Made from a garage door cable drum, garage door cable, brearing pillow blocks, 1" 0.120 wall tube, 9/16 shafting, and an amazon special awning roller. Its not sketchy at all, nope. Seriously though, don't stand under it.

Looks great 😎 Perhaps you can add a safety pin in case the cable breaks?

Thanks! The cable is supposedly rated to 350lbs BUT the worm drive awning box is rated to ??!¿Lbs. It held me + the shelf load and my tools as a "proof load". I am looking into adding a spring loaded latch of some kind so it hooks in automatically but I don't have that 100% figured out yet.

Did you use pin nails to hold the back/bottom on? I assume it's at least glued. Or, is that the "sketchy" part?

There are more points of failure there than the cable snapping.
This needs some redundant safety if you expect to ever walk or stand under it.

I feel like this needs a video demo, maybe with sound!

Is that where you keep all your scrap steel?

No question there. I'm working out how to do a spring loaded pin or latch system.

Is it the same basic concept as its friend between the next set of rafters? If so, I might be more concerned about the piano hinge than the rest of it, as those are usually used to support lids versus gravity rather than loaded up carcases. I also might go for some metal strapping on your joist to reinforce the pocket holes. I'm not all that familiar with how awning gear boxes work, though. What holds the cable in place when the box is stowed?

All in all, I am not too terrified of this one, which may say more about me than about your handiwork (LOL), but some lag-screw hooks and some rope or chain (and a stick if they're too high to reach) might be a good accessibility compromise to keep anybody from getting clocked if something does fail.

Nah, just sanders, sandpaper, router bits. Stuff like that.

Pocket hole screws and glue for the base cabinets. Machine screws and nuts for the hinges. Hex bolts and lock nuts for the winch setup. Its all roughly comparable to what is used on garage doors.

Yep, they are as close to twins as I can make with my skills. Agreed on the piano hinges, gotta use what I had on hand. They seem to be okay so far but you know how stuff gets sneaky after a while.

The awning box is just a really shitty worm drive gear box, its "positive locking" either by design or by poor manufacturing. I.e. they don't spin unless you spin the input shaft.

Really, there is probably less than 50 total lbs in the whole setup even when the tools are in it. Overhead loads just sketch me out in general.

Overhead loads just sketch me out in general.

Same, especially as a fellow practitioner of the dark arts of "this unrelated device looks fit for purpose." We had some large purpose-designed overhead trays prefessionally installed above our garage door, and while they're each rated for a pretty hefty load, first choice for what to put up there was always items that are not very dense for their size. I will mess with a lot of stuff, but fucking with HVAC, weight-loads on ceilings, or in-wall plumbing and electrical is not for me.

I did some sketchy napkin math and the load in the cable as is is ~30-75lbs depending on what is in the boxes and how its arranged assuming the box weight based on a half sheet of 5/8 plywood and 30-50lbs of stuff in it. I can live with that.

Hanging loads still make me nervous and I will be righing up some kind of safety pin/clip for these.

Is there a reason you didn't mount it to the ceiling? That way the force would stay mostly vertical.

The way you have it, the force to raise it changes from mostly vertical to nearly horizontal. That horizontal force is going to be huge because it's mostly just pulling instead of working against gravity.

Think of trying to raise a weight in the middle of a rope by stretching it out horizontally instead of just lifting it straight up.

You could also just mount a pulley on the ceiling.

I need to move the winch by a couple of inches but the idea is that the winch cable is tangent to the mounting point on the cabinet, and the winch cable is vertical when the cabinet is flush to the ceiling. I just pre-mounted everything before I had the winch spacing figured out so its off by 2ish inches.

Right on brother

Yeah, I would install a safety strap or something underneath it.

I've got a portable work table thing sketchily mounted to my garage wall. Out of paranoia of someone bumping it off when getting something underneath it I have a very old rock climbing quick draw (no longer safe for climbing purposes) attached to it and an eye bolt in the wall.

I'm not familiar with the quick draw, is that the little one way rope clips? Functions like a ratchet or check valve but for rope?

Quick draws are the little bit of strap with a carabiner on both ends. One end clips into a bolt in the wall/rock, the other end clips around your rope so if you fall, you only fall as far as the last one you attached.

Damocles Storage Solutions LLC

Can you elaborate on "weight loads on ceilings" ?

This post has kind of inspired me to follow up on my plan to make a storage area in the roof cavity over my garage.

Do you mean non-trafficable ceilings? My house is designed with timber ceiling joists around 450mm apart suspended from the A-frame roof.

I asked about it on some DIY sub a while back and the consensus was that it's fine for some boxes of junk.

Obviously I share your and OPs concerns about overhead loads. I'm trying to figure out how comfortable I am with this.

Nothing precise. I have tons of DIY nonsense in my garage, but when it came time to suspend storage from the ceiling, the consequences of it's failing would mean significant damage to the ceiling, the contents, my car, and possibly the garage door. As long as you use sufficiently strong hardware and follow solid practices for how to mount things, it should be fine. Just not something I was wanting to do.

Fair enough. I'd be very concerned about mounting anything on the underside of the ceiling, because all the weight is pulling directly along the shaft of whatever fixing you use.