hi i'm paul brodie we're in my shop here i'm gonna be a fabricator we're gonna make stuff mitch
behind the camera working his magic as usual it's not motorcycles today it's sharp it's a toolbox
i have a toolbox a lot of you have a toolbox too and i've been thinking about this idea for
a very long time maybe even decades i don't know about you but i find it really handy to
have a shelf here i put you can tell i put stuff on here and then when i want to get inside i
have to put this stuff somewhere else open it up and then usually some stuff goes back on top so
what i want to do is to make a shelf that fits over top that i can still use as
a storage space and when i want to access the top of my toolbox it hinges it hinges to the side
i open it up i get what i want put the lid down and the shelf goes back to where it
was over here look i have a drawing if you can call this a drawing it's a piece of cardboard
this is the toolbox in red that's the outline and that's where the hinge is
going to be so that's the first thing we're going to do we're going to work on
on the clamping system of the hinge can you see what i got here that's the first part
oh yeah look at that cut
okay these clamps are going to hold the hinge and so what is the hinge the hinge is
a tube it's going to have bronze bushings on both ends and then there's going to be an inch bar
this is what hinges inside the tube inch bar so it's got some weight and the shelf is going
to have some weight so if i anchor these onto the sheet metal here like that and like that
it could flex because there's going to be some weight there so i don't want to have any flex so
i happen to have a piece of aluminum it's 3 8 of an inch and it's going to bolt on here
so i took off the handle so it's got a couple threads here so i drilled those
and then i'm going to put some sheet metal screws in here and the sheet metal screws are going to
go in there that's going to go like that that's going to be really solid so the next step here
is to drill and and tap for these mounts here
so one's going to go here one's going to go there you can see the red line so i'm going to tap
a hole and a second hole and then we'll put these on we also have to
have to bore out this is going to go around this inch and a quarter tube there's the
inch and a quarter tube in the middle and these go on either side and the thread goes
it's going to get countersunk there and the thread will go into the plate
i'm going to cut some card out because i'm going to put some cardboard in between so that when
i take out the cardboard it'll squash on the tube so this is just a little a little trick
so i got the clamps made now i put in the in the tube that fits nicely so i clamp these down
so they don't move and then i can drill that hole there and then tap it so there's a little bit of a
method going on here just so that everything lines up really well hold it that's pretty good fit
that's all i'm doing i'm just i'm just marking the hole
if you don't have a piece of aluminum you could use
a nice piece of plywood just to help out that that could work too
i'm just showing you this so that you get the idea of what's going on
you don't have to make it exactly the same way
oh yeah that seems to work fine
okay installation is complete that turned out quite nice okay this tube
it's actually 4130 it's a nice tube inch and quarter od 095 wall i happen to have it
so it's gonna get mounted like so and one of the advantages of holding the clamps
a two-part clamp is that i can slide this up and down i can get this
exactly the height that i want so that's good what we need to do is to make a bushing a
bushing has to go into here i made one for the inside last night so you see the bronze bushing
it's got a few thousand clearance for the rod for the inch shaft so we need to make one for
here and it's got it has to go outside because that there's a load coming down under there
so let's go to the lathe make up a bushing
that's that's that's fine that's a good fit
so that's gonna get bored out and the ink shaft is going to fit right through so we
got a bronze bushing at the top that's also a thrust acting as a thrust washer
and then this is got a bronze bushing on the bottom so let's go back over here
oh look at that a couple thou play that's fine
okay that's that's good let's install the hinge now
well we'll just put it right there for now because that's what's nice about this
i can adjust the height of the shelf
so that should be pretty pretty solid because it's chromoly it's bolted onto a nice
aluminum plate so the next step is to make the shelf so i'll show you i'll show you what we
got here there's my outline of the toolbox so i've got some i think this is half by 5 8
so we got a little welding coming up here can you see how that all fits together
i'm just tacking here that's what i'm doing
so
look at that
almost perfect we'll just leave that's good that's fine so what we need to
do is to put the surround around now so we'll do that a couple little tack welds
okay this is going to get welded onto here now
right on the corner and that's where the inch cold rod gets welded into
so
i can't say i've done this before
there we go how's that
looks like it's pretty solid okay that's a
tight and i think it has to come in a little bit this way
because it should be pretty good
okay that looks a lot better now so
this is just a piece of tubing because it has to that has to go on top of that
because this here is going to have a weld so it's not going to spin freely so
there we go so let's see what happens here
okay
woohoo look at that it moves pretty nicely
so it looks like it okay see see how there's a bit of flex here can you see the flex we
want this to be level and it looks like it hangs down a little bit so what we need here
is a support let me show you what i got okay this is off my old race bike well the bike i
still have but this is version one can you see the cable there that's the cable we're gonna use
it's uh it's out of the sailboat industry it's all made out of stainless steel here's the cable
it's going to go from here and it's going to hold up that so i've got this made and i've also made
see this this is going to get welded onto here like that and then we need something
to hold this thread this is 5 16 national fine and it's going to go around there
so i have something in mind so let me make you a sketch of what i want to do
and there's going to be a thread inside there
you notice that's not left hand or right hand thread it's just the thread this is the top view
like that and the threads in there and there's the hole right there so that's what i want to
make out of here's the piece that i want to use so we're going to go over to the lathe so
for you who have done some work on lathe and machining what's the first operation
what am i going to do first that's what i'm asking you i went through this in my head last night i
count six different operations to make this piece mill lathe actually lathe mill lathe let's go do
the first operation i wanted to see how long this is going to take me so here we go stopwatch is on
there we go that's a that's a plunge
so
i'm trying four degrees because i'm just guessing here i don't know
i'm thinking four degrees is about right
there we go that's what i wanted it to look like so i need to do a little debris but
oh 20 minutes and uh and 25 seconds so that's uh that's that's about what i thought so
oh look at that
all the welding's done we just have to put a piece of plywood in here so i do have a piece of plywood
i think it came out of my house years ago so we just have to cut that put the rubber on top
and we'll call it a day so a little bit of woodwork now
so how's this
hey look at that
it's been a fun project thank you for hanging out in our shop here we like coffee mitch and i
if you buy us coffees much appreciated hope to see you next time you take care
you