Kato

How much do I get to charge you?? A clean shop is a productive shop, and I've been known to fire people for not putting tools away

Even doing that as a practical joke is stupid, but...humans do stupid crap all day every day, this doesn't surprise me. Plus, being a car shooter some of the stuff I've seen at shows makes this one look like the queen of the ball. And, the kid in me thinks it'd be fun plowing with that car just to see the looks you'd get.

I don't find any issues with getting into tight areas with the Geawrenches, in fact I've gotten them into tight spots where a standard wrench wouldn't fit. But, everyone has a favorite, nothing wrong with that. The Gearwrench tap and die set I have is my absolute favorite thing out of any tool I own. I keep it clean, obsessively clean. It looks like I never use it but I use it all the time. Well, I try to keep all of my stuff clean, that's the way I am. But, the tap and die set, I'm a little overboard with the cleanliness of that. Even used it for some practice shooting in the lightbox... Tools 003 by Ed Durbin (Katodog), on Flickr Tools 004 by Ed Durbin (Katodog), on Flickr Tools 005 by Ed Durbin (Katodog), on Flickr Tools 006 by Ed Durbin (Katodog), on Flickr Tools 010 by Ed Durbin (Katodog), on Flickr Tools 011 by Ed Durbin (Katodog), on Flickr Tools 012 by Ed Durbin (Katodog), on Flickr

The joy of that is that when you do it long enough, it gives you a ton of skill in a lot of different areas.

You have no idea. That's part of why the garage keeps going through different phases, I'm constantly thinking up new ways to "improve" the layout. My brain works everything like a Tetris game...every piece has to get flipped and turned the right way, and interlock with every other piece. Everything is easy to access easy to work with, and when it's all cleaned up it all fits nice and tidy somewhere. My wife can park on "her side" of the garage and I still have a ton of room to work. I can lay a full sheet of plywood on horses and have enough room to squeeze by when her car is in there. It's an obsession, it's making me mental. I go so far as to do stupid stuff like move the hammer rack a 1/4" to the left, so the claw of one hammer doesn't rub on the cabinet. Which was dumb because it barely touched the cabinet, but that's how my head works...everything has to be "perfect". The true joy is using the old battery shells as tool mounts, puts everything I use right where I want it, without hiding it all in tool boxes. I've been tossing around the idea of doing a walk-through video of the garage, showing where and what everything is. Probably do that within the next couple of days.

Here's a shot of what I've done in the garage the past few months. If you guys get the time look through the set I linked in my first post, lots of shots in there of the transformation from one stage to another... Garage 020 by Ed Durbin (Katodog), on Flickr

I don't have any problems thinking of stuff do do, all the wood I get is from palettes, so it's what I use for anything that requires wood. The coffee table was easy, slice the palette into three pieces, stack them on top of each other, flip the bottom one over so the gap is bigger. It's so easy a caveman could do it. If he had power tools. The handcuffs are just leftovers from a previous line of work. They sit in the drawer, sometimes I take them out and ratchet them just to hear the "click click click"...of course I do the same thing with my tools, go out in the garage and hit the trigger on the power tools, just to hear them kick on. Or my knives, sit there hitting the button to hear the blade kick in and out, or flick the thumbstud to hear the blade swing out. And yes, I have way too much time on my hands and way too many mental issues, I'm like a little kid sometimes...

I like my Gearwrench stuff, can't stand non-ratcheting wrenches, they're like caveman tools to me. I like Stanley too, and considering Stanley and Gearwrench have lifetime warranties just like Crapman you can't go wrong. I have a bunch of Craftsman stuff that I got from my cousin, but I'll always love and go to my Gearwrench sets first. I'm a power tool kind of guy though, I'd rather throw a socket on the drill/driver instead of using a ratchet, kinda lazy like that I guess.

I don't want to utter any lame photographer quotes but "It's not the camera, it's the person using it.". People saying "Your camera takes great pictures" is like saying "Your stove makes great meals"...and the pics of my garage suck, look through my Flickr and you'll see some pretty good stuff. If you're into cars and bikes there's plenty of that.

