I've finally committed to some larger changes in my shop. This thread will keep track of that progress, as well as work done on the machines.
I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago, and Ebay alerted me that a lathe was for sale near home. Despite being a large city, we've never had a manufacturing base -- so I basically had to jump on the opportunity, buy something new, or eventually drive more than 200 miles through mountain ranges to one of the nearby cities.
The lathe in question, loaded and waiting. The move was actually pretty pleasant -- but more about that later.
I wasn't totally committed to a shop reorg when I bought the lathe, so it still had to fit in the garage with two cars. Thankfully the British shared their experience with cramped spaces.
This whole peripheral garage shop journey began when I was laying in bed one morning, doing basic trigonometry. At that point I really just had a workbench -- but I had the realization that a knee mill might actually fit in the corner.
Maybe?
Definitely.
But since this specific post is about the shop reorg...
The biggest roadblock is that I need to charge my car, and the 50A outlet wasn't close enough for the charging cable to get outside. So I'd have to buy a charger with a longer cable and move the outlet. Fortunately that just meant removing a section of conduit. Unfortunately I'd have to move a bunch of disorganized stuff.
Disorganized stuff, getting more disorganized.
The outlet was moved and wasn't that much of a job. It just took time to drag things around. And since it's still Hawtumn here, I'm up before dawn on the weekends and am generally suffering by 10am.
But sometimes the sunrise is amazing.
One of the upsides to the lathe is that it came on a workbench heavier than it and casters that can convert to rubber leveling feet. Makes being indecisive way more pleasant.
But eventually I got things mostly organized and the tools laid out. For now.
There's a couple of high priority projects that I need to tackle, and they'll be in this thread.
The lathe and the mill need power completed -- no more "temporary" solutions. The rest of those parts are on the way.
The lighting is terrible, and I need cabinets. Spamming LED fixtures should be easy. Cabinets will be harder. I have access to a CNC router at the makerspace, but I really dislike woodworking. Probably because it's scary and I'm terrible at it.
I'm also pretty sporadic about shop time. Too many hobbies, so this thread might be dormant for long chunks of time.
But hopefully I'll post stuff about progress!
I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago, and Ebay alerted me that a lathe was for sale near home. Despite being a large city, we've never had a manufacturing base -- so I basically had to jump on the opportunity, buy something new, or eventually drive more than 200 miles through mountain ranges to one of the nearby cities.
The lathe in question, loaded and waiting. The move was actually pretty pleasant -- but more about that later.
I wasn't totally committed to a shop reorg when I bought the lathe, so it still had to fit in the garage with two cars. Thankfully the British shared their experience with cramped spaces.
This whole peripheral garage shop journey began when I was laying in bed one morning, doing basic trigonometry. At that point I really just had a workbench -- but I had the realization that a knee mill might actually fit in the corner.
Maybe?
Definitely.
But since this specific post is about the shop reorg...
The biggest roadblock is that I need to charge my car, and the 50A outlet wasn't close enough for the charging cable to get outside. So I'd have to buy a charger with a longer cable and move the outlet. Fortunately that just meant removing a section of conduit. Unfortunately I'd have to move a bunch of disorganized stuff.
Disorganized stuff, getting more disorganized.
The outlet was moved and wasn't that much of a job. It just took time to drag things around. And since it's still Hawtumn here, I'm up before dawn on the weekends and am generally suffering by 10am.
But sometimes the sunrise is amazing.
One of the upsides to the lathe is that it came on a workbench heavier than it and casters that can convert to rubber leveling feet. Makes being indecisive way more pleasant.
But eventually I got things mostly organized and the tools laid out. For now.
There's a couple of high priority projects that I need to tackle, and they'll be in this thread.
The lathe and the mill need power completed -- no more "temporary" solutions. The rest of those parts are on the way.
The lighting is terrible, and I need cabinets. Spamming LED fixtures should be easy. Cabinets will be harder. I have access to a CNC router at the makerspace, but I really dislike woodworking. Probably because it's scary and I'm terrible at it.
I'm also pretty sporadic about shop time. Too many hobbies, so this thread might be dormant for long chunks of time.
But hopefully I'll post stuff about progress!
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). He has manuals for most machines, all mostly priced the same, no matter how sparse the information in the manual is.
