Above 1200 Sq/FT The Action Sports Garage

I've had quite a few people send me some DM's and ask if I would start a garage thread, so here it is.

A bit of background. I am an engineer by schooling, but a photographer by trade. In fact I have never used my engineering degree as I have worked in the Action Sports industry for the last 25 years. I primarily focus on Skiing, but I also spend a lot of time riding bikes and shoot a fair amount of Mountian Biking as well.

My day job has taken me around the world more times than I can count shooting for RedBull, NatGeo Adventure, ESPN, Outside, Powder magazine, Bike Magazine and a whole lot of ski and bike companies.









I get to spend a lot of time hanging out in cool spots, or even hanging out of cool machines.


And occasionally we get to blow stuff up.



During these experiences, I have gotten to spend a bunch of time in different ski shops, bike shops, aircraft hangers, engineering labs and productions facilities all over the world. It seems every time I get one of those opertunites, I learn new techniques and ideas and try to incorporate them a bit in my home shop. I'm constantly learning.

When I am not skiing or biking or hanging out with my son, I like to spend time in my home shop. I am currently working on a full teardown and rebuild of a Monarch 10EE lathe that was originally manufactured for Hanford in 1944.

Since I am not currently doing an actual garage build, I will do my best to document a bit of the evolution of my shop to the point where it currently is today and then going forward I will document the changes to it here. I look at it as a constant evolution.


This is an image of my original garage. It was just a typical 2 stall garage, but I sure could fit a lot of bikes in there! This image was taken back when I hosted Bike Magazine's Bible buyers guide issue out of my house. I had every bike in the buyers guide in my garage for a month while each bike got tested and reviewed. During that time I played host to the entire Bike crew, but most notably Ryan Palmer (pictured), Ryan was a former World Cup race mechanic, and the technical editor for Bike mag, and later Beta and Pink Bike. I learned a ton from him about working on suspension rebuilds, and he introduced me to some pretty nice tools.

After 5 years in my first home, my wife and I decided that with our first child on the way, and my crazy winter work schedule it would be best if we moved from our place in the foot hills into town.


Our new house was 800 SF smaller than our previous house, but we are in a great neighborhood, we get a lot more sun (relatively speaking its still the PNW) and most importantly I got a slightly bigger garage. The Garage is 21x20 with one side being extra deep ( 18x8 ). I really wanted a 3 bay garage with a separate shop building, but that wasn't happening in the neighborhoods my wife was interested in. Maybe some day.

The first year was a bit of a blur as we sold our house, bought our new place and moved all before my son was 2 months old. Crazy times, with not a lot of sleep.

One of the first things I did, was to tune up the yard. I trimmed all of the bushes way back, installed an automated drip system (rain Machine) that alters the watering based upon the weather forecast, and planted a bunch of perennials and installed landscape lights. and built a bunch of garden beds and trellises for the plants. I enjoy having a nice yard, but I hate having it take up all of my time. So aside form a bit of early season maintenance each spring, I only need to spend a few minutes a day staying onto of the weeds and dead heading flowers etc. For weeds I found that using a Gallon of industrial vinegar mixed with 2 cups of brine salt and a cup caps of dish soap is amazingly effective.

With the yard work out of the way, it freed me up to spend time working on the garage.

I found 3 sets of bank safety deposit boxes on craigslist for something like $50 a set. They where too good of a deal to pass up so I brought them home and bolted them to the walls in the back corner of the garage. I use these for my hardware storage. Each of the smaller safety deposit boxes on top holds a different thread size. Everything from #2 machine screws to ¾+ in SAE and 2mm to 13MM+ in metric.

I use Schaller Boxes to divide the hardware in each box by its length. I hate having to run to the hardware store to by one of fasteners, so anytime I need fasteners I always by extras... ideally by the box if its cost effective. Having them organized this way makes it super efficient to find any size fastener I need. The rest of the boxes are organized in a similar fashion for retaining rings, cotter pins, drive screws, rivets, etc.

Red plastic cases onto of the safe deposit boxes hold the types of hardware that I often want to take with me to a project, such a wire terminals, wood screws, etc, etc.

Having limited garage space, and needing as much storage as I could get, I built up Three 4x8 sheets of plywood with hard wood edges and them painted them white. I then used all thread and unistrut to hang all 3 panels above where the garage door raises. This would normally be wasted space but now I have 96 sq feet of storage there.

My dad came up for a visit and the two of us built all of the garage cabinets in a day. They are all made with ¾" Birch play and are pretty damn strong. This is my main work area It consists of a 8' workbench on the right. On the left is safety deposit boxes, a 8' work bench with a ply top, my Festool Kapex miter saw and then another 8' work bench. All of my ski tuning gear lives around the wax bench on the right. The back left workbench is for whatever... .typically what ever big project I am working on and need temp storage for. The front left workbench is my main work bench and my most used tools and bike specific tools reside under it.

This is the view from the other direction. You can see the drill press is on the right after my main work bench, followed by more cabinets, my snowmobile and then the bike racks. Since this pic was taken, I have sold the drill press and the sled, moved the black tool box to the other wall, and added some bigger machine tools. At least it will give you an idea of the general layout.

Looking into the garage from the front, to the right of the deeper bay is my ski storage. I suspend some custom made steel racks from the ceiling using unit strut, so the skis all hang in front of the gas heater and hot water tank. This serves two purposes, it still allows plenty of airflow to the furnace / hot water heater, but the residual heat from those helps to dry off the skis in the winter. The rack can hold over 30 pairs of "fat" skis.


To the left of the ski rack, is my ski pole rack. These hang over the chest freezer we keep in the garage.

