This Week in Wood » Shop Layout

What a mess!

glennth — Fri, 14 May 2010 02:06:39 +0000

OK, as a woodworker I have a chore that I’m responsible for once in a while. I need to empty the dust collector bag. It’s not a fun chore and boy does it make a mess – even in the best of times. Having had a dust collector, I’ve often put it off too long so that the bag is overflowing. Recently, I thought I had gotten better at judging when it needed emptying. Oh, yeah I do have one thing that keeps that info from me. The dust collection is in an out building (a small shed with a 4″ hole connected to my shop) so that I can’t see the bag’s fill level unless I open the shed.

I’d been feeling like I should empty it for the last week or so. I finally got to it today.

OH..MY..GOD! Not only was the bag overflowing but it has started filling the space in the upper bag (yes, I thought there might be a problem because a day or so ago, the sound it made changed). I got my wife, Kathy out to help me and she was laughing at me about the whole thing. I did manage to get it all cleaned up but it was a dusty and chippy mess.

I think my issue is that all the hand tool work creates a done of shavings. These curly shavings ultimately take up a lot more space and so fill up the bag quicker than dust from a table saw. Hopefully I’ve learned my lesson.

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What a mess!

Updated Shop Tour – Detailed

glennth — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 01:19:44 +0000

Since well before Christmas, I’ve been working on a background project. Making my work areas more efficient. In the couple of little projects that I’ve done since this Summer, I’ve realized that a few things needed to be moved to a better location. Here is the results:

Main Workbench:

Rather than building a bench from scratch, I bought one. Many of the inexpensive benches are very light so I’ve anchored it to the floor for stability during planing and such. With the bench, I’ve made various bench hooks and such which have proven very useful.

Next a Dedicated Sharpening Bench:

This bench was my quick and dirty attempt at bench building. Rather than get rid of it, I’ve turned it into my dedicated sharpening station with my Tormek, water stones, and granite stations. I love having this set up all the time. I’ve already been more inclined to sharpen blades when they start cutting funky.

Tool Cabinet:

I designed and built this tool cabinet with scraps from my shop. It has turned out very well to house my chisels, measuring tools, and hand planes. On the outside, I’ve got magnets holding my measuring tools.

On the inside are my chisels, hand planes, files, marking gauges, and mallets.

Hand Saws:

Next to the tool cabinet, I have my various hand saws. This is a collection that is still being developed. Based on reviews and trials, I’ve selected some of the basic saws I need. I’m really focusing on Western saws though I have a few pull/japanese saws.

Next to the main saws, I have more saws along with my brace and hand drill. This is also the port to the dust collection shed (see later in this post).

Sanding Station

I have a Rigid sanding station sitting on top of my Craftsman toolbox which holds hammers, screw drivers, wrenches, plyers, and such.

Router Table and Planer:

I have a cabinet (originally a flip top but I found that it didn’t work nearly as well as my fantasy) which houses my power planer and my router table (again I chose to go for a kit from Benchdog instead of designing and making one of my own).

Drill Press:

I have a Delta bench top drill press on a shop made cabinet.

Bandsaw:

Here is my Delta 14″ bandsaw. I need to get a new blade and tune it up.

Festool:

Here is a shop made bench with a Festool work surface on top. In the cabinet is my routers and bits and other non-Festool hand power tools.

Here are my Festool tools including a vacuum, circular saw, sander, jig saw, Domino. I love my Festools (including the rail guides which I have in various sides).

The rest of the shop:

Notice that my dust collection is outside the shop. Dust collection includes a floor sweep and 2 flex hoses on either side of the shop that can connect to the router table, bandsaw, planer, sander.

Basically, I’ve optimized my 12′x16′ shop space for hand tools and some limited power tool usage.

How Many Times…

glennth — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 03:44:04 +0000

How many times can one reorganize ones workshop?

I showed Kathy my newly reorganized workshop and she said ” 4.0, 5.0, 6.0 ?” The real answer is probably much higher than that.

I found that I wasn’t using my sharpening station that I built in the garage because…well, it’s not in my shop. In order to fit my sharpening station and sharpening tools into my shop I needed to do some miracle reorganization. I’m saying miracle because, as you may have noticed in my shop tour, my shop is not big and is very fully loaded.

