I didn’t accomplish much in the garage on Sunday, but I did manage to take down some old, flickery and generally unreliable flourescent lights and replace them with some very inexpensive LED lights. I had previously tried to continue to use two of the old fixtures, including their old fluorescent ballasts, but in general that proved to be more trouble than they were worth. The connectors were already unreliable, and occasionally one of them would just turn off and back on again at intermittent intervals. I grew tired of them, and decided to just take down and take them to the recycling center and replace them with new but inexpensive LED shop lights.
I unplugged the old fixtures and then took them down. They were actually screwed into mostly dry wall, I’m kind of shocked that they didn’t just fall out of the ceiling. We decided to make a run to the El Cerrito Recycling and Environmental Resource Center to get rid of them and the stock of old fluorescent bulbs that we had lying around. They are a great resource, and took everything but the ballasts (I had to snip them out). I guess they have some kind of hazardous chemicals in them, and I have to take them to Richmond Hazardous Waste instead. We have some old paint cans we have to take over there anyway, so that will probably be on next week’s task list.
I didn’t want to replace them with anything expensive, so I decided to continue with some cheap $20 hanging fixtures that I got from Lowes. I had good luck with a couple of these cheap lights from Lowes and manufactured by Lithonia. They actually are an integrated unit: you can’t change the bulbs out, they simply run until they are dead, and then you replace them. They are nice and bright, and I had installed two of them a couple of years ago with no complaints. They are also incredibly lightweight (which could also be considered as “flimsy”) at a weight of 1.7lbs. Ironically, they are listed as “4ft” bulbs, but the fixture length is a little over 45 inches. I purchased four more of these, and hung two of them immediately, with the other two waiting until I can get rid of some telescope grinding equipment. I just used wimpy hooks to attach them to the rafters, but the hooks have too fine a thread to be secure in just dry wall. I’ll have to get a couple of dry wall anchors to fix one in the place I intend.
At about 36 watts a piece, I now burn about 150ish watts for lighting in there, but the garage is actually bright and easy to work in. Huzzah.
Addendum: I also decided that my Workmate rack of yesterday wasn’t entirely adequate. Because it was only fastened to the wall in the center (that’s the only convenient stud to attach it too) it actually looked like it could twist a bit (the wood is soft and the lever arm is relatively long). I decided to change the simple cross bar into a T shape. I took out my Kreg pocket hole jig, and bored two holes in the end of another scrap, and then fastened it to the original crossbar with glue and pocket screws. I drilled a couple of holes along its edge with a Forstner bit, and then fastened it back (a little bit lower) on the wall. Now, since it has fastening bolts along 2 feet of stud instead of just a couple of inches, it’s rock solid.
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!
The Workmate is now on the wall where I won’t trip on it.
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:
How I squeezed it back in the box.
It’s a model H90.
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.
Merry Christmas to all, and best wishes for the New Year!
I’m in the middle of the “Winter Break” at Pixar. The studio mostly empties between Christmas and New Years, and they take the time to do some improvements and maintenance to the building. I thought it might be a good idea to continue my attempt to do similar improvements in my garage/workshop area, so that’s on the top of my list this week.
This endeavor generally reminds me of the Sherlock Holmes story The Musgrave Ritual, which opens with a lament from John Watson about his roommates rather untidy habits. I’m sure that were Carmen to read the following, she’d find some striking similarities to my own habits:
Our chambers were always full of chemicals and of criminal relics which had a way of wandering into unlikely positions, and of turning up in the butter-dish or in even less desirable places. But his papers were my great crux. He had a horror of destroying documents, especially those which were connected with his past cases, and yet it was only once in every year or two that he would muster energy to docket and arrange them; for, as I have mentioned somewhere in these incoherent memoirs, the outbursts of passionate energy when he performed the remarkable feats with which his name is associated were followed by reactions of lethargy during which he would lie about with his violin and his books, hardly moving save from the sofa to the table. Thus month after month his papers accumulated, until every corner of the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which were on no account to be burned, and which could not be put away save by their owner.
The Musgrave Ritual
Carmen and I have been living in our current house for nearly twenty years, and our garage has increasingly become storage, and inefficiently used storage at that. All sorts of boxes and containers were strewn about, containing both treasure and crap in equal measure. But a few months ago, we had a problem with a leak in our water heater which created quite a mess and I’ve been trying to dedicate some time each week (mostly on the weekend) to separate the wheat from the chaff and turn the space back into a real, working space where I could tackle new projects in a more efficient manner. I call this effort “Project Virtue” in the hopes that I will develop tidier habits, and make bursts of creativity more productive.
Of course whenever you embark on a project like this, you end up with a bunch of sub-projects, and then sub-sub-projects. The hope is to prevent some kind of infinite regression like Atlas’ turtles (“it’s projects upon projects, all the way down.”) It feels that way, but I am making some headway.
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I wanted to repair my Black and Decker CMM1000 cordless electric lawnmower which seemed to have a completely dead battery that wouldn’t charge.