This is the bike storage area.

Ok, so thats more or less the general layout of how I had the garage setup the first year. Next I'll go into the changes I've made to it so far.

The first winter after we moved in, I was up helping the ski area set up for opening day. When I'm in town, I like to help them out as I have all of the various certs, and avalanche training. Working in the snow full time for as long as I have you learn to get very good at understanding avalanche conditions. However no matter how much training and experience you have, our still dealing with the unpredictable nature of being in the mountains. That year we where dealign with a very unusual avalanche layer at th start of the season. In fact it was so unusual I have never seen in here in the PNW, and only knew just enough to know I didnt know **** about it. So I was helping the ski area out sitting up signs inbounds after avalanche control was done. When I placed a cliff sign in the snow, the entire slope above and bellow me let go.

I ended up going for a ride through these cliffs.

Evidently this is how you look after a big slide. I ended up separating my left shoulder and broke my right ankle in 7 spots.

When the slide broke loose, out of insticnt I turned and jumped to allow most of the snow to go bellow me. I ended up landing on rock from a 40 foot air. If you are fmailiar with ski boots, you know how stout they are. I hit so hard I split the shell of the boot.

The next day the ski area used some pretty big explosives and got slopes to rip out we have never seen slide before.

I'm not the type of person that does well sitting around doing nothing, and I sure as heck dont like forced time off due to an injury. So a couple of weeks later, I decided to build a drying rack for wet ski gear. I used ¾ baltic Birch that has a melamine factory bonded to both sides. Its commonly called cabinet liner. It's super strong, water resistant and easy to clean by just wiping it down. The bench top was made out of Sipo and then got a few layers of poly to protect it.

I ran a bunch of new eletrical outlets so each of the 4 sections has it own outlet for charging batteries, etc, but also a switch.
In the cabinet base for each section I installed a high powered carpet drying air,

and then drilled and chamfered a series of vent holes in the bench for each section.

This way, we can individual turn on the fan for each section to dry we outerwear. The switches are smart switches so they are programed to turn off after 2 hours of run time. Plenty to dry even the wettest goretex.

I built the cabinet using my Festool Domino to do most of the joining. Its very quick and makes incredibly strong joints.

You can see some of the domino tenons here in one of the drawers I built for the base unit. The odd shape is so we can store extra boots In the base, while still leaving room for the fan units.

Thanks for sharing, I’m looking forward to seeing more. And I’m glad you survived the avalanche, that sounds pretty scary….

I need to build a drying system as well. How do you dry your boots? Do you remove the liners? I’m not quite clear on how the blowers under the bench actually work, but maybe future pics will be more clear.

Wow thanks for sharing! Engineer turned photographer turned mechanic turned goofball turned executive here... One day I'll decide what I want to be when I grow up!

gba2331 said:

I need to build a drying system as well. How do you dry your boots? Do you remove the liners? I’m not quite clear on how the blowers under the bench actually work, but maybe future pics will be more clear.

Click to expand...

It's funny, I thought I had a pic of the finished drying rack system, but guess I never took one. I was dealing with a pretty heavy concussion during that time. Here is a pic where you can see a bit of the drying rack in the back ground.

The fans blow air up though the holes in the bench seat, and that air movement is what drys the gear hanging in each section. It's surprising how fast gear will dry out with enough air movement, and you dont need heat. A lot of the cat and Heli lodges in BC use a similar set up with the carpet drying fans.

The boot / glove drying rack is made by Gear Dryer. It works well, is fairly compact and its way better priced than its next closet competitor. My wife, was a bit pissed when I bought it, but after one winter with the kid splashing in puddles every day, she has some around and there is times, that she wished we owned two of the units! I replaced the main switch with a smart switch, so it automatically turns off 6 hours after I turn it on in the evening. I also programed the smart switch to automatically turn on 1 hour before the time I typically leave for the ski hill in the am, so my boots are always warm in the am. I dont remove my liners from the shells to dry them, for two reasons. If you dry them every night, you dont get that much moisture built up to require removing the liners. The second reason is that my liners are custom foam by Surefoot So they are an exact mold of my foot and of the inside of the boot shell. Thats makes them a real pain in the *** to try to remove from the shell. Its do able, but its not fun. My liners have built in heaters, so with this setup, I can charge the boot heater batteries while the boots are drying. Plus all of my work radios are right there charging as well.

Here is a better shot of the ski rack during its construction.

The second set of the bars is attached to the lower bracket, and its off set from the first set, so the bindings clear each other both vertically and horizontally.

I finished the drying rack system in the 6 week time span from the avlanche till I left for a work trip to Japan.

We had some pretty amazing conditions on that trip... almost made me forget I was skiing on a broken ankle.

However I was still in a ton of pain, and was literally going from walking cast to ski boot, back to walking cast every day. When I got home I went back to see the surgeon, and let him know something was obviously wrong. When I was in the ER after the slide they did and X-ray of my ankle and saw only a few avulsion fractures. It wasn't until I got back from 2 weeks of skiing in Japan and finally got in to see an Ankle surgeon that they finally did an MRI of my ankle where we discovered I had fully fractured it in 7 places and completely tore every ligament. That should have been the end of my season, but I had so many work projects I was obligates to, I would take a few weeks off, work for a few days and take a few more weeks off. I ended up skiing 40 days that winter, and in hind site I should have skied none... oh well.


During one of my "ankle recovery sessions" that winter I ended up finding a 6'5" Wilton tradesman vice on craigslist. I cant remember for sure, but I think I only paid $50 or maybe $75 for it. It was cheap, but it added a bit of work.

