build a workshop

I brought my old table saw from the states when we moved to Australia, but I didn’t have a 240v motor for it. A few months ago I finally got the thing put together and bolted on a new motor.

Ah, the sweet whine of wood being ripped to width…

I’ve begun assembling the bits and pieces of my little Taig lathe. So far, I’ve the lathe itself lapped and assembled, and I’ve bugun making a mounting board for it.

The biggest short-term challenge is machining an adaptor to let me use one of the motors I bought to power it. It has a non-standard stub shaft with a slot in it, so I need to make the adaptor so I can put the Taig drive pulley on it, but I can’t machine the adaptor until I have the lathe working.

I intend to rig up a tempory drive motor with the pulley chucked up on my power drill, just long enough to make the needed part.

Bought another benchtop drill press, far superior to the $80AU piece of crap I bought last year. The old one vibrated so much I was afraid it would break drill bits (it did) or even vibrate itself right off the bench (it didn’t, but only because I clamped it down).

I got disgusted with it and bought a display model of a 13” machine, 3/4HP for just $265AU. I measured a runout of 0.004” on the Morse taper in the spindle, so it’s not a high-end machine by any means, but it’s a darn sight better than what I had.

I’ve decided I am not a wealthy enough man to buy cheap tools; if I really need the tool, I’ll buy the best I can afford.

Patched holes in the corrugated iron roof of the shed. Next up: stapling the reflective insulation to the rafters.

The main thing keeping me out of my workshop has been the summer heat. It has a shallow sloped corrugated iron roof, and the Australian sun heats it up very efficiently.

Today I bought reflective building wrap (“sarking”) to cut down on the heat radiated from the iron roof. Radiated heat is the main culprit in warm, dry weather, so I’m hoping this will do the job.

I’ve got four banks of storage shelves up now, and by putting boxes in them I’ve managed to create aisles where I can walk nearly unimpeded. More progress.

I have a wonderful space for a workshop (about 50 sq. meters), but the problem is it’s mostly full of boxes of stuff, furniture, and junk. Some are my tools collection, some are from previous tenant(s).

Today I started moving the latter stuff into a different storage area. A small amount of progress.