Two car garage shop

[psacustomcreations]

The house I purchased has an attached two car garage plus a matching detaching two car garage. The detached has a high bay with car lift on one side. The other side has a room above it where the Ingersoll Rand shop air compressor sits as well as where I store most of my art and crap I make.

Unfortunately I do not have a garden shed so I had to make a platform to put all my yard tools and use the car lift to move them out of the way. As you can see from the pics I do not have a welding table and have thrown a piece of 1/8" plate on top of my table saw. It has worked so far but my goal is to make a table like Brooklyns Bravest has recently made.

I put most of my tools on casters so I can move them out of the way when I am not using them.

[psacustomcreations]

A few more views plus my scrap piles. I have various cylinders on the right, there is a trailer full of scrap metal, and then my pile of aluminum scrap

[acourtjester]

Looks like you have enough tools to keep you happy
If I member right those cylinder are for your wind chime supply!

have fun

[psacustomcreations]

Looks like you have enough tools to keep you happy
If I member right those cylinder are for your wind chime supply!

have fun

You remember right. Right now I am mostly doing lamps, bells and wind chimes with some scrap metal art every once in a while

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[7A749]

I thought I had a lot of stuff packed into a small space!

Nice building tho. You got lots of nice toys, uh I mean tools

[soutthpaw]

The lift is cheating

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[gundog77]

Any of those fire extinguishers actually work? I didn't see any in your shop. Might want to take some of that scrap and build a rack or throw a chain around those unsupported cylinders with no caps on them. I love the lift with the load of stuff on it.

[psacustomcreations]

Any of those fire extinguishers actually work? I didn't see any in your shop. Might want to take some of that scrap and build a rack or throw a chain around those unsupported cylinders with no caps on them. I love the lift with the load of stuff on it.

Some of the extinguishers in the scrap pile are completely full. Others not so much. I do need to bring a good one inside the shop for emergencies.
Once I posted the pics I knew I was going to get caught not having the cylinders chained or secured. One of the unsupported cylinders is for the MIG. The MIG cart holding the MM 175 is that cheap one from Miller and can't really support the weight of a full size cylinder. I have been holding off building/buying a bigger cart since I want to upgrade to a MM252.
The second cylinder is full of Helium and I use that for the Dynasty. I use the helium when I am making items out of old aluminum scuba tanks. I have been looking at modifying the Dynasty cart to hold two cylinders.

I am going to move those loose cylinders over behind the door so they can be secured the right way.

[psacustomcreations]

The lift is cheating

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I kick myself sometimes since over the last couple of years I have had to work on the brakes of my truck or change a tire and end up getting the floor jack and jack stands since the lift is being used.

[DSW]

Loads of unused space in that garage. Keep your eyes open for some pallet racking and make a shelf on the wall just above the windows for a lot of extra storage. Lots of times when places like Depot/Lowes do remodels they trash a lot of decent pallet racking. For lighter stuff, the double slot adjustable shelf standards and brackets are great if a bit pricey. You can push a lot of that stuff up in that unused area over the windows and clear up a lot of floor space.


Nice selection of cylinders there on the pile. If that silver alum 40 I see there is any decent, they make a great portable air cylinder for nail guns etc. I can get a couple decent fills on my small 19cf pony from one of my bigger Scuba cylinders for stuff like that so I don't need to drag in the pancake compressor to drive a few nails for one or two pieces of trim.


Overall, nice looking shop. I'd love to have something that size with 2nd floor storage space. Question: does the lift go high enough that you could have a hatch in the ceiling for 2nd floor access? I've thought about that, or a set of double swing doors on the side of the 2nd floor so that larger stuff could be brought up to the 2nd floor. Your outside stairs saves you loosing floor space for that, but being able to get bigger stuff upstairs would be really nice.

[psacustomcreations]

DSW, Great eye and thanks for the compliments. That is indeed a 40 you see. In aluminum I have everything from 6cuft argon bottles all the way up to 100 cuft. I recently made a piggy bank out of an old short, fat 80. I have steel scuba tanks and cylinders from a couple of cuft all the way to full size welding bottles. I have been very lucky and have been given a dozen or more scuba tanks and even a couple of welding cylinders over the years by people who just want to clean out their closet or garage.


I also have a few cylinders set aside for portable air tool use for those exact reasons. I use an old Conshelf 14 first stage so I can dial the intermediate pressure to what the tool requires. That has even saved my bacon on the side of a road once. So much easier, faster and safer to use air tools when you need to change tires of the side of the road.

I have a brand new box of the double slot racking sitting of all places on top of the car lift. That and more racks will be put to use when I can finally build a 16'x32' addition on the back of the shop. I need to get my daughter out of grad school first.

