Shop, Garage, & Dirt Floor Tricks....

MetalCraftSolved

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 20, 2010
Location
NC
Bet you spend a lot of time in the garage, like me.

Bet you've stumbled onto random things that get it done.

Share! Simple to Advanced. :rockon: o_O




I saw a spider running across the floor earlier and I smashed it with my good ole Carolina boot. I bet a thousand tiny baby spiders ran out across the floor. When I failed at stomping them, I grabbed the quick flame and changed their temperature. Used it on ants a few times. Seems like if you get close to 5 inches from them, there done.


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Tires come and go around here. I have to have them in the garage so I can groove them in my spare time. I stack them on rollers and this helps a lot when I need to create space and move things around.


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I like to keep anything I can off the floor so its not hard to sweep. To create shelf space I try to hang rarely used things in places I can only reach with a ladder.


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I've got a home-fabbed box fan made from 2x12 and an old roof mounted vent fan. I used an old extension cord and a wall switch to control and power it. I also have it sitting in the same spot all the time and it blows out of one of my shop doors so when I sweep, it also blows as much dust outside as possible. Having somewhat rough concrete in my shop, every little bit helps.

I like to hang as much stuff up as I can too. My weedeater (first thing that comes to mind) is hanging from the rafters in the shop.

I took a piece of Schedule 40 pipe about 5 feet long and laid across the top side of the rafters, in the corners where the inside braces meet, and use that to hang my chain hoist. My shop is 32x50, but those rafters can really support a lot of weight. Spreading it across half a dozen or more of them helps.


If you're like me, and from time to time you wash out the floor in your shop AND you have refrigerators and freezers for all of the frozen woodland critters that you've killed, then you know that you'll kill the appliances if you're not careful. I have the fridges and freezers sitting up on 4x4s to keep them off the floor. Simple, yet effective!
 
Yeah, it must be nice to have an open ceiling. I have to do this sometimes with rolled tubing.
I hang my weed eaters too. Hang them from the garage door tracks.

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I work for a Retail Display Company. When I was a designer here, I designed a display for Stihl that has various hanger component attachments to hang their different tools on in the store. Now as Production manager I got to sift through the Scratch and dent pile of parts and assembled a display in my garage that holds damn near every yard tool and has shelves for other items as well.
One of these:

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It takes up about a 3'x3' corner of my garage.
 
I figured this thread would bring up ideas like that. Simple to build and super effective. Something like that would keep all my small lawn equipment tight and secure in the V-nose of my enclosed trailer. Then when I go ride dirt bikes it would double to hold helmets, boots, knee pads, etc, etc, etc.

Cool stuff :D
 
keepin along the lines of simple, one of the best things i've done for my shop floor/etc is a garden sprayer filled with purple stuff, works great, to clean up spills also works to degrease parts

scared to death!!!!!
 
One of the things i started doing for the past year on the concrete floor is getting concrete cleaner amd scrubbing it with a shop broom then spraying it out, washes the dust out and gets the oil stains to a lighter color. Just makes laying down nice
 
Going to throw this one out, my all-time favorite - "Iredell County Creeper" I.E. cardboard from a large box.
I've got a gravel driveway at home, and the Iredell County Creeper is fantastic. Plus it gives enough clearance to get under vehicles that I can't with the regular creeper.
 
Using some rebar as a handle, we poured some concrete blocks in a small, rectangular mold and made floor scrubbers out of them. It beats the hell out of using your feet to grind oil dry in a mess on your floor. I also found that I could get most of the color to come up out of the floor as well.
 
Anybody else ever weld jack stands on a base plate to keep them from digging in a rock driveway? Works wonders! I'll also roll the floor jack on something to keep it from digging in the ground.
 
Anybody else ever weld jack stands on a base plate to keep them from digging in a rock driveway? Works wonders! I'll also roll the floor jack on something to keep it from digging in the ground.


Mine are not welded but that is what I have to do all the time. Working outside sucks ass sometimes. Damn floor jack is a bitch to roll on big gravel. I have some 4x8 sheets of 1/4" tuff ass plastic that I use as a "floor" when I work on my rig. I am about to do a mega set up for a SOA and shackle reversal.
 
A few companies make these but I made my own a few years ago. A 10" long piece 2" .120 wall tube split in half and taped back together at one end works great to hold little short pieces of tube in your notcher vice that are normally too short to clamp. I've done all the way down to 1.5" long tip to tip.
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I recently had to cut a bunch of 3/8" plate on my plasma table and quickly found that it was too heavy to handle by my self in the shop. Fortunately I had an old air bumper jack laying around that a buddy had given me. I cut the rear wheels off and replaced them with a heavy caster and changed the front into two legs with fixed casters, then built a set of forks in place of the lift arms. Works great and will lift 500 lbs up to 38" like a feather. It made transferring 4'x4' sheets from my plate rack to the table a cakewalk.
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Homemade 12" disc sander. Been using it without trouble for years.
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As you can see I'm cheap. I've been doing a ton of sheet metal work lately and needed a sheet metal brake to bend 1/8" steel and aluminum. My small brake works great bit its only 40" wide.
So I built this. The piece pictured is 4ft of .125 aluminum. Bends it without any work at all. I've done 24" wide of 3/16" aluminum in it. I built it to have an adjustable bend radius.
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Sent from the MarsFab Off Road mobile response unit.
 
good call on the flap wheels.


Going to throw this one out, my all-time favorite - "Iredell County Creeper" I.E. cardboard from a large box.


...........Even better, the white plastic cardboard they use to wrap stuff on pallets. It's 4' wide, waterproof, you can wipe oil or grease off it, and it's slippery so it's easy to slide in and out from under the vehicle, it works better on dirt and grass, gravel will pop holes through it.
 
My garage is slowly turning into a Fab shop :rockon: I had so much crap sitting on the floor, I decided to build this weird little temporary shelf. Material cost like 12 bucks at Lowes. Turns out it holds all kinds of crazy stuff. I think I might end up building something similar out of steel.


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I have tall ceilings in my garage so I built a 4'x10' hanging shelf above the garage door. Put seasonal stuff up there that only come down once a year or so.

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