Pix of Shop and Today's Work

[Dick in Seattle]

Today was really great!   I set out to do some serious work in the shop, which was kind of hard because of the addition of that extra workbench I got free on the street.  My "method" was to simply begin doing jobs, shoving stuff out of the way to give myself access to the needed tools.   (Everything in the shop is on wheels.)  Gradually, the best places for each machine kind of sorted themselves out.   One blazing bit of creative thinking (joke) involved deciding that since I am in "non-lathe" mode, get the lathe out of the picture.   I moved it out of the shop area and stashed it in what used to be my gun room but now holds camping gear.  It can readily be wheeled back out to the shop if a use for it comes up.

Moving that left the possibility for stashing tools two deep in the corner, opening up the floor quite a bit and permitting placement of the new workbench in a usable location.   Yippee!

The final arrangement didn't gel until the end of the day, and along the way, I got a LOT of work done.  Here are some pix of the new shop arrangement and of the day's work...


 

What you're looking at here is 5 tools... On the back wall are a Rigid oscillating belt/spindle sander;  Grizzly 6x48 belt sander, and Grizzly overhead drum sander.   In front of those are a Grizzle pneumatic drum sander and Delta drill press.  The drill press is the most used tool and is usable as placed.


 

Moving and packing the tools into the corner as shown above permitted the placement of the "new" work bench against the wall, with the Grizzly bandsaw and DeWalt contractor saw to either side.    Above the bench are some wall mounted bins full of smaller hand power tools, with long items like glass lams and such stored on top of it.  Buried deep in the corner alcove behind the bandsaw is some wood storage and heavy shelves holding some power tools that can be gotten out and used as needed... a jointer, chop saw and a scroll saw, plus a bunch of toolboxes dedicated to things like Dremel tools, soldering, refinishing, etc.


 

Opposite wall, back corner...   My regular woodworking bench, with a tall roll around tool chest and against the back wall, a grinding bench.  The Grizzly dust collector is in a temporary spot.  It will get installed in the furnace room behind the shop, with an overhead duct system.


 

Forward or front view of that side of the shop...   the roll around hot box, with screw and nail bin shelves above and the roll around worktable, which of course can be anywhere.

All of these tools are, as mentioned, on wheels.  In any kind of good weather, the paved driveway in front of the garage becomes expanded shop space.


OK... what did I accomplish besides rearranging the lifeboats?   Here you go... one good day's work...

 

You're looking at three complete sets of lams and seven riser blanks.  The lams started out as resaws except for a couple of tapers left over from my last order with Kenny.  The risers started out as 2x2 and cuts on planks.    It took a lot of drum sanding to square all the riser blanks up and make all those lams come out the size i wanted them to.   Basically, with final sanding of the fades I'm ready to lay up three bows!   All three are close to the recipe for Slowpoke... one below, one identical, and one heavier.   I'm now feeling really good, after being down over the setback of the exploding bow last week.

[Chuck Hoopes]

Nothing quite like the pleasure of working in a shop that is organized and you can move from one tool to the next w/ease-- kind of like that one bow that just smoothly brings it all in alignment.  I suspect you will be spending even more time there than before. Look'n good.

[George Tsoukalas]

Dick, awesome shop! Looks great. Jawge

[razorback]

Got me motivated to work on my shop some more. I need to put my tools on wheels too and stand my wood pile up. At the moment it is laying down taking up a lot of space and I can't get to anything.
Looks good Dick and thanks.

[Bob Sarrels]

Guess my most used tool is my 80" grizzly sander.  This thing is really a work horse.  Think I have designed all my bows around this tool.  I have 2 dust collectors and 1 micro particle collector that my bride insisted I buy.  This machine comes on each morning when I walk into the shop and is turned off each evening when I leave.  My lungs do feel better.  The book says it changes the air in my shop 6 times a minute.  You can really see it cleaning up the really small stuff.

[bigcountry]

I need that table saw.  I also need a spindle sander, a better drill press, bigger belt sander, then I will be complete.  Until someone else shows there shop.

Oh yea, I need a central dust collection system with tubes going to each piece of machinery.

[razorback]

Dick, what size casters do you use for you heavier machuines and what combination/orientation of swivel, locking and standard casters do you use?

[Bob Sarrels]

Dick,  man oh man your shop looks too clean.

[Dick in Seattle]

Let's see... first, casters.   When I set up everything on mobile tool chests, they came with large hard plastic wheels, mostly front rigid and back swivel.  They made the tools too high.  I traded them out for smaller rubber wheels that rolled smoother and lowered the cabinets.  As I recall, they were 1 1/2"... standard items at Lowe's.  These were all swivel, with at least two locking.  If you study the pictures, you can see I'm talking about a lot of tool cabinets!  I ended up with a milk crate full of left over wheels.  I had a couple of tools I wanted real low, the belt sander and the drum sander.  For these, I built low wooden bases and grabbed up some of the wheels from the milk crate.  In this case, I just didn't have enough of the big swivel wheels, so I ended up putting rigid wheels on one end.   I hate that and will replace with all swivels as soon as I can.  With the tight packing in of tools, it's hard to move them around with rigid wheel setup.  Eventually, I will have everything on high quality all swivel wheels with two locking.

Incidentally, I put 3/4" plywood tops on each cabinet.

As to being clean.. what'd you think, I was going to take pictures after working?!  :^)   One of the penalties, although it's really a help, of small space is that it's vital to stop and clean up between operations.  These shots were taken right after cleaning up and before the next project started.  The atomic half-life of these pictures is overnight if the cleanup occurs at the end of the day... maybe an hour in the morning.  I suspect this is true of an awful lot of shops.

[razorback]

Thanks Dick. The big plastic ones are what I was thinking of using, but didn't like the idea because of the size. I was thinking that I needed wheels that would support the total weight of te tool and then realized that the weight will be distributed amongst 4 wheels and there fore i didn't need wheels so big.

[Dick in Seattle]

Razorback...  If you're making your own bases, by all means get larger diameter wheels, but I would get rubber rather than hard plastic.  I needed all that drawer storage, so for me, the toolboxes were a good answer, though higher than i might like.

Mount the locking wheels right on the corner.  I put a couple in a inch or two and can't get atthe locks with my toe... dumb mistake.  Scroll up and study the pix of my oven's wheels.  If you have the shop space, putting the wheels outboard is nice.

For really big stuff, like the bandsaw, use the commercial expanding frame wheel bases.

[razorback]

I will be making my own bases so these are some real good pointers. Am off to the hardware store to see what they have.

[jcar315]

Dick, Thanks for the shop pics. Great to see and puts some "meat on the bones" for someone like me who doesn't know a whole lot. Great to see how someone who really knows what they are doing sets things up. John

[Dick in Seattle]

>>>someone who really knows what they are doing<<<


LOL!   What on earth gave you that idea?!  This is what evolved... ain't gonna tell you how many changes it took to get to this point, but  believe me, it was trial and error.   My former shop, 10 years ago, was a fully professional setup, 20 x 30 feet, every tool free standing, overhead air, etc. where I produced wooden ventriloquist figures for professional ventriloquists, plus the occasional carousel horse.  Then I ran into a bunch of problems with age and health and ended up moving to this place with the little garage.  The health kept me unable to work in a shop for almost 8 years.  Somewhat unexpectedly, about 5 years ago, I began to recover and the last 2 years I've spent getting this shop up to what you see.  Bow making is a totally different activity from the pure wood carving I used to do... different tools, different techniques.  Learning it is giving me a new lease on life in my 70's, and also helping me cope with some new health issues.  Plenty of those as you get older :^)