From a wooden level to a brand-new stainless steel sink

An old wooden level found during Barnes MetalCrafters' premoving warehouse cleanup.

Keeping a clean shop—it is what it is. When you think of a clean shop, you may think of sweeping and keeping things tidy or in their place. At least that is the first thing that usually comes to mind. That is, until you must move your entire shop to a new building. At Barnes MetalCrafters, we are fortunate to be in this situation, but there is plenty of work ahead of us, especially in the cleaning department.

If you haven’t heard, we are building a new facility across town here in Wilson, N.C. It will be quite the upgrade for us, both in terms of space and equipment and how we are doing business. Our shop has been in the same location for more than 50 years. Believe me, I’ve only been working here for roughly 15 years, but I’ve seen a lot of “stuff” come through these doors.

What some people don’t realize about job shops is that it takes a lot of pieces, parts, and components to complete jobs. You come across projects that require random fasteners or hardware. When you order these items, you find that the company supplying them often has a required minimum quantity per order. You may need only 50 pieces, but a 500-piece minimum is required. That's just an example, but you get the idea. It doesn’t matter if you are buying decorative post caps for a handrail or a special gasket for an enclosure; you must have it to complete the job, and chances are you will buy a quantity in excess of what’s needed.

When the job is complete, you most likely will have some parts left over. What you do with them is your choice. Obviously, you have to store them for the repeat order. Right? That is pretty much the case all of the time at Barnes MetalCrafters. I guess it is borderline hoarding, but it’s not trash if you can use it on something else. I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say, “By the time we throw that away, we are going to need it.” It makes me laugh, because I’ve said it a hundred times or more.

I had a talk with our shop lead, Nick Truheart, when the new building construction was really starting to take off. I told him we needed to start getting ready now, even if we weren’t moving for several months. We have a small warehouse next door to our shop. For the most part, it has been used for storage. It has gotten out of hand over the years, so organizing and cleaning it is a priority. Nick and I talked about the amount of useless stuff in there and how it should be thrown away. We also said that some of the newer guys might not know what they are looking at. Someone was going to have to keep an eye on everything and lead the charge.

We had some downtime in our work load recently, so we decided it was time to clear some stuff out of the warehouse. That you can accumulate a lot of things is an understatement. I don’t know why some items are ever saved, like cardboard boxes and the protective sheets that come with our sheet metal. We use some of this for shipping and receiving but, honestly, we get the materials faster than we get rid of them. I told them to trash it all.

We pulled out bundles of drops of tubing and rebar. A large portion of this went right in the scrap dumpster. My dad decided to donate some of the material to the local community college for its welding program. I’m sure it will be appreciated.

We had several pieces of rectangular tubing that will be used for odds and ends at the new building—a cost savings. We even had a huge stainless steel sink that we have been holding on to for years. This will be incorporated into a washstation for the shop, located outside of the bathrooms. One artifact that comes to mind was found by one of our fabricators, George Boydstun: an old wooden level. He brought it into the shop like he had just found a treasure. He said he was going to clean it up and sell it on eBay. I said, “That sounds great, but it’s not yours, George.”

Some of our stuff has probably been here 40 or 50 years. I’m not kidding. We are only just scratching the surface for now, but I’m certain we will be finding plenty more artifacts that will have us scratching our heads.

We are hoping to nip this mild hoarding problem in the bud before we move to the new facility. At least we will have space there to organize items, so that we can find them and use them again. I’m sure that many job shops probably order things twice when what is needed is hidden among its treasures.

All images courtesy of Barnes MetalCrafters, Wilson, N.C.

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