I ended up doing a complete overhaul of it, and it turned out really nice!

I then immediately put it to work running steel air lines for the garage. I have a full set of ratcheting Rigid pipe taps, so I was able to buy the pipe in bulk, cut it to length at home using my abrasive cut off saw, and then tap

and ream each section.

I attached the pipe to the walls / ceiling using the thinner Unistrut. Instead of lag screws, I used structural screws. Ideally like those as no pilot hole is needed. Just drive them in with an impact.

The pipe then gets secured to the unistrut using their pipe clamps. The hole system works really slick and is incredibly strong. I used some flexible hose to connect my tiny Makita air compressor. All of the air drops have J bends so that the moisture collects at the bottom of the bend, to minimize what makes it to the tool end. I have the air compressor plugged into a dust collection remote system from Grizzly, so I dont have to walk to the back of the shop to turn the air compressor on / off and its got a programmable time shut off, so I dont have to worry about forgetting to turn it off.

That following spring, I found a really good deal on a used Bridgeport.


Here is a thread to that build. Was still dealing with the effects of the avalanche concussion, so that write up wasn't that detailed.

But it turned out really nice.

With the purchase of the mill, I couldn't really justify keeping the Grizzly drill press so I sold it. I wasn't a fan of its quality anyways, so I dont miss it. I then moved my Large craftsman tool chest stack to its location, and the purchased another tool chest for the mill tooling to go behind it.

The first project for the mill was to make a custom camera mount for my work cameras, as I hatted how thick all of the comercially available mounts where. Plus the mounts for the cameras I use are stupid expensive. Here I am using a dovetail cutter to make the tripod mount.

Here is the finished mount.

That one project alone, saved me ⅓ of the total cost I had into the mill. So I was pretty damn happy with the purchase!

Latter that summer I found a pretty good deal on a Shopfox cabinet saw.

In order to move it by myself, I pulled off the cat iron top.

I spent a bit of time when I reinstalled the top to make sure it was level and perpendicular to the blade. I ended having to use a few pieces of brass shim stock to get it perfectly calibrated.

It came with a router lift and an incur fence system. I really like the Incra system, especially after I converted it to metric as all of my other wood workin tools are Festool so they are all in metric. I put a cheap DRO system on the Tables main fence as well, so its easy to switch back and forth from inch to metric.

I used the mill to make a custom dust collection attachment for the Incra fence so I could use it with my Festool dust collector.

After two major equipment purchases, I figured I better make my wife something really nice for our anniversary to keep the piece.

I had a bunch of Sipo left over from the previous drying rack, so decided to build my wife some custom night stands to match the Sipo bed my dad built use when we got married.

For the cured and tapered pieces I built up some jigs using baltic birch ply, so I used use a large compression bit to make exact copies.

This is it assembled without any glue, to check the fitment.

My good friend Zack Giffin (pro skier and former host of Tiny House Nation) gave me a pretty cool formula for the finish. It's ⅓ Tung Oil, ⅓ Boiled linseed oil and ⅓ poly all mixed together. It really makes the grain pop and when wet sanded and reapplied with 1200 girt almost gives the grain a 3D look to it. I finished all of the pieces before assembly to prevent any glue stains.


Here they are after glue up. The toping bottom panels are floating to account for wood movement.

I made dovetailed drawers using the Incra fence system... its super versatile for making just about any kind of joinery.

I used Birds Eye maple for the fronts with the same finish I sued o note carcass.

I used a template and the router table to make the main curve for the handles. The scalloped portion was cut on the Bridgeport using a router bit. I then installed Brass thread inserts.

All finished up.

My next major project for the garage was to upgrade the bike storage system.

The idea with this system, so that you can flip the bikes like you would the pages of a book and rotate the front wheel L or R to better nest the bikes. I also ran a bunch of outlets for charging E-bikes.

The racks are pretty well made here in WA.

The wheel trays can be adjusted to fit any wheel size up to 29"

It works pretty well as I can store 8 bikes in just 8 linear feet. However after bit of use and having the rack fully loaded, I'm not sure I am the biggest fan of the system. At some point, I'm either going to modify it, or just build something else as I dont really like how the bikes swing left or right.

At somepoint this large Famco 3-1/2R ratcheting arbor press followed me home. It was way bigger than what I was looking for, but its pretty awesome.

My son loves to crush cans with it! If you look closely, you will see the handle is a mountian bike grip I had laying around. I find the Arbor press has a ton of use, from pressing out pins, bearings and shafts, to other uses for skiing as well. During Covid, I want able to cross the boarder to see my boot fitter, so I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I milled up some aluminum

and made an adapter to turn the arbor press into a custom boot press. I ordered the boot press attachments from Sun Valley Ski Tools.

For those not familiar with ski boots you want them to fit pretty tight and precisely. If they feel like tennis shoes out of the box, then they are way too big. The tighter the fit the better the performance. Most of the time to get the ideal fit you need to make more room in the boot in a specific spot.

Here I have marked in yellow the general area where I need to widen the toe box.

All of the hardware gets stripped from the boots.

Then an appropriate sized mandrel is selected for the job.


A heat gun is used to heat the shell above its TG

I use an infrared thermometer to see how hot it is.

The boot is then placed on to the mandral and pressure is applied to stretch the area where you nee more space. It is then allowed to fully cool before you remove the pressure.

And thats how you custom fit ski boots.

After years of searching for a lathe, I found a Monarch 10EE for sale within a reasonable days drive.

That is currently my major shop project at the moment. You can view the very detailed rebuild thread here.

