The Bota Cave

[Tom_H]

Batman has the Bat Cave, but I have the Bota Cave. It is home to all my tools, 2 cars, my tractor, and numerous implements, most of which are on dollies. Attached is a photo of 5 implements stacked vertically to save space. Near the bottom is the brush hog on its dolly. Beneath the brush hog is the carry all with bolted on casters, rolled beneath the brush hog dolly. Sitting on the back of the brush hog is the rear blade, lifted into position by the electric hoist. To the side of these is the dolly on which the rear blade is placed when time to move it to the 3ph.

All of these sit underneath the scraper/grader high dolly. I use the electric hoist to lift the scraper grader and then roll the dolly beneath it. The scraper/grader has large eye-bolts on the corners where I attach carabiners and chains to lift it. On top of the grader/scraper is its short dolly, used to roll it to the 3ph. Above that is where the FEL bucket goes when attached to the tractor and parked.

Over the next few days, I will add pics of more dollies and innovations I have come up with for the Bota Cave and its equipment. Maybe TBN should start a forum dedicated to garages, shops, and man caves.

 

[Tom_H]

I got this cabinet at a surplus equipment outlet for $50. I built a wooden frame to encase it. Casters make it mobile and the work surface has T-Nuts throughout the bottom which allow me to anchor my bench vice, benchtop drill press, chain saw sharpener, cut-off saw, among other things.

 

[Tom_H]

The electric hoist lets me move the rear blade back and forth between its dolly and the back of the brush hog, also the scraper/grader back and forth between its high and low dollies. It also makes it quick and easy to lift the MMM for blade access.

 

[Tom_H]

The MMM on its dolly:

 

[Tom_H]

Rather than a dolly, the Woods backhoe has bolt on skateboards that I custom built. It takes more time than a traditional dolly, but allows far greater finesse in getting the bh off and on.

 

[Tom_H]

I recently bought a new washer and dryer. The 2 pedestals would have cost $500, which in my mind, is nuts. I used mostly scraps to build a platform which puts the doors at chest height. We can load and unload without stooping over. The little dolly which holds the backhoe buckets and ripper fits under there. Also under there is the 700# of ballast weights I got on Craigslist for $125. They will get their own dolly soon. The other weights I already had sit on a little platter dolly which rolls under the box blade, which rolls into one side of the shelving system I built. The rototiller rolls into the other side. Will have to get pics of those up soon.

 

[Tom_H]

MMM blade gets checked for balance after sharpening:

 

[Tom_H]

Sometimes things are a tight fit. Actually, I park like this just to give my wife more space on both sides of her car.

 

[Tom_H]

This link is to a post with a number of pics of my DR chipper and its dolly. Though a small dolly, it is by far the most sophisticated one:

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/attachments/92701-dolly-3-point-hitch-dr.html#post1046058

 

[Tom_H]

This is a link to an old post with some MMM dolly info and a couple of other pics of it.

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/...-mmm-3-wheel-dolly-casters-2.html#post1376070

 

[Tom_H]

I hope to put up (in this thread) pics of other dollies as time goes by. When I get the PHD put back together, I will show pics of the chain hoist used to lift it from the 3ph and the eyebolts, pins, and padlocks that secure it to the garage log wall. If the mods don't mind, I'll put up some pics of the log house I designed and contracted myself, and some of the western, rustic, and Native American artistry we have in it.

 

[Grateful11]

Man that's some of the best ingenuity I've seen in a long time. I have to say
who needs those overpriced washer and dryer pedestals when you can have
BH bucket storage. Great job on all of them and keep'em coming!

 

[herringchoker]

Tom, you are a master organizer....what great ideas! I especially like the washer / dryer pedestal (though my missus wasn't impressed) and the cutout for the car mirror. You didn't mention about the vise mount on the car's trunk lid shown in the picture in your second post:laughing:.

 

[allenr]

Tom, have you ever considered another shed!

But seriously, I admire your inventiveness.

Thanks for the pictures.

 

[JOHNTHOMAS]

Thanks for pictures. This can truly be called Dolly World!

 

[Slatecreek]

Nice work, the dollies look great. A lot of good ideas you have shown us. I use the dollies from Harbor Freight that you can pick up for less than $20 bucks a piece and they work great for a few things. Great work.

 

[Tractor Factor]

Once again it's proven that necessity is the mother of invention. :thumbsup:

 

[jas67]

Tom H -- very creative dollies. I especially like the idea of going vertical. I took a little different route to going vertical. In addition to needing a more efficient way to store my various tractor implements, and other large items (such as the several military generators that have followed me home), I wanted a way to be able to unload wood-pellet pallets from my truck w/o having to do it bag-by-bag.

My solution was a walk-behind forklift. I watched craigslist and ebay for months until I found one that fit my needs for a low enough price. It is a crown 20MT:

This one is available with three different height specs, mine being the middle one of about 9 1/2 feet. The lowest lift one has a single stage mast, and this one one, and the higher one, a two-stage mast. This middle one has the lowest down height of the three, and can fit through a 7-foot high garage door (might be handy to get my pellets into the house-attached garage). It has a 2000lb lift capacity -- just enough for my wood pellets. This unit also takes up a lot less floor space than a regular forklift, and is light enough to haul on a small utility trailer. If I park it with the forks under a pallet, it only takes a few square feet of additional space beyond

So, since I got this, I purchased some used pallet racking for a few hundred, and got all my "stuff" off the floor. This freed up enough floor space to now be able to park my truck (crew-cab F-350) and utility trailer inside. I kept the lowest shelf high enough park the front of my one car under one, and other items such as walk behind snow blower, push mower, etc under others. Off season implements (such as the snow blower right now), and infrequently used implements get put up on the higher shelves, and items I'm currently using, or use frequently are on the floor under the shelves where they can't be quickly dragged out to use. My shop is a pole barn that has 10 1/2' high side walls, and trusses on 8-foot centers, so I'm able to store things on a top shelf at a height of 9 feet, with the item fitting up between the trusses.

I also plan on putting storage racks higher on the side walls of my garage (which has 10 1/2' high walls) for extra lumber and other bulky items to get them up and out of the way -- the fork lift makes it easy to get these items up.

At a total investment of about $1200 for the forklift and pallet racks, I was able to free up about 400 square feet of floor space. This is a LOT less money than it would have cost to build another building to store this stuff in. It is also a lot easier to get at things too, as I don't have to move a lot of stuff out of the way to get at what is in back (which is always where what I need ends up being). Since I now have all my implements on pallets, I also picked up a "manual" pallet jack for about $100 (again off of craigslist) which makes it real easy to position them to mount/unmount on/off the tractor.

Click on these pictures to see larger ons:

 

[jas67]

If anyone is interested in seeing my other storage optimization project see this thread:
Truck cap hoist for removal/installation and storage - TractorByNet.com

 

[Johndeere3720]

Here is where i keep most of my implements. atleast until we build a shop.To keep my implements looking nice i just put them in the garage and put some touch up paint on them. Yesterday i put a fresh coat of black paint on my pallet forks. Luckly it was nice out so i painted it outside.