brainwagon

So, today I had a list of a few simple tasks in my garage that I thought would be good to get to. It’s now 2:30 in the afternoon, and I’ve… gotten some of them accomplished.

Just to the left of my door as I enter my garage, I had assembled a fairly rickety looking (but probably fairly sturdy) set of sheet metal shelves, and over the years they had acquired a thick layer of pointless crap and a few things that were actually worthy. In particular, it was the resting place of my old Philips 25Mhz oscilloscope, which I hadn’t used since I purchased my relatively spiffy 100Mhz Rigol scope a few years ago. Still, it works, and I thought that perhaps it would be a worthy contribution to our maker lab at work, so I dusted it off and set it aside, and then cleared the shelving unit. The amount of usable stuff was approximately what could fit in a shoe box, the rest was put in a garbage bag and will be gone on garbage day.

I drug the shelving unit outside and had a good look. It’s actually in pretty good shape, and while I don’t have space for it immediately, perhaps relocating it and using it for gardening supplies would be a good idea. I’ll ponder that some more.

In the mean time, I thought it would be good to find a way to hang my trusty Black and Decker Workmate 225. It’s a useful gadget, but it often ends up where I trip over it, or buried under other things. I thought I would just use a pair of bicycle hooks to attach it to the wall, and ordered a pair from Amazon Prime. Sadly, on the day it should have been delivered, they reported it lost and today I see that they refunded my money. But, my sweet wife went out and got me a set of 10 utility hooks from Target which worked out well. I found my good studfinder, and went looking for a stud in the place where I had removed the shelving. I found a scrap of 20″ long 2×4 and put two pilot holes into it, and inserted the largest curved hooks into it 10″ apart. I then predrilled a pair of holes in the middle so I could fasten the board to a stud, and drove it in using some 2.5″ construction screws I had left over from my workbench project. Voila!

It’s not the greatest bit of carpentry, but it gets it out of the way.

There has been a steady decrease in the amount of crap in my garage, but it’s still fairly crowded. Sometime in the next month I hope to get rid of my old telescope grinding machine. which should free up a couple of square yards of space. I have someone who wants it, but we are trying to arrange a suitable time to hall the monstrosity off. In the mean time, I still have a lot of crap and only a little space.

Some of it was being taken up by a tangled pile of hose and cords which was my Weekender power washer. I decided that I needed to figure out a way to get it all back in its case, which meant disassembling some fittings that I hadn’t done in ages, and which had resulted in me piling it on a bench earlier. I tried looking up the manual, hoping it would provide some hint, but it appears that the manufacturer has gone out of business, so I wasn’t able to figure it out. A little poking and prodding got most of the hoses disassembled, but the spray gun itself was a little odd. I ended up pulling a bunch of screws and disassembling it. Future me might want to remember this little tidbit: to get the spray wand off the handle, push in and twist.  I suppose it should have been obvious, but it took disassembling for me to figure it out.

I’ve taken to making photographs of the make and model number of new tools that I get and uploading them to my Google Drive account. Along with their manuals (which I scan using my Brother scanner/printer and upload to Google Drive) I have found this to be really useful. Just for fun, here is a look at how all the parts go back in the case, along with the ID tag for the power washer:

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The truth is that if I have any problems with it in the future, I’m likely to replace it anyway, since it’s not the most glorious power washer anyway. But for now, it’s back in its box and stashed on storage shelves until next time.

I did some more vacuuming. I might go out and replace two old set of ballasted fluorescent lights with some new (and much brighter) LED lights, but overall I think today might be done.

Oh, and by the way, this marks the first time I used my new DeWalt drill and driver. Both are really powerful! I will have to get used to them. I used the drill to do the pilot holes in my 2×4, and it was insane how quickly it punched through the 2×4. The torque of these brushless motors is freakin’ amazing. It really pointed out that the drill bits I have are dull, because it did have a tendency to skip around. I should probably get some new drill bits (perhaps even some bradpoint bits) and get a bit more practice to keep the drill from wandering away from the mark (or punch a small divet using an awl). The impact driver was amazing. I drove these 2.5″ screws into the wall stud without a pilot hole with no problem at all. Definitely need some more practice in the brave new world of power tools. I think I am glad I still have my wimpy little 6v Black and Decker drill for less aggressive uses.

Have a good weekend, all.