Since moving to a cabin in the woods Mine is spread out between the master closet, music room and garage corner space. Nothing much to see here...
Gun work area
- Thread starter jav
- Start date
GasGuzzler
Hawkeye
Basements are very rare in Texas so my work area is my half of the garage. Since my truck doesn't fit, I have accumulated lots of stuff for my little spot at home (every other room is the wife's and even half of the garage where she parks is too). The parking area is taking up by the large city-owned trash bin, two mowers, a shop vac, two BMX bikes I built that are too nice to be outside, lawn spreader, bins with lawn chems, etc., and right now ... all the stuff that came out of the house to fit the Christmas tree.
So ... all the important stuff that stays forever is placed around the edges. I have two work benches. One was in the house when I bought it nearly 20 years ago. I moved it once I wasn't parking in there any more (2014) and got another off craigslist.
The old one is short (to the ground) and pretty small. It's where my reloading books and model car building stuff is. It is used as temporary storage more than anything. Right now it has all the presents I got for the shop guys this year for Christmas all piled up.
The "new" one is a full 4X8 and plenty tall, well built and came with a light and electrical. Got it for $75 locally. At today's prices, it'd cost $300 in lumber alone to build. It's lag screwed to the wall studs and has several hundred pounds of lead in boxes inside plastic totes on the shelf underneath. It doesn't move. I moved the light from under the table top to over the bench.
I have a cheesy toolbox where the retired items from work come to live. Next to that is my buffing wheel on a stand I bought at a garage sale for $15 in the 1990's then sold myself at my own garage sale yet the buyer never came back for it ... so it was free! Next to that is a heavy duty cabinet that used to be blue and housed the 1980's era GM "computer" (CAMs machine). It was long gone and I even had the key so I took it home, removed the plastic topper, painted it, and added a stained piece of plywood for the top. Its thin top drawer is good for home-smithing tools and the roller bearing drawers hold a lot of weight. Has a spring loaded cabinet door too.
Then there's bins of sports equipment and all my spare golf club parts and tools.
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OP
This is the end results
contender
Ruger Guru
Looks good!
And as they say,, "If it works for you,, who else cares?"
And as they say,, "If it works for you,, who else cares?"
There are times when only this is used. As contender said above: "If it works for you,, who else cares?"
Every so often, I'm able to catch my bench when everything is in its place. This ain't one of those times.
rkrcpa
Single-Sixer
Reloading bench on the left
Gunsmithing bench on the right
OP
Very very nice
Reloading bench on the left
Gunsmithing bench on the right
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2022
- Messages
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This was at my house in TX. This bench was dedicated just for reloading
The cluttered bench to the right was dedicated as an area to mount scopes and work on guns. A separate rolling cabinet in the middle of the room was for cleaning.
A guy has got to love reloading manuals!
I am currently trying to get my reloading room in MT set up to be functional as this one was but it seems you never have enough room to do the things you would like to. I think a 40’x40’ shop dedicated to guns would be about right.
I have had several gun work areas and reloading areas over the years. When we would move I would build a new area. Typically it was larger but not always depending how much space I had to work with. This one is my current area and probably my last. My reloading area is a smaller room just off the work area with a door so I can close it off. I work on antique clocks so the work area doubles for that too.
I see a small pile of old Life magazines. If you have the Feb 21, 1964 edition with Lee Harvey Oswald on the cover, there is a picture in there of my great aunt (grandfather's brother's wife) posing with a puppy on her front porch in Fort Worth. She was Oswald's 4th grade teacher, and he gave her that puppy. I have a copy somewhere but not handy, so I can't quote the page. The inside baseball about that photo is that they flipped the negative when they printed it - my dad knew the house and his aunt's hairdo well enough to spot the mirroring.
Mine don't have that that kind or personnel or historic significance.
I had just gone down to our town's recycling center to drop off my recycling trash and the attendant was looking through a stack of about a dozen that someone had dropped off. I picked out five that I thought my grandkids might find interesting. One was September 1, 1952 with Ernest Hemingway on the cover with his newly release story "The Old Man and the Sea" inside. Another was July 13 1953 with an article about these two guys , Hillary & Tenzing who had just climbed a big pile of rock, ice and snow called Mt. Everest. I heard that Hillary Clinton was named after one of them, even before he became famous. The other three 10/1 1953, 6/8/53 and 9/7/53 just had interesting covers and stories about the evolution of the animals on the planet and I thought my kids and grandkids would find it interesting how the thinking had changed from then until now.
I wish I had grabbed to whole pile. I like looking through at the ads.
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I clean my guns and do other smithing on this steel desk I bought at a bank that closed down. Paid $15.00 for it.
Reloading bench behind it.
Reloading bench behind it.
GasGuzzler
Hawkeye
I have one of those old steel desks with the Formica top at work.
GEEZ, I sort of envy all you guys with the neat, clean, orderly work spaces. Mine more closely resemble an explosion in a Harbor Freight store. ;)
Not all my fault since often there are 3 of us making the mess and then the other 2 go home. And then there's two John Deeres, two 250 gallon chemical tanks, and six 40 bushel seed totes taking up space in the middle of everything else.
Not all my fault since often there are 3 of us making the mess and then the other 2 go home. And then there's two John Deeres, two 250 gallon chemical tanks, and six 40 bushel seed totes taking up space in the middle of everything else.
contender
Ruger Guru
Don't feel bad about the work area looking like a HF explosion. Many of us are like that. But we do have to occasionally have to clean it all up to find what we need for something else. I've been called "A clutter catastrophe" a few times. :D
dadstillsurfs
Single-Sixer
I've been doing my cleaning and "gentle" gun work on my old college drafting table. The table is kinda lightweight but dense, and the cover has a nice firm resilient give. Besides being available, its top is 50" long and 40" tall... plenty of room for tools, cleaning and lube products, and working and intermediate storage space.
I'm on the search for a steel "secretary" desk and use the drafting table cover material on. That would let me store all the "stuff" currently on my bench in drawers... what a concept!
I'm on the search for a steel "secretary" desk and use the drafting table cover material on. That would let me store all the "stuff" currently on my bench in drawers... what a concept!
When we moved here from Cemtral Oregon, I left behind a military steel tanker desk with the additional side peninsula. It weighed a ton, so it was left behind. It had a Formica top and was perfect.
I was looking for a picture online, and now I'm pretty disgusted. This is exactly what I had- and it's listed for $2499! 78" wide main desk and about 42” wide peninsula.
https://retrooffice.com/products/78-mcdowell-craig-tanker-desk-with-return
Do you guys mean some folks really do clean their guns
GasGuzzler
Hawkeye
That's like my desk at work only left side drawers are a mirror of the right, not a peninsula on mine. Here's a random picture that shows the pattern on the top revealing a little about its age.