The car lift goes up enough so that I could probably use it to bring items up to the second floor but I never thought of making a door. The first couple of years of business I was carrying everything up and down the stairs whenever I went to an arts and craft show. That grew old real quick when you are carrying a total of 1000 pounds or more up and down the stairs each time, so I purchased that white box trailer behind my truck. I usually keep my inventory in that for half the year. Now I unload the trailer for the winter and don't have to load it again until later this spring when the show season starts back up.

[MyWeldingShop]

DSW, Great eye and thanks for the compliments. That is indeed a 40 you see. In aluminum I have everything from 6cuft argon bottles all the way up to 100 cuft. I recently made a piggy bank out of an old short, fat 80. I have steel scuba tanks and cylinders from a couple of cuft all the way to full size welding bottles. I have been very lucky and have been given a dozen or more scuba tanks and even a couple of welding cylinders over the years by people who just want to clean out their closet or garage.


I also have a few cylinders set aside for portable air tool use for those exact reasons. I use an old Conshelf 14 first stage so I can dial the intermediate pressure to what the tool requires. That has even saved my bacon on the side of a road once. So much easier, faster and safer to use air tools when you need to change tires of the side of the road.

I have a brand new box of the double slot racking sitting of all places on top of the car lift. That and more racks will be put to use when I can finally build a 16'x32' addition on the back of the shop. I need to get my daughter out of grad school first.

The car lift goes up enough so that I could probably use it to bring items up to the second floor but I never thought of making a door. The first couple of years of business I was carrying everything up and down the stairs whenever I went to an arts and craft show. That grew old real quick when you are carrying a total of 1000 pounds or more up and down the stairs each time, so I purchased that white box trailer behind my truck. I usually keep my inventory in that for half the year. Now I unload the trailer for the winter and don't have to load it again until later this spring when the show season starts back up.

How do you cut your propane tanks? Any pictures of your wind chimes?

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[psacustomcreations]

How do you cut your propane tanks? Any pictures of your wind chimes?

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I cut the scuba tanks and any thick wall tanks on the horizontal bandsaw. I cut the fire extinguishers and thin wall tanks with my DeWalt dry cut chop saw.

I have some large acetylene and various propane tanks that I have not touched. I have seen a few videos of accidents and between that and some of the threads and comments on here, I am not willing to take a chance on them exploding. If you do cut propane, make sure you are careful.

Here are some pics of the bells.

[psacustomcreations]

MyWeldingShop, since you were talking about the thickness of the tanks in the bandsaw thread, here are some pieces of wall art and sculptures made from rings of tanks. some are from aluminum 80's others from various steel tanks.

[MyWeldingShop]

Very cool!

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[tinker001]

Why not get a couple of trailer axles to put under to platform? Or the spindles and build the support for them has a drop axle. That way you could roll it out when needed. That would make your platform a movable .

[psacustomcreations]

Why not get a couple of trailer axles to put under to platform? Or the spindles and build the support for them has a drop axle. That way you could roll it out when needed. That would make your platform a movable .

I put six of the harbor freight 10 inch pneumatic swivel caster/tires on the platform to roll it out. If you look at the pic you can see the center ones are still in place. I took the front and rear ones off since I kept hitting my head on them.

[JimboTN]

Yes, I'm a little jealous of your shop space and lift...but your artwork has really got me glowing green!!! I'm always amazed at the skills of folks on this forum and your creativity with circles is top notch! BTW, what process are you using to weld the aluminum and steel together in your artwork?

[psacustomcreations]

Thanks. I am using mig on the steel and tig on the aluminum. I probably wasn't clear on my description. All the ring art work posted is using aluminum scuba tanks and various aluminum tubing. I have made many of the same items using steel rings.
When I tig the aluminum I am often at 200 amps on the Dynasty and I use 100 percent medical grade helium since an aluminum scuba tank is 1/2" thick

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[MyWeldingShop]

What got you started using the rings? Bad tone using them as chimes?

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[psacustomcreations]

When I started making items out of scuba tanks I often had a section in the middle that wasn't used. I needed to figure out a way to use that portion and came up with this idea.

[psacustomcreations]

I have quite a bit of material sitting on the floor. I was getting tired of stepping on it and having a piece of round bar roll under my foot so I made some brackets to attach to the ceiling. I should be able to get a decent amount off the floor. Some of the material is good sized like 2"x2" solid square bar and then a whole bunch of stainless so that may not be able to go up there. Its a start at least.

[psacustomcreations]

I didn't like how short the hangers turned out so I added 2 feet to them. I had to do that so they could be screwed into the joist at two points. Turns out they used micro laminated joists, not 2x12. This allowed me to drop the hangers a foot.

I am now able to clean the floor for the first time in a couple of years. Turns out I have 100 feet of 1 inch solid stainless hexagonal bar plus a bunch more stuff I picked up from an auction.



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[psacustomcreations]

Other side view. I had to put the really big stuff on the car lift platform.
That is some 2 inch solid square and some big round bar.


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