This is how the garage looked before I brought the lathe home. Right now its sitting next to the cabinet saw. When its finished its going to behind the bikes, where my balder buffer currently lives before my workbenches start on the left hand wall.

Not long after I purchased the lathe, I found a guy that was selling two Vidmar cabinets for $500. It was a deal I couldn't pass up as I drastically needed more efficient tool storage.

I ended up fully stripping them, repainted them with automotive Polyurethane paint, greasing all of the bearings and installed new drawer handles.

They now work and operate as new.

Ok, now for the tool ****. I'll start with the bike side of things and eventually work my way over to the Ski tuning bench.

Here is my main bench. Its right across from the mill, so it gets the most use.

The vice is a 6.5" Wilton tradesman.
The screwdrivers are PB Swiss (I have a full set) and Wera with the strike handles. I dont use them often, but the WERA's with the ¼ Drive socket adapter in the heads is nice for stubborn screws.

The T handles are a full set of PBSwiss by .5mm I dont think I have ever used some of the odd sizes like 7mm... but I picked them up in Switzerland years ago when there was a pretty good exchange rate.

These are Hout drill index's, I have a full set of fractional, Number, Letter, Silver Deming, as well as metric, plus Fosters and Left hand drills ( for removing stuck bolts).

That green unit on top of the left hadn't drill index is a drill bit sharpener.... its nice to have, especially if you drill lots of steel.
The cabinets under the bench are a set of Vidmar's that I restored and painted with a full automotive paint system. That painting project was practice for the lathe I am restoring.

The Vidmar's make Snapon tool boxes look cheaply made. Each drawer is rated for over 500Lb's and they are way deeper than a standard box, so you can fit more **** in them... in this case tools.
I rarely use T wrenches these days. As I prefer the PB Swiss screwdriver handles for assembly with hex and Torx. For taking **** apart, or torquing it, down, sockets all the way for me.

The Wera driver is a torque limiting screw driver. The Torque wrenches are all Snapon, with the exception of one being a CDI. Snapon owns CDI and they are identical except the Snapon ones have a nicer handle the CDI is ¼ the price. All of my sockets are PBSwiss for Torx and metric hex, the rest are Snapon. PB Swiss makes the best hex sockets I have found. They are hard to find, but are worth it as they last forever, like I am still using them a decade latter. I'd like to try the Nepros sockets at some point. My rachets are all Snapon and Nepros. I find I gravitate toward the Nepros ratchets each time. I especially like their ⅜ as it is in the same body as their long ¼ drive. For confined areas the Snapon TZERO with its spraug clutch is really nice (same tech as an Industry 9 hub). Those hex keys are WERA stainless steel and I forget what they called that specific set, but they have a unique tip that will often grab stripped hex heads that nothing else will.

All of my sockets are Snapon Flank Drive plus, with the exception of the mid length sockets, I prefer standard flank drive for those as the Flank Drive plus tolerances can be too tight on rusted fasteners.
This is my ½ drive socket drawer, once again all Snapon, including the impacts.

All of my Crowfeet are also Snapon.

Most people don't realize the Park Cone wrenches can be used as really thing Crowfeet
https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/...e-jpg.1676371/
https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/...e-jpg.1676374/
Thats a good trick to know. I just used it last week on a Vorspring Smashpot conversion as its the only thing that would fit in the narrow slot.
On to the Bike specific tools

I prefer Felco for cable cutters these days, and Unior for chain Link pliers. The Knipex are flush cut pliers specific for plastics IE zip ties.

The long grey pliers are made by VAR and are cable end ferrule crimpers.

Most of the BB sockets are for E-bikes these days, with the exception of the ChrisKing one. Supposedly Abbey is about to launch a set of these this fall and I will be upgrading. I really like the Abbey chain wrench for removing front sprockets on E-Bikes, but prefer the Pedros vicegrip for cassettes.

I am big fan of the Abbie Crombie as well as the Crombie socket.

This is my drawer for dealing with Bike hydraulics, brakes / suspension. The chamferless sockets and dust wiper installers are all Abbey. I really like the Park bleeders as well. The two grey shafts at top are FOX factory tools for loosening the ends of the fork shafts. The union strap wrench is awesome on air cans. For seal / oil ring removal, I use a variety of tools, but mostly the brass / plastic picks in the middle, or the Matthew (Identical to snapon) seal remover set (bottom) for really stubborn ones. The park sealant injector is nice for tubeless setups as I tend to use more sealant than recommended.

This is my bearing removal drawer. I've not found a press system that I am fully stoked on. I like the Abbey press better than the Park one for pivot's but the park one has a better cup system for those. The Park has a quicker method of setting up the press. Unfortunately they use different sized shafts, so not that compatible... once I finish my lathe rebuild, I will probably make these all custom as needed.

Shaft clamps and crown race puller. I almost never used the derailleur hanger alignment tool. Especially since switching all of my bikes over to AXS. If I have shifting issues, 99% of the time its a hanger and for $20 its not worth trying to straighten them.
All of my pliers are either Knipex or Engineer. I like the Engineer ones for screw removal, and their nylon tip ones can be good for suspension rebuilds. For a while Craftsman was rebranding the Knipex and I picked up a few before they stopped at ⅓ the normal price.

For retaining rings, I prefer Wiha as their tips are angled and notched to prevent the rings from going flying. For other snap rings, I like a combination of Knipex and Wilde. Wilde makes these for Proto / Snapon... they are all identical other than the lable on them, and if you shop around you can pick them up quite easily for reasonable prices.

Hammer drawer... most dont get used much as I keep both Craftsman and a PBSwiss soft blow hanging up for easy reach. PBSwiss is the way to go for these IMOP. A few of those claw heads where my great-grandfathers and are over 100 years old.

