So as I mentioned in my ongoing article about saving money, life has gotten rough with my wife being in an out of the hospital lately. At the moment we know nothing and at 38 years old she’s suddenly started having seizures out of the blue and her memory has gone to shit. Add to that we’ve had fix the AC and get a new roof on the house so yeah… combine with that my ever complicated work schedule… it’s a wonder I get any time to do anything these days.
HOWEVER…. I was able to get out in the shop a few times and do some things to start improving the shop, making more work space, working on projects including the Boomer containment system and other little things.
One of the biggest things was my new and improved full sheet work table with storage underneath. The need for this came because the centre of my shop was a nightmare, it was a collection of all kinds of stuff including lumber and rims for the Tundra which won’t get put on till later this year so I needed to store them somewhere. Now it’s all neatly tucked away on this one massive workbench which gives me a huge work surface that doesn’t roll around easily despite being on wheels.
The workbench itself was made from reclaimed and culled lumber from you guessed it, my all time favourite place, Home Depot so it literally cost me less than $50, most of which was the $20 spent at Harbor Freight getting the casters.
Once I got the work bench built up I added some peg board on one end and stuck some reclaimed racks on there for even more useful storage which presently has my safety gear like goggles, gloves, ear protection, respirator, etc as well as other little odds and ends I use frequently. This went a LONG way in cleaning up the centre of the shop and giving me more work space.
The reclaimed peg board racks come from my work, which we get periodically when our stores upgrade displays or get rid of them completely, Many times the vendors don’t want them back so I get to bring them home figure out ways to do things with them, this was a perfect use of some of them and gives me convenient access to things right on the end of the bench without having to do any serious building.
So now onto the Boomer Containment System. This is being built around the outer slab of my workshop in order to keep our Boomer safe while we’re out in the shop which will also let my wife spend more time with me out there. It’s simply some reclaimed 2×4’s with some slats made from resawn 2×8’s capped off with 2×2’s into which I routed out a channel for the slats to fit into. The corners are made from some leftover 4×4’s we had from when we tore down the picket fence around our property. The segments are all nailed together with my nail gun and then screwed into the concrete slab at the bottom through the 2×4’s with concrete screws to help hold them in place. The structure thus far is quite rigid and will more than do the job. The wood is then being sealed to protect it from the elements and I’ll be adding a gate or removable section in the front so I can easily bring materials in and out of the shop when I need to.
Today I actually made another section I didn’t get a picture of yet but it extends across the front just like the other little section there in the first image.
And for some of you wondering what I speak of when I leave work and say I’m going home to get covered in Manglitter or Manfetti… here are some examples:
Manglitter (n): The fine particles of sawdust created from sanding or sawing that covers EVERYTHING and gets EVERYWHERE similar to that way the sparkly glitter that women wear does.
Manfetti (n): The larger, sometimes wispy particulates created from planing or using a router and other larger tools, these shavings resemble party confetti commonly thrown for celebrations.
Hope that clears things up for some of you.
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