This is what the fab shop turned into, a cluttered impossible to work in shop.

A while back, over a year now, I started working on doing a little addition to the fab shop. This added space will be a great help in the shop.

With all the supports up and the steel in place all we  now need to do in add concrete.

Well this weekend the slab was finally laid.

A total of 9 yards of fun happened on Saturday.

Now all this new equipment means that changes have to be made to the shops. Room being as scarce as it is in the shop means moving tools.

The first thing was to make room for the new tools that were coming in. This meant moving the manual vertical mill and pantograph out to the fab shop. With the backhoe still down, due to diesel fuel in the oil system, we now had to move everything the good old fashion hard way. No pictures of this fun period  were taken as I did not want proof of how stupid I can be.

They are in the fab shop and will be moved into place this weekend.

A path needed to be made through the shop. However the space between the punch press and the vise was not large enough.

So I cleared out on the other side of the posts.

Jacketed up the milling machine and put my small set of skates under it to start the move.

A close up of the skates.

It did not take long before I changed out to the larger skates.

At the 1/2 way point and at the turn. 2 hours into the move.

Finally at it’s new home. I will be starting on the new concrete slab in a couple of weeks.

Another view, the grinder will be moving when the slab gets in.

The easy part was moving the pantograph.

Now came the real fun. Trying to move 25 pounds of stuff in a 5 pound bag and getting it set up.

The first step is to turn the EDM around 180 degrees and position it in the shop to allow access to all the panels and hook up points while not taking all the room in the shop up.

In this photo the EDM is in the wrong direction and as always there is stuff in the way.

I needed to move it into the shop but still more stuff in the way.

Finally the EDM was in place and all the support equipment was set next to it.

Now it was time to move the two spot welders

They are in there new home.

With the majority of the moving completed I needed one other small project to end the day with. So Insulation was glued to the steel door. Ran out of material and will finish next weekend.

Enough for Saturday. I will fill you in on Sundays progress tomorrow.

I have it setting next to a large Dillon unit to show the comparison of size. It should make life a little easier.

The 4″ conduit was run around the wood shop as well as the rest of the 2″ and 1″ and we buried it in preparation for the next phase.

And covered.

Sand pile is reduced a little.

Then some maintenance issues were address in the shop. The first was an air leak due to a valve failure.

It was removed and capped, I will paint it next weekend.

I needed to move some equipment around to have better flow and a little more room. The first thing was my son’s tool box. It was relocated to the cnc room.

To do this the 1″ belt sander was moved to the fab shop as was it’s parts table. Next the die room was re-organized. This is the way it use to look.

This is how it looks now. The spot welder was moved in and set up to do all the welding on the VG1-5.

Then the Webb, Allan- Bradley, and the Wells-Index machines were set up to run parts, as well as the Haas machining center.The Webb was set up to drill out the cocking handle for the first op.

The set up was just a basic vise with thin parallels and a spring separating them with a vise stop to  for proper positioning.

All the handles were then completed and de-bured on the drill press.

The Well-Index was set up to re-tap the cross pins deeper.

We used a 5-C collet closer and a tap-a-matic to finish this job.

They are all completed now.

The Allen -Bradley was set up to ream the buffer pin holes slightly larger to prevent binding.

We made a special fixture for this.

They too are also now completed.

The Haas was set up to complete the screw slots on all the stock and hand guard screws. Unfortunately, I broke the last small end mill before we could complete the project. More have been ordered but have not arrived.

A lot of screws to do.

From here I went to the fly press. A siding needed to be put on it to prevent the chips from flying on the shelves and it need to be re-leveled and have the adjustable levelers re-moved. This is what it use to look like.

After leveling.

And then with the new siding.

Once these tasks were finished I started the first stamping op for the fire control housing.

However, I just ran out of steam and did not finish all of them.

I did manage to move all the exercising out and over to a friends house that wanted it. This also was way to much fun.

Thanks that I had heavy equipment skates and jacks.

Even with that equipment it still a lot of work. This is the first load.

The second load was just a single piece of equipment.

It now cleared out an area to allow me to expand the wood shop.

While this was going on Axel was back and smarter this time so he took over as Arbeitsschuts or better known here as OSHA. He deemed that the stairs to the guest house needed non slip covers.

A better view.

I think it is color codded as per some German guide line.

The upper stairs.

He and my wife worked on the last of the ammo re-organizing as well. This was the start.

And the finish.

