Thursday, August 30, 2012

Making an assembly table


I have built wood projects on the floor of the garage, in the driveway and on plywood sheets on a pair of sawhorses, but I have never owned an assembly table. While planning this out I thought of all the problems I have experienced while putting together a project. I must have walked one-hundred miles over the years just in my garage looking for tools, sandpaper and such. I needed drawers in the table to hold router bits, sandpaper, sanders and finishing products. I have already built a cabinet on rollers that holds all fasteners, thirty different kinds of screws, five different kinds of nails, staple guns, screw guns, pin guns and all my clamps.   I just needed a table to roll that cabinet up to. I told my wife we needed a better chest of drawers in our bedroom. After we bought one, I took the old dresser and started to build a table frame around it. I also wanted a large floor shelf to store large tools. I painted that shelf before I installed it with the same pattern I painted the garage floor with. I then attached an  electrical box so I would have only one extension cord in the garage floor. Remembering how hard it was to hold down a large flat board and try to sand it, or carve it at the same time, I imbedded a four feet T-Track into the top of the table to hold boards flat in place. I bought several different types of hold down attachments for the T-Track. That is most likely the biggest benefit to this table over other work tables. I also inserted the top of the table into a frame so I can easily replace it when it gets too banged up. Add two wood vices and we have an assembly table. 




Wednesday, August 8, 2012

GARAGE REMODEL

Our garage was built in the early 1900's. The cement was made on site and includes everything from sticks to different sizes of rocks. There is no border foundation. The entire floor is only 3" to 4" thick. Over the years, the building has settled and the floor has cracked in several places. The center has cracked 1/2" wide and the center is higher then the corners. Any contractor would have recovered the floor with another 4" of cement and sand, but that would be way too expensive for us. Every recommended floor repair was $600.00+ and none of them were recommended for a floor this damaged.  I decided to keep the project under $300.00. I used various crack fillers and I sanded the floor with a 4" belt sander. The floor was given six coats of bonding sealer, epoxy paint and a clear flaked top coat.

WALLS and CEILING: The entire garage is made of bare rough cut redwood, which I love, but it made the room very dark. I painted the walls and ceiling bright green. This was a three month project. There were 23 broken windows that needed to be replaced. When I removed the glass, some frames fell apart because of wood rot. The frames were rebuilt and sealed with epoxy. All that is left is to call an Electriction to rewire the room.

BEFORE:
AFTER: