The reason that we got on with this task now, is because we had an accident where the old air tank was knocked over (it sits on two large wheels and a third front positioned foot) and unfortunately, it managed to roll over and fall off the First Floor and down the stairs, to land on the ground floor with a loud thump!! The air hose was still attached and that caused it to mostly turn back upright again and land on its wheels. But, the poor wheels are now rather bent at very odd angles!
Old tank with bent wheels 1
Old tank with bent wheels 2
Since we had to do some repair work on it anyway, we decided that it was time to implement one of our long-awaited ideas of building a cabinet on wheels to take a air tank and have room for nails and staples. In our original grand idea, we had drawers on runners, doors on cupboards and hooks for the guns themselves! We went for a much more basic and simpler design .. four open shelves, a platform for the tank and one upright tall end plate to hook one or two guns.
We examined our boxes of staples and nails, and decided that the dimensions of a shelf would be 350mm deep and 600mm wide, using 12mm thick plywood material. This was large enough to have the fifth “shelf” to act as the platform for the air tank to be clamped on to.
The tall end would be 1200mm tall by 350mm wide and the other end only being 900mm tall. We had several left-over pieces and used those to put on the longer side at the top, to act as both a shelf barrier for the tank, but also, to help stiffen up the cabinet as a whole. The second piece went down near the bottom to repeat this stiffening function.
We used another piece of left-over 45degree sliced CLS timber, cut into 340mm lengths, to provide shelf brackets, which were glued and screwed into place, to form the five layers.
One of the other upgrades we have gone for, is to use our alternative spare air tank which is rated for 10bars of pressure instead of the more standard 8bars. This will give a better performance of being able to quickly recharge our nail guns to full power and we can drive the nails, especially the longer 90mm ones, deeper and more quickly. In addition, we are going to buy replacement pressure gauges, so we can monitor the tank’s pressure, the regulated output and perhaps one for the input air feed too.
Finally, four castor wheels were screwed to the bottom shelf and this gives the whole thing a nice easy moveability, at least on our internal flooring, which is all smooth and level. This is the majority of our work from now on. We feel much happier now, the silly tank won’t keep falling over, which kept on breaking the delicate pressure gauges. The whole thing will be weighed down by the staples and nails, but also the tall ends will give some protection if and ever it does get knocked over again!!
New Air tool trolley with tank (1)
New Air tool trolley with tank (2)