My new workshop

Herzlichen Glückwunsch. congratulations. Most of all now you have heating.
Small tip. I made 2 portable vices (normal vice and tubing vice) with 3 screwable feet. 1/2" plate with 3 angular cut 1" threaded tubing unions.
3 feet will not wobble on any ground but rest solid.
Welding tables are a strange thing. the most solid one I have seen was 1" somewhen in the 60tees. now its still 3/4" at Siemens Costa Rica.
My own with 1/4" was not solid enough so I had to beaf it up from below with a frame structure. result: everything got warped.
But it lasts now 23 years, fair enough.
In deed it is a good idea to seperate dust and clean work area completely. a point I still did not get to.

Best wishes for your future proyects.
Sven

Thanks, Sven. I started this topic because there are many people who love workshops, and can be happy with someone else's hapiness.

Smaller portable vice is mounted to 50-pound steel "brick" on rubber pad. Fits perfectly on any table, doesn't move.
Fortunately, with rubber pads under all 4 legs, my bigger green vice (5,5") fits any place on the floor. With some balast on lower part of vice stand, I can grip whole sidecar frame in any position in the air, allowing me to grind any fragment when I stand, without doing "strange gyms". It's a work that my previous configuration (4" vive on column) couldn't do, and I missed for something like this.

Welding table was a full weekend work. It consists of 2 6mm (1/4") halves, ~1050x430mm each. I bought them on junkyard, and both were slightly bent in the same way. But wits some welder's tricks I could make them almost ideally flat - also utilizing heat bens, instead of fight it. If you are familiar with heat bending, it sometimes can save time, effort etc.
With frame welded from 50x50x6mm (2x2x1/4") corner profiles, and then cross-shaped counterframe from corner to corner (and some sanding/grinding), finally I got very stiff table, with biggest level difference about 0.5mm.

One more "toy" waits installing. 550x600x20mm steel plate (a gift), ground and scrubbed to "perfect flat". In Poland it's called "tracing plate" or "planning plate". I can cover it with sand paper and flatten some thing precisely.

And I wouldn't be honest without thinking few people for some gifts - like vice, table's stand, thick welding cables, lamps and many smaller or bigger things that now are parts of my workshop. And to family of my brother's wife - her uncle and dad, who "lend" me the place. Now I have fee-free workplace just under my brother's home, and we can work together. The blue bike is brother's one. The only "fee" is welding or turning something sometimes, for "the uncles". Lucky me 🙂

Your work space looks very good Igor. Congratulations!! Here's to many years of successful projects!

Save the tracing plate for the delicate and good work! Remember each small hit that causes a small crater will cause a small elevation too and the accuaracy will be gone. Therefore I use once in a while the finest grid EDM polishing stones for to clean out these scar elevations on my measuring and scraping rulers and the master ruler stays wrapped in oil cloth sometimes for years.
The best Prussian Blue I have worked with is from Diamond brand. I used to buy it at the Hoffmann gruppe tool shops (Perschmann in Braunschweig) (the worst prussian blue is from Permatex = not even good for an emergency scraping job, its pure grease smear)
Hoffmann Gruppe's scrapers blades are not that good at all, so I use only their scraping handles and got the good carbide scraper blades from Sandvik (carbide grade K05).
I wish you many happy hours tinkering and traveling.
Keep in mind every second is a gift and as my old fishing friend Horst Woitkowitz used to say. "Make every single thing You do in that manner that You may be sure that years later you will be still able to be proud about it"
It was his simple and effective recipie for his success and joyful interesting long life.

The huge vice is pretty impressive, its even bigger then my mill vice. For sure it will become very "handy" for the strange jobs.
In some moment You might have luck to get a hydraulic elevator scissor table for the bikes (use them always with positive position locking device),
Myself I wanted always one for bedway scraping, but my back is nowerdays in such a bad shape I am "fix und foxy" after 15 minutes scraping and have back pain for 2 further weeks...
Heat bending on sheet metal and welding . brrrr, not my taste. I prefer to make a fine adjustment of precicion machinery parts out of grey cast.

For tomorrow I will have to weld the new transport wheel bases to a portal crane in 7 m height... perhaps my last heavy duty job.
Another nice thing for tomorrow: Sophie Travelair my Ural Patrol will leave Los Angeles Port on a ship for Costa Rica...13.th of november.. might I get again a bike's number plate? (on 13th of December? (1986 MZ rig / 2004 Jawa rig / 20011 KLR solo / 2013 Ural ?)

Best wishes for You to continue in your challenges. You are on a good way to realize things other people are not even able to dream of.
Sven
🙂

I will keep the tracing plate as a treat, in flat wooden chest. Plate will be accessible by lifting the top cover on hinges. But for Prussian Blue work I have to restore my scrappers - rusted and used for blacksmith-precission works by last owner And get some reference plate for scrapping. At the moment, my plate is not "mirror flat", but does its job, as I'm not doing micrometer precision jobs. Yet.

Few things in my workshop are "saint", and sit in "tabernaculum", locked with lockpad. I've seen few "workshop crimes", like grinding some scrap metal on finest tool grinder, or straighting nails on a tracing plate, or phasing a hole by hand using 16.25mm drill, or our mechanician in institute, who tried to repair door hinges with measuring caliper. And it was a real trauma. And because my workshop is not only mine, I keep few precise things hidden.

