Looking for Shop Space in Toronto

[Guest]

So my bike is currently in pieces in my parking garage, and if the landlord catches me working on it down there one more time I'm pretty sure I'm getting evicted. With COVID shutting down all the DIY garage spaces I'm looking for like-minded individuals to pool some rent together to get a wrenching space. I'm good with anything within an hour of the city. I come complete with a TIG/Stick Machine to sweeten the deal.

[farmall]

If ya clean everything so it's as tidy as furniture it's not hard to fit a bike and tools in small spaces if the shared workspace doesn't happen.

In the AF I had 1 and 3/4 Ironheads in my military wall lockers plus tools and none of it was visible during room inspections. There are lots of ways to get creative. Plastic (not metal!) industrial carts are ideal for this but if you need invisible something like a large cedar chest-sized wooden box can hold a drivetrain. Wheels and forks fit under beds. Small parts are easily organized in cheap plastic fishing tackle boxes like Flambeau make then stashed anywhere. All the needed bits are available online so you don't have to travel to hunt them. Some G.I.s buy job boxes (like Knaack but generics are cheaper) and cover them with a nice blanket then use them like coffee tables. Brown ones are low-viz and you could use a wood graining kit if you really want visible bits to look like furniture. (I didn't but da wife woodgrained our metal doors and it came out looking impressively like wood.)

Welding blankets mean ya can even TIG indoors, and depending on how loud you can play music that could mask moderate grinder use and/or use a small die grinder or Dremel for less noise. A vacuum with an exhaust hose can remove fumes and dump them out the window.

If you can park a small enclosed trailer that's one way to get space, and a removable hitch makes them harder to steal. (I use and love Bulldog plates and hitches for that and adjustability.)

[Guest]

All good points

[farmall]

BTW wheels and wheeled modern plastic tool and other boxes are wonderful and a plastic storage ecosystem is furniture friendly. Casters with LARGE wheels (scaffolding casters are awesome being free to rotate, lockable and provided with brakes) can be had with plastic solid tires (in the formal sense of the word, like wagon wheel tires). As you own a welder it would be very low effort to take a cheap Harbor Freight (is the Canadian equivalent Princess Auto?) engine stand and use that for a handy engine caddy. I have a wheeled mobility fetish and it makes handling absurdly easy and far safer for my destroyed back. Where ever you work, wheels on everything are well worth it. In an apartment an engine on a stand (which need not be of full height auto engine stand height since that's more than needed to sit by one on a chair or stool and lower = more stable, you could shorten an auto stand post) could live beneath an attractive wooden box-like bit of furniture which also serves as a dust cover if you locate your build elsewhere. Having your project at hand (I've a Triumph Trident in my living room as my other shop space mysteriously fills up with other bikes) makes it easier to contemplate every detail and being feet away from my computer makes research a breeze.

It's remarkable how few square meters a project can take when position and handling are taken into account.

There's even a clean, light engine hoist option in patient lifts. They fit a standard doorway and I use tiedown straps to pick Harley engines by the top mounts but lifting eyes are so easy to make I'd make one or many were it useful. They weigh little and take little space, and being medical equipment don't have possibly offensive esthetics. Leg width is easily adjustable for stability. I gave 150 bucks for mine used. They're also the right size for lifting welding machines onto a workbench or cart and, importantly, designed to roll with a suspended load be it a fat human or machinery. Larger sizes exist. I'm always watching as I want more of them.

The money you might spend on what you cannot keep (rented workspace) and have to share and risk people fucking with your stuff while only having intermittent instead of perfectly convenient access could go purely to equipment you can keep for life and which enhances any future shop.

[Hatchet54]

Your posts never cease to interest me Farmall