My Shop

May 17th, 2007

I can't believe it has been nine months since that post below. Man, have I been slacking. Well, here is an update. I finally got the finances in place to build my dream shop. The drawings are only slightly more advanced than they were last August. I have made some changes since then, but basically it is the same as the origional plan. It will be a 52ft wide 36ft deep shop. the center peek is 20ft and the walls are 16ft. It will be devided into two sections. One the far left will be a 16ft by 36ft section with a 10 ft cieling. This will be my wood and leather working shop. It will have a door to the main shop, but will basically be totally isolated from the blacksmith & welding shop which will be 36 by 36. There will be access from the blacksmith shop to overhead of the wood shop for long term storage type stuff. I'll put up some drawings and stuff later when I get them finished.

I took what I had down to the planning deptarment a couple weeks ago. There was good and bad news. The good news was that I am ok to build what I have planned pretty much the way I planned it. The bad news is they want a lot more detals and call outs than I had in mind. This is gonna take a while before I am even ready to pull the permit. In the mean time I have begun getting the yard and existing shops ready.

Here is where things started at a couple weeks ago.	Here is where we are at as of this morning. The shelter with the rolled up door will be pure storage. The one between the sheds will be my wood shop during construction. The green frame will get a tarp attached and be the blachsmith shop. The pile on the left is for the dump.

"I can see clearly now the rain has gone" August 1st, 2006

That green tarp that was tacked up over my welder and grinder is now part of the roof.	Here is the area over my power hammer. The entire shop got rained inside of.

Those song lyrics came to mind as I was doing this update, but I was thinking, "I can see clearly now the day has come" for two reasons. The first is that obviously the rain & daylight is coming the shop from places it shouldn't be. The other is that the day has come to start building my new permanent shop. I am so tired of wasting money on tarps and lumber to keep jerry rigging the temporary shop. Not to mention the fact that I have completely outgrown it size wise. I am currently drawing the plans for the shop. I have finished the plot map and am working on the elevations now. Hopefully I can go pull a permit next week.

If the city will let me do what I want I will end up with a shop that is 52' wide by 36'8" deep. My lot is only 62' wide, so I will end up with 5ft clearance on 3 sides of the shop, and room to add onto it in front if I want to later. The design is basically a pole barn. I will be doing 16ft center row of 4x6 poles, and 15ft tall both outer rows. It will be sectioned off into 2 areas. On the far left will be an area 14 ft wide with a 12ft wide by 14ft tall roll up door that can be used as RV storage later, but for me will be a wood shop & leather shop. The main blacksmith shop will be 38' by 36'8". I'll end up with a 1900 sqft shop and I only have a 900 sqft house. The shop will actually connect to the current 12' by 20' shed, and I plan to put a door between them. To start with I will only be building the roof and the two end walls. I will fill in other walls as I can afford them each month.

I will definetly be documenting the process here, so stay tuned.

Shop up and running now.

It's been quite some time since I posted an update, so there have been a few changes to the shop. Mostly it's just about figuring out where to put things since it is a smaller area than I was using. Over all I am pretty happy with it. I wish I had extended it out more, but I don't want to bother since this is really a temporary setup until I build the permanent building. I figure that if I am cramped and uncomfortable then I will get going on it sooner. Yeah, I know that is twisted logic, but I am hoping it will work for me. I'll post up a couple of pics once it is looking more presentable.

January 17th, 2006

Here are a few shots of what the shop looks like now, as of January 17th, 2006. I am debating with myself to move the wall to the left of the door out about 4ft. When I redid the rook a couple months ago I ran the boards out that far instead of cutting them off. So, instead of having a 4ft overhang, I could run the wall out nearly to the end very easily and gain that space within the shop. I probably will since I am using the shop more now and it has gotten a little cramped in there with the wire feed welder in there now.

Here is a shot looking in the door. The heavy bench right in front is the last thing that needs to get cleaned up.	Here is another shot in the door, but this one is looking to the right towards the forge and power hammer.	Just as an aside. The hardy you see in the picture above is in the forge when the pictures to the left were taken. The two pictures below show what I did to it.
		The bent up part is about how much I drew it out. It was about twice as thick also. Thank god for the power hammer. I could have never done it without it.
A wider shot of the power hammer showing the chain hoist over it.	Here is a shot from the power hammer looking back at the shop.	Here it is in the same anvil from the top picture, but now it actually fits. I already had a nice top cut hardy, so I modified this one.

