More workbench

Now that the Jetta is out of the way, I was finally able to finish the other half of the workbench. Off to the right of the original bench on the back wall, I built another 8 feet on the side of the garage. Since this is a single car garage, however, I couldn't make the surface very deep, or I wouldn't be able to get a car in. And since it is so shallow, I can't hang any shelves on that wall above the surface. Well, I think I might still hang some above head-height where they won't be in the way.

I also upgraded my drill press. The little $50 8" press was fine for wood but was simply not rigid enough nor could it go slow enough to drill 1/2" holes in steel or even aluminum (the bigger the hole, the slower RPM you need, and the little press's slowest speed was about 3 times too fast). My options were to spend $60 and many hours upgrading the little press, or spend $103 (on sale) for a new press and sell the old one for $40. So in essence the new press cost $3 using man-math. (Don't tell Lemontree I said that. ;) ) Unfortunately, this bigger 10" drill (which is way bigger than the mere 2" size difference would suggest, and something that came as a bit of a surprise when I opened the box) wouldn't even come close to fitting on my shallow work bench. So, I lag-bolted a couple of 2x4s to the bench and then bolted the drill press to that. It sticks out, but it's solid -- I can bounce all my weight on it and it doesn't even flex. I enjoy over-engineering things. :)

Oh and while I was playing with drill presses I made a drill organizer, seen behind the drill press. I have several drill sets that came in nice metal and plastic boxes, but over the years I've collected a bunch of odd bits that either didn't fit in the box or the box was lost or destroyed, so drilling a hole with each bit in a scrap of 2x4 solved that.

The other section of bench is going to be for reloading. I already mounted my press on the far right, though I still need to buy a little stool so I can sit in comfort instead of standing like I used to do in the pre-garage-revamp days.

I think I've going to start referring to the garage as my man-cave (again, Lemontree need not know this). Admittedly, we plan on getting some woodworking stuff that Lemontree will use out in the garage too so maybe I'll have to come up with a different name. Fortress of Awesomeness?