Shop Tour 2010: Part I

SHOP TOUR: 2010

I figured after almost twelve years it might be time to do another shop tour, the original was posted  on the Badger Pond woodworking forum back in 1998. The Badger Pond site has since been assimilated but the shop tour is still alive here.The larger images that go along with that tour are located here in the original shop tour gallery. Some things have remained the same but several things have changed including the size of the shop, in 2004 my son and I moved the front wall about 3 feet out. This move added about 30 sqft of floor space and 300 hundred cuft of volume which I use.

Over the past few weeks I've been getting the shop back into shape and ready for use, after today's efforts I think it is ready to be photographed and posted. Each of the small pictures when clicked on will display the larger size image. The pictures were shot with both a wide angle lens and a straight 35mm lens using a Sony Alpha-100 digital camera. As you can see from the pictures I take advanatge of all the space I have so do click the pictures to see the details. Check out the storage areas between the stud cavities, in the rafters or hanging from the ceiling.

Topics in the Post

Shop Basics: Includes dimensions, electrical, lighting, dust collection, air handling, etc.

Shop Tour: The basic tour from looking into the shop to moving clockwise around it.

Storage: Seems that most of the shop is storage, used several tricks to take advantage of a small shop.

Tools: The big power tools and some important hand tools.

Wood: Storage and variation of material currently on hand.

Shop Basics

The shop is 20'x16' with 9.5' ceilings. It is located in the walkout basement of my Pennsylvania home, built in 2000. The shop was built in the spring of 2001 and was originally meant to be a woodworking shop exclusively, but now it is used for electronics as well. The shop has a single large window on the left hand side that looks out over the yard, even though it is a basement much of the shop side is exposed. I used double doors (60") for the shop that are directly in front of the entrance doors to the basement making it easy to move materials in and out. There is a total of four fluorescent lights over each area in the shop, two double eight footers in the middle of the shop, a double four footer over the bench and a double four footer over the router/bandsaw area.

The whole shop is plumbed with 6” metal pipe for the dust collection. I have two main drops (6” to two 4” blast gates) and one utility drop (6”) that I have various interchangeable fittings for (floor sweep, downdraft table, belt/disc sander, etc). The dust collection unit is a Jet 1100 that is located in the front corner of the shop, it isn't quiet but it works like a champ. There is also a 15 gallon compressor located in the closet under the steps, the air comes into the shop to a regulator where it is then connected to a retractable hose hanging from the ceiling. Hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the shop is the air filtration system from Jet, it can clean the air in the shop every three minutes or so.

I put in a 220 circuit (used for the jointer and table saw) with two receptacles hanging from the ceiling and an outlet near the bench. Also added two 110 circuits, one for the lights, dust collection and air filtration, the other is for the tools. Most of the tools are in cabinets that I built over the years and are hanging around the shop on a French cleat system, wood storage is all over the shop which I'll detail separately. I left the floor concrete but I have rubber fatigue mats at the tool stations and the bench. The walls are a mixture of materials, one is concrete, another is covered in cedar planks while another is pine and pegboard.

Shop Tour

Looking into the shop through the double doors this is what you see, the table saw dominates the view as it does the shop. The shop is twenty foot front to back and 16' side to side, the front has an area that wraps around the staircase exposing an additional 120 square foot of space. There is enough natural light during a sunny day that I don't really need to use the lights in the shop unless I am doing detailed work. To the left is the bench, not at all what I want but I haven't had the time to make a real woodworker's bench so this is it, actually it isn't a bad bench. The ceiling is still exposed because I use the cavities for storage of jigs, wood, tools and various other items. I didn't add heating or air conditioning which isn't a problem in the summer but to use it in the winter I need to roll in the heater.

The image to the left represents looking left after entering the shop. This corner is basically used for storage of materials, hardware and tools. As you can see I have created shelving that drops down from the ceiling, this was done using threaded bars and oversize bolts, works great. The cabinets were made for specific types of storage which is detailed further down. The walls are pegboard on the top half and pine on the bottom. The area above the cabinets is used for wood and material storage up to 9' long and 36" wide.

The image on the right if looking towards the back of the shop on the left hand side. The bench and most of my electrical components are stored in this area, specifically in the cabinet and in various size plastic bins. The area under the bench stores most of my handheld power tools as well as some other stuff like a chop saw, some big motors I plan on using someday and a Jet mortising machine. I need to clean this up and rearrange for more storage.

The bench, as I said, is a prefabbed one got from an old employer but it works pretty well. I've purchased all the materials needed to build a classic woodworking bench just haven't had the time or motivation to do it yet.

The image to the right if the rear and right rear part of the shop. The woodrack and sheet storage takes up most of the back wall and what is left over I use for short storage (not shown in this pic).

The entire wall on the right side is used from floor to ceiling for storage. For example, both of the cabinets (green and red) are hanging on doors that open to the wall stub cavities where various size planks are stored (up to 9'). The area to the right has additional stud cavity storage plus it uses the door to store various tools and props. Just to the right of that is a cabinet that I built to store certain hand tools, I made the doors but I've yet to glue them up and install, obviously. While it is hard to see in the picture there is a shelf above the cabinets and doors that runs the entire length o f the wall, this is used for storage of tools, electrical equipment and various exotic wood pieces that I use for handles. The cabinets are new from the last tour and are detailed in the storage section of this post.