Woo Hoo, a wire feed welder. January 8th, 2006

I totally lucked out getting this welder. It was actually given to me by my welding supplier because it didn't work according to the customer who gave it to him. The guy bought a new one, and just gave it to him. His worker couldn't get it going, so he gave it to me just to get it out of the way. I fooled around with it, and got it going pretty easily. So far it seems to weld just fine. It had a bad switch, and they were hooking it up to 120volt because the wire is so thin, but reading the label told me it was 220volt, so I tried that and it worked. Amazing what reading the faded sticker on the back of the machine will do for ya.

Here are a couple of pics of the front of it. You can see it has controls to do stitch welding as well.
Here is the side of it. I need to get the bottle for it, and some new tips, but otherwise it is ready to roll.	Here is the welding table I built over my buzz box. The whole thing is on wheels and self contained. Everything I need to weld is on that cart.

New air Compressor & tables. August 2005

I had a great weekend of July 31st. I found a couple of great yard sales and ended up getting a 5hp Ingersoll Rand air compressor, 2 steel tables, and a nice shelving unit. The compressor turned out to be much older than I thought it was, but it seems to work just fine. I redid the way it was wired, and changed the oil & air filter. It runs pretty sweet.

Here's the loaded trailer.	Here's the truck & trailer	Here is a shot of the outside the way it sits now.
From the door looking towards the power hammer.	From the door looking straight in.	Here is a closer shot straight in.
Here is the compressor set up. I'll probably buy the siding and get it put on this weekend as well.	Here is a shot with my anvil and coal forge in place. I'll move the propane forge this weekend.

I'll add some more pics of the compressor set up soon. I forgot to take them when I set it up last weekend.

My New Anvil. March 21st, 2005

I received a new anvil via UPS today. It's a Peter Wright anvil that was made in 1850 according to the ebay listing. It range very nicely before I mounted it. I placed 2 layers of some 2oz leather I had lying around under it, and then tightened it down with the chains. Now it is a dull thud kind of sound that I am sure my neighbors will not mind as much.

These 3 pics are from the ebay listing where I bought the anvil. You can see that none of them are too close. I should have paid a little closer attention to the face. I was focused on the fact that the edges looked like they had no chips in them. That was because some one had beveled the edges to remove the bad edges I'm sure now. It has taken a lot of sanding to get it where I think I can use it.
Here is a closer shot down the face before I started sanding it.	Here is what it looked like after sanding the rust off. There's not a non marked spot on the whole face, but the edges are all there.	Here is another shot before I started cleaning it up. It rang real nice before I mounted it.
Here are a couple of shots of the mark on the side of the anvil.	You can see that a lot of it is gone, but you can still see enough to tell it's a Peter Wright.	This is the face on Wednesday after another round of belt sanding. I think I'll leave it be for now and see how it works.

Here are a few more pics of the anvil taken to help identify it.

My new shop

Here's a quick update on the shop. It is basically done now. There are still a few details to do, but I have it filled up and in use now. We just had 3 good days of rain and my roof didn't leak. I was actually very surprised by that since I suck at roofing. I wish I could have said the same for the house.

Here it is just before we finished it.	Here is how it looks now. We had some rain so I set up the two shelters out front to cover more tools.	I will probably leave them up since it gives me shade as well as rain protection.
This is the inside looking to the left. I've cleaned it up some since I took this pic by getting more stuff up on the shelves.	This is looking straight in through the door. The shelves are really coming in handy.	This is a shot to the right. I extended the bottom shelf around the corner as a bench. I have mounted 2 grinders and a vice there.

(Sept 04) It's been a while since I added anything to this page. That's probably because I don't really have a shop now. Everything is kind of in flux as I build sheds and shops at the new house. Here is what I have now.

I have a rented 20ft sea container full of my shop and a few household items. I wanted some shade so I could work during the day on weekends, so I rigged a large tarp off the front to give me some shade. It's been kind of windy lately, so it's looking pretty bad.	Here is a shop from the end. I just ran some ropes from the container to this far end where I put 3 8ft 2x4's in the ground a foot then topped it with a 20ft 2x4. It's just held up with tension really. I did end up making a little post to hold up the center and give me more head room.
		Above is a pic of my shed inspiration. This dealer is just down the street, so I went into this shed with my digital camera and took a bunch of pics and measurements. This shed is 10x20 and 8' at the peak. They sell for about $5000. Mine is 12'x24' and 10' at the peak. It would probably be over $10,000 if I had them build it. So far I have about $2200 in it, plus a lot of time. I can afford the time, I couldn't afford the cash.
This is where I'm at on the shed now. (Sept 04) The side walls are 7' tall and the peak is 10'. I have added a lot of features to mine the the store bought ones don't have like hurricane straps and heavier framing.	I am hopping to have it done in another couple of weeks so I will then have a month to move stuff from the container. In a few months when I get the shop done and get moved in this will become my wife's shop. I plan to add electrical as well as insulation and drywall eventually.

