Simple Garage Report

Today I did nothing special but it killed a lot more time than I planned. You’ve been there too, no? At issue: the shop is hopelessly wrecked. Winter is coming. Time to get my head out of my ass and prepare for indoor projects. This is one small corner of my pigpen/shop. Too cluttered to get anything done.

I decided to throw up some shelves to impose order on chaos. I’m lazy and cheap. I found these brackets in a bucket in a barn years ago. I’ve been keeping them forever. Might as well use them (there’s a little rust but who cares).

They looked right for 6″ nominal wood so I picked up a couple 2″x 6″s. Total cost; like $11 or something.

Total fuckin’ disaster! The brackets were 1/2″ too wide for a nominal 2″ x 6″.

Fer fuck’s sake!

As an aside, I like to use plain wood for shop “fixtures”. I rarely, if ever, paint or varnish shit. I just leave it there because varnish or paint would be “final”. Half the time I decide to re-purpose whatever I built at first into whatever I happen to need now. I’ll toss up a bench or a bracket or a wall out of a plain dimension lumber, and years later tear it down to build something else out of the materials. Often, the Mark II version of my materials use will serve for years and yet again I’ll tear it down and use what’s left for another thing. Each time the chunk of wood gets more haggard and worn (and smaller)… but if it’ll serve the purpose I’ll use it down to the last molecule. I don’t know why I’m like this, it’s not like wood is going extinct.

Finally, it winds up in the wood stove; which is why it wasn’t varnished or painted decades prior. There’s clearly a mental imbalance in refusing to treat wood in 2019 because I may burn it in 2030. But… I cannot deny my true nature.

I have a shelf I made for an air compressor. I made it in a different state, in a different time zone, for an air compressor that died so long ago I barely remember it. The shelf followed me through several locations before it became a chicken coop door. Then it was a feed bag storage area. Then it was a nesting box. Then, it became heat. That’s five uses. Hippies bitching about recycling got nothin’ on a cheap redneck!

Why I do this is a mystery to even me. Wood isn’t that expensive.

But it’s relevant to today’s project. I needed brackets for a 6″ (nominal) shelf and buying a couple new metal Chinesium brackets just never entered my mind. The cost would be a couple bucks a bracket and it would save some time. Honest to God it never occurred to me.

Instead I found a chunk of rough cut wood; cast off from some other thing I’m building (more on that later).

I love my thickness planer. I ran the rough cut dirty old POS through it several times (probably dulling blades that cost more than the wood’s worth). It came out, if not pretty, at least not hideous.

Then I ripped both sides on a table saw. End result? I’d “resawn” a block of wood into a couple linear feet of something resembling what you’d buy at Home Depot or whatever. I’d also burned an hour to make something worth a few bucks. Dumbass! There’s something with my brain that just feels like I’m always in an economic depression; maybe it’s something you pick up in your youth and it stays with you?

Geometry. It ain’t rocket science. Metal brackets are for pussies.

Then, on the wall it went. As is my weirdness, I hung it up there with the minimum of Torx screws. Someday I’l be in urgent need of a 2″ x 6″ and my shelf will be sacrificed to the Gods of “Too Lazy To Drive To The Lumber Yard”. So I’ll want the minimum number of holes in my “new” raw material.

Which reminds me, am I the only one who loves Torx screws? You can back them out of damn near anything? How did I survive the horrible dark age of nails?

It’s amazing how much order you can get from 16′ linear feet of crude shelving.

None of this is rocket science or even interesting. I just know it makes me  happy when I see some other dude’s workshop all clean and orderly (I find it inspiring). I made it so there’s a tiny bit less chaos on the planet and I want to pass the joy on to you. Hope ya’ like it.

A.C.

P.S. In case you’re wondering, every square inch of the rest of the shop still looks like a tornado sucked up a county dump and took a shit through a blender. Heck, for the work surface “after” photo, I only managed to clear  6′ of the 8′ field of view. (Some of those tiny bits of wood are scrap walnut… I may need ’em someday.) But who cares, every cleaned cubic foot of workspace is a good thing. Good luck to everyone else in their battles with creeping clutter.