Took the first step towards building my shop

[Toolmaker51]

Hey, Frank S, metric_taper;
you guys should check out homemadetools.net. People there lap this kind of thinking like big bowls of lime sherbet.
Ohh, wait a minute....

Like Iowa, our soils can be poor support to concrete pours. The perimeter of my building is unpaved, floor is acceptable, but really want [need] 4' under my DeVlieg. That's about 18 yards. There also is a walkway/ forklift ramp needing rebuilt.
While getting a personal batch plant is thinking big, there are potential customers afterward. I see them likely completely unaware there a truck shop and machining facility of considerable size connected to it. A safe bet is 10-or 15 miles is 1/3 or 1/4 the possible customer radius. One then feeds the other.
That's basis of my intent, instead of concrete I'll rent hard to find tools. Very low cost, high deposit, and agreement guarantees they have NO liability protection. Two pages of 8.5" x 14" legal boiler-plate un-needed, a simple "Receipt of this warrants user has no recourse to injury or property damage, public or private."
.......but then "Shall not be infringed" is unclear to some, and over past several decades.

[Frank S]

Progress on the shop may, or I should say will slow down for a while. Today was the last day I had my helper from out of town also we have exhausted most if not all of the long sheets of sheet metal. And for the second time in a week we have ran out of screws again. When he arrived I had a bag of 750 then bought another 200 then another 500 and we might have had 3 left when we quit at noon today.
I think I'll order another 1000 next week rather than pay the high prices of the hardware stores within 75 miles of me.
Here is what we did this morning

[Frank S]

You think big with getting your own batch plant!

At my local home supply, 1cuft bag of cement is ~$10. How much is that bulk I wonder. I think the current price of concrete delivered here locally is $160-$180/cu.yd. It was $48/yd in 1988 the last time I had it delivered. And that's made with crushed limestone aggregate, which is too soft in my opinion (and why the life cycle of roads here is short, as it is porous to the salt water in the winter, and freeze-thaw spalling is common). I paid extra to have washed river gravel from igneous rock used. But under the entire state is only limestone near the surface. The mix is a 6bag per yd of cement to make the strength yield using limestone.

It has been a lot of years since I have found the bulk deals I used to find but at one time I bought a freight tanker load of bulk Portland for ten dollars a ton at a derailment site. I hired 3 dry bulk vacuum tankers to pump it out of the freight tanker. However stupid me, I sold the cement to a batch plant for a huge profit, instead of thinking that 20 years later I might need it for my own slab

[metric_taper]

It has been a lot of years since I have found the bulk deals I used to find but at one time I bought a freight tanker load of bulk Portland for ten dollars a ton at a derailment site. I hired 3 dry bulk vacuum tankers to pump it out of the freight tanker. However stupid me, I sold the cement to a batch plant for a huge profit, instead of thinking that 20 years later I might need it for my own slab

It would probably be a solid chunk if you stored it that long, but maybe you have some water vapor proof storage vessels. It screams to be hydrated. I've learned that even the bags that have a plastic film between the paper structural sheets, let moister in. Really disappointing when you find the 3 bags you got on sale are solid. And absolutely do not store on concrete as that exudes moister, and keeps the cement below dew point (the lesson was delivered this way). So I shall see in a few weeks if storing the left over bags in a dry wall mud pails with a sealed lid keeps it dry. That was 3 years ago. I have a critical repair task of my storage building, that is 3 feet from a retaining wall, about 3 feet high. The wall is tilting outward and letting the sand below the building slump along with this. The building is on a concrete slab, made from that crappy limestone aggregate, that I mixed myself. The freeze thaw is making that slab punky. Soft enough that a ground hog (marmot) dug through it 3 years ago, and undermined the building and filled the floor area it could with 2 feet of the earth from below the building. I hate ground hogs, and they are my enemy. And as this building is above the surrounding area this attracts them for a winter home that is dry. They have some instinct that knows the winter melt will fill a den if it can't drain out. I accidentally made a hill for them. They hibernate in our climate.

[metric_taper]

Progress on the shop may, or I should say will slow down for a while. Today was the last day I had my helper from out of town also we have exhausted most if not all of the long sheets of sheet metal. And for the second time in a week we have ran out of screws again. When he arrived I had a bag of 750 then bought another 200 then another 500 and we might have had 3 left when we quit at noon today.
I think I'll order another 1000 next week rather than pay the high prices of the hardware stores within 75 miles of me.
Here is what we did this morning

I think you said a 40 foot rollup door was going to be installed in these openings. Or is this one of those aviation hangar style doors that folds in the middle?