Files, one set is dedicated to steel, one set thats specific for ALU and other non-ferris soft metals and a third set for wood. I like the Snapon handles, so use these on some of the non-snapon made files.

Metric wrenches, all Snapon, I have a full set of Flankdrive plus, plus a full set of ratcheting. The wrenches in the top left are Snapon Low-Torque. These are my go to for suspension work, they are very thin (not quite as thin as cone wrenches), but they won't sractch delicate suspension coatings as they have a very high polish on them. Expensive, but cheaper than ******* up a critical part.

My SAE wrenches are also all snapon with full sets of Flankdrive plus and in ratcheting. Those hex keys are the very hard to find full set of PBSwiss in Inch.

Picks, splungers and scribes. The Snapon picks maybe one of their best products... especially for the price. I find I use the dental pics a lot. Its worth buying medical grade for these, as they are much harder, stronger tips, plus they have small blades sharpened into them. I believe these are made by Hu-Friedley, but I'd lave to go look at them. Knipex is my go to for tweezers and their ball bearing tweezers really come in handy.

Punches and drifts. I have full set in both steel and brass. All of the steel ones are Starrett. They are the cats meow (I'm luke warm on their brass ones, I think Mayhew is better). Alignment punches are at the top center, followed by Starrett center punches. Their automatic punch is unrivaled. The set of brass punches bellow the red box are roll pin specific punches. To the right is a set of brass and steel starter punches. These have special concave tips, so they do not wander when you are trying to free a pin.
The red box is a set of PBSwiss metic punches.

They are nice, but I bent the small one. Starretts are stronger but only available in inch sizes. Next time I would get the shorter PB Swiss metic set without the handles.

Electrical. The crimpers on the right are Knipex multi crimps. I have not found anything they won't do, or that they dont make dies for. The bottom is a set of Snapon pin removers for electrical connections. These are going to get more commonly needed with E-bikes. As are the set of contact files, contact cleaning brushes and contact cleaning tweezers above. The contact cleaning tweezers are especially helpful to clean contacts on Ebike batteries and chargers where a contact brush won't fit. Back when I used to do a lot of camera repair, the contact cleaning brushes, especially with the fiberglass brush was a go to tool.

Precision measuring. It's not worth waisting time or money on anything but Starrett or Mitutoyo here. Japan wins for the digital calipers and USA wins for the squares. Above the square set is a set of drill gauges. The exception here, is tape measures. I love the Fastcap ones. I have a inch / metric for general use and a dedicated metric one for cabinet making / wood working, as all of my wood working tools are Festool.

Incra makes nice rullers for layout work. The brass 45 is made by Bridge City Tools... those where the top of the top until they sold the company and now all of their new stuff is Chinese junk. The Starrett dual indicators are for tramming in the head of my mill.

Machine tool stuff. The parallels are all Starrett. The indicator holders are NOGA. For Tap Handles, nothing comes close to Starrett. Use them once and you will never touch a hardware store tap handle again. The Starrett tap guide is also a must for precision. I find that I use their bench block way more than I thought I would.

I keep all of my Taps, Dies and thread chasers organized by size. I am also starting to leave the correct tap drill in each bin, so I dont have to look them up each time.

Automotive tools. Once you use one of these ratcheting brake pad spreaders, you will never change your brakes any other way.

A few more tid bits. Milton makes the best inflator I’ve ever used. The rest are ****.

it has a bunch of quick change tips. I use these two most.

For Air guns the coilhose pneumatics Typhoon is really nice.

For oil and grease I like to use syringes and syringe bottles. Plus Boeshield T9 is way cheaper by the gallon.

For bike stands I’m using a Park Pro Stand mounted upside down to the ceiling so it telescopes out of the way.

For knives I’m a big fan of this Knipex and my old Snapon

Another must have is a good flashlight. I really like this solid titanium D4V2 it’s stupid bright.

and has a magnetic base.

And of course good drills and impacts are a must.
I do want to pick up a Snapon ¼ and ⅜ impact wrench to go with the power ratchet I have, but keep waiting for a deal on them.

Finally for **** that won’t budge, map gas and Posi lock pullers and blind bearing pullers.

Ok, on to the Ski tuning set up. Here is an over view of the current wax bench setup.

At this point, I dont think there is a jig that I dont have. Any time I get a chance. I replace a jig-rex jig with a factory jig as they are more accurate and more reliable. The issue with the Jigarex is it uses plastic on metal for the width adjustment and as that wears the accuracy goes out the window.
At the end of the workbench is a larger arbor press, that I made an adapter for, so it can serve double duty as a boot press using the SVST boot press tools.
Here is a my wax and edge tuning drawer

After years of having both rotor-brushes and hand brushes, I decided to sell the hand brushes as I have not touched them since getting the root-brushes. Also if you have not tried them yet, the Pro series files by SVST are the best edge files I have used yet. I never touch my ice files now.

This is my binding mounting drawer

I mostly use Binding Freedom inserts when mounting skis these days, but am still fully equipped to do traditional mounts and to fix anything an athlete might F'up while we are out shooting.

This is my base repair drawer

The large black tube is a slide hammer for removing ski pole grips, so we can fine tune them to size. On the left is my general purpose file drawer. They have different file handles on purpose than my ski tuning files to keep everything separate.

For ski / snowboard vises, The SVST vise is hands down the best one that I have see and or used.

I machined new custom jaws for it on my Bridgeport that are wider, and have a negative rack on them so it better grips skis, even those with the most slanted or rounded top sheets.

