For background: my father worked as an engineer for a paper company in northern Maine his whole career. Technically, the company retired before he did. At some point during the clearout at the end, he wound up inheriting a pile of modular metal shelving that had been in one of the mill storerooms. At his old place, most of it was set up in a storage building (the same one Angus the Wonder Truck used to be in), the rest in the basement.

Today we got around to setting it up in the loft at the VAB, but before we could do that, there was a slight problem.

This is what happens when the vertical panels of your steel modular shelving system are 84 inches tall, and your garage loft has an 80-inch ceiling.

We had 12 of those to cut. So that was fun!

In the process of handing them upstairs, I discovered that someone in the old Great Northern Paper storeroom had added a couple of embellishments to one of the uprights. This one was particularly unexpected:

The other... less so.

Evidently this particular employee had a bone to pick with the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers Union. Two interesting facts about this:

1) PACE only existed for a few years, from 1999 to 2005; it was formed by a merger of two earlier unions and then merged with the United Steel Workers (which now has a colossally complicated name that is still somehow abbreviated "USW").

2) This appears to be one of those custom return-address labels various charities offer in return for a donation. I can only imagine the bemusement of whoever had to fulfil that order.

Anyway, we had already taken the shelves upstairs with the hoist, so once we got the uprights up there, it was time to start putting stuff together.

Remember how I mentioned these shelves used to be in a storeroom in the mill? Some of the shelf labels are still there. Since we had the Kroil handy in case any of the bolts were seized, I couldn't resist when I noticed one of the labels.

(For context, Never-Seez® is a line of lubricants/corrosion protectants, while Kroil® is a very effective penetrating oil, the main purpose of which is to free up seized fasteners. They're not quite the same class of product, but sort of adjacent.)

This was as far as we got today. Progress was slowed a little by the fact that someone had bolted a bunch of the modular cleats, which are supposed to just be held together with sliding pins, in place on a couple of the panels, and we had to take them all apart before we could get the shelves into the positions we wanted. Ultimately, there will be five bays in either direction, mostly covering two of the walls. One more session ought to have them complete, at which point we'll start moving stuff up there and finding places for it.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

The other day I watched Adam Savage's most recent shop reorg on Tested and it was pretty fun watching him geek out about his new shelving.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Before we put up the last couple of bays on the long wall, we installed the first piece of the conduit run that will eventually go around the bathroom to the new outlet for the water heater.

Next time we'll probably either finish that, or start moving stuff upstairs.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

It's the smallest one we could find, a mere 2.5 gallons, which isn't a lot of water, but it's plenty for hand washing in a shop that rarely has more than two people in it. It has wifi capabilities and can be controlled from a phone app, but since a) that's a silly thing to do to a water heater and b) there is no wifi in the VAB--for that matter, there's no cell service about three-quarters of the time--those functions are turned off.

The nicest thing about having a tiny water heater just on the other side of the wall from the sink is that the hot water arrives at the sink immediately. I'm used to waiting a good 30 seconds for it to reach my bathroom at home, but in the VAB it takes... maybe three?

Note, lest anyone worry: The electrical arrangement shown here is temporary, and it's only plugged in when we're there. Since the layout of the place means that we had to install it in the one corner of the building where there aren't way more electrical outlets than anyone could ever need, we have to add one, and the best way to do that is to run conduit all the way around the outside of the bathroom. It'll be on the wall above the heater, and will have its own switch and indicator light to make the building startup/shutdown checklist easier. (The water to upstairs has to be turned off when we leave for Reasons™, so we have to be able to shut off the water heater as part of the process as well.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

With that done, we turned our attention to running the conduit and pulling the wires needed to install the new electrical outlet the bathroom water heater needs.

Here's the homebrew rig we put together to supply the wires. The existing box we're jumping off from is kind of hidden by the shelves at this camera angle. Those are 12-gauge conductors, which are fairly heavy and quite stiff, which made them kind of a pain to pull. Black is "hot", white is neutral (the return run needed to make the circuit work), green is ground.

Note that we needed 21 feet of each color and those are 500-foot spools. It's the better value. :)

Conduit run around the top of the bathroom in progress. The new conduit is the one right against the wall; the other one is original and goes through the wall on the far side of the door to supply the light in the bathroom. Note that the last horizontal section, around the corner, isn't installed yet and the wire are hanging out. Those elbows were a massive PITA, which really highlighted why the original builders just bent their conduit instead. Sadly, we don't have a conduit bender.

Test positioning of the box, with all the conduit except the final vertical section in place. It has to be at least that high up the all to hit the wooden structure behind the metal cladding (note the row of screws giving away where it is). We were a little worried that would be too high for the fairly short cord on the heater, but it proved to be OK. There won't be much slack (which is good, really), but there should be plenty of space to plug it in without any tension on the connection.

