You recall my "Pay to Work" post of several weeks ago. I never got to show you the nearly completed (now re-occupied) areas. Many things were moved. Everything was cleaned up. There's still a couple of shop rooms I haven't finished ... but ... here's where we are. And, it's been really fine to work in the improved areas.



Welding shop. I do some cutting and grinding here. Sanding and milling on the edge of this shop area. A New furnace pipes, altered heat ducts, electric and pneumatic lines changed, cleaned, and more insulation added.




This shop was "slabbed" and rebuilt. It was totally deteriorated. Now I have the grinders, buffers, back in this area.




The rebuild compressor closet. Small - about 3 by 8' ... but very handy, insulated well, and new roof.




Grinding area. Rebuilt walls and roof. New electric lines alot of places in the shop, new pneumatic lines. Dust recovery system. All simple stuff (until you do it all yourself, and try to be on two ladders at once ...




Ahhh .... the "Employee Lounge". I fought hard to get this in my contract. It's taken me 36 years to get here, but it was worth it for a hot cuppa coffee!




Command Central




One of the bench areas. You never have enough lay-out space.




Another bench area (foreground) and ... the path I walk for miles, back and forth, every day.

None of it is hi-tech. But, I've either bought or built every pc. of it ... and it works very well for my needs. It's wonderful to recover the building to a far better condition. Makes it soooo much nicer to make art, without rain dripping down your back.

Hope you enjoyed a look-see.

Gary

Gary the shop looks great! It's always nice to be working in a clean, organized space, not to mention the dry neck. Mine gets a reorganization only with a new project. I can't imagine juggling all the guns you have in the works.

Kent

Keeping track of everything is a chore. They are in closets, bins, racks, tubes, and cases. Everything is marked with a blue tape tag which has a number on it. Then, the numbers are recorded in files under various categories. Seems to work - but I'll be glad to see less blue tags this winter as I complete things.

Gary

Hey! I thought that microwave was slated for the war wagon! Darn, we'll have to get another.

Sheesh Gary, that is one serious workshop! Then again, I guess you are one serious gun-maker
Cheers
Neil

Nice layout Gary, very orderly just like I like it. I bet you know just where to look for what you need. I definitely noticed that wooden wheel on the grinder, neat.

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your comments. It's been nice to have the shop in better order.

Neil, there's three more areas - upstairs is the anodizing lab (a bunch of tanks, sinks, drains, stove to heat dyes and sealers, electrical stuff). Then, upstairs there's another room where I do engraving in one end. I have to reclaim the rest from storage of "stuff". Downstairs, there's also what I've always called the "knife shop", where I have a small lathe for die grinding, a 20 and 50 ton press which I used for some stuff, and some out of use equipment now. I plan to reclaim that shop at another time. I did restore the roof and ceiling in there though, with two inch solid polystyrine insulation panels. Should help.

Joe ... wooden wheels. You bet. Many years ago, "contact wheels" for grinders were seriously beyond my budget. (I think they still are). They want a pile of gold for a 24" contact wheel ... ... so, I built these from laminated plywood. I turned them, in place, using the grinder itself .... sealed the wood with bondo ... turned it again. Covered one wheel with rubber, and the other with leather. They've been working perfectly for decades. Powered the whole thing with a double shaft bench grinder. The other grinders on the benches, also have wooden contact wheels. Some have been running for about 35 years. I've made alot of the machines and tooling. Sort of rewarding to find your way around the roadblock of a thin checkbook.

Gary

Cool stuff!

Are your 20 and 50 ton presses hydraulic ones for making Damascus and the like?

Hi Bill,

Used to make some shearing dies. Use them to also raise forming dies. Use them for striking silver plates (sort of "coining" work).

I did make a hydraulic rolling mill ... tried it for Damascus steel once. It worked - but was slow. The power hammer I made did an excellent job, and was pretty effecient.

Gary

What do the larger wheels get used for, do you need slower rpms

It cuts a larger circumference. Makes a full sweep, edge to spine on a blade, and makes a nearly flat grind. Otherwise, you'd have what we've come to think of as the normal hollow ground edge of the blade, and then the thick spine. I prefer the "edge to spine" grind. If you tried that with smaller wheels, you'd grind the blade in half in the middle.



Gary

ı want to come there to wirk with gray. I like this shop

Just remember, you have to walk single file to the passing areas....

You have to master the Jackie Gleeson "shuffle" as well. That spritely sideways progression designed to prevent you from snagging on: milling machine hand wheels, the panograph motor boom arm, the cut-off rack, the obscure parts rack, the drill press rotary indexing table hand wheels, sanding lathe, machine lathe belt cover, dust collection filter box, 20 ton press seat ... to name just a few. (Here I'd use a Jackie Gleeson shuffling smilie guy).

Working in my shop is an artform, in and of itself.

Gary

could you jot down a quick plan of your lay out some time gary please ,,, as to the untrained eye , it al seems to look like its in a coridoor with a right angle bend at the end , it cant al be a long passage ,, can it .
looks very ,,, erm ,,, homely , yes , thats the word , quaintly homely.
glad its turned out dry again though.

Dyson,

Take a fresh sheet of paper. Apply pen point somewhere near the middle. Now - close your eyes, and randomly scribble your pen, in a fit, for three seconds. Open eyes. What you have there, is a close copy of the exact floor plan and passages within the Barnes complex.

It is, indeed; all corners and passages, with a few worm holes tossed in. As I've noted before, when I get working well, and running from station to station ... I sometimes catch a glimpse of myself rounding a corner up ahead. I've gotten used to it though.

It was a small garage, built in 1894. On the back of the property, there was an additional small building, which was a shed and a privy. I extended the origonal garage to accomadate an overhead door, and rebuilt the roofline to include storage overhead. Later moved and plugged in the other old building, and connected the two with a hallway (the one that crumbled and required a rebuild recently). As the years passed, restoring a roof turned into raising the roof some. I blew out one side of the roof, and installed a bow window I came across cheap. Etc., etc.

All the while, a mammoth old weeping cherry tree, steadfastly refused to yield it's ground; until it's trunk now is enormous. It's surrounded by the shop segments. It's truely a "tree in a hollow shop". As with most things I've done, I put a different twist on it.

It works. Won't win any architectural awards. Contains the tools, contains much of the heat, keeps most of the rain off. That's about it.

Thanks,
Gary

perfect ,,,, just as it seems to the rest of us ,,, its some where for the elves to hide .

A hollow tree full of elves, eh?

Seems to me that if we were happy with just medium sized elves, we could get about half a dozen of them from just one Gary. In fact, if we could pull this off it'd be the perfect solution for the old "never enough time" problem.

There'd be one elf on the lathe, another on the milling machine, another working the bluing tanks (yeah, that'd be the grumpy one), one on the computer full-time keeping up with Email and the website, another out making a donut run, and most important, the elf that does nothing except brew coffee 24/7.

Yeah...OK...I'll admit it. I've been looking for an excuse to use that "coffee cup" smiley for a while now.

HI Rotor,

Great Smilie usage there! Well done.

It's a shame we didn't have any "elf smilies" for ya. We have to make due ya know. We're running on a Tandy cassette drive hooked to a leaking dry cell battery.

Trouble with the elves is that the little creeps are always drunk! I have to re-do most of what they mess up.

Gary

So thats were the MAD scientist makes his creations huh? Pretty nice gary, pretty nice. You have a lot of stuff. I'm now officially jealous

Nah ... just drag home stuff for 36 years, and you'll have the same thing, or better.

It's much nicer this winter, with the improvements. I spend my life in there. I've worn out alot of shoes in this shop!

Gary