What's on my Bench Today?

Thanks!!

The crane comes at 2pm tomorrow...and while the weather says no rain until Saturday...I'm watching some pretty freakin ugly clouds gather to the south and east . The worst part is I know that once the building is up and complete, it will never, ever rain here again!

/sigh

 

Good luck - with rain, crane, and everything else left.

After it's all finished -- at least short-term; usually one finds plenty of additional things to do over time -- would be interested if, with hindsight, you still think it made sense to do it this way, rather than maybe locating mostly used lumber, over time, so you could build it to your own (more standardized) specifications.

 

Arizona monsoon's are harsh. The rain took out the motor on my grinder, my tempering oven is shot (luckily it's just a decent toaster oven, easily replaced), my benches are warped (the new one needs a new top already!) and the wind, rain, and sun in repetition pretty much wrecked the tarp that was the 'roof' of my 'shop'. It's going to cost me another $300 to fix my grinder, and if I'd left my tooling in a usable configuration out in the weather on that pad the remainder would have been wrecked also.

It's supposed to be dropping dime sized hail on us tonight...in 100°F plus weather.

Honestly though, you're right...I'd have preferred to do it a bit differently...but I got this structure at substantially less than used lumber pricing (per the average on my Craigslist). Even tossing in the extra money for the crane tomorrow, and a few boards to fix what was warped, and all new electrical run throughout...it's still close to buying used lumber for the same size structure, only...ready to run.

I really did get a good deal .

Speaking of storms producing dime size hail...in 100°F weather...

Here's ours, on its way.



Sometimes a guy just can't catch a break! 24hrs and I'd be fine.

/sigh

 

Well! Here I am 24hrs plus later, lol. It's been a stupidly busy day...but I got a LOT done.



The crane arrived at 2:30pm (half an hour late). When he came out to look at the job yesterday, he expressed a serious amount of concern...telling us that the $250 only covered 30 minutes, and he was positive this would be an hour and a half job.


8 minutes after arrival...


14 minutes after arrival...


21 minutes and on his way. I've done more than my share of rigging work in the past, lol...this was nothing. The best part though, was when he asked how we got them down in the first place. When we told him 'by hand'...his face was priceless .


You'll notice in the last two pictures that there's a 2x10 screwed into the side of this roof beam. We actually managed to split the board while loading it. The 2x10 supported it until we got it on the roof, at which point we jacked it up and supported it with straps. Once the two roof pieces were put together, I drilled six 1/2" holes through both beams, and used 1/2" bolts with large washers to secure them to each other. That roof isn't going anywhere .


Here you see the roof in its initial placement. The center beams are bolted together, and the cut shingles have been sealed with Henry roofing tar. The roof is all one piece for all intents and purposes. Also (not shown), I've secured the back face of the roof section to the top plate of the wall with 2"x6" screw straps. Obviously these will hold the roof down to the wall...but they will also flex some when we lift the front of the roof up 16" or so to fit the header plate in. This will give the roof a 1" per foot rearward pitch. We don't get appreciable snow here (though, surprisingly it does snow on occasion), and while the rain is destructive it dries too quickly to rot a roof over time. The biggest benefit to the pitched roof is internal space for storage on shelves, lol.


Tarred roof! I hate that stuff. No matter HOW careful you are...it still ends up all over you.


Hey, look! My tools are covered!! It was supposed to rain ALL weekend. Bet it doesn't even sprinkle now .

Anyhow...tomorrow will be lifting the front of the roof...putting in the header sections, and finishing the skin. After that I'll be wiring the inside for both my 120v and 240v circuits, reinstalling the insulation, and putting up the drywall. From there it's trenching 140' to run a new 10/2 supply from the breaker box on the shop to the breaker box at the house....and I'll FINALLY be done!

Then we can set up the shop, and get back to the bladesmithing .

 

Yeah, who needs those boring custom kitchen knives when you can build custom workshops?! Put me in line for one please. As soon as you start offering custom workshops with worldwide shipping, I'll be there, waiting for it

 

I have workshop envy

 

Well done! I bet you're progressively relieved the hardest parts are done (I hope). How will you be lifting the front of the roof?

 

Lol, I could do it...but I don't think there's many people in the world who could afford to actually pay me enough to make me do it...much less the shipping .

Trust me brother...prior to this building, I had workshop envy of everyone.