That air strike is on my list, want that thing sooooo bad.

Thank guys. I don't drink much so I'll have a vanilla iced coffee instead, and so far I've enjoyed the site. As for organized, I'm pretty OCD when it comes to keeping work areas cleaned and organized. I've fired people for not putting tools away.

Looks like they took apart a tape measure and stuffed the innards into a tape (the sticky kind, like Scotch tape) dispenser. Hmmm, that's funny, tape and tape...

Nothing beats a good ladder. I've got two of these types, one is a Cosco 17' and the other is a Keller 13', love them both. Couldn't afford Little Giants but to be honest these "cheaper" ones are pretty dang nice. As for image posting, your best bet is to use Flickr or Photobucket to host your photos, and copy.paste the links into your posts. That way you can control how they show up in the post.

It always makes me wonder when I see people talk down about Ryobi. I've used Ryobi power tools for years, my oldest are 12 years old, and apart form the NiCad batteries dying (which isn't a problem anymore because I use the shells to hang my power tools) the tools are still going as strong as the day I bought them. Currently I own around 20 or so power tools from Ryobi, and I love every one of them. The only one that stunk was the leaf blower I had, which was great until the cheap-ass plastic flywheel broke. Wasn't gonna even bother trying to find parts, just went out and bought a different blower (that has a metal flywheel). I'm not just a weekend-warrior do-it-yourself type of guy, I've used my Ryobi tools for some pretty heavy-duty work as a maintenance mechanic, and never had a single issue with any of them. Makes me curious as to why people don't like Ryobi. Anybody care to enlighten me?

Some recent stuff....kitchen drawers, office drawer organizers, palette coffee table, and my garage work area. Added these to the cabinet, makes life a hell of a lot easier when working in the kitchen... And my garage work area (linked to save you from 6 bajillion photos), which I'm constantly tinkering around revamping. I think I'm done for now though, got everything organized pretty good, got my tools where I want them. There's a lot of info to give on the garage transformation if anybody is interested in what's going on in the photos just ask.

Maintenance mechanic. Spent most of my life working with machinery and building maintenance for the bowling industry.

Thanks, it's been through a pretty big transformation over the past few months. I keep going in there and finding something to revamp, so since early November there's been a lot of changes. Here's a Flickr set with photos, although I never thought to take before shots from the way I had it before I made the workbench. The shelf over the workbench, I used to have another one under it, and that's where I had the grinder and other stuff. The "work table" was basically the top of the toolbox, and we had all kinds of stuff in the garage like an elliptical and whatnot. Was a real pain in the neck working in there, and it always got under my skin because I like a clean and organized work area. Finally got sick of screwing around with the elliptical and bikes and stuff, went out and re-organized the shed and put the bikes in there, and took apart the elliptical and shoved it way back in the corner of the garage. That gave me floor space, and then I went to work on making a decent workbench. Funny thing is that I already had the small table made, and when I made the workbench it turned out that the space between the garage door and workbench was perfect to fit the table. Put it on wheels and now it's pinned to the workbench, and I can unpin it and move it around if need be. Everything else was a slow transformation here or there, making the battery rack, mounting the power tools, all just stuff I did because it popped into my head. At least the power tool mounts were a brilliant idea, using the shells form the old Ryobi NiCad piece of junk batteries to hang the tools.

Obviously I'm new here, otherwise I wouldn't be starting an "Introduce yourself" thread. Anyhow, maintenance mechanic for around 28 years, professional photographer, "sharp stuff" collector (knives, swords, anything with an edge), and martial artist. I like tools, so any forum related to tools I have to at least give a look-see. So, yup, me, new here, like tools, uhhh, really like tools, and hi. Think that covers it My newly revamped work area in the garage... Garage 019 by Ed Durbin (Katodog), on Flickr Garage 020 by Ed Durbin (Katodog), on Flickr