Found By Accident

[jlrice54]

I just ran across this forum while researching a strange tool that I have owned for a couple of decades.  I'm a semi-retired IT consultant for the past 20 years and a retired (30 year first career) industrial electrician and electrical, instrumentation and control contractor. I also will admit I have a tool problem - I never met a tool I didn't want to own and got my first tool box at age 6, so I've been at  it a long time.  I recently finished a 4 year stent at the local community college completing an AAS in both collision repair and refinishing and welding and fabrication technology.  While in the welding program I picked up 3 AWS certifications.  I have a home machine shop which ties in with all the other hobbies: auto restoration and customizing, welding and fabrication, 3D printing and teaching myself to become a better machinist. 

 

I'm currently trying to clean out my shop building and get everything organized.  After 9 years of neglect, it's a larger project than I realized.  But like the elephant, it's one bite at at time.  Or one square foot at a time in this case.  

[Jronman]

How do you organize your shop? Right now I have some Tough System boxes on some wall racks and a few Systainers to organize most of my handheld power tools and hand tools. Everything else is in a couple drawers, hanging on the wall, or on some shelves organized as best I could. It's not much but at least stuff has a place and is easy to find. I try to keep similar items together. Grinding wheels with grinder, bits with drill/impact, batteries with batteries, etc.

[paulengr]

That’s the idea. Toughsystem is more for mobile such as tools that you don’t need every week. Regular racks and drawers are fine in shops.

[jlrice54]

5 hours ago, Jronman said:

How do you organize your shop? Right now I have some Tough System boxes on some wall racks and a few Systainers to organize most of my handheld power tools and hand tools. Everything else is in a couple drawers, hanging on the wall, or on some shelves organized as best I could. It's not much but at least stuff has a place and is easy to find. I try to keep similar items together. Grinding wheels with grinder, bits with drill/impact, batteries with batteries, etc.

 I'm working on a system that works for me.  I've got 2200sqft to organize and with my interests being so varied it's hard to find something that works for everything.  My shop is a 30x60 with a 230sqft office along one side and an added portion of 15x25 soon to be expanded to 15x60 with the addition of a spray booth on the end.  

 

What I am doing now is sorting through all the clutter, getting tools in one place, separating material and parts from tools and gathering trash.  It got in such a mess due to some circumstances that either were not in my control or some I could have managed better. We moved in starting in February 2011.  I started unpacking, setting machines and sorting stuff at that time and made a lot of progress.  During those months I bought several machine tools and moved them home including a South Bend 16" lathe with a 120" bed.  Then my father started having health issues and as the only surviving child, my time was dedicated to his care and when he passed in 2013, settling his estate.  I inherited his shop contents which was a few power tools, my grandfather's all original 1966 Chevy C10 pickup  and a massive 80 year collection of hand tools which I moved home.  This took most of 2014.  Then my stepfather-in-law suddenly passed in early 2015 and I inherited his tools.  In 2015 my lovely wife found a house she loved on the shores of Lake Texoma which had a 1200sft shop so we moved and I started sorting and packing stuff to move what would fit in the smaller shop.  After a year and moving about half of what I was going to keep, she decided she didn't like the house, so we moved back.  During this time I had started my second college career taking classes 8 hours a day, 4 days a week and working in what time was left.  So I had no shop time at all.  This continued until May 2019 when I graduated.  So I'm completing my unpacking form the aborted move, trying to clean, sort, store, rearrange and make progress on basically 6 years of neglect.  

 

My current plan is to use the 15x25 side room as a body shop and automotive parts storage area.  Late spring next year I plan to add the 15x35 section to that area which will include a built-in downdraft paint booth.  The shop office will house my 3D printers, my reloading and gunsmithing bench, my electronics repair bench where I'll do all my board level repairs, the metrology bench and surface plate, my shop server, a desk shop CAD workstation with plotter, bookshelves for manuals and my refrigerator.  That room is currently climate controlled.  This spring I plan to replace the roof on the shop and add better insulation in preparation for air conditioning the whole shop.   I'm also rearranging all my lathes, mills, grinders, welders and fab tables, drill presses, pantograph, band saws and my tool chests to clear more floor space and kind of organize the shop into work areas - like welding and fabrication, machine shop, auto repair which includes the car lift, etc.  Since my tool chests have no leftover capacity, I'm also hoping to find some bargains during the Black Friday sales to allow me to gain some tool storage and finally get my hand tools organized.

