shop tour - pic HEAVY

[NickWheeler]

Where did you hide all the doilies and cozies that go on the machines?

I'm having a new set made for my birthday, so I'm waiting on showing those!

Sorry Patrice, I forged out a giant blade yesterday and took a zillion pictures of that (so it took about 10 times longer than it should have) and after all that Angi swept me off for a birthday dinner. Sorry Matt... it was not a bag of poo.

I won't be able to post any of the other pics until tonight or tomorrow.

 

[Robert Parsons]

When I looked at your shop pics, I automatically sinned. Something about "Covet" I must go ask forgiveness now.

You are a blessed knife maker.

 

[NickWheeler]

Here's some stuff I've come up with that I thought might give some guys ideas.

Oh... and no blades in sight? ROFLMAO

Sometimes welding a piece of pipe to a peg-board hook gives you something a lot better than you can get at Home Depot

Things like the John Perry broaches are AMAZING, but not cheap... so letting them bang together is a bad idea. A simple little thing that holds them in one spot and without hurting their edges.

A shot of the buffer hoods... simple, but catch a HUGE percentage of the dust.

A simple file cabinet I bought at an employee sale at my last job for $1. Works PERFECT for keeping buffing wheels up to 10" clean and separate (along with the compounds).

 

[NickWheeler]

This is an articulated light I built to go over the grinder bench... it's similar to a "Doc-Lite" a friend gave me.

Patrice is right... buckets of water are not the best... but it works better than nothing. I couldn't have the buckets where they needed to be and still open my drawers. So I built these swing away shelves to hold the buckets. Plus it's easy to sweep under them.

This shows the bucket pivots, and some tool arm holders I built. I have the tooling trees, but don't like them being up above the grinders.

You gotta put steel somewhere. There's 1,000 pounds of W2 behind the grinders, but I also built some racks in the rafters. This one holds about 400 pounds of 1084 and 1095

Here's one of the only things I've built and didn't paint. It holds a very large industrial fan up in the ceiling when I don't need it, but I can swing it down and point it anywhere.

 

[NickWheeler]

Here's the fan down in position.

This is something I've been shouting about from the rafters for years, but nobody ever seems to listen. It is THE best way to hold a knife and work on the handle when used with the right bench vise. A knife maker named Tiny Spencer showed me something like this when I was 17, and this is my version of it.

Here it's in the vise, holding a hunter. I can pivot the fixture 360, the vise head 360, and the vise base 360... I can position the handle where ever the hell I want it.

Here's a close-up, showing how the blade sets in the fixture.

 

[Patrice Lemée]

Well my shop upgrades list was getting shorter.
Now thanks to you there is no end in sight.
Thanks so much for sharing!

 

[JC in SC]

When I first read your post, I didn't think you were going to give us any details on your anvil.

Saying "Turn around and you'll see my anvil, mill/drill and a bunch of other crap" it seemed as though you were mentioning it in passing like it isn't worth really talking about. Fortunately, you followed up with some close ups.

I know I'm weird, but I think this is beautiful!!! 450# Nimba Gladiator

I don't think that is weird at all. In fact, out of all the tools in your shop, I think this one is the coolest and that of which I am most envious. You see a lot of used machine tools in excellent condition on Craigslist all the time, but decent anvils are few and far between. A 450 lb. Nimba Gladiator is pure awesomeness. I'd love to get one, but I'll likely have to settle for the Titan.

 

[Allen Newberry]

Things like the John Perry broaches are AMAZING, but not cheap... so letting them bang together is a bad idea. A simple little thing that holds them in one spot and without hurting their edges.

You've got to love John Perry's broaches! I've got the narrower size and find it does the job quite nicely.

 

[hankknickmeyer]

Great shop, Nick
In case nobody answered the "What are these? question". They are Tom Clark tong clips--usually stored in a coffee can.
Hank

 

[NickWheeler]

Thanks Hank! Hope you're doing well!