So much to compliment on here! Serious organization, fabrication, woodworking. That ski tuning bench with a Sun Valley vise gives me serious envy (I have a lowly SkiMan). I'm not sure you have enough mounting jigs though...

Color me subscribed!

OK....new favorite thread

Trapps said:

So much to compliment on here! Serious organization, fabrication, woodworking. That ski tuning bench with a Sun Valley vise gives me serious envy (I have a lowly SkiMan). I'm not sure you have enough mounting jigs though...

Color me subscribed!

Click to expand...

Thanks, I think I have everything but the new Duke PT jig, but I’m not a fan of that binding. At some point I want to make a custom ski vice, but I gotta get the lathe project done first.

Clemson13 said:

OK....new favorite thread

Click to expand...

Thanks. More to come once I get back from a few days Biking in Revelstoke

Nice looking garage OP. Im jealous of all that snap on. For a small work space you sure do quite a bit.

Holy **** what an amazing garage, did you cut all that one one at a time for each tool or were you able to order some?

DeeDubz said:

Nice looking garage OP. Im jealous of all that snap on. For a small work space you sure do quite a bit.

Click to expand...

Thanks. I try to be as efficient with it as possible given the small space. The Snapon stuff is really nice to have, especially when working on more delicate suspension components

ryanp77 said:

Holy **** what an amazing garage, did you cut all that one one at a time for each tool or were you able to order some?

Click to expand...

Thanks. The Foam for the Snapon stuff and all of the Blue / black foam is from ToolBed. They custom cut it based on scans in their system. There layout software is really good. All of the black foam is Kaizen foam from FastCap here in Bellingham and I hand cut it.

Great stuff and killer adventures.

I also have a question about your foam inserts that is driving my ocd crazy. How do you add tools? I feel like every time I’d add a socket or new pair of pliers I’d have to have new foam cut lol.

Grant Gunderson said:

Thanks. More to come once I get back from a few days Biking in Revelstoke

Click to expand...

Back in my old town! Might be my favorite place I've lived.

Augus7us said:

Great stuff and killer adventures.

I also have a question about your foam inserts that is driving my ocd crazy. How do you add tools? I feel like every time I’d add a socket or new pair of pliers I’d have to have new foam cut lol.

Click to expand...

I have a pretty mature tool collection at this point. For example I own a full set of Snapon sockets, wrenches and a pretty full set of Knipex/ Engineer pliers. There just isn’t a lot left for me to buy. So not buying very many new tools these days. If I do buy a new tool I’ll either cut a space for it in the existing foam, or just do new foaM for that drawer.

Zengineer said:

Back in my old town! Might be my favorite place I've lived.

Click to expand...

When where you in Revelstoke? It’s changed a lot in the last 15 years. I still love it, but it’s not the little town that happened to have a skiing problem anymore. I guess that’s good and bad.

Yeah I was there in the good old days, decades ago now. Used to hit Mount MacKenzie just about daily in the winter. Way before it was developed into what it is now. The cat skiing was epic too.

Still a winter playground though, with the other mountains surrounding. Snowmobiling, cross country skiing, downhill.... they've got a mountain for that!

Zengineer said:

Yeah I was there in the good old days, decades ago now. Used to hit Mount MacKenzie just about daily in the winter. Way before it was developed into what it is now. The cat skiing was epic too.

Still a winter playground though, with the other mountains surrounding. Snowmobiling, cross country skiing, downhill.... they've got a mountain for that!

Click to expand...

I remember those days fondly. I spent a lot of time exploring the backcountry there via sled and Heli before the resort went in. Eric Berger and I where the two photographers they contracted to shoot the promo imagery before the resort opened, so they paid us to Heli it all.... that was a really fun gig!

We brought the E-bikes with us on this trip. Im my mind, they are totally going to open the place up to biking. They are the great equalizer and they make what used to be epics that only the fittest of the fit could do, more accessible to everyone. Thats especially important in places like Revelstoke where its all big climbs.

This is the top of the climb to the 5620 trial they built at the resort. Its an interesting setup, as the Gondola takes you ⅔ of the way up, then to access the top trail you have to climb the rest.

It's totally worth it, as the backdrops are stunning. We didnt get much for light the first day as it couldn't decide if it wanted to rain or clear up.

The main trail down is called 5620 because you get 5620 vertical feet in one run. These are the top berms, by the bottom, you are so tired of riding berms, you are begging for some straight sections!

The next day, it went full pull blue, so we headed out to Keystone Basin. The wild flowers when going off!


The entire trail is in the alpine and has stunning views in every direction. I couldn't help but think that if this trail was in the US we would be going to jail for riding it as it would all be in wilderness. That trail alone made the 6 hour drive totally worth it! The next day we attempted to go ride Joss mountian, but we got totally shut down. There was a Heli logging crew setup on the access road, and then further up the road was decominssed, so we pedaled to the trial head on the e-bikes. We ended up turning around only 1.5km into the trail as it was so over grown, it would have taken us 6+ hours to bushwhack into the alpine, and you would have had to do the same on the way back down. At least now we know.

I normally take most of the summer off to just ride and spend time with the family, but this year it seems like I keep getting asked to do last minute bike projects, so haven't had as much time as I would like in the shop.

The nice thing, it was so wet around Bellingham this spring the wild flowers went off on Galbraith. It was the greenest I've ever seen it. It's always nice when I can ride my bike from my house to work!


I got one more job lined up next week at a new bike park thats getting ready to open, so after that I'll have more time in the shop.

