My first real project - garage ceiling shelving

[Bruce]

CAUTION be real careful how you hang your shelves and what you put on them. Ceiling joists are not engineered to support much weight, their purpose is to keep the two walls from moving in or out. Their strength is tension and compression of their length. They have little strength engineered into them for things hanging from them. By suspending shelves from them you can have a failure. My son in law is a contractor and he can usually find a garage ceiling to fix to keep his crew busy if things get slow, (never a lack of this kind of work) so be careful.

When I was considering a similar project, a guy at Lowe's suggested I extend the hangers up into the rafters and bolt them in two places to better distribute the weight.

[dusty]

Chris,

When I look at your pictures I see one beautiful shop in the making. It's looking good.

I need to ask something though. In the second photo (IMG-1701), do I see that you are using the rip fence in conjunction with the miter gauge. I see the red featherboard - is this the stop that you are using for length? Just don't let the "cutoff" get caught betweem the blade and the rip fence.

This is my attempt to avoid what could be a very unnecessary incident while cross cutting multiple pieces the same length. Typically, I leave this attached to the rip fence. I just move it to the other side if it's in the way. The knob gives me something to grab onto when moving the rip fence around.

[a1gutterman]

That is a nice set-up, Dusty. Mine is simply a block clamped to my fence, and I must be sure that the clamp does not get in the way.

[chrispitude]

Hi curiousgeorge,

I agree. My plan is to put the Shopsmith on its own dedicated line, and keep it separate from the main garage/lighting circuit. It's too late to put the lighting on a separate circuit without really having to rip a lot of sheetrock down to do major surgery. I am looking to ensure the lights stay on while the Shopsmith is in use.

Hi edflorence,

I was using the fence-mounted featherboard mounted to the rip fence as a stop. This way, the workpiece is not in contact with anything on the right side as it meets the blade. The one time I accidentally did this was because I had the workpiece too far forward past the stop, and when I slid it right to where I thought it was hitting the featherboard stop, it was actually hitting the rip fence itself. I'm glad I noticed quickly before anything unfortunate happened.

Hi charlese,

You hit the nail on the head - my first project is shelving storage because I am tired of tripping over things as I walk around the garage. It sounds like you've been there, done that, and know exactly where I'm coming from! (Actually, I'm sure you all do.) Thanks for confirmation on the upper guard just barely making contact with the miter extension. I haven't been flipping the upper guard up for crosscuts. Is that what I'm supposed to be doing? (I really don't know what the proper safety technique is.)

Hi Ed in Tampa,

Fortunately my garage is below an upstairs level, and so the joists are 2x6 and supported by a big laminate beam running along the middle of the garage ceiling. The shelving will be used primarily for bulky item storage - cooler, folded tarps, empty unused gas containers, etc. I plan on marking the ceiling joist locations precisely using a sewing pin, pressing through the sheetrock until I have the joist completely dead to rights and then predrilling the holes for the lag bolts to the proper diameter. I don't take any chances with wall-mounted or ceiling-mounted items of any kind.

I made a bit more progress on my project today. The next step was to take 16 of the 24 2x4x8 boards, and cut them in half. I am building eight shelving units, four for each garage bay. Each shelving unit needs four 4' pieces. I picked out the 16 straightest boards, and cut them in half four at a time with my circular saw.

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I grabbed six of my cut 1x4 pieces and laid them on the garage floor. I laid four 2x4s across them, and made sure the ends were aligned together. I then clamped the ends with bar clamps, leaving room under the bars for a tape measure. Once the ends were clamped, I measured exactly 48" from one end and made two marks:

[ATTACH]1293[/ATTACH]

Once the marks were made, I clamped an aluminum straightedge guide for the circular saw exactly 1 1/4" up from the mark. I know from experience that this amount centers the kerf on the mark. I then attached two more clamps on either side of the cut line to keep things stable as the each piece is cut through. After each cut, I numbered the pieces in sets of four, with the pieces in each set being exactly the same length. (For all intents and purposes, I think all the pieces are the same length, but I figure making this sort of thing a habit can't hurt.)

And the finished product:

[ATTACH]1294[/ATTACH]

Trivia fact - all of the 16 2x4s were precisely 96" long, except for one. That one was 1/8" longer. I marked the end to trim down later.

The next step is to measure out exactly where the ceiling joists are. Once I know where the joists are, I know where the lag bolts will go for each shelving unit. This will dictate where I need to cut the dados for the vertical shelving supports.

- Chris

[pinkiewerewolf]

Chris, I made a similar set of shelves out of tongue & groove 2" pine flooring. I attached them to the floor joist in the basement in my old place.
That floor isn't going anywhere. LOL
You'll find the shelves add structural strength and storage solutions, going from floor to ceiling.
Remember, heavy stuff on the bottom 2/3rd...the older we get, the harder it is to put stuff above our heads.
Have fun with the project and its uses, & thanks again for sharing the photos.