(Nov 03) Here are a few pictures of the new steel rack that I have been working on lately. I'll post up some more once it's done. It's probably heavier than it needs to be, but at least I know I won't have to worry about loading it up too much.

I've added some tabs to the ends of the arms to keep steel from rolling off. I'm also in the process of adding some 1/2" expanded steel wire to the base and down the center of the A frame. I plan to store scrap pieces in the middle.

This is my first anvil. It's about 40 pounds. I couldn't find a stump for it, so I just made one. I took 2 pieces of 4" X 8" beam and glued and bolted them together. Later I added the holder you see around the outside made of 2" angle iron.

From the horn you can see the wide trough where I can set my hammers and other tools.When I first made it the intention was to cut off the piece sticking out front, but it ended up being a perfect place to set my wire brush.	Side shot from where I work. You can see in the feet of the anvil where I drilled 1/4" holes and used lag bolts to hold it down. I don't recommend this, and didn't do it on my next anvil.

Here is my current primary anvil. It's 100 lbs, and has a decent face and good rebound. Unfortunately, the edges are a little rough, but what can you do? Again I used the beams to make a stand. This time I used 4" X 12" beams with a 2" X 12" plank in the middle. I glued it all together and then drilled 3/8" holes all the way threw it for carriage bolts. After it was together I built another hammer holder around it like the first. I made this one out of 1 1/2" angle iron instead. The hammers fit in it a little tighter and don't want to fall over towards me when I just drop them in.

Here it is from my working view. I keep my favorite 2 hammers up front and others in back or on the sides. It also has holes on the 4 corners for various hardies. You can see where I have marked it off for doing hot cutoffs. The 0 is where my cutoff hardie sits.	You can see the 2 by sandwiched here, as well as the chains I use to hold it down. This really cut down on the ring.	Here it is from the heal. You can also see the forming stake at the bottom that I use to hold it down. I pound these into the ground on 3 sides and use drywall screws to hold it. This keeps it from moving when I do large twists.

This is my bargain table. I call it that because every item on it was some kind of deal.

I got this 1/2" thick steel table at a yard sale for $45. I was very jazzed. The grinder was from the same sale for $40. The blue vise was only $49 from Harbor Freight. It should have been about $80, but I had pulled the screw out of my cheaper vise from there, so I returned it and upgraded. The manager decided to just trade them straight across since I am such a good customer.

This is my post vise which I love. I really lucked out on this one as well. There weren't many bidders, so I got it for about the same as the blower below. I had to take it apart and clean & grease it when I first got it, but now it works great. The base piece didn't come with it, so I made one, which is the little yellow piece on the bottom.

The blower was my best deal of all, and has a great story as well. There was a guy in upstate New York who was running a roto tiller through the garden behind his barn, when he suddenly hit something hard. When he dug it out he found a Buffalo Forge number 100 hand crank blower that had been there for untold years. Being an industrious sort of fellow he cleaned it up a little and put it up for auction on ebay, which is where I came into the picture. Fortunately for me, our industrious gardener was also a little lazy, so he didn't really clean up the blower very well, or take a very good picture of it. Luckily for me he is a better gardener than a photographer. What this all really means is that there were not very many bids for this blower, and so I got it for $80 plus another $40 for shipping. It was a little rough when it showed up. There was still quite a bit of dirt inside the fins, and there was no oil in the gear box. It really didn't take much work for me to clean it up. I took it apart and cleaned the fins and inside of the housing. Now, with a light turn of the crank it will spin all on its own it's so smooth. I have thought about trying to straighten out the handle and make some new wood for it as well, but I can't get the screws out. Maybe later.

Here are a few hammers I recently bought off ebay. I'm really excited by the hot cutter. It's the first one I have owned, and I am looking forward to trying it out once the forge is done. The one with the rounded face is called a ship builders hammer. It was used to set rivets when building steel ships.

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