My first big was to move my Festool bench to the opposite wall and exchange positions with my sanding station and my drill press. This allowed me to move some of the Festool guides and clear a space for a new shelving unit. This shelving unit would hold my drills, bits, radio/mp3 player, phone and chargers for my drill batteries. I used scraps for making it so it cost next to nothing.

My next was to move over my second bench so that I would have a lot of room for my Festool bench. My secondary bench would become my new sharpening station including a granite slab, Tormek, and bench hook for sharpening stones. My actual Festool collection would remain below while my sharpening paraphernalia would be above.

Lastly, I moved my primary bench a little closer to the wall for easier access to tools and such.

I’m actually amazed that everything fits. I’ll need to post a new tour soon.

Shop Tour – Pictoral

glennth — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:44:11 +0000

I know, I know. Finally he shows his entire shop. Of course when you entire shop is less than 10′ x 16′ there isn’t much to show off.

First, here is my main work bench. Someday, I may build my own from scratch but I wanted to get to work so I bought a bench kit from Sjoberg. I did some research and for lesser expensive bench kits, it got lots of good reviews. There are better benches if you are willing to spend $1000′s of dollars (see Lie-Nielsen for example). A real big difference between many shop built benches (or these expensive ones I mentioned) and these in-expensive kits is the weight or mass. These inexpensive kits are prone to moving around as you use them. I’ve drilled holes into the leg bases and the floors so that I can have a removable anchor using dowels. It’s worked great.

Here is a shot of the entire corner where I have a quick/dirty shop made cabinet for hand planes/chisels/marking/measuring tools along with hand saws on the wall. I keep my saw benches (modeled after Christopher Schwarz’ design). This area has really worked out well as I move more towards using various hand tools. You will notice that I have a dust collection set up. This is somewhat the remnants from when I had my table saw (can you imagine a table saw taking up nearly the entire shop) but it’s still useful for shop cleanup and some of the remaining power tools (planer, sander). Notice that I still am working on that handcut dovetail hope chest.

Oposite my main bench is a secondary bench that I use for metal work (though I don’t do this much) and I can put a anvil or metal vise into the bench vises. Above this secondary bench, I have a cabinet purchased from the local borg which holds a few reference books and most of my finishing supplies. Also in the farthest corner, I have a scrap bin and trash on wheels (it’s helpful in such a small shop to allow everything to be mobile.

On the same wall but at the other end as the secondary bench, is where I have my benchtop drill press, benchtop planer, bench top oscillating sander, dovetail jig (for router cut dovetails). Above all that I have storage for fasteners and other misc hardware and supplies. Lastly, is my Craftsman (as in Sears) toolbox for hammers, screw drivers, wrenches, plyers, socket sets and such. Notice in front of the second door to my shop (which is hardly ever used) is a ladder. I use it to get to the overhead storage where I keep other wood odds and ends. Also you can just see my collection of bessy clamps that are vital to building anything.

Opposite the above power tool area is my Festool bench. It’s the orginal MFT 1080 (I think that is it’s number) bench (latest version is the MFT-3 which is a different shape but has the same essential features). I have the MFT bench on top of a shop made cabinet which holds routers (I have 4), circular saws (I have 3), router bits (never have enough), and some other misc tools. Next to that, you can see a band saw which I would like to change out the blade for a wider blade and tune it up so I can use it for cutting both smaller items (that the Festool circular saw has difficulty with) and cutting thicker material to be used for project. Behind the bandsaw, I have scraps that I haven’t put away but behind that I have a panel clamp system.

There are some other elements of my shop that are not actually in my shop. I have had several posts regarding my Sharpening Center which I keep in my garage. Now that you’ve seen the shop you can understand why. Also, if you noticed the dust collection looks like it comes through the wall, it does. I have a small shed outside of the shop where the dust collection system stays and makes it’s dust and noise which is not in the shop. Lastly, I have a sheet goods storage area in another shed (it’s a partitioned part of my gardening shed).

