Sharon – Shop Tour
This week’s shop comes from Sharon. Check it out:
So this is far from being a “dream shop”, but I still dream about working in it all week long as this is the only “shop” I have to work in these days. Living with a single car garage and no street parking at night, doesn’t give one many options to use that garage for anything else, so everything has to be portable and moved in and out for every project I work on. I would love to have a dedicated shop space once we buy our own place, and I can set something up, but until then it’s at the “you gotta do what you gotta do” stage.
So this is my “shop”, 2 Stanley work horses that have flip-on table tops (these are actually pretty nice for what they are) a set of cordless Dewalt power tools which I used for the longest time, and recently added a table saw to the setup.
So it does take a bit longer to set up shop every morning, and takes a bit longer to cleanup and store everything at the end of the day – but in between, there is wood working that makes you forget about all of that, and I think that’s what it’s all about-creating something that wasn’t there before.
I know that there are many other people with space limitations, and just wanted to give a shout out to everyone that are in a similar situation to mine and say – it’s doable, you just need to find the best setup that works for you, and as long as you get to mold that wood to something new – it’s all good.
Sometimes it feels like we’re obsessed with Shop-building, but you’ve got to remember that it really is all about Woodworking at the end of the day. P.S. yes, I know there’s a gap in that sideboard – the floor is so crooked I’m surprised I was able to level the top on all three carcasses.
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nicely done, Sharon. I have a pair of those stanley sawhorses too – they’ve been a godsend, especially when doing projects at some else’s home. Can you build any wall units? an nice wall of tool organization, saw horse hang ups, and a fold down bench could take your shop to the next level. I ran into similar problems when trying to build my shop in the garage. I spent more time setting up and taking down than I did woodworking.
well, you’re certainly on the right track. I’ve been whining about confining myself to 300sqft in the basement. I guess it’s time to stop whining :)
Muddler
Sharon,
It is amazing to see what we can do with limited resources and in my opinion, you have done well. I too have those saw horses and love them. Take care of them as they are no longer available in the borgs.
Thanks for sharing your space with us.
Hey Sharon,
Good job on the cabinets given your shop space and tool limitations. Inset mounted doors and drawers are probably the most unforgiving mounting there is. It’s harder to disguise misalignment between door and frame. I use full overlap to hide mine. :-)
Jim
Thanx for the comments :) I was actually looking around trying to find these sawhorses and also was not able to find then anymore.
As far as the cabinet goes – I was trying to experiment with new construction elements (face frame, inset doors, flush drawers. This whole cabinet is made of 1 4′x8′x3/4″ sheet of plywood, and wasn’t really meant to be a “fine” piece of furniture to begin with, but as time goes, the doors and drawers will be upgraded with better materials and construction. it wasn’t easy to align all those pieces together, but I was happy with the results.
This Shop is 10′x15′ about 7′ high and on uneven and unleveled ground. Ironically enough, I have since added wall mounted sheet of plywood to hand things on, a foldable workbench that hangs off of the wall as well, and a wood tool cabinet that is based on FineWoodworking design (I love that thing). you can see more pictures here:
http://lumberjocks.com/jocks/PurpLev/workshop
(mind you – my space is up to the post in the garage)
I too have a small shop. One thing I noticed was how much more room I had once I started using hand tools. The bench I built is a little larger than the table saw I got rid of, but the combination of my bandsaw, and handtools with the bench has increased my shops versitility. Maybe someday I’ll look into the Festool line. It looks like it saves space too. Clever people those Europeans
Rick
Sharon,
Your point about keeping your eye on the woodworking is very well made.
Re your cabinet: you might consider adding a base, similar to the way kitchen cabinets are often installed. That way you could scribe it to the floor and provide a level surface to put the cabinet on.
Rick – I love working with handtools, they are quieter, more intimate, provide somewhat of better precision and safer to work with – but I wouldn’t get rid of the table-saw – it has it’s uses, and is indispensable when it comes to repeatability and streamlined work! I just finished 6 drawers from scratch to finished construction yesterday in less then 3 hours using box joints with the TS – cutting all pieces to size, making the joints – all on the TS, all same size, using the same setup – you can’t beat that with hand tools (and you shouldn’t – these are different work methods)
I have the same problem with space; I do have on-street parking, however. I freed up considerable space by removing the overhead garage door and putting a wall in the space. I hope to build carriage doors sometime soon to allow me to open doors for long cuts and for planing and molding long boards. But putting things up is a good space saver.
I also plan to put some machines on wheels. Right now I’m lifting my joiner out of the way to do planing. I’m also constantly sweeping, so a DC is in the works too. So, I’m learning to weld because its’ cheaper than buying the system.
BioBill – Thanx , thats actually a very good idea… and fairly easy to setup. I’ll put that on my list!
Nice looking cabinets, Sharon! Congrats!
Now, about those sawhorses… After seeing yours I went looking for them on the net and came up empty handed. I now see where you said that you couldn’t find anymore of them either. Would you mind sharing the model number of them? Some times older hardward stores will have discontinued items in storage somewhere so it might be worth looking into. At least that’s whay I plan to do…. 8^)
Thanks
Rock
Rock- These are Stanley model 11020 saw horses/workbench, but you’ll have to run your own search to find them as last time I tried to find a couple more, I wasn’t able to locate any -maybe on eBay you can find those… or once in a while someone might post those on craigslist or something of that sort.
hope this help.
The cabinets look great Sharon,
I see people spend thousands of dollars on equipment and have large shops do less than what you have done.
Its all how you do with what you have that I think makes it fun.
Keep on making things
Thanks, Sharon, for the sawhorse model number…
The hunt begins… <
Rock