[TheForge] Small shop questions

[Ries Niemi]

Well, I admit I am kind of a hog when it comes to shop space- as in, I 
have more than most people.
I recently built a second shop building for fabricating large stuff, as 
well as holding some of the tools that are standalone in their use, to 
open up some space in the main shop.

As far as tool holddowns, what what we did in this new building is I 
ordered a dozen pieces of 1" plate, 12" square. I then drilled and 
tapped 4 holes in each plate- 3/4" threads.
These plates were set flush with the concrete floor when it was poured, 
tied together with 1" rebar halfway down thru the thickness of the 
floor. The 1" rebar was welded together into a  6' grid, very strong, 
so all the plates are tied together electrically- ground one, and all 
of them are grounded, so when welding large items, it just has to touch 
any plate and it is grounded. And the 4 holes in each plate, all on the 
same centers, mean we can weld a vise, or a hossfeld bender, or any 
other tool that needs to stay put, to a matching base plate with the 
same hole pattern, and bolt it down at any of 12 locations in the room.
We also build a lot of bigger sculptures, and can now use the entire 
building as a jig for welding them up- by bolting pieces of large angle 
iron to our floor plates, and then clamping the work to them. In the 
old shop, we would just rotohammer bolts into the floor, and grind them 
flush when the project was done. Hopefully the new building will have 
less of a metal polka dot floor.

I agree headroom is important- this new building is 16' at the low end, 
22 at the high end. With 2 rollup doors, 12' x 12' each, so you can do 
donuts with the forklift in and out of the building.

Someone mentioned quartz  halogen lights- I have been using these for 
years in the shop as extra bright lighting over workbenches and tables- 
I just buy the 500 watt outdoor fixtures from home depot or lowes- they 
usually cost under 15 bucks, including your first bulb. They wear out 
after a few years- there is a solder joint between the socket and the 
wire that is just not resolderable , so I toss em and buy new ones- but 
they put out a lot of light, are aimable, and cheap. Hard to break, 
too, unlike flourescent tubes. Voice of experience, there. Nothing 
quite like running a forklift into a flourescent tube. Its snowing in 
July.

ries