One of the neighboor kids stoped by tonight with his dad. They thought that he needed a new bottom bracket on his bike. Any time one of the neighbor kids stops buy needing help with their bikes, I take the aproach that its better to spend a bit of extra time and walk them through how to do the task, and then have them do it themselves. That way, A, I'm not responcible if anything gets screwed up. B, they learn that they can fix their own stuff vs take it to a shop.... I think thats something that seems lost on the younger generations these days... hell its lost most people regardless of age I guess.

His bike uses press fit bottom brackets (dont ever buy a bike with pressfit) On top of that they use plastic cups. I explained how to use my Park bottom bracket drift and when he went to tap the cups out, they broke, so the bearings came out, leaving the cups stuck in the frame. I ended up using a larger bearing drift to push the center tube to get them out. Turns out when they pressed them in at the factory they did it dry.... It's one thing for a bike company to use press fit BB's to save $ but its a whole another level of cheapeness to not at least lube the cups! I guess you can get away with it with plastic cups, but I am still a fan of lubing them.

They where correct tho, that he needed a new BB. That bearing on the right was so far gone, I couldn't get it to spin! I explained to the kid when you start to feel the BB getting rough or hear it making noise, you need to service it, and hopefully not let it go this far next time as it can cause damage to the frame. I helped him press a new BB in and he took it for a test ride, but the bike was still squeaky as hell.

New BB pressed in. I suspected that the squeaks where his pivots, and based upon how dirty his bike is and how bad his BB was I figured it was most likely the issue.

The Park pivot bearing press made quick work of getting all of the bearings out of the frame. I have both this one and an Abbey tool version, but I like how the Parktool uses cups to catch the bearings wich makes this job a hell of a lot easier. Once I finish my lathe I might make some of these style cups for the Abbey Press.

Turns out half of the pivots had bad bearings.

I tossed the suspension hardware in the ultrasonic and gave it a quick 20 min clean. Looks like new now. His dad was a bit sticker shocked when he saw it was going to be like $80 just in bearings for the Enduro brand ones. I told him to look on amazon and he found some no name ones that where $16 for a set of 10. I told him at that price, who cares if you have to replace them more often. Especially on a kids bike where you know he's going to need new ones each year.

Crazy how much less snow is on those mountain tops than there are in my memories... With that said, the summer in Revelstoke was always so picturesque and awesome, all 6 weeks of it! (haha, ok it wasn't that bad, but I do remember not being able to ride my bike until May because of all the snow on the ground still)

Great shots, they really do convey the feeling of the place. Looks like an awesome mountain biking experience.

The kid and his dad came by yesterday with the new bearings for his bike. The amazon ones he ordered where so bad, that they felt worse than the ones we where replacing and they where so far out of spec, I dont think they would have pressed in. Problem is there is no way to tell of any of the no name ones are any good. So they ended up buying the Enduro brand ones in town. I personally just order better ones form McMaster for my own bike.

The pivot press made quick work of pressing all of the new bearings back in.

Race Face is using this cinch ring system to attach chain rings to there cranks. The kid was getting some play there, so luckily they used a splined BB tool for their cinch ring, so that was a quick fix. Not sure what I think about that system.

The kid even cleaned and put all of the tools away. Cant complain about that.

Crab is in season here, and another one of the dads in the neighborhood dropped some off for me. I tried smoking it this time, and it turned out so good, I think thats the only way I'll cook crab for now on.

Ok back to bikes, I got a work trip coming up, so I figured I'd post how I prep a bike for flying. I haven't ridden my trail bike since I picked up my new Ebike in may, so first step is to clean all of the shop dust off of the trail bike.

I have a wash station setup on the side of the garage, where I put 2 yards of large crushed gravel for it all to drain. I typically hit the bikes with a jet nozzle on the hose, then spray it down with Simple Green. I really like these Sure Shot sprayers for this. You fill them with your solution, etc then to hook your compressor up to them and fill them with up to 200PSI of compressed air. It's a hell of a lot better than the cheap spray bottles at the local HW store.

I then scrub the bike with an automotive detail brush. This one is from Adam's and it works a hell of a lot better than any of the cheap bike branded ones I've tried. I especially hated the Park brushes... they never lasted. After a scrub it all gets rinsed off with the hose.

I run XX1 cassettes on my trail bikes for years. They are super light weight, but expensive as hell. I found I get a lot more life out of them if I keep them relatively clean. To clean them, I just toss them into my ultrasonic cleaner for 20 minutes.

For cassette tools, I am a really big fan of the Abbie Tools. There chain whip and crombie tool go with me on every trip. I always use the crombie to loosen cassettes, but prefer to use their crombie socket for properly torquing them back down.

I have pretty much switched over to Ted-Gel for use as an anti seize on my bikes. It's way stickier than a normal antisieze and its made for the marine industry, so its also water proof.

For chain lube, I like to use Boeshield T9 Its the best stuff I have found. It works great here in the PNW but also does a great job in drier climates. I buy it buy the gallon then fill dispenser bottles to apply it.

The bike is a Evil Offering, until I picked up my current Ebike it was my favorite bike that I have owned and I put a bunch of miles on it before I got the Eb. One thing thats nice about it, is that it has an incredibly light build on it, while still having a full coil suspension.

It has a full carbon, Enve cockpit, Rev suspension grips, and I am running a full wireless system.

The rear shock is a custom tuned Push 11-6, the Fox 36 on the front also has the Push AC3 coil conversion in it. All of the hardware on the bike, has been replaced with Ti bolts.

Speaking of Ti, the cranks are limited edition Tye-dyed, Titanium EEwings. The pedals are made by TwentySix Componets and also have Ti spindles.