Conduit complete. Unfortunately this is as far as we got, since the tools needed to do the actual wiring were elsewhere today. Next time we'll be able to install the switch and outlet here, tie the wiring into the existing outlet at the other end, and button everything up, at which point we can get rid of that extension cord you can see in the test-fit photo.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Lining up all these bolts in heavy, awkwardly-shaped pieces of steel was a pain in the butt, but we got it together in the end. Then we had to stand it up.

Fortunately, we had the loft hoist!

Standing it up this way was a bit of an adventure, because as it came upright it wanted to slide back, and keeping it from crashing into the wall and damaging something was tricky, but we accomplished it! (Note the C-clamps, which were there to keep the rope from sliding to one end or the other and unbalancing the load.)

Once fully assembled, stood up, and then raised to its full height, with a trolley and chainfall lift installed, it's an impressively substantial structure.

You wouldn't think two crippled old men could build such a thing by themselves, but we did it. Mind you, it probably took us six times as long as it would've for a crew of young go-getters, but even so.

Another angle.

With this piece of equipment, we'll be able to pull and replace engines/transmissions much less awkwardly than with the red engine hoist that can be seen in some of these shots. Those are great if you have limited headroom, but they do tend to get in the way a bit, and if there's one thing the VAB does not have, it's a shortage of headroom.

Between that and all the progress at moving stuff upstairs, I think we're just about ready to start doing actual, you know... mechanic work!

(We also need to get some décor going on in there, but.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Note how this bench was custom-built to fit exactly in that arbitrarily-sized alcove in the garage, which was dictated by the walls of an interior room. This will be of interest in a moment.

Today we looked around in the VAB for a place to rebuild the old bench, and after some consideration, decided that the obvious place to put it wasn't where we thought we would put it, but rather in the corner where we originally put the fridge and set up the soft chairs, plus a bookcase for our shop manuals and stuff. There evidently was a workbench there before, which is indicated by the fact that there's a whole row of electrical outlets along the wall there and they're all on a breaker labeled "BENCH". So, after taking some measurements and thinking it over, we decided to move the fridge back to where it was when we found it, take the bookcase and chairs upstairs, and put the Tech Center bench there instead.

And here's the weird part:

We had to add a few new legs to the frame because it's not screwed to the wall like it was in its old home, but the frame itself is the same and the worktop is the same two pieces of plywood as before, and it all fits exactly in that spot. That steel cabinet with all the drawers in it wasn't put there with an eye toward doing this later, and it's way too heavy for us to have moved it today without completely unloading and removing all the drawers, which we weren't about to do. its position is entirely arbitrary--and it's perfect. A quarter-inch more to the left and we couldn't have gotten the bench in there.

(If the plywood looks too clean to you, note that the long and short side pieces are on opposite ends now. The side that used to be the top is now underneath; we flipped it over to make it easier to get at the space under the stairs. :)

Also note the blue PEX line, which is the water supply to upstairs. I love how whoever installed the water system could have put the shutoff valve anywhere, but they opted to break the line and insert the valve, creating no fewer than three potential sources of a water leak, directly above one of the electrical boxes. You just can't make this stuff up.

Next time we'll probably install a vise and possibly also one of several drill presses that we have kicking around the place, along with some tool storage. This corner will be where the engine rebuild stuff lives.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

After we rebuilt the bench and moved the yellow storage boxes underneath it, Dad and I were planning to put up some more metal shelves along the wall where they were, but the hardware center was kind of in the way. We took some measurements and determined that it would just about fit inside one of the shelving bays (it's probably part of a similar system), so we decided we'd do that.

The problem with this plan was that the hardware center was full of hardware. Literally thousands of pieces of hardware. All of which would have to be taken out, sorted, and then put back in the right slots after the thing was moved.

Dad wanted to just hook it onto his tractor with a strap and move it without taking anything out, but I could only imagine that unfolding as an absolute disaster that ended with us picking up all the hardware off the floor anyway, so I persuaded him not to do it that way. Then we proceeded not to get around to doing it my way for... some time.

But now we've done it!

All those coffee cans, prescription bottles, silverware trays, and peanut butter jars on the table are what we used to sort out the hardware. That big white Tupperware thing is full of miscellaneous stuff we didn't have slots for or couldn't figure out what size it is ("probably metric" is Dad's verdict on anything that doesn't obviously fit anything :), but was in good enough condition that we didn't want to just throw it away.

