Remember Frank and his dresser which inspired the look and feel of the doors I’m building? Frank’s done a lot of cool things in his life, and a few years ago, he built some big crazy tables. One thing led to another, and at one point, Mary was going to build the tables that Frank would design, and everyone would die old, rich, and happy. That hasn’t happened, but Mary gave it her best shot. She owns a really nice set of tools and, between her and Bill, managed to get some very nice projects built. But Bill is gone, and the projects dried up with the economy, so her tools started gathering a lot of dust and a little rust.
Along comes Reid.
My own power tools are 30 years old and, when we sold Westford, I tried (halfheartedly) to get rid of them, because Mary was going to give me hers. I got no takers on Craigslist, so I put mine in Chuck. But the day after they spray-foamed the basement, the new shop was mine to move into, and I got started.
The day we took the beams down, we also moved my big bench into the new basement. This baby is 10 feet long, 42″ wide, and 2 1/2″ thick, solid maple, and as flat as the bowling lane it used to be. It weighs 300# and I used to just lift it up and put it on my car.
No more. Chris and I moved it to the new house, and we set it up in the northeast corner of the basement, away from the walls, so I could work at it from all sides.
I went to the Mill and took apart Mary’s table saw, loaded it in the truck, and carted it home. It’s a Jet cabinet saw with a big motor, nice iron, and a big table and fence. Some assembly was required and, after so many months without a shop, I went at it with a level and a micrometer. I forget what was the first thing I cut with it, but it felt really good.
Most of Mary’s power tools
That weekend, I took the trailer over and loaded most of the rest of Mary’s tools. Jointer, planer, 2 sanders, a band saw, drill press, mortiser, compound, dust collector … I pretty much cleaned her out, and it’s all first-rate stuff.
Thanks, Mary, you’re a peach. I promise I will make you proud.
This is why I put a double door in the basement
Getting all this heavy stuff on the trailer was a project, but it was really just a question of ramps, grunts, and a dolly, and I got it all loaded and tied down in a couple hours. Nothing fell off on the way home and no cops stopped me. There were still a couple hours of daylight left to unload and, with chains and the tractor, it wasn’t hard. It’s times like these that I’m glad to have that double door in the basement.
Stu, the storage unit, has been full of my big metal tools since April. When we moved from Westford, it took 3 trips and 5 days of work to move them into Stu. To get them into the basement, I’d planned to use the beams and the A-frame hoist to move them from Stu onto the trailer, and then use Bernie’s excavator to get them from the trailer onto the beams, and then roll them into the basement. I was gung-ho when I got started, but I lost interest when I realized it was going to be at least as much work as it was the first time.
I’m too old for this.
Lifting the bandsaw out of Stu
So I had Morrisville Lumber’s big delivery truck meet me at Stu on a Wednesday morning. I’d queued everything up the day before and got there early to move the beams into place so we could roll the heavy equipment onto them. From there, the truck’s hoist could take over. With Ashton’s help, everything went smoothly. We put the beams on the truck with the equipment, strapped it all down, and headed home.
Have a safe trip
This is waaaay easier than last time
Off the truck and onto the driveway
The ground at the house was muck, so we decided not to drive the big truck down to the basement entrance. Instead, we unloaded the equipment onto the driveway and used the tractor to move the safe and the bandsaw into the basement. We put the beams in front of the double door and moved the mill onto the beams with the excavator. By now, I have a pretty deft touch about moving these tools and, with a nice collection of pipe diameters at hand, we transferred the weight from the beams to the basement without messing up the threshold, and then took a breather. We moved the lathe the same way and there were handshakes all around.
Moving the safe to the cellar
Moving the lathe to the cellar
With enough careful planning, it all went smoothly, but the truth is that I was amped on adrenaline the whole time. Somewhere along the line, I noticed that my hands were a bloody mess, with 6 badly scraped knuckles that started hurting as soon as the excitement wore off.
Mounting the J-head on the mill
Over the next couple of days, I rolled the lathe and mill to their permanent locations and winched the J-head up to mount it on the mill. I converted all the plugs to the ‘correct’ NEMA types for 3-phase, but when I turned on the breaker, the basement lit up, and I followed my nose to the smoking short. Finally, with a temporary 3-phase connection in place, I used the mill to fabricate a box cover to mount the male receptacle where the rotary converter feeds 3-phase power to the wall.
(Thus proving that the chicken-and-egg problem is much easier than the chicken-or-egg problem)
It feels great to be able to make a mess in a real shop again.