I know that a lot of us are retirees. And we all get older. It gets harder and harder to lift that mill vise or 4-jaw chuck. One day, we'll die. It's going to happen to every one of us. I also know that a bunch of us HSMs have the attitude "let my descendants worry about it!"
I don't. By the time I die I'd like my shop to look like two 2-car garages again - empty. I'm sure many of you feel the same way.
My wife and I had a deal. If she ever decided we were going to sell the house, I needed two full years to downsize before the move. As it happened, our 4 kids grew up and left, and she decided it was time. She gave me the official notice, and I had 2 years to sell pretty much everything. I sold my Bridgeport and a 15" Cincinnati lathe and a big Kaltenbach cold saw and an Alzmetall drill press and lots of smaller stuff. But when I looked at my shop you could barely tell anything was missing! I got overwhelmed and admitted to my wife that I was going to need help. Fortunately for me, she let me off the hook and decided we should stay here.
I had a good friend who lived about a mile from me. He was a very savvy ex Boeing engineer and he had a two car garage STUFFED with machines and tools and supplies and partly completed projects. He died suddenly and his family contacted me and asked me to please help them get their garage back. I agreed and bought the entire contents of his shop and liquidated absolutely everything. It literally took me six months working at least half time. I sold his South Bend heavy 10, his Harig 6x12 surface grinder, his CNC Bridgeport, his drill press and his horizontal/vertical bandsaw, his air compressor, his heat treating oven, his surface plate and Biax scraper. And dozens (hundreds) of other items. It was a ton of work! The lesson I learned is that completely liquidating a home shop, especially one which has items collected over decades, is hard and stressful. I really don't want to put my family through that.
My kids are both pretty handy. Sure, they'd take some of my tools. But I have four Kennedy stacks and a 16 foot workbench with 56 big drawers under it all full. They might take half a percent of that. Kids these days don't have big houses to put things in.
So it's going to be up to me. I'm 68 and feel healthy and I can still lift my mill table and lathe chucks just fine. But that day is coming. My question is, how do I know when it gets here?
Assuming I decline slowly and gracefully and don't drop dead suddenly, of course.
metalmagpie
I don't. By the time I die I'd like my shop to look like two 2-car garages again - empty. I'm sure many of you feel the same way.
My wife and I had a deal. If she ever decided we were going to sell the house, I needed two full years to downsize before the move. As it happened, our 4 kids grew up and left, and she decided it was time. She gave me the official notice, and I had 2 years to sell pretty much everything. I sold my Bridgeport and a 15" Cincinnati lathe and a big Kaltenbach cold saw and an Alzmetall drill press and lots of smaller stuff. But when I looked at my shop you could barely tell anything was missing! I got overwhelmed and admitted to my wife that I was going to need help. Fortunately for me, she let me off the hook and decided we should stay here.
I had a good friend who lived about a mile from me. He was a very savvy ex Boeing engineer and he had a two car garage STUFFED with machines and tools and supplies and partly completed projects. He died suddenly and his family contacted me and asked me to please help them get their garage back. I agreed and bought the entire contents of his shop and liquidated absolutely everything. It literally took me six months working at least half time. I sold his South Bend heavy 10, his Harig 6x12 surface grinder, his CNC Bridgeport, his drill press and his horizontal/vertical bandsaw, his air compressor, his heat treating oven, his surface plate and Biax scraper. And dozens (hundreds) of other items. It was a ton of work! The lesson I learned is that completely liquidating a home shop, especially one which has items collected over decades, is hard and stressful. I really don't want to put my family through that.
My kids are both pretty handy. Sure, they'd take some of my tools. But I have four Kennedy stacks and a 16 foot workbench with 56 big drawers under it all full. They might take half a percent of that. Kids these days don't have big houses to put things in.
So it's going to be up to me. I'm 68 and feel healthy and I can still lift my mill table and lathe chucks just fine. But that day is coming. My question is, how do I know when it gets here?
Assuming I decline slowly and gracefully and don't drop dead suddenly, of course.
metalmagpie
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