Two small shop upgrades
 

Really too small to mention, but it's been a slow day.

1:
Ever since we bought the ironworker the area where the shear blades live
has been shrouded in darkness. Setting up a cut was something of a
braille exercise.

I finally made a mount for a swing-arm lamp to go onto it - a bit of
1/4" x 2" bar stock bent to a 90 with a press-fit piece of round stock
bored for the lamp mount. Hooked it up to one hot and the ground (yeah,
I know, bad electrical, but easy to do because I didn't have any 220
volt bulbs) Voila! Let there be light!

A side benefit - setting the lamp off to the side of the punch station
to illuminate it obliquely makes center punch marks really stand out and
speeds hole punching immensely.

2:
We just got a cheapo HF fold-up hydraulic 2 ton engine hoist (cherry
picker) - Good sale price, plus a 20% off coupon. OK...

It's the one with holes in the boom for 1/2-, 1-, 1 1/2- and 2-Ton
lifting capacity that align with a hole in the telescoping boom arm .

Sliding the boom in and out and finding the alignment to get the locking
pin into the hole was a visual challenge - a black hole with a black
telescoping arm.... So I pulled the arm out and painted a 1" white space
on both sides of the hole in the extension arm. Now I can see the
alignment clearly while sliding the arm in and out.

Another small annoyance conquered!


Carla

Vocabulary word for the day: Liquidity: When you look at your
investments and wet your pants.

Two small shop upgrades
 

Carla Fong wrote:
... 2 ton engine hoist ...
... painted a 1" white space
on both sides of the hole in the extension arm. ...

Neat! When you have "problems" like aligning holes, or any nuisance
kind of thing, a major step to improving it is just realizing that it's
a nuisance that you CAN do something about. Often/usually you just go
on living with the nuisance. Of course, having the insight/imagination
to see a neat (simple, easy, effective) solution is the real satisfying
part.

Bob