Thank you my friend! The most dangerous part is over for sure. I think it's going to tie for 'hardest' with hand digging 140', 2' deep from the house breaker box to the new breaker box I'm putting up in the shop, lol.

As for lifting the roof...why, I used floor jacks!!

Here's today's pictures


This is the header. You can't see it well in this picture, but it's actually two sections (I cut it when we removed it from the building initially).


I was serious when I said floor jacks. Low profile aluminum racing jacks are super useful. I'm constantly finding ways to put them to use that they are uniquely (and weirdly) suited for. Anyhow, the roof lifted cleanly, and the header pieces slipped right in.




All set in place. The previous owner just had the roof resting on it, with nothing holding either the header to the wall, or the roof to the header...other than gravity. I attached the header to the wall with four 1/2" bolts and large washers (shown above), and the roof to the header with four screw straps. Again...that roof isn't going anywhere.


Coming together!!


I've spent the last almost two weeks (has it only been two weeks??) this drenched from about 6:30am, to past dark...every day lol. You can't see it, but even my freaking pants are saturated. I start each day with a shirt on, but it's so quickly drenched as to be useless. By the time I come inside for a shower, I'm usually a mud covered ball of grunge, lol.


My two helpers, Mario and Luigi!


Got the outside skin on before the storms hit. I can't find that little piece for the upper right corner, so I'll just make a new one tomorrow. All those circles on the upper part are washers. That wood was SO warped, that the wood screws would just rip through it and not pull it down. The washers cinched it down nicely.




Speaking of rain...I had to put all of the interior walls and insulation inside for the night...which is a huge pain since I've just got to drag it back out again to work on things. I hate...hatehatehate working with insulation as well, lol. Seriously.

Oh, and I actually have a knifemaking related picture to share! My wood came in from K&G today. $170 worth of stabilized claro walnut and buckeye burl .


As soon as I get things in the shop worked out to a semi usable condition, I'll go ahead and polish up the faces to get a look at what it's going to turn out like. I think it's all going to be rather beautiful to be honest.

 

Floor jacks?.?.?..... Frickin' Brilliant... Big fan of the wood, as well!!!

 

Cris, you've been a busy, BUSY man! Looking fwd to seeing more of your finished pieces!

 

Thank you gentlemen!

I spent part of yesterday taking a break. I moved a lot of the building parts (sheetrock, interior plywood, the wood from the floors) to the back near the building, but other than that didn't do a lot. Today however, I finalized my plan for the electrical, which amounts to a new 100 amp subpanel at my building with five circuits (three 30 amp, one 20 amp, and one 15 amp). Fed by these will be four 120v internal 2 gang boxes (4 plugs), two 120v internal 1 gang boxes (2 plugs), one 120v external 1 gang box, three 240v outlets (grinder, heat treat oven, and an extra), and light switches to control each bank of four 54w 46" T5 bulbs. There's also one external switch to turn the outdoor floodlight on.

The best part of all of this? I'm not a freakin electrician, lol. I mean, I can replace a bad switch or outlet...but wiring the entire thing is a bit new to me. Luckily I've done enough new home construction (mostly plumbing), that I know what looks right...and some reading and common sense covered the rest. When the time comes to install the subpanel and such, I'll be having an electrician friend take a look at the whole thing before energizing it. I'm all about do it yourself...but I'm also all about not burning down my shop. Until then, I'll run it all 120v off the same extension cord I've been using up to this point.

Anyhow, here's a couple semi-pointless pictures just to keep up with the theme, lol.


Here you can see some of the flood mess from last night's storm (and my cheer squad while I work...mostly they just chew grass all day, but it's surprisingly motivational). Over 2" in about 4hrs. We didn't even catch the brunt of it...other parts of town had nearly double what we did. Half the freeways were closed due to literally having as much as 8' of standing water...and I don't mean in underpasses.


Here's a picture from after the water levels subsided some. We have serious monsoons EVERY year...and I've never seen anything like this.


Someone help??



We have light switches!!




And power, lol.

Anyhow, tomorrow I hope to get all of the electrical finished up to the point of the subpanel. From there I'll connect it all to the existing 120v power, and hopefully get the insulation and sheetrock mostly up. After that I'll be able to get back to knives for awhile (if in a limited capacity) while I science out the new supply run .

 

holy crap! i didnt see any other pics of that flooding. thats on the 10?

 

Yes, google image '43rd and I10 flood' and you'll see plenty.

