okay uh trevor flowers wants to know about infrastructure infrastructure in terms of
the ordering how do you stay on top of ordering everything that needs ordering is there a place
where people make a note when they are running low on some material or hardware who does the work of
putting in the orders so that the in-shop hardware store never runs out it's me uh yeah and i have a
like i am so i'm so afraid of running out of stuff that it's almost a pathology with me
so i am your your your uh assumption that someone might be making a note is absolutely true as i
go through my drill bit sorters by the way so i have cabinets for all my drill bits and i have
in some cases like 40 of the same bit um and this is the kind of thing that in an industrial
shop that goes through a lot of expendables would have uh the containers are called sciott
i believe is the ciot is the name of the brand uh and i've got them for my drill bits all the
way from a 32 of an inch up to two inches and then for my taps reamers and end mills
and when i am like getting a drill bit let's say i'm drilling a 440 hole for drilling for a 440
tap i'm grabbing a number 42. that is one of my most regular drill bits i go for is the number 42.
and if i look into the number 42 bin and there's only three drill bits there i order 10 more uh
when i am low enough to count at a glance for drill bits that's when i order more of that
drill bit uh for belt for sanding belts i have both a 36 and 72 inch two inch belt sanders and
i have what i feel like is a lifetime supply of belts for those two things but
just the other day i realized that i was all out of low uh grit like 150 100 grit belts for them
um and in order to make sure i know where i'm at i'm actually going to have to pull all the
belts out of the like seven hooks they're all hanging from and really chronicle them list
them out and figure out what i have that is a again another frequently overlooked part of shop
infrastructure but you got to do it from time to time um i'm working up the the uh the wherewithal
to go through all of my belts because there's probably like 50 sanding belts there yeah i'm
it's problematic um i do make lists i make lists on i often make lists when i'm cleaning up
because that's when i'm remembering oh right i'm almost out of sharpies oh yeah i'm almost out
of those like those things um so i'll make notes sometimes i'll make notes on my hand
sometimes i mean you know having amazon on the phone or ebay is really great because frequently
i'll notice something's missing and i'll just immediately put it in the shopping cart um
look how much you keep on hand is also always a function of how much space you have to keep stuff
on hand i try not to have i try to have a place for every expendable that gets replaced and
recently uh i just added uh a a little sorter bin for pipe cleaners q-tips small popsicle sticks
skewers regular q-tips tongue depressors and acid brushes those things are stuff i use
constantly and i was always going to the bin where those were i ended up making two
sorters for them that go in two different parts of the shop um and that's the other
thing i have different expendables containers depending on what what tool i'm working with
but uh yeah it all redounds to to this guy i haven't had a shop assistant since before covid
um freddie uh freddie came in uh recently uh our old our old friend freddie uh came in and did some
organization for me because he really knows this space but as far as regular help yeah
it is all just yours truly um mr mobius 2011 wants to know how do you decide which storage systems
to use like sortimo versus average boxes so you don't have a hodgepodge of different boxes that
never quite seem to match um you know having used a bunch of different like regular sorters like
like these by art bin um i like these these are great and i have i might you know i these help me
slay the dragon of my lego collection and they are perfect for that um this type of milky plastic is
not the most durable of plastics it does not like you drop it it can shatter uh and for that reason
uh i'm sparing about how i use these for shop infrastructure i don't use them for stuff i'm
going to all the time i use them more for things like leather chemicals uh let's see leatherwork
chemicals i have three bins for those uh hat maintenance stuff handles and drawer pulls
yeah i mean these are stuff i go to like twice a year and so those are perfect for that
someone's at the door as soon as i saw the sortimo system and uh just to for due diligence i will
show you that as soon as i saw the sortimo system um i saw a crazy durable thing that was really
worth investing in um the the build quality of this was apparent immediately so i decided at that
moment in time and this is now uh 10 years ago to invest and it's not cheap i mean these these
these sort of mo tea boxes are about 50 bucks a piece um but i was i had a television show i was
able to invest in that and that made a lot of sense and still continues to um that being said
i still have a hodgepodge of boxes all over the place i mean
i'm working on a i'm working on a a metal buildup of kylo ren's saber and i don't have anywhere else
to put it except for this custom foam core box because of the size that it is and the
way i want to hold these materials in reference to each other so the fact is is you never slay
the dragon entirely of storage you momentarily put them on their back feet while you continue
to sort things out but there's always going to be more categories than there are spaces for them um
i had enough experience with shop storage when i saw the first sort
of mobox 10 years ago to know that i was looking at a remarkable solution
and i mean that's one of the other ones let's just try everything that's interesting
um old sorting boxes are something that shows up at garage sales all the time uh shows up on ebay
uh you can grab stuff and just try it out and see how it works for you but again ever like
every this should start with every shop discussion every shop is an externalization of a philosophy
of how to work and that philosophy is either coming from the person that runs that shop or
the group of people that utilize that shop um and so this solution worked for me because of
the particular way in which my brain operated but your results may vary um a good starting
point is to start cheap uh i don't think the art bin boxes are that expensive and again they're
terrific especially for uh low iteration use um you need to be a little more careful with them
than with let's say some of the more uh industrialized options but that's why also they're
less expensive um i'm a big believer in starting with the cheapest solution that you can get
the you know the ball through the goal with and then build up from there
uh let's see here what else do we have oh we have a bunch of new questions um bertrand
leroy says can you describe your compressed air infrastructure it's it's not amazing but
uh how do you deal with noise especially when filming where are the hoses manifolds etc so uh
five foot tall compressor way over in the opposite corner of the shop is like as far
from here as i can get it and uh it is built into a soundproof plywood box so when it kicks in we
have had to wait for like specific audio pieces to camera but besides that it's not that big a deal
um i don't like listening to compressors so it is always a thing to put a compressor in a soundproof
box if you do though you have to make sure you have access to the parts of the compressor you
need to regularly service for instance if you're using a compressor as it compresses uh the air in
the room into its tank it is also creating a lot of water because it's pulling water out of the air
so you need to be able to have access to the drain of your compressor you need to be able to put
something under that drain so when you open it and all that gunk comes out it doesn't just run on the
floor i have that i have it sits up on a riser so i can slip a bucket underneath um and then
um look if i had my real druthers i'd be running pressurized like copper pipe or schedule 40 pipe
all the way from the compressor out here into the shop and i'd have uh taps to that i've never
gotten around to doing it here i did it once at m the original m7 shop when i set when i helped
to set that up we did that shop infrastructure with pvc pipe and that is a terrible idea don't
use pvc pipe for your compressed air distribution don't do it it shatters so what can happen is yeah
you could end up with this beautiful manifold that runs all on your shop and you did it all in a day
and it didn't cost that much because you're gluing pvc together and then uh a year later your shop
air is sitting there at 105 psi and something large falls against the pvc pipe and pvc pipe
shatters when it endures a heavy concussive load you have a mini explosion in your shop i mean it's
not going to take out a wall but it absolutely creates shrapnel that is very dangerous you don't
want to do it please don't use pvc for your air manifold at the at the bare minimum you schedule
4d pipe uh with the with all the proper fittings i've also seen people do it with sweated uh
half-inch copper lines that all went out to taps and again i would love to do that here i've just
never gotten around to that project because it's a long throw what i have is literally flexible air
couplings going all the way from the compressor to a large manifold here up above my drill press
which distributes out to the other tool so it's all it's all air lines it's all flexible rubber
lines it's not a great way to distribute your air um it's a little hard to maintain
but again the alternative would take me like a couple of full days of work to get right
so i've never gotten around to it i wish i had a better answer to that question