The image on the left represents looking right after entering the shop, you can see from this wide angle shot how the shop goes back into a corner where the dust collection unit is stored. In fact, if you look at the floor you can see the unpainted lines, these represent where the wall was originally placed. I store mainly bigger machines and clamps in this area but there is ample pegboard storage on the wall as well as shelves hanging down from the ceiling. The light and the dust collection are on remote controls that are velcro'd to the pole. The air compressor is stored under the steps which has been converted to a closet although it is used for more than woodworking.

The bandsaw is usable where it is but the router table and oscillating spindle sander need to be moved in order to use them, unless the components are very small. All the tools are on wheels so moving them around isn't a problem. The drill press (Delta 16") is the only exception, that doesn't move unless I need to open both doors which is rarely the case now that the shop is full. The wall to the left of the bandsaw is like the others in that it has a door (with storage) that hides the cavity where additional wood is stored. Above the doors are the blades for the table and chop saws and above them are various cans of paint that we've used over the years. I use bungee cords to hold the cans on the shelves.

The picture to the right shows a slightly closer view of the area to the right. The pole is a pain in the ass but nothing I can do about it, at least not practically. The router table was built by me back in 2002 after using a couple shitty Craftsmen tables, this is my own design but represents a blend of other tables I've looked at over the years. The oscillating spindle sander is very useful for the bandsaw box work I do but it provides value for any curved component.

The pegboard is pretty well covered with small hand tools and various small shelves, this area can do with some reorganization at some point. In the very back corner is the dust collection system, it is plumbed with 6" ducting and splits at the top into two paths around the room.

Storage

The storage in the shop is where I spent most of my time, the tools go where they can fit and everything else has to work around them including the wood. Much of the storage is traditional in that it includes cabinets and pegboards but the non-traditional storage in the ceiling and walls proved to be a critical factor in allowing me to have my tools in the shop and still be able to work. I've also managed to store about half of my wood stash in the shop with the other half living in the shed.

I think my two biggest storage tricks are using the stud walls as storage and dropping shelves down from the ceiling, both of these technoques provided as much storage as a shop much larger than mine. Most of the storage ideas came from other shops and various books and magazines I've read, but I'm not done because there are still more areas I can improve to either increase capacity, ease access or both. One idea is swinging pegboard panels that I've seen utilized quite a bit, at some point I'll do these for some of the hand tools I have.

Cabinet Storage

I've built six cabinets over the years that i use for storage, these are all hanging on French cleats and can therefore be moved around the shop easily. The cabinets are simple and with two exceptions all made from paint grade pine and have acrylic, see-thru panels. Starting on the left side of the shop and moving in the same direction as the tour the cabinet hanging below the wood storage shelves was the first one I made of this type.

There are two main sections to this cabinet, a top area with long shelves and a bottom area with shorter but taller shelves. The clear cabinet doors cover the entire cabinet keeping everyhing clean and easily visible. The dimensions are 36" wide by 32" high and 12" deep.

One of the coolest features of this cabinet is the hidden set of shelves behind the main shelving. This area is accessed by opening the hinged front shelves. There are four distinct shelves which are the width of the cabinet but only about 4" wide. This is used primarily for hardware like screws, nails, rivets, etc. As you can see there is quite a lot of storage in this cabinet.This is my favorite cabinet in the shop and the most fun to build.

The cabinet to the left is the last one I made, probably back in 2005 or so. This was made to hold my best bladed hand tools including hand planes, carving tools, rasps and chisels. The slanted area holding the planes lifts up to reveal sharpening tools, oils, stones and other items used for blade maintenance. The cabinet is made from solid walnut and high cabinet quality ash plywood. The dimensions are 22" tall and wide and 13" deep, the door is 2.5" deep leaving the main area about 9.5" deep. I still need to put a magnetic latch on the door at some point.

The cabinet to the right is used for bench storage, almost entirely electrical components and various high quality measuring and marking tools. This cabinet is buring between a set of shelves and floor standing unit for exotic short storage.

The shelves go all the way to the ceiling and hold mostly plastic bins used to separate accessories for each one of the power tools. For example, there is a bin for the bandsaw that contains any accessories required for blade changes or general maintenance. The same is true for the table saw, the mortiser and any other tool that doesn't have its own dedicated storage. The bins work out well and they are cheap is you look around, BJs or Costco sell them for about $1 a piece.

The image on the left shows the right side of the bench area looking at the side of the cabinet and the short storage area below. As you can see I use the magnetic bars to store some frequently accessed tools, these are constantly changing depending on what I'm doing.

The short storage shelving was hastily put together but has survived because it works. The shorts stored here are only exotic varieties of wood like purpleheart, lacewood, bocote and others that are not abundant in the USA. The storage shelving is 3 feet deep and about 2 feet high with 18" of width, as you can see there is a lot of wood stored there.

The red and green cabinets in the back of the shop are new additions as well, I built both these cabinets a the same time in probably no more than 2 hours. They are used to store glues, epoxies, paints, varnishes and other toxic materials.

Both of these cabinets have smaller shelves behind the materials on the top two shelves, this allows me to store many of the smaller containers that hold the dyes and catalysts used by some of the products. These cabinets are hanging on two doors that open to reveal some additional wood storage.

End of part I.