The batteries arrived over the weekend, and I got to work. The mower actually takes two batteries which were held together back-to-back with mounting tape. Luckily, I had some on hand, so I taped the new batteries together, and then transferred the shorting strap to place the batteries in series. A quick check with the multimeter indicated that the batteries were charged, and so I reinstalled the battery and tested out the lawnmower. Huzzah! Fired right up. I went ahead and used it to mow the front lawn. It has some pluses and minuses compared to my gas mower. It is much quieter, and the mechanism for adjusting the mow height is really nice and adjusts all the wheels simultaneously. But it is not as powerful, and I had problems using the bagging function (it’s better a simple mulching mower). I also have gotten used to my gas mower’s powered wheels, which makes it much easier to use despite both mowers weighing a similar amount.
After cutting the lawn, I also tested the charging adapter. There was a small chance that the adapter was also faulty, but it seemed to work okay. Note to myself: the charge meter only works when the safety is installed and you start the mower. It does not indicate the state of charge while charging. You should see the red led come on when charging, and it will turn green when charging is complete.
So, I popped the stack: mower is fixed. If it is going to take up space in the garage, it will at least be because it is a functioning tool.
Another sub-project was fixing the dog door in our garage. We’ve never owned a dog, but apparently one of the previous owners did. The door was fairly large-ish, and covered with a flap which had suffered over time. The net result was it was both drafty and allowed various varmints and critters (and on one occasion, a pregnant cat) to set up shop in our garage. So, I removed the hardware and found a scrap of plywood that I could cut to the right side and bolt in place over the opening.
I hit the board with a coating of Krylon exterior primer/paint, and screwed it in place. My perpetual problem of finding screws of the right size at our local Home Depot continued, but while cleaning I found my underutilized angle grinder, so the long bolts presented no real problem.
More fun than a hacksaw!
I also moved my aging Linux box to the garage, and got an inexpensive $80 LED TV from Best Buy, which I mounted using an unused TV mount from Harbor Freight.
22″ 1920×1280 TV from Best Buy, usable as a monitor
I scrounged up a wireless keyboard and mouse, and I was good to go.
I’ve still got a lot of cleaning to do, but increasingly the floor is becoming visible, trash cans are filling and being hauled away each week (probably the current bottleneck) and I’m beginning to organize tools and work more efficiently.
But… I’m also in acquisition mode, and thanks to Santa, I’ve got some new additions. I’ve been wanting to have a chop saw for quite some time. I have borrowed one from the Richmond Tool library, but having one of my own seemed like it would be useful. I’m not much of a wood worker, but it would be great to be able to do small projects like building planter boxes and workbenches. Carmen must have been paying attention, because she ended up surprising me a Dewalt DW715 12″ compound miter saw. Very nice! Of course, I lack workbench space for it, so after reading some web reviews, I drove over to Harbor Freight and got one of their Heavy Duty Mobile Miter Stands using a 20% off Super Coupon. It is pretty beefy, and has a couple of features I really like. It has large wheels, and you can actually roll it around with the saw mounted on it. The mounting brackets are actually really nice, and have a two-stage release mechanism which makes it easy to take the saw off and put it back on. Things that could be improved are that there is a significant amount of play in the supports for the rollers, but some shimming would probably help considerably. The ability to store it upright against the wall is pretty nice for space-constrained workshop areas.
Ultimately though, I know I need some additional workbench space, and I want to make at least one on rollers. I don’t want anything too sophisticated, but I do want it to be sturdy and useful. I also didn’t want to fuss with it forever, I wanted it to be a project that I could complete for modest money, with a single trip to Home Depot and a Saturday.
That brings me to an expenditure where I’m trading time for money. I decided that it would be worthwhile to acquire a pocket hole jig, and settled for the Kreg K4 Jig. I could have gone cheaper, but I think that would perhaps be false economy. The larger system is designed to do work with 2×4’s more efficiently, and includes things like the specialty clamp and vacuum adapter for dust removal.
Kreg also maintains a list of cool projects, and I found this cool Easy Build Workbench that looks pretty much like what I envisioned: 32″ x 48″ with locking casters. The only modification I am going to make is to build it taller: I want my benchtop to be at 36″. I’ll probably get some 3″ locking wheels from Harbor Freight which should mean that the 2×6″ uprights need to be 32.5″ in height. I’m also thinking of adding a power strip to one end and a place to wind a power cord.
After I get this bench done, I have a couple of other projects in mind, including a stand for my drill press (it’s not bolted to the the current stand, which is probably not a good idea), a drill press table and fence, and maybe some additional jiggery to make the Kreg more useful. I’ll probably also do some planters for our back garden, and maybe some additional home improvements. And then I can get back to my electronics and ESP8266 hacking.
I’ve also got a friend coming over on Saturday to take away some of my telescope making inventory. It dawns on me that I have lots more stuff in my garage than I will use in my lifetime, and finding new homes for a lot of it will make other people happy and will also clear up additional space for me. If we discover anything cool while digging, I’ll be sure to post about it here.