I am running Enve Wheels and a wireless dropper. The first step for packing the bike, is to lower the seat post, and shift the derailed all the way down. Then the batteries get pulled and the travel caps get inserted.

Next, I pull the wheels and place travel blocks between the brake pads and protectors onto the axels to help protect the rotors. The wheels then get placed into padded wheel bags.

My travel case is a Thule I got from a job I did for them years ago. It works well enough, but my recomendation after traveling the world with it, is to never buy a hard sided bike case. The bike bags from EVOC are by far a better solution, I just never remember to order one until I'm packing a bike. Anyways, the Thule uses this tray system that attaches to the fork and straps to the BB that then clips into the travel case. Once its clipped on, I then pull the pedals.

The pedals get placed into some pipe insulation and then zip lock bagged. They then go into pockets on the wheel bags.

The chain and derailleur then get pulled. The derailleur gets put into pipe insulation and then bagged with the chain. This is a really nice thing about a wireless setup. There is no cables to deal with, so when I get to my location, it just bolts back on and is ready to go.

Bike snaps into the case. All thats left is to pull the handle bars.

So I dont have to deal with bar alignment when I arrive, I use a grease pencil to mark the bars.

The bars get wrapped in pipe insulation and then get zip tied to the fork lowers and the down tube.



The derailleur / chain package gets zip tied to the bike cases mounting bar.

Wheel bags get inserted, and I am ready to fly. All in, it only takes 15 minutes, if that to pack the bike or unpack it and have it ready to ride.

Above is my normal riding tools, these are always in my trail bag. I found over the years I only need to bring a few additional tools to these when on trips to fix 99% of any issues that might pop up. Of of those things is to bring spare deraileur hangers for whatever bike I am running as well as a few spare bolts, and brake pads.

I use these Festool Systainers to keep all of the small parts organized at home.

For bigger road trips, I bring the containers in my truck, but thats not practical for flying.

So I just pull a small assortment of what I need, plus a few extra cables, etc in case any of the athlete bikes need something. That small selection along with my riding tools is all we need.

Zengineer said:

Crazy how much less snow is on those mountain tops than there are in my memories... With that said, the summer in Revelstoke was always so picturesque and awesome, all 6 weeks of it! (haha, ok it wasn't that bad, but I do remember not being able to ride my bike until May because of all the snow on the ground still)

Great shots, they really do convey the feeling of the place. Looks like an awesome mountain biking experience.

Click to expand...

I think that short window in the summer is what makes it so special. I dont think I could handle living in Revy year round, but thats ok as its only a 6 hour drive, and its a nice break from the coast.

I see you stumbled into r/flashlight too. I have a few of Hank's offerings as well.

Great shop and efficient use of space. I love the organization of it all as well. Something to live up to.

big_bake said:

I see you stumbled into r/flashlight too. I have a few of Hank's offerings as well.

Great shop and efficient use of space. I love the organization of it all as well. Something to live up to.

Click to expand...

Thanks. My neighbor found the flash lights and bought 3 of them, once I saw them I had to have one as well. They are quite impressive.

Damn you grant. It took me most of the day to read thru your thread between those nasty four letter works like...work. But the minute I saw you hanging out of the flying margarita mixer, I was hooked AND it just kept getting better n better.

Good show all around bud

LXCam said:

Damn you grant. It took me most of the day to read thru your thread between those nasty four letter works like...work. But the minute I saw you hanging out of the flying margarita mixer, I was hooked AND it just kept getting better n better.

Good show all around bud

Click to expand...

Thanks! More to come once I get back from this Las Vegas MTB shoot this week.

Grant Gunderson said:

Thanks. My neighbor found the flash lights and bought 3 of them, once I saw them I had to have one as well. They are quite impressive.

Click to expand...

Oh so your neighbor must be the one that is on r/flashlight

big_bake said:

Oh so your neighbor must be the one that is on r/flashlight

Click to expand...

I'm not sure if he is on there, but he would be the one.

I just got back from a pretty amazing trip to Lee Canyon outside of Las Vegas. They are getting ready to open up their bike park, and we got asked to come do some promo imagery and check it out prior to opening.

Pretty damn hard to believe this is from less than 50 minutes outside of Vegas, and the temps and dirt was better than back home in Bellingham last week. I think once they get a few more trails built its going to really take off for them. We where blown away with the quality of the trails and the dirt.

Are Hertz rental van was a complete POS for just having 30K on it. I didnt notice this until I returned it, but the damn lug nuts where not even tight on the wheels! WTF?

Back home, I made some pork belly burnt ends on the smoker, than got to work unpacking the bike.

The drive train and BB had picked up a bunch of grit from all of the small rock fines in the Lee Canyon soil, so I stripped it down for a good clean in the ultrasonic. My long Snapon ⅜ ratchet is my go to for removing the cranks and the BB. These EEwing cranks get torqued on to 52NM with a 14mm hex, so, a long handle ratchet is the only way to remove them.

You can see all of the **** thats built up from just a few days.

Into the ultrasonic it all goes, with the exception of the BB, ill get to it in a minute.

I just use water and Dawn dish soap for the cleaning agent. I have found that in the Ultrasonic simple green will strip the anodizing right off.

The Chris King BB's are all fully service and unlike cheap BB's I have gotten 5+ years out of them. This one in particular uses ceramic bearings, so its worth it to give it some TLC a few times a season. First, I use a dental pic to remove the snap ring that holds the seal in place. The rubber seal then comes right off.

I then place the BB into the ultrasonic by its self and let it run with the heat on for 30 min.

Once out, I flush them with a bath of Isopropyl.