Are you prophet, Sven? The hydraulic elevator scisor table for bikes is my next "tool project". Some materials and the elevator itself I have collected already. It will sit in garage, for sure it will have locks on work positions - I'm a work safety maniac. Workpieces placed on proper height help avoiding back pains. I spend additional day or more to adjust tables and tools height to my body height and proportions.

My everyday precision (turning etc) don't argue with heat bend and welding, that I love. Yesterday I had chance to try TIG, MMA and plasma cutting on stainless steel. My friend bought such combined welder. Yummy. It was way better to fall asleep after such evening. And another "must have" dream...

Why last big work? Your back?

I'd love to give you a call right now, but I better hit the road as due to strikes and trafic jams I will come late anyway. even with a Solo bike you can not pass by anymore. A Latinamerican capital on a typical day is worse then Berlin Kreuzberg when the Kurds have a manifastation.

There are several reasons why I hope not to do more heavy duty work.
First the back pain and ernia (Monday 3 times some part of the intestine got caught during "Reset button pop out" ), 😮
Second "are the clients worth to damage your health for them?" After 23 years I do not think any more that even 1 percent does appreciate what you have done for them.
Third I am a one person company. means if I do not things myself there will be nobody else. So who will have to sell the stock or who will make all those projects that I have in my brain? The kids have their own plans for their lives.
Now we come to the forth argument: I want to get things done for my family and me that were waiting for "one of those days" for many years, and I want to get them done before my body will not be able to do them.
Its just like with this short trip to Alaska that was the result of 6 years talking. If You do not do it "in Life", you will blame yourself for ever.

The portal crane is one of those things where I feel unable to delegate. I better do it well done myself for to protect my clients employees, then delegate part of the work to somebody else because I do not like the idea to respond for somebody else's job that can put a person's life into danger. I had been praying enough for 11 month that nobody would get hurt. (The highly "responsible" client took all this time for to get the new crane to Costa Rica what he could have done in 4-5 weeks.) In this time 4 loads came down from 6 m together with the hook....A miracle nobody got hurt.

Similar example today after work. After sunset 2 policemen were unable to mark with their cones an open sewer 15 m down the road where they did their work checking for delinquents. "We notified the transportation office 3 days ago, we cannot do anything" I nearly drove crazy and had to bite my tongue.

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Today I got amazed how strong and stiff was my old beetle mechanical scissor jack. I could easily lift the hole portal frame edge by edge, which gave me the following idea for You:
Just use 3 or 4 cheapy scissor jacks. mount them on a wheel frame with slot slides and fix them where you need them with a few butterfly set screws. On the top nose of the jacks You weld a patch with lateral tie down hooks and the crank handles you make long enough so they stick out on one side. The orientable wheels should have a brake so you can work on uneven ground too.
Such a setup should not help only for sidecar or bike jobs, but for other invents too.
All what counts is to be versatile and be able to reuse everything you once built for one purpose for some other job too.The most expensive part are the caster wheels. The best brand I worked with are Polyurethane (or grey cast for heavy loads) wheels from Flexello, Belguim. (cheap rubber caster wheels are thrown away money)

I use to preach to my clients that in stead of throwing away and make new, that on each single job they shall first use their brain and design their projects in that manner, that they solve at the same time immediate problems and fulfil medium term tactical and long term strategical goals all together
Specially in educational governmental institutes I see the throw away mentality once and again.

My private dream is a simple TIC high frequency welder....one of those days when money and time will not be an issue....???or a universal CNC machine like the former conventional Hommel submarine lathe, rectifier, mill.......So many dreams and ideas, life will not last for to fulfil them all.
http://www.lathes.co.uk/hommel/index.html (in Hamburg I once saw a CNCed Hommel. 60 or more years old and extremely good and accurate.)
So first let's get to see more from the world....
The tent and sleeping bags left today with the Ural rig Los Angeles... 😉 😉 😉

Best regards for you from 50 year old Peter Pan.
Wo ein Wille ist ist auch ein Weg...Where there is a desire there is a way too. 😉

Hommel, the same as OUS in Poland. Multi-multi function center. Small workshop mechanician's dream. Very rare and if available, often incomplete and worn out. Colleague in work has one of them, that he got in 70's and uses until today, but without care 🙁

I don't understand your scisor idea in 100%. 3 scisor car lifters on common platform, and upper platform (for bike) put on hooks when needed? Some reconfigurable lifting device? Good, but have you tried to lift something on scisor jacks? They are good for things that are supported in other point, like car (2 wheels and scisor jack) or big plate (one edge on the ground, the opposite one lifted). Scisor jacks that I saw or used, are very pliant in side way. Even if you stiff their "feet" to the floor or steel frame, they will bend if you lift something on them and push it from one side. Hydraulic jacks - yes, they can be very stiff and not bend in such situation. I plan to make my lifting table operated by one 2 tons hydraulic jack, that I received for free because it lacked a pump handle (yes, one straight 2 feet tube). Lift and immediately lock. Hydraulic jack shouldn't support, only lift/drop. For sidecar rig I plan to make some kind of "plugin", but it needs good design and thought, to be safe and functional.

At the moment my table consists of the jack, four polyamide wheels, bunch of materials, bunch of thoughts and the "in near future" ratio 🙂

I try to make tools/things reusable and expansion-enabled, to save them (and time) when needs change.

What does this cat do? His/her face is mysterious 🙂