[Frank S]

I think you said a 40 foot rollup door was going to be installed in these openings. Or is this one of those aviation hangar style doors that folds in the middle?

What I have is a 17 by 48 foot billboard tarp that I will attach at the top and attach a long heavy pipe at the bottom with flanges on each end to form cable spools. with cables wound around on the ends then up to a set of pulleys and over to a winch when I wind the winch the spools on the bottom of the door will unroll while rolling up the tarp. I could also add another feature by attaching some braces and stays then roll out the tarp as an awning canopy. This would be a huge PLUS in the summer afternoons.

[Toolmaker51]

Finding 3 bags of solidified quick set is disappointing enough. Imagine 3 tankers worth?
Three monoliths; each in the most unusable, oddly shaped, and significant size imaginable.
DAMHIKT...please.

[metric_taper]

Finding 3 bags of solidified quick set is disappointing enough. Imagine 3 tankers worth?
Three monoliths; each in the most unusable, oddly shaped, and significant size imaginable.
DAMHIKT...please.

I recall seeing a discarded cement truck mixing assembly that had concrete set up inside. I could only assume that the hydraulic motor rotating the drum failed, and there was no way to open the hatch door, rotate this to the bottom, and remove the contents. I bet there was cussing.

[Toolmaker51]

At one time, my fertile brain pondered why ready mix truck drums were so shaped.
Let fertile here also mean too young for sorting out that stuff. Seems I was never too young to wonder or ask "Why?".

Besides center of gravity, sufficient volume without pouring out, keeping minimal surface exposed to air [drying too quick]; sometimes the tapers aid removal of a dried plug. Of course it has to be dismantled and circumferences torched open...Also told they keep sacks of rock salt in the cab in the event of trouble, to retard or throw the mix out of drying cycle, but ruins the load.
Frank S; I relinquish the floor....

A peremptory response to my DAMHIKT; ~ 2008 economic crisis [properly labeled, compared to COVID 19 'crisis'] I was laid off.
My region was a little distant from a real metro area and decent employment. I went to work fixing rail cars, which is considerable business around here. Anyway, two concrete chassis arrived with cement stuck to the walls, about 4" thick in places.
After freeing up the sliding dump shutters, guess who was smallest and newest to climb inside with sledge, engineer hammer and a few chisels...
Ohh the 08"s, such good times; brought to us by a bank who's name only gets mention as perpetrators.
I only know how much it set one family back, many caught up far, far worse.

[Frank S]

Actually a dry mix batch plant is little more than silos or storage units to hold the Portland cement and other chemicals added to a mix which determines the plasticity of the pour the amount of time a mix can remain in the mixer drum accelerants for faster cure rates and a host of other things added in very small quantities, plus a pair of conveyors to haul sand and aggerate up for pouring back down into a mixer truck where water is then added to the mix. The heart of an operation such as a wet plant is a mixer drum often very large ones at that but most of the wet plants or portable batch plants that I have seen use a drum or an old mixer truck which is no longer suitable for highway use. Those will just sit there and turn mixing the concrete the pouring into tippers or loaders or even powered wheel barrows which transport short distances usually staying on the same property to the pour of the day.
In many countries where it can be very hot or there are long distances to be traveled or long travel times due to road and traffic conditions the mixer trucks will have a 3 to 500 gallon water tank mounted on them in addition to their drum these will leave the dry batch plant then start to mix near or at their destination or wait in line turning the dry contents until it is time for them to wet up . A project I was involved with in Oman had not only a huge dry batch plant but over 100 mixer trucks on site and 5 pumper rigs. the mixer trucks would start loading for the next days pour at their companies batch plants sometime in the night the days pour started at around 4 AM and by days end nearly all trucks would have visited the on site batch plant at least twice Huge screeds would spread the pumped concrete dozens of ride on power trowels worked feverously throughout the day. 100s of whip vibrators would be pushed up and down the footing and wall forms. Miles upon miles of plastic sheeting would be stretched over the slabs and 1000s of workers were so tired you would wonder if they would show up the next day. many wouldn't