 

damn! thats cool. haven't seen any cars get flooded like that since i lived down in tucson hahahha

 

Yeah, it's been pretty nasty down here the last couple days.

 

I feel your pain, Cris. A couple of weeks ago it rained so hard here, what usually takes me about a half hour to drive to work, took me almost two to get to work and about two and a half hours to get home. Completely drowned the freeways.

 

Yeah, this hasn't been a lot of fun, for sure. Normally I absolutely LOVE the rain...but putting this shop up has made it impossible for me to appreciate it, lol.

I've done a lot of cussing, for sure.

Anyhow, I had to take yesterday off due to the storm blowing crap into my left eye, and it getting semi infected. I had to remove my left contact (I'm pretty much blind without those, btw), and it basically felt like someone packed my eyeball with salt, then stirred it up with an ice pick. Not pleasant.



That said, today it felt a bit better, soooooo...I made it out to the shop to get some more done.


180° view. All that was left here was to run three more 120v outlets, and install the lights.


My last outlet going together, lol. This was actually something of an accomplishment considering that my depth perception with just one eye sort of sucks.


And...light! It even runs off the switch panel as it's supposed to. Tomorrow morning I'll hook up the other two, along with the outdoor security lamp. By midday I'm hoping to have the entire shop running off of an extension cord temporarily. This will get me back making knives in a limited manner (as effectively as I was before anyway), until I can work out the details of the subpanel and 240v setup. Everything is wired in though (120v and 240v)...s0 I'm happy at this point. If things go as I hope...I might even be able to get a knife or two thermal cycled tomorrow evening .

We'll see how things work out!

 

Yes Sir!!!

 

Any work over the weekend?

 

ump

Absolutely!

As a matter of fact...I was able to get some knife related work done tonight.


I broke down the whole 14lb box of buckeye burl and claro walnut to 40 grit, lol. What a freakin mess! I wanted to get it done first though so I could clean it up...as wood dust and hot sparks from metal grinding don't mix well. I really need a dust extraction system lol. You can't see it here, but the dust around the grinder is an inch deep, and there's a layer of it on everything in the shop.

Some results...




You can't really see the chatoyance in the pictures...but that walnut's some pretty stuff. Even stabilized it'll need finished with tru-oil, due to the open grain...but man it's pretty. Some of the most active walnut I've ever seen.



As far as the shop goes...


I did get the temporary power hooked up. It seems to be handling everything ok, though I did trip the breaker tonight. It's been tripped a thousand times though, so it probably needs replaced anyhow. I'm going to be running like this for awhile, since the cost to run a 100 amp line to a subpanel on my building is going to be about $500 or so, and I wasn't quite prepared for that expense. I'd like to get it done in the next few months however. This is all that was running things before, so it'll have to continue for just a bit longer.


Insulation!! On the south and east walls. I did those walls first so I could put the limited amount of drywall I had on hand up in the areas I needed it most...which were...you guessed it, those two walls.




You can see in the first picture that I'm going a step beyond the previous owner with the insulation. He only insulated to the top plate for the walls (right above the light). I'm going to the roof, since my intent will be to eventually insulate every square inch of the building. Because of this I ran a little short on the walls, as you can see in the last couple pictures. That's ok though, as I only had enough drywall for the south and east walls anyhow. I'll do the rest as I can pick up used insulation on Craigslist.


My youngest helper. This is what he does immediately after school. Strips to his underwear and a robe, then comes outside to help. Every day I have to tell him to go put normal clothes back on, lol.


Hey! Drywall!! The washers were to make sure it pulled up tight to crush the insulation, without the screws pulling through. I later took them out and put the screws back in without them.


I got really tired really quickly of moving that $50/sheet 3/4" plywood around, lol. Each one of them weighs 80lbs, and I swear I had to move them a hundred times throughout this process.




Oh, look at that...as usable knife shop!! I still have to put up some cabinets, and shelving for storage etc...along with finishing the insulation, a couple lights and a ceiling fan, and drywall. But overall, it's done and usable now.

ump

Oh, one more thing really quickly...



I thought I'd share the two main reasons why I call the place 'Scorpion Forge'. These two were in the firebricks I carried back inside (you can see them above my heat treat oven in the last picture). I found them AFTER I carried them in. This is the first reason. The second, is that when I find them, they die by 2300°F torch.

Scorpion. Forge.