TL;DR: This week’s ShopTalk: how a messy bench, a junkyard childhood, and a 3-horsepower gas engine explain the fine line between dopamine and deliverables.  Then we offer a few “brain sharpeners” to keep handy in the workplace.  And we end with a ponder (Prime Big Deals days ahead) if your shop doesn’t need a stool.”

A Messy Shop Insight

The “critical breakthrough” in my lifetime of self-discovery happened one morning this week at precisely 3:27 AM.

I’d gotten up early for coffee and some thinking time. The world is quiet then—no sunrise, no animals moving, Elaine asleep, security cameras waiting for deer to stir.

The focus was simple enough: why doesn’t my shop look more like a genius-level laboratory? All the parts, tools, and equipment are there. But instead of gleaming benches and tidy rows, one workbench is buried, overflow landed on a table saw, and a box with a new office chair squats on the chop saw.

As I sat, coffee warming my hands, the Ure genetics kicked in. Like a cartoon devil and angel on my shoulders. The devil murmured: Even if it was all dusted and shined, would you really have any more than before “organizing”? The angel countered: If you have to move things to find things, then you need to change.

I’ve heard this back-and-forth for 25 years—ever since we sold the sailboat, where space was sacred and organization wasn’t optional. Land life filled up with “inventor needs” until even I admit it’s ridiculous. Try explaining to your son why you really do need two table saws—one for sheet goods, one for dados.

No, there was something deeper going on. And I was determined to find it.

Black and Tan

The answer, once I dug down, was simple: junkyards.

Mom always called them “junkyards,” but to Pappy they were sacred ground. One of the best in 1950s Seattle was Black and Tan Surplus. (Not to be confused with the Black and Tan Supper Club-Cabaret just south of 12th and Jackson St. of similar vintage.)

Legend said it was started just after WWII—or maybe Korea—by two friends, one Black and one Spanish, who built a surplus empire together. They covered an entire industrial block with sprawling racks and tin-roof sheds.

Need a part for anything? Black and Tan had it. Hydraulics piled in one shed, electrical in another. I was fascinated by the odd radios and the three-phase shipyard gear—400-cycle equipment stacked like treasure.

My favorite was the aircraft metal building. Aluminum in any shape you wanted—pipe, rod, or quarter-inch plate—all for 25 cents a pound. If you only needed a short piece, bring your own hacksaw.

Times Changed

By ’62 or ’63, the founders sold out and it became Aircraft Supply and Salvage. Same location, new focus: Boeing’s jet boom fed the yard with aircraft salvage. Across the street, Winter’s Surplus opened. For a young boy, it was paradise.

Popular Science and Popular Mechanics were fueling every kid’s imagination. My pal “the Major” caught the bug too. We’d bike down to Georgetown where Washington Liquidators had shipyard scrap stacked sky-high.

We drooled over refrigerator-sized Navy transmitters and boxes of tubes. Saturday “street-level education” was a bike ride, a burger at Dag’s, and a backpack full of parts for the next big idea.

How Junkyards Changed Me

The resolution of my messy shop? It comes down to this: junkyards turned me into a possibility thinker.

All those hours wandering the aisles with Pappy trained my brain to look at any piece of junk and imagine two or three things it could become. The endless what-if’ing freed my mind from other people’s ruts.

That’s why there are multiple CNC machines, 3D printers, welders, and more saws than I’ll admit to. It’s my internal visionary externalizing the creative process.

A trip to Zeidel’s shipbreakers in Tacoma once had me set on buying a brass porthole for my bedroom door. Pappy vetoed the $25, but we came home with inch-thick Navy porcelain mugs. One became my shaving soap mug. Nothing wasted.

Planners Versus Imagineers

Here’s the larger insight: there are planners and there are imagineers.

Elaine’s an imaginer. She hasn’t sewn in 25 years but still treasures fabric stashes that “call to her.” She can wander a fabric store mesmerized by colors and textures while planners walk in with a list, buy exactly what’s on it, and leave in ten minutes.

Men are the same. My uncle, a deputy fire chief, was pure planner. He hit salvage yards with a shopping list: plate steel this size, pipe that size, and straight back out. That focus built things like Medic One.

Me? I drift. I stand in the presence of possibilities. That’s how the imagination jailbreak works.

And it shows up everywhere. At Lowe’s, planners grab their gallon of paint and go. Imaginers (like Elaine) lose 20 minutes comparing palettes. I surprised myself the other day—walked into Sherwin-Williams and said, “Give me a quart of Fire on the Mountain red.” Out in five minutes.

So maybe I can be both: planner and imagineer.

Unless, of course, a 3-horsepower horizontal shaft gas engine shows up in the shop. Then all bets are off.

You see – and this is the Shop Lesson today – that clutter wasn’t laziness, it was inheritance. It came from an early heavy dose of “possibility thinking”.  And an appreciation that there’s a Truth to human creativity.  Many dreams never happen because there aren’t materials at hand.  Others end up like Elaine’s fabrics – the call to a project is there, but not the urgency.

Learning to walk the line between dopamine and deliverables.  It was worth getting up early to sort it out and learn.

I then went to the messy shop and said “Thanks for the lesson.  Now we change.”