[charlese]

Hi charlese,
Thanks for confirmation on the upper guard just barely making contact with the miter extension. I haven't been flipping the upper guard up for crosscuts. Is that what I'm supposed to be doing? (I really don't know what the proper safety technique is. - Chris

"Supposed to be doing?" No, not so stated in any manual that I've seen.

Here's what I've reasoned about safety, vs. accuracy when making crosscuts. If I'm mistaken, I'm sure someone will correct me or at least comment:

Safety is not compromised by lifting the upper guard except for one (I believe minor) thing. That is sawdust being thrown upward and forward by the spinning blade. A pair of safety measure can be taken. - Don't put your head in line with the spinning blade. - Wear safety glasses. Since the riving knife and anti kickback mechanism is in place - this method is properly safety protected.

When making a crosscut with the miter gauge, many times I want accuracy - dead on, with absolutely no small chips (splintering) on the trailing edge of the board. The lifted top blade guard allows dead on aligning with the proper edge of the blade. From here I pass the wood through the blade and really slow the movement of the board as the blade begins to exit the lower edge of the wood. I can watch the blade rise along the trailing edge until it reaches the top rear corner - at this point, I will often wait a few seconds, until the blade cuts (almost wears away) the upper top corner of the cut. This method doesn't necessarily cause any burning. If the table is properly aligned the only parts of the blade touching the wood are the corners of the teeth. Only if the wood were to slip or cant to a slight angle will burning happen.

I hardly ever saw pine or fir, occasionally saw poplar, usually saw oak and an occasional piece of walnut. Other than that, I'm pretty void of wood varieties. I don't worry about edge splintering with pine and fir. Poplar gets fuzzy little splintering edges - easily removed. Oak has a coarser grain that tends to develop small splinters on the trailing edge of a crosscut. These splinters are not deep or large, but they can cause unsightly defects when a perfect joint is desired. I try to avoid these in sawing.

[chrispitude]

I cut the remaining pieces to final length today. This time, I was cutting on the right side of the blade and cutting a wee bit off the end. At first, I tried cutting with the guard down but I became uncomfortable with this because the trimmed piece was sometimes fitting inside the guard which then held it against the blade. In this picture I've positioned the workpiece and the trimmed endpiece where they end up as soon as the blade completes its cut:

[ATTACH]1350[/ATTACH]

As you can see, the workpiece does not reach the pawls or riving knife as the endpiece becomes freestanding. To keep the guard from potentially causing issues, I flipped the guard up and completed the remaining cuts without the guard.

When I was previously cutting the longer workpieces on the left side of the blade, I kept the Shopsmith running as I pulled the trimmed lengths and the miter-held lengths away from the blade on both sides. This time, since the trimmed pieces were small, I had to turn the Shopsmith off after each and every cut to remove the remainder. I wasn't comfortable just feeding more workpieces and pushing those little cut pieces back, because they'd get back near the upward-moving part of the blade. Was this the right thing to do? I hope the constant cycling doesn't cause too much extra wear and tear.

Here's a picture showing how the trimmed end tended to sit under the guard as the workpiece was removed from the right side of the blade:

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Here's a closer look:

[ATTACH]1347[/ATTACH]

Since the guard wobbles laterally, sometimes the guard would actually fall down and keep the workpiece against the blade. Maybe a zero clearance insert would have been better for this sort of cut too?

Whoah, where did this guy come from!

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...continued...

[chrispitude]

With the lower guard pulled out to close off the gap that Bruce had pointed out. Although I only made half the number of cuts this time (24 this time versus 48 last time), there was substantially less sawdust on the table carriage when I was done:

[ATTACH]1351[/ATTACH]

I also ran with the upper guard pulled up for most of the cuts, so that may be a factor too.

I began marking off the ceiling studs where the shelving will attach. I take absolutely no chances with things like this. First, I used a studfinder to mark the approximate location of the stud. Next, I used a Rotozip with the bit extended about 1" and plunged the bit in where I figured the stud would be. Since the bit was longer than the thickness of the drywall, it did not plunge in all the way. I moved the bit laterally to each side of the stud, and as soon as the bit fell in the whole way, I moved along the stud to make a mark. This results in an "I-beam" mark which tells me exactly where dead center is:

[ATTACH]1352[/ATTACH]

Since the 2x4 will be lag-bolted to the ceiling, it will cover all these marks up and I'll never see them.

Now that I know where the studs are, I need to work out how where I need to dado for the vertical shelving posts so they don't conflict with where the lag bolts will go. This will become clearer in time...

- Chris

[a1gutterman]

You are doing great, Chris! Just a note about your ceiling studs: Studs they are not, joists is the proper term.

The saw guard is for your safety. If it's safer to not use it for a particular task, such as this, then don't use it. The safest way in this situation, wood probably be to use a sled.

[dusty]

Chris,

In your part of the country, are the ceiling joists in a garage area on 16", 20" or 24" centers?