A Poor Retired Plumbers take on a Glory Hole

old55 said:

Entertaining as usual Colin.

It would appear that you don’t use the wheelbarrow very much as it’s on the back wall of the glory hole. Bringing it over the timber storage on the sides and missing the overhanging timber and ladder could be problematic, one would think. 😁😁😆😆

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Coleve said:

Hi There Fraternity.



: A receptacle (as a box or cupboard) or area into which odds and ends are put haphazardly and in no particular order.

Well that about sums it up. The above statement is my research on Google as to my area within my workshop that accumulates all my crap.

I also have a similar receptacle in my kitchen suitably named the Man Drawer. It is the domain of the Alpha male and must not be contaminated or interfered with by the female who just happens to share the same domain.

In my case it contains such invaluable resources such as replacement batteries, old and new mixed together, string of various lengths, blunt scissors which cannot cut string. Elastic bands that have long lost their elasticity, and many more items that do not allow the drawer to close the first time unless it is given a good shake. And remember you never throw out a discharged battery or used up dry ink pen, they go back in the drawer.

My workshop glory hole resides at the end of my workshop and is a narrow separate area that accommodates my wood cuttings etc that causes me a dilemma in that how do you decide what goes and what stays. If everything stayed there would a time that you would not be able to operate due to the accumulation of cuttings ie crap.

This personal conflict was not lost on my wife who advised me on the six month rule. Which applies to my whole workshop. Ie if you haven’t used it for half a year get rid of it. She reinforced her argument in that at my age six months is as long as I can remember back. So that’s the route I went with and it’s worked. My workshop is not cluttered and I have no idea what I threw out. My age related failing memory is in this case a virtue.

Now I don’t venture too many times into that particular clutter, but when I do it’s does my head in. Every thing I touch falls over and I end up tripping up and my temper breaks, what to do. Well here it is. My options were limited as it is only about ten feet long and three feet wide, so could not form shelving as very width limited and I had 4.8 metre lengths of 4x2 and a two part ladder, and a wheel barrow to boot.

I had to deal with the ladder first and decided that overhead was the way to go but a gantry in timber would be too bulky, so purchased some one metre lengths of 25mm square steel tubing which gave me the excuse to buy a MiG welder from Amazon. It’s not a professional one and rated at 140 watt, although in hind sight should have gone for a 200 watt one. It did give me the excuse to build a welding cart which I decided on as a good quality one was over a hundred pounds. Never migged in my life, here is my advise for producing the perfect weld.

Firstly always weld alone, no observers such as wives etc. After each line of weld grind off all carbuncles vigorously with a suitable good quality grinder. Apply weld with lashing of really thick red oxide paint, in my case three coats. Install ladder rack in dimly lit area of glory hole. Keep glory hole door locked when not in use. Follows these simple welding steps and you will be mightily pleased at never seeing your results.

I have included the photo of the welder on its £10 trolley just incase any likeminded prospective welder takes the same path and there are so many accessories needed to operate the welder I needed something adequate to accommodate all of them and maybe the design may assist a forum member in their own build.

So after I stopped seeing spots before my eyes and my retinas partially returned this is what I came up with. I just partition it off into three feet cubicles, five in all, installed a length of old skirting along at ground level and fitted on a series of bungee clips along the front. The partitions were made from 2x2’s covered in 6mm ply. I deliberately made them like that in order to fix firmly to the wall. I split them into two halves, fitting one half to the wall then closing them off with the second half.

So did it work, yes in terms of eliminating a tripping hazard. Was it expensive, no everything came from the glory hole apart from the steel tube and the welder.

Am I a happy bunny, I think so although I did beat myself up somewhat as to whether I should sand everything down to perfection and varnish the death out of it. My good wife came to my rescue when I was standing staring at the project trying to decide with quote, get a life.

Colin, somewhere in Scotland with a not so much Glory Hole and an unopened full tin of varnish.

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