hey everybody adam savage in my cave uh and i'm taking some questions today posted by tested
patrons uh and answering them in this format and today's question comes from wayne lewis
wayne lewis wants to know how have you designed mobility in your shop what equipment tools etc
particularly particularly large ones are mobile and are commonly moved versus not
are there difficult tools that you have not made mobile and why
mobility in the shop is actually of paramount importance to me um and that is why almost
everything you can see in this shot is on wheels except for the milling machine
uh the table saw is on a moving platform because it lives up against that back wall
but when i need to do cuts that are longer than 18 inches i have to pull it back um
and actually it's created a little bit of a problem on the floor over there
so as you can see maybe it's hard to see over here but underneath the table saw over here
though the plywood that gets rolled over every day for the last 10 years is starting to really
show its displeasure with this situation because the the wheels on the table saw roller are uh
hard little wheels and just like grind over that plywood they're slowly delaminating the top layer
at some point i may need to like cut out the plywood of the floor there and replace it but that
day is not today so i am not worrying about that but this is a tiny space my shop as it is hang on
my shop as it is here we're gonna do this full here we go that is one end of the shop
there's the other end of the shop yep this is it and uh in addition to that
i have my mold making and uh mold making and cleaning area and that's it it's 450 square feet
is great it is great it's small um funnily enough if you gave me like another 5 000 square feet oh
i'd use it but i'd still probably pack my tools this close in in one area of the shop because i
like to work like this however because space is at a premium i mean the amount of floor space here is
relatively tiny yeah uh because space is at a premium the wheels allow me i joke that my shop
is a tile puzzle my whole life is actually a tile puzzle but the shop is a real tile puzzle
and i don't mean that in any denigrating way that's actually a feature not a bug i use the tile
puzzle that is my shop to be able to reconfigure things so that i can have some more room
that being said i am i am committed to this three thousand pound behemoth here this three thousand
pound behemoth here those just live there um as for my super duper awesome workbench it
also pretty much lives there i could move it if i had to and if like i was throwing a party i might
certainly push it back to give more room in here as i have done in the past but wheels are like
everything i build has wheels everything i buy wheels on ebay i do searches for casters lot
and i buy tons of them um it's actually a great way to buy inexpensive casters um anybody who
pulls casters off of something and resells them is going to sell them to you for pennies on the
dollar you know you'll love that tip and like go look for other colors of wheels get red get green
get yellow that's out there um i think i'm close to the end of my current stash of casters by which
i mean i've got like seven to ten upstairs in a box um so soon i'm going to be shopping again
just to kind of refill the the coffers but mobility is paramount every shop is itself
a machine right a machine is a collection of parts to achieve an end so in a certain sense stairs
are a machine i know i know it's weird to think of it like that but it i believe that's really true
uh and this shop too in the same way that like my drill press is a collection of individual
parts and pieces to do a thing so is this entire space a collection of parts and processes to do
kind of a thing just a lot wider of a variance of a thing and thus the wheels allow me to
reconfigure this shop the way i need to so it allows me to actually store stuff really close
to the mill when i don't need it but i can pull those out and have access to stuff behind the mill
i know i talk about how i don't like moving stuff out of the way to get to stuff but machine tools
and certain processes that i only use every couple of months that that's totally fine again first
order retrievability is for the mission critical in the shop not not for everything um yeah
i think that's a i think that's a fair coverage of the kind of mobility that i appreciate i just to
continue on i'll show you that all my drill bits and reamers and taps are also in rolling carts
um my new parts washer which i just built a cart for sits on on wheels i mean i joke that like
the display area with all my crap that's gonna take a while to move but this shop i feel like
i could get this shop out the door in like five hours flat with a few guys yeah pretty much all
right thank you so much for that fantastic question wayne uh and tested patrons submit
your questions uh and i will continue to answer them thank you guys so much um i'd love to know
in the comments if you have specific approaches to wheels and the obtainment of wheels but also the
utility of them in your shop all right thanks guys stay safe and i will see you next time