In and among all this fun I had a friend bring over his Beretta Model 38A to have me fix it and I did, sorry forgot the pictures. And another friend brought over a 22 rifle that would not cycle. Axel fixed this. Cute little semi-auto.

A close up of it.

I did get a little time in the wood shop. I started on the backing for the radial arm saw.

So all in all not a bad weekend.

My wife jumped on that right now. We had problems finding ammo from the ammo rack so it was time to reorganize and check everything. Axel, with normal Teutonic efficiency, tackled the job. You can see the kind of disaster we were dealing with.

Every can was removed from the rack and opened then labeled.

Talk about a fun day, WOW.

While they were having way to much fun doing this I decided to take it easy and lounge around by the wood shop. The new conduits needed to be laid for electricity for my wife’s a/c in the office, who would have thought that she did not want to work in a room that was 120 in the heat of the summer. The trench was cleaned out an bedded in sand.

Then the conduit that was  here was set in place.

The 4″ conduit will be put in next weekend.

My son wanted the spot welder moved to machine shop in 2 and that was accomplished.

Finally all the ammo was organized and stored based upon caliber.

We ran out of label material so temporary labels were made. But still organized.

The moral of the story around here is not to voluntary for work because we can find you something to do.

This what she bought to replace it.

Now the fun starts. There is nothing I like better then to get my old and over weight body down on the floor and try to squeeze into a small space and work.

Then to only find out none of the hoses match up between the old faucet and the new on. So a trip to home depot to buy the necessary components and back on the floor again and we end up with this.

While we are on the subject of honeydo’s my next door neighbor decided he needed a new tv. The large 63″ one in his bedroom just was not big enough so he bought a new one that was larger and was going to throw out his one year old one because it kept shutting down after 30 minutes or so. Because he had trouble moving it by himself he gave me a call and asked if I wanted it. Not one to turn down free stuff I said yes. It is now in the living room where it replace my 34″ set. And the timer has been reset so it operates great.

It took a while to get working and new cables have to be bought, as it is high def and our old one was not. I still can not get use to the size. It takes up the wall.

Now on to shop things. Most of this weekend was spent working in the wood shop and as the weather was a little chilly it was a good idea.

Yes, that is snow on the mountain behind my home.

Now, back to the wood shop. A couple of weeks ago I picked up some new, for me, wood working equipment. With the new additions I needed to make some changes to the shop. It seems a number of  people question my sanity for getting additional wood working equipment when I spend most of my time in the machine shop. There are two good reasons for this. The first is that I need to make stocks and metal casting patterns for some of the gun projects were we are doing. The second is that I started a complete house remodel a few years back and got stopped at the kitchen. I bought a kitchen store display cheap but when I went back to buy the additional cabinets to finish the kitchen the costs were out in the “O MY God” price range. The same is true when we contacted a number of cabinet makers in the valley. Not to mention that I am now sure that cabinet makers are one step below used car sales men in honesty and integrity. So I have decided to make the remainder of the kitchen cabinets because I have nothing to do in my spare time.

So,with the new tool I got for Christmas I got busy.

I finished the back table for the table saw.

A cabinet needs to be built for inside the stand. That project is coming up as soon as I finish the drawings in solid works.

Then we move the radial arm saw to a new location to make it more user friendly and started build a larger table for it. This next series of pictures is that process.

We started with the old bench that I had in the shop, I got it out of a dumpster a while back and liked it. However it was to low for the saw and needed to be raised and there was a slight rise in the table so everything had to be hand fitted.

But by the end of the weekend we had it mostly finished. I need to pick up a 1.5″x2″x16′ long piece of steel to finish the job. This is how it looked when I stopped.

This weekend I also took a class for K. who is a professional photographer, and works for a top gun magazine, to try and improve my pictures. This is the photo I took at the beginning of the session.

And these are the same shots at the end of the session. I was lucky enough to be able to spend a few hours with her and learned a great deal. With any luck I will be able to do it again.

No photoshop magic was done on any of them.

And as they say in the infomercials, BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE.

I also spent time in the machine shop working on the new parts we just got in fro the laser cutter for the VG1-5 project. I finished the magazine release button and the strengthening plates for the receiver.

Magazine release buttons.

A complete write up will be coming in the next few days along with videos. I also spent more time on the AR-16 drawings to try and get that rifle finished up in solid works. Other then taking my wife out to the movie and a few clean up projects this was my weekend. Tomorrow I will post an update on the VG1-5 project and all the other projects we have been working on here at Gun Lab.

I just don’t want to hear about the benches not being the right height or that we need a new cnc machine.