After looking through my photos again, I realized some people might think that machining/stock removal is my main thing, and that forging is just an after thought, or a little thing on the side. However, that is NOT the case. Hot work is easily one of my favorite aspects of knife making. The machine tools were dream items for me, that came available when I had the money. If it had been a Nazel 3b (self-contained air hammer) that came up for sale and I had the money, it would have been sitting in the shop (okay, NEAR the shop) instead!!!

If you notice the anvil is the only thing with clear space all the way around it. That's so stuff doesn't get in my way while forging a blade!

My next shop will have an area AT LEAST the same size as the machining area set aside strictly for forging and welding. It's just that in this shop, I only have so much room, and the machine tools had to take precedence... the Little Giants have so much oil and grease on them that they won't rust outside even in Washington!

Actually Angi and I have been looking at a place that currently has a 28X32 shop, which is still fairly small (although nearly twice the square footage I have now) but I would add another 28X42 on the end for the hot work area, and build a 10'X32' lean-to/room off the back for a grinding room. *fingers crossed tightly*

 

[NickWheeler]

There's a couple things I had wanted to mention and forgot.

The welding table is very cool to me, because it was in the blacksmith shop at my Great-Grandfather's sawmill that was, literally, right down the road from where I live. The mill had been burned and sold off when Grandma was pregnant with mom in 1951, but some of the tools had been kept by Grandma's oldest brother.

One of my Grandma's older brothers did all of the blacksmith/fabrication work there, and I can only imagine some of the jobs he did on that table. Of course it didn't have a file drawer or Craftsman mid-cabinet under it. I mounted that stuff, as well as the vise, and also made the "drawer" under it. It's basically a big box on super stout little casters that holds about 500 pounds of steel.

There was a babbit ladle that I got when I went down and got the table. Grandma still remembers watching Don melt babbit in a big pot over a coal forge and doing the pour with the ladle (back in the 30's-40's just about every big piece of machinery in a mom and pop sawmill had babbit bearings). I plan to use that ladle when I redo the babbit in my Little Giant trip hammers.

There's also a couple hammers around my anvil that came from down there.

If you happened to notice the open beam construction of my shop roof, it's made from rough cut, TRUE 2"X10" boards that were milled at Great-grandpa's saw mill.

An interesting side note, the base plate that my BIG vise is mounted to is made from 3" thick solid plate. That means the base piece alone weighs 350 pounds.

 

[NickWheeler]

Here's some more, just for the hell of it.

This is my forge... it was in action all day Friday and Saturday. It REALLY REALLY needs to be relined, but that's going to have to wait a little bit.

The Grant Sarver designed forge blower put out too much air for this forge when trying to dial it down to hold 1400F, so I had to make a "wood-worker's dust collection style" blast-gate to cut the airflow at those low temps.

You guys were probably kidding about the drawers... but it's not like the kid on the TV sitcom that cleans his room by cramming everything in a closet. I'm serious when I say things have to have a place to be put, or it really F's up my focus.

This is a drawer I built (under my hand-sanding bench) that holds my hand-sanding "sticks."

Here's some tooling... Bridgeport boring head, Yuasa boring head, ISCAR face mill, Jacob's drill chucks, fly cutters, collets... STUFF When people say that while shopping for a milling machine you should factor in an equal amount of money for tooling, they are not kidding. The tooling in this drawer alone is worth enough to buy a small mill (if all purchased new that is)

Some more... NMTB-50 tooling for the Cincinatti, Sandvik face mill, stuff...

 

[NickWheeler]

Here's an articulated arm I built for something else, but it works well for hanging my Foredom wherever it's comfortable to use.

Here's my third favorite vise- an old 6" leg vise... these things are WAY cool! It will have an actual post with a lot of clearance around it in the next shop, just as it should have!

 

[Michael Rader]

Very nice, Nick. I always suspected that you had an awesome shop and I was right. Thanks for the pics. Very inspiring. -mikey

 

[Patrice Lemée]

That drawer for the sanding stuff is cool Nick.
But I have to say that nail polish is something I won't do. ;-)

About your Foredom, when I inquire before, people said that the 1/6 HP model was a little underpowered. What do you think?