Every so often I think I should update this blog, and then I wonder if the thing I’m going to actually update it with bears any relevance to the real purpose of the blog, and then I remember that really nobody reads this and it’s mostly just for me to diarise my exploits as and when I can be bothered, so this is more of that!

So I’ve been in my workshop space since I think around late summer 2016. In that time I’ve had numerous cars, motorbikes, engines, and other projects in there, but it’s always been a bit of a mess, and I’ve always had tools & equipment split between my home garage and there. This split has often been the source of frustration when I’ve needed to do something and had to drive 20 minutes each way to achieve it. I decided this year that I was going to move all of my tools and projects to the workshop to enable me to have one singular space to work on things, and that’s what I’ve started out on the journey of. I’ve acquired a shipping container on the same site as my workshop, and I’ve moved the majority of my parts & consumables collection into there. It also now houses the R1 and a few other ongoing long term projects.

Above is the last shot I have of the workshop before I began this project. Unfortunately most of the mess is blocked by the yacht tender, but you get the picture of the level of mess.

Because the workshop is double skinned and lined internally with breeze block, I had to seal the breeze block so it would take paint. I did this with a PVC glue & water mixture and a garden sprayer:

I then, along with the help of my friend Jake (who has featured before in this blog) masked up the various things I didn’t want to get paint on since I was going to be spraying the walls:

The Minari bonnet was lowered from the ceiling and placed on the Minari (which had been moved to the container) for sale (the car has now been sold):

Here’s Jake masking the top line:

We also plastic sheeted and taped up everything that was left inside to avoid the paint dust getting on it:

We dutifully masked up (though I couldn’t find my good respirator, and these were all I could get at short notice from the local “The Range” store. I think these were made for small children – they’re so tiny they barely covered our mouths!):

I put the first coat on the left hand wall (this is 10% water, 90% matt finish water based emulsion sprayed through a spray gun):

and the first wall being done and it getting late, we packed in for the night, trapping Jake behind everything by accident!

Time rumbled on a few months with many other things going on (mostly boat work, which I’ll blog about at some point in proper time order – so they may strangely appear before this post!) and eventually I found the time and motivation to finish off the paint job:

At this point what I really wanted to do was put some decent flooring in the workshop. The concrete floor was always a bit rough and ready, and it collected dirt like nobodies business. I wanted decent PVC or rubber tile but workshop flooring is quite expensive and I would honestly rather spend the money on more tools, so I just occasionally browsed Facebook marketplace in case anybody was selling any used. Lo and behold, I found a chap about 20 minutes from me selling his used flooring for £100! It was sufficient to cover the area with some spare (given the gaps for machine tools) so I snapped it up. That night I started laying it down:

Now, it’s a bit dirty, but its a machine shop so honestly who cares! I slowly cleared stuff round and fitted the flooring bit by bit over 2 evenings:

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Eventually with all of the flooring down (apart from some close cuts to the milling machine) I wanted to turn my attention to the rest of the workshop. For quite a while now I’ve wanted to upgrade my lathe. The little Myford is great for small aluminium parts, but useless for anything else, and I was feeling a bit bad asking to borrow friends lathes to achieve things. I wanted a lathe that was capable of cutting stainless, had a decent gap bed for larger parts, and had a metric thread cutting gearbox. Having done some browsing around on Facebook Marketplace (yes, again!), I came across a Harrison M300 for sale for a very reasonable price in Wales. I duly drove to collect it a few days later. Here’s the seller loading it for me:

Strapped in view from inside the truck (which I borrowed from my very kind friend Chris):

That same day I also happened to pick up a shot blasting cabinet locally for an absolute steal:

The next day I unloaded the lathe, and another kind friend Adrian lent me his very shiny and new forklift with which to do so (honestly, nicest forklift I’ve ever driven; it’s ruined me for the dance that is controlling the usual one I drive!):

I dropped the lathe onto the pallet truck (with some wooden extensions) so I could park it in the workshop and await some assistance to get it situated at the weekend:

I roped my long suffering father into joining me at the workshop at the weekend. Primarily so there would be someone there in case I got crushed by a lathe, but also because two pairs of hands are often better than one where heavy equipment is involved. Given the lathe weighs somewhere between 700 and 900kg, I wanted to be careful when getting it down from the pallet truck, but similarly I don’t own a set of toe jacks and for the amount I move machinery its just not yet worth investing in any. Thus, this monstrosity was born:

Even with how dodgy this looks, and how much I had to run around the lathe inching down the jacks so as to keep it balanced, it worked an absolute treat:

With the lathe in place we continued sorting other bits of the workshop and ensuring there was space to accommodate the workbench I was moving from home. I moved this the next day, though alas have no photos of my doing so, with another lend of a different truck and trailer from Chris again – he really is a great friend!

Needless to say, the workshop is now really coming together. In the coming weeks suitable arrangements will be made to facilitate all of this equipment, more sorting and tidying will be done, and we’ll hopefully be up and running with a great facility for many years to come!