This is what makes up my woodworking efforts. I hope that you enjoyed the quick tour. I hope to put together a video tour as well but that will be later. If you have any questions, please post them in the comments and I will address them as I can.

New Project – Hanging Tool Cabinet

glennth — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 21:42:18 +0000

As I mentioned in several earlier post, I needed to build a tool cabinet to hold my hand tools for easy access. Some secondary purposes including making some hand cut dovetails and use up some of the left over plywood that I had (yes, the tool cabinet would be better if it were solid wood but I wanted to use left over supplies and keep the cost down).

I made the interior of the cabinet have adjustable shelves to hold the hand planes that I’ve aquired. The doors had some thickness so that I could hang chisels, files and measuring and marking tools. I used hand cut dovetails to join the sides of the main cabinet and sides of the doors. I did use a router to make a groove for the back of the cabinets and the front of the doors. I used a cleat to install the cabinet on to the wall. It is positioned over my work bench (I will show that off in a future post regarding a shop tour).

Here is the finished cabinet:

Here are some progress shots:

It’s a simple design but retains a lot of flexibility for the tools I expect to use in my future projects. I’d love to hear about other tool cabinet designs and implementations in the comment section.

Past Projects – Shop Cabinets

glennth — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:02:12 +0000

With my potential changes to my shop coming up, I’m looking around the shop to see what I may need to do. In the mean time though, let’s take a few minutes and look at some of the shop cabinets that I’ve already built and am still using.

The first to talk about is a lower but large cabinet. When designing the cabinet, I wanted my Festool portable table (older version) to fit on top and have that surface be flush with the top of the table saw. It has several large equipment drawers that routers and saws are stored in. The smaller drawers are for router bits and other shop supplies. If I do wind up getting ride of the table saw (see previous post) I may convert the top to a torsion box for assembly and such.

The next are a pair of quickly built cabinets. One is for my drip press and it has drawers for various drill and sanding supplies. The other is a flip top cabinet which was originally for my planer and an oscillating sander. It still could flip but I found that it was more work to use it that way so I simply move the small equipment to a bench top to use. It’s still good for equipment storage.

I may have to remove some cabinets and rethink storage going forward. I certainly am going to need a new, full size work bench. That may be a good project for me too since it has a lot of joinery possibilities and is a project that can use hand techniques as well as power. I’ve really enjoyed the Renaissance Woodworker’s podcast covering the robo workbench design and construction.

Under consideration – Workshop Change

glennth — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:22:59 +0000

As a woodworker, I am primarily self taught. This means that, I’ve figured things out myself, watched videos/TV shows to understand techniques, and read books and magazine articles to understand additional techniques. During all this, I’ve been (nearly entirely) focused on using power tools – table saws, bandsaws, hand power tools, jointers, routers, planers and others.

Over the last year or so, I’ve been trying to change my approach to woodworking. First, I’ve started using hand tools. My first big use was for a cherry blanket chest project (I haven’t posted anything on this yet but I will list it at some point in my Past Projects series of posts). I used a jointer plane (very long bed) to joint boards together. This worked out well though I’m sure my technique has a lot of short comings. I’ve obtained many planes which I use though I’m not sure in the correct fashion yet and I’ve obtained chisels. I’ve obtained a few hand saws. My first time of cutting hand cut dovetails was for a tool cabinet that I’m working on that will be wall mounted and hold hand planes, chisels, measuring and marking tools (I’ll do a post on that at some point when I finish it – I’m working on the doors right now).

All that being said, I have no intention of giving up power tools. They do things more accurately and quickly than many hand tool tecnhiques.

…though…

I have decided to give up the table saw. My primary motivation is space. My shop is small (16×12) and the table saw takes up nearly half that space (clearance and actual foot print). My secondary motivation is that I believe that my Festool circular saw (I have a first generation of the TS55) can achieve much of what I can do on a table saw – perhaps more and maybe even in a safer manner.

It’s a big leap but I’m hopeful of the space recovered that I can have a proper workbench and still have space to cut sheet goods (though I hope to reduce my projects involving sheet goods and go to more solid wood projects).

Are there others out there that have attempted this same path or am I the only one?