Shop Sharpeners – Trivia that Isn’t

Sixty-five years back, wandering surplus stores was like going to mechanical engineering grad school.  “Hey, Dad…why did they [insert any of a thousand questions].  Invariably, Pappy had the answer which is why most of the Fifth Battalion called him “the Encyclopedia.”

Still, it was a lot to take in as a boy.  So here’s a few “things to know” that will keep you from feeling like a neophyte or looking like a klutz, when you visit a properly equipped shop.

• A 2×4 is really 1½ by 3½ inches. That’s why “three two-by-fours” in a corner is the standing newbie joke among framers.  They give you three, “Lay em up so they are even all around” and then saunter off.  The trick, if you must is the gap is to the center of structure on the outside so the inside sheetrock will be well supported and the nailing for exterior sheathing is good…
• A comfortable stair riser is 7 inches.  That’s a 2-by-6 on edge with a 2-by-some as the tread.  Smaller risers (Pappy likes 6-inches – less work to climb. One relative had an attic with narrow treads and a 7 1/2″ rise – it was deadly, even as a kid.)
• A 45-degree brace is 1.414 times the leg length, so a 3-foot by 3-foot triangle needs a 4.24-foot diagonal. For reinforcing decks?  A little shy is fine – it’s only an 1/8th inch of “gimme” on each edge.
• The quick square rule is 3-4-5.  Just try cobbling 3, 4, and 5 inches into something that doesn’t have a 90 in it.
• Household power is 120 volts;
  • white is neutral,
  • green or bare is ground,
  • black or red is hot.
  • In DC wiring, how’s your color correction? It’s a freaking rainbow.  Black ground and red positive for “regular” 12-volt work.
• DC wiring among the grownups?  You have solid wire colors including:

• But then, in addition to the wire body color, you also have “Traces” on the wire.

And it doesn’t stop there.  The main “knowing” is that there is no wire color police.  Sure, wrong voltages can kill.  But you can’t expect industrial compliance to be as serious as, oh, pronouns for example…

• One amp at 120 volts equals 120 watts.
• One metric horsepower is 740-watts.  About 6.16 amps but measure voltage is you want to be absurd about it.  Measure that metric horse for me, while Ure at it.
• #12 copper safely carries 20 amps.  Be able to discuss the “Wire Derating Game.”  The ABYC tables for your family porta yacht?  (Nods to Adm. Egor): ABYC Ampacities: For 12/2 AWG marine-grade wire, the maximum allowable amperage is 45 amps outside an engine space and 38.3 amps inside an engine space, based on specific conditions.  Can’t bundle though (derates).
• For antennas, half-wave length in feet equals 468 divided by frequency in MHz; a 7.2 MHz quarter wave dipole on each side needs about 33.25 feet per leg.
• Common coax velocity factor is about 0.66. Ladder line? Close to 1… Foam and LMR try 0.85.  (Can a physics whiz tell me why radio moves slower in coax, please?)
• A ¼-20 bolt has 20 threads per inch, and its tap drill is a #7.
• Fraction to decimal cheats:
  • 1/8 = 0.125,
  • 3/16 = 0.1875,
  • 1/4 = 0.25,
  • 3/8 = 0.375,
  • 1/2 = 0.5.
• One gallon of water weighs 8.34 pounds, a cubic foot is 62.4 pounds. Beer drinkers adhering to “pint’s a pound the world around” are short-changing themselves about a half shot per pint.  (Seeing why trivia’s important? Data matters!)

Keep enough of these things in your head and you won’t have room to remember much else. Which is why Mom walked “stiff-legged” for two weeks when Pappy got here a new Electrolux for Mother’s Day, one year.

Aging Shop Ergonomics

The local boy (who is now in the semi-pro’s of Texas Fence Work) did a great job this week.  But it was a hell of an adjustment: Seeing someone besides me on the ladder.

In fact, it took me until Saturday morning to “be OK with it.”  Because about then I realized “Hey!  I’m not sore today!”  Usually, two days after a big bout of ladder climbing and I’m starting to look around for drug dealers…

T’other thing I noticed was that I somehow – just in the past month – have developed a preference for SITTING instead of standing at the shop bench.

No, most tasks, reefing down wrench points and such, you need to be up and ambling all over hell.  But now you take the (long-delayed) bench clean-up?  There’s a god-awful amount of hardware to be sorted and a roll around chair was just what I needed.

Shopping Tip:  If you don’t have a roll around bar stool and a low stool in your shop, get thee hither to the clicker at the ‘Zon.  It was $60 bucks and change on Saturday.

I did figure out what “sitting while working” may be a better plan than standing while working, especially as the weather cools.  So I’ve been dreaming up a perfect shop desk to work from:

Not a perfected idea, yet. But Ure welcome to borrow and tweak. The beer cooler bottom left is too small. Microwave looks too small for decent coffee, too. Watchmaker tools are where the mouse pad should be.  But the real problems?  No BBQ grill, no pot-belly oil stove, no CNC.

Oh…and no room for it.  So…time to go vertical!

I’m working on how to vent the charcoal (lower left) and how to run the oil stove vent through the big screen – but such things are trivialities to the creative ShopMeister.

For now I’m back to things to add onto the Amazon list: ground screws, four-by-fours, sheathing, and this time? Insulation.

Look, I may be slow…er...but I’m slow.

Write when you get rich,

[email protected]