 

I inherited a large amount of Gorilla Rack shelving from the previous owner and the shop has 50' of heavy duty 4x4 framed wooden workbench space build across on end of the building in a huge horseshoe which has been a mixed blessing as it seems to function more as horizontal clutter catchers than useful workspace.  Right now I'm looking at different schemes for storing a couple of tons of metal cut offs I've collected for feed stock for the machine shop, plus metal bars and sheets for other projects.  I also have to finish fabricating several jib cranes to install next to machine tools as those milling vises, large lathe chucks, rotary tables and other tools are not getting any lighter and I'm not getting any younger.  The same goes for I-beams, steel plates and long  pieces of steel for fabrication.  

[Jronman]

Wow that's a nice shop. I've liked the idea of having a dedicated office in a shop. I'm not too familiar with machine/metalworking but the drafting is one thing I like to do. I also did a bit of 3d printing in school. I get to use half of a roughly 24'x24' 2 car garage. It is more like I get 2 quarters of the garage because my side is split into 2 sections: one for my lawn care equipment and one for my wood working. It would be nice to have my own space separate from where I live but I try to make do with my current space.

[josephraza]

On 10/26/2019 at 2:41 AM, jlrice54 said:

 I'm working on a system that works for me.  I've got 2200sqft to organize and with my interests being so varied it's hard to find something that works for everything.  My shop is a 30x60 with a 230sqft office along one side and an added portion of 15x25 soon to be expanded to 15x60 with the addition of a spray booth on the end.  

 

What I am doing now is sorting through all the clutter, getting tools in one place, separating material and parts from tools and gathering trash.  It got in such a mess due to some circumstances that either were not in my control or some I could have managed better. We moved in starting in February 2011.  I started unpacking, setting machines and sorting stuff at that time and made a lot of progress.  During those months I bought several machine tools and moved them home including a South Bend 16" lathe with a 120" bed.  Then my father started having health issues and as the only surviving child, my time was dedicated to his care and when he passed in 2013, settling his estate.  I inherited his shop contents which was a few power tools, my grandfather's all original 1966 Chevy C10 pickup  and a massive 80 year collection of hand tools which I moved home.  This took most of 2014.  Then my stepfather-in-law suddenly passed in early 2015 and I inherited his tools.  In 2015 my lovely wife found a house she loved on the shores of Lake Texoma which had a 1200sft shop so we moved and I started sorting and packing stuff to move what would fit in the smaller shop.  After a year and moving with https://movingcompanyfrisco.com/ about half of what I was going to keep, she decided she didn't like the house, so we moved back.  During this time I had started my second college career taking classes 8 hours a day, 4 days a week and working in what time was left.  So I had no shop time at all.  This continued until May 2019 when I graduated.  So I'm completing my unpacking form the aborted move, trying to clean, sort, store, rearrange and make progress on basically 6 years of neglect.  

 

My current plan is to use the 15x25 side room as a body shop and automotive parts storage area.  Late spring next year I plan to add the 15x35 section to that area which will include a built-in downdraft paint booth.  The shop office will house my 3D printers, my reloading and gunsmithing bench, my electronics repair bench where I'll do all my board level repairs, the metrology bench and surface plate, my shop server, a desk shop CAD workstation with plotter, bookshelves for manuals and my refrigerator.  That room is currently climate controlled.  This spring I plan to replace the roof on the shop and add better insulation in preparation for air conditioning the whole shop.   I'm also rearranging all my lathes, mills, grinders, welders and fab tables, drill presses, pantograph, band saws and my tool chests to clear more floor space and kind of organize the shop into work areas - like welding and fabrication, machine shop, auto repair which includes the car lift, etc.  Since my tool chests have no leftover capacity, I'm also hoping to find some bargains during the Black Friday sales to allow me to gain some tool storage and finally get my hand tools organized.

 

I inherited a large amount of Gorilla Rack shelving from the previous owner and the shop has 50' of heavy duty 4x4 framed wooden workbench space build across on end of the building in a huge horseshoe which has been a mixed blessing as it seems to function more as horizontal clutter catchers than useful workspace.  Right now I'm looking at different schemes for storing a couple of tons of metal cut offs I've collected for feed stock for the machine shop, plus metal bars and sheets for other projects.  I also have to finish fabricating several jib cranes to install next to machine tools as those milling vises, large lathe chucks, rotary tables and other tools are not getting any lighter and I'm not getting any younger.  The same goes for I-beams, steel plates and long  pieces of steel for fabrication.  

Just explained brilliantly.