under a weather balloon. That was definitely in the back of my mind on this project. The trouble is, where I live I don't know that the iPhone would work as a way to locate the landed camera (via GPS) or if it would simply be immediately stolen and pawned. But one day, I think it would be fun to send a bigger balloon up and not have a tether. But we're going to have to find a safe place to do it.
And I've seen some amazing race footage (the Nurburgring in Germany, I think?) shot with four-propeller drones. I think they'll eventually replace helicopters in movie making. (Maybe they already have?)
Hi Jack,
Love your garage! I followed this thread for a long time but haven't visited it recently. Looks like you've been keeping busy!
I meant to comment to your phone a while back (or maybe I did and don't remember! ;-). I've got a 554 (ca. 1958) hanging in my garage, but I'm thinking a 354 would look better. May have to score one.
If you ever find yourself with nothing else to do (yeah, right!), there's a way you can tighten up the coils on that handset cord:
http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=202.0
Thanks for all the inspiration!
Thanks for that link. It just went on my list! (I think I'll try the hairdryer, so I don't have to disconnect anything.)
Phew! That was an epic read! Well done sir!
I saw the part where you discussed the lighting and the motion detectors but you didn't mention why you went with compact florecent instead of regular tube florecents (sp?). Most big shops (and my little one) run these so I figured they must be on to something.
You've inspired me to re-organise my little shop. At first glance you appeared to be OCD clean but happily you also included pics of a messy garage with work in progress. It finally dawned on me to start and finish a job instead of having three of four "work in progress" activities going on. So much more bench space now with everything stashed neatly away until I actually work on it!
Nice car too, I've got a 3.0CSi from 1972. A great year!
Thanks. When my garage is messy, it's VERY messy. But when it's clean, it's pretty darned clean.
Great video Jack and Max. What kind of a camera did you use? and where can I get one? Some day Id like to visit California I have a cousin that is a Writer/ Producer in LA. Thanks for sharing your Garage and adventures.
Thanks. Most of the video was shot on a little Canon Powershot Elph 300 HS. I think it might be broken, as there's a clicking sound it makes as it re-focuses. But it works. The non-hand-held shots were made on my wife's Nikon still camera (which also shoots video). And the eye in the sky shots were made with a little $38 keychain fob camera.
After a week of reading this thread (thing called "work" gets in the way of fun), I finally got to the end.
Question: Jack, you never mentioned anything about cleaning up. Do you just use a bench brush and a Shop Vac or do you have a dust collector? Where do you keep the Shop Vac?
Beautiful garage!!
Thanks. There's a shop vac in the cabinet to the right of the inch-thick steel bench. There's also a Toro leaf blower in there. A quick sweep of the big stuff and then a walk-through with the leaf blower is really just about all I ever do. The leaf blower gets everything, everywhere. I mostly use the shop vac for cleaning dirt out of the race car.
Every time I think you've got as good a garage as you could possibly have, you think of a way to make it better! Great job.
