Posts from the ‘Tools’ Category

After the sale of my other  insanely expensive hobby, a 1967 Chevelle set up for 1/8 mile drag racing, we decided that we wanted to use the cash to start finishing out our basement to add a guest bedroom and a bonus/play room for our expanding family.   My shop currently occupies a large portion of what we are going to finish so the plan was to move the machinery to the single bay of the garage vacated by the chevelle.   Here’s a befor shot during the pre-move chaos.

Part of the space will be retained as my bench room, so the first step was to bust a hole in the wall and frame up for a double door opening connecting the two spaces.

Then, like all projects, it inevitably bread more projects.  First, I decided that the hodge podge of a dust collection system I had previously  was not worth moving and I wanted to re-plumb the whole system in 6″ sewer and drain pipe.  During this process it became painfully obvious that my old 1.5 HP bag type dust collector was not going to be able to make the length of runs I had planned.  So, while not in the budget, I went ahead and purchased a new Penn State 2.5 HP cyclone unit and installed that as well.  I also added a bank of base cabinets for some much needed storage and did some minor wiring for all the 220V equipment.  Here are some shots of the finished space.  A little messy with another couple projects already in process.

Here’s a shot of what will eventually become the adjacent bench room after a separating wall is constructed just to the right of the window to the right of the bench.