The 74 cafe racer
Oxide tank, number board, Holy Bull on the cases. Runs, rides, and still gets fiddled with.
Running
A nonprofit mission organization
Get out of your head.
Get into the garage.
A man was built to make things. We exist to get him back to it — working with his hands, alongside other men, on something that outlasts him.
Ashland, Ohio
The Garage Library
Write the build down while you are building it.
The Build Book is a blank, fill-as-you-go record of the machine in your garage — not how the factory built it, how you built it. Every jet, torque spec, part number and revision on the page you will look for it on, instead of in a coffee can and your memory.
145 pages
27 systems
Fillable PDF
Print forever
Instant download · Print & bound from $22.49 · Every sale funds the mission
The mission
Every house is built by man; but he that built all things is God.
Hebrews 3:4
When God made a man, He put in him the urge to build, repair and restore. Guys in the Garage exists to hand that back to men who have lost track of it — to get them off the couch, off the phone, and into a shop where something gets better because they showed up.
It does not have to be engines. Wood, copper, paint, a shelf that was never going to build itself. What matters is that a man puts his hands on something real and makes it better — because in my experience he gets a little better in the process.
01
Get men back to work
Not a job — work. The kind you choose, that nobody is paying you for, that leaves something behind when you are done.
02
Put them next to each other
A man needs other men who will tell him when he is wrong, share the hard parts, and show up when he cannot do it alone.
03
Pass the skill on
Plumbers, mechanics and carpenters are not different from you. They know different things — things any man can learn from someone willing to teach.
The work
What is on the bench
The mission is not a slogan — it is a shop with things in it, in various states of finished. Here is the honest state of the bench.
7
Machines in the shop
3
Running
2
On the bench
2
Ongoing
1974 Yamaha RD 350
Cases apart, carbs catalogued, every number written down. Good progress, more to go.
On the bench
The welding table
Built it so everything after it could be built better. That is usually how the shop grows.
RunningAlso on the bench
Not every build has an engine.
I built these the same way I build bikes — start with what you have, take it apart until you understand it, write down what actually worked. They happen to be made of code and 3D print instead of steel. They belong to Knowlton Industries, and they are what pays for this.
Kilo
The robot truck dog. A rock-crawler chassis, on-board compute, a depth camera, and a phone bolted on for a head — eyes, voice, ears and face recognition in one part. It drives itself.
Drives itself
Atlas
Evidence before conclusion. It records what happened, measures it, and gives answers that name what they rest on. Delete every answer and it rebuilds them from the record alone.
DemonstratedG.A.I.L.Garage
Artificial
Intelligence
Liaison
GAIL
The voice and the face you actually talk to. She listens, acts on the services you already use, remembers what happened — and will not tell you anything a tool did not really return.
Active development
The other half
Not all of it happens indoors.
Squirrel’s Armory is Greg’s corner — guns, hunting, fishing and forge work. Same rule as the garage: get off the couch, learn something with your hands, and take somebody with you.
Where it comes from
Nobody in this picture had a shop.
They had a driveway, a socket set that was missing the one you needed, and whoever turned up on Saturday. That was enough. It was always enough.
Somewhere along the way we got prosperous enough to pay someone else to do everything, and a man stopped knowing how to change a tyre, build a shelf or clear a drain. That is not right, and it is about time we fixed it.
This is not nostalgia. It is the observation that men were better off when they made things, and that the fix costs nothing but a Saturday.
Follow the build
Most of it happens before it gets written down.
The shop moves faster than the blog does. Short clips, wrong turns, and the bits that worked go up as they happen.
How it is funded
The mission does not sell anything. The workshop does.
Guys in the Garage is the mission. Knowlton Industries is the technology and commercial identity that pays for it — so the mission never has to pass a hat.
The one you can hold is the Garage Library: build books, restoration records and workshop packs. Blank, fillable, printable. Buy one and you have funded the work.
Buy a bookThe Garage Library · from $19
↗
Subscribe on FacebookMonthly · supports the shop directly
↗
Shirts, hats and mugsComing to the store
Checkout lives on the store and nowhere else. This site takes no payments and does not duplicate the catalogue — one commerce surface, kept honest.
Build Book
Restoration
Founder's
Thirteen finished titles, and a free sample on the store if you would rather try the format before you buy anything.
Get involved
Three ways in
Free · Ten minutes
Show what you are building
Big or small, finished or halfway. Somebody else needs to see that a normal guy in a normal garage made it.
Submit your project →Free
Follow the shop
Facebook, YouTube and TikTok. The wrong turns go up alongside the wins, which is the useful part.
Pick a channel →Funds the mission
Buy a book
Record your own build in one, and pay for somebody else's way back into the garage while you are at it.
Visit the store ↗From the bench
Recent write-ups
The A, B, C(nc)’s of Progress
While my aspirations are for a Tormach or a converted Bridgeport, the Genmitsu 3020 Pro Max V2 is a good place to…
Taking Baby Steps in Snow Boots
It's a bit cluttered, but the garage is clean. The saws and such against the back wall are all new to me.…
In the Garage
As far back as I can remember I’ve always been at my best when I’m at home in my garage. I grew…