The VAB used to be a commercial truck garage, and all that hardware was purchased when the place was built; we found an invoice in one of the slots from a hardware store up in Presque Isle, dated 2006, for the organizer itself as well as many hundreds of cap screws, nuts, and washers that are in it. In the time between then and when it ceased to be used for commercial purposes, the hardware was... let's go with "not curated very carefully." It was a bit of a mess.

Worst of all, the unlabeled slots on the righthand side were mostly full of... well, garbage, really. Not food waste, it was all hardware, but it was clearly heavily used hardware that should have been thrown away. Bolts with visible stretch defects in the middle. Nuts too rusty to ever be used again. Bent, useless washers. Just junk. Why whoever it was stuffed it all in there instead of just scrapping it, I couldn't tell you.

Well, it's all cleaned out and organized now, and with the superstructure of the shelving up, we can now concentrate on arranging the rest of the shelves for the stuff that needs to go in them. There's one more bay's worth of those shelves that are already set up on the other side, which will be moved over to join these. We'll keep the most immediately needed parts and supplies, including various fluids and what have you, down here, while stuff that we don't need often stays on the ones upstairs.

Trying to get a place like this organized is a never-ending struggle, but at least we already had all this shelving lying around. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

It makes me go 'oh right the original release of those games was like twenty-five years ago, right' and it makes me consider the sheer LENGTH of 25 years, and I just feel old and shuddery.

In this view from the loft, we can see that although things remain chaotic around Angus's parking space, the rest of that side of the building is approaching its Final Form™. (Don't mind the water heater hanging from the gantry crane. That will eventually live in the basement of Dad's house, but they needed someplace to unload it while he researches the plumbing changes he's going to have to make to install it.)

Here's a closer view of the middle portion. The cordoned-off area is Ollie's office, featuring both his bed and his favorite recliner. Only the best for the shop manager. Someday the lift will probably be there, but for the moment, it's a nice central location for him to hang out where we can keep an eye on him and make sure he's not getting too bored.

In addition to the vast collection of hardware that came with the shop, these shelves are the standby area for the most commonly used supplies (fluids, etc.) and a staging point for soon-to-be-called-for parts and tools.

Meanwhile, next door, the area with the old workbench we salvaged from the Technology Center is now fully* configured for its new role as the Engine Lab. Once we have the heads, crankshaft, and piston assemblies back from the machine shop, this is where I'll be building the engine.

Note the sign on the wall. That was salvaged from a World War II-vintage crane that still belonged to Great Northern Paper when my father started there in 1974, and for the care and feeding of which he was responsible for a fair chunk of his career. They finally retired it in the late 1980s when they could no longer find parts for it. Having spent his entire career to date looking after it, Dad took the nameplate off it before it went off to the scrapyard, and it's been floating around his various garages ever since.

There's a fun postscript to that story. When GNP retired that crane it could no longer pass safety inspections as fit for use in an industrial setting, so the company management insisted that it only be sold for scrap. A few years later, my father had occasion to visit the scrapyard they sold it to in search of some other item the mill had a need for... and discovered the old Link-Belt still in service, being used for various lifting duties around the yard.

Speaking of ancient industrial relics, take a look at this badass drill press.

This machine was made by the Famco Machine Company of Racine, Wisconsin, probably around the same time as the old Link-Belt. I was a bit out of sorts yesterday (you may have seen the post elsewhere on these boards that suggests reasons why), so I failed to get a picture of the information plate that would tell us more, but I'll try to remember to do that next time.

My grandfather salvaged this thing when he worked for the Forest Service in the 1990s. In his capacity as handyman and general factotum of the MFS post he worked at, he was asked to dispose of it, since it had evidently suffered some massive electrical failure. Instead, he seems to have taken it home and... uh... well, look, Gramp wasn't an electrician, OK? Yes, that is a household light switch, and yes, that pigtail does appear to be a cannibalized garage extension cord. As with every single such cord he owned, the grounding pin has been cut off the plug. Dad informs me that said plug is not even polarized, so that whenever you plug this machine in, there's a 50% chance you've got it backward and energized the outer casing. This makes the user experience somewhat less than ideal.

But it's still a huge, sturdy, and powerful drill press, far superior in every mechanical respect to any of the other three(?!) drill presses my father owns, so he's determined to re-salvage it, wire it properly, and put it to use in the VAB. And I can see why, I mean, this thing's only one or two steps removed from a proper machine tool. We have that giant steel welding bench the building came with, which will be perfect for mounting this press on once we can mark it out and drill some bolt holes in the top.

Also, it's so astonishingly heavy that we're going to have to use the engine crane to lift it up there. :)

--G.
* well, almost fully. I need to find a taller stool someplace. wish I had the one I used to have in the old Machine Tool Lab tool crib, that would be perfect.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.