Gary’s Basement Shop – Shop Tour
This Viewer Shop is from Gary, a 14 year old woodworker. Let’s hear what he has to say:
Hi, I am woodworker (from the forum). I am 14 and and just started woodworking. My workshop is a basement shop and its right at the bottom of the stairs so I can only get 4×4 sheets down there, 4×8s won’t fit. At the bottom of the stairs is a shelf with some cabinets with drawers which hold screws and nails which are all sorted by size. The shop is about 6′ by 11′. There’s about 8 feet before and after the blade on the table saw with about 2 feet from the left of the blade and 1.5 feet from the right. The table saw is a 10 inch Craftsman contractor saw. It cuts pretty good, not the best. Along side of the stairs I have a Harbor Freight 14 inch bandsaw. It’s a good bandsaw for the price. Next to the bandsaw is my Harbor Freight 21 gallon air compressor. My miter saw is, yes you guessed it, a Harbor Freight 12 inch sliding compound miter saw. The stand is all 2×4s, 11 feet long by 3 feet tall and 1 foot thick with a 1 gal, 1 hp shop vac hooked to the miter saw. Then in front of the fridge next to the table saw is my homemade router table with a Freud 2 hp fixed base router. The work bench is 2×4 frame and legs; the top is just a osb board over the supports with instead of a 1/4 inch hardboard, I used 2 1/8 inch so I could put the top on bottom and bottom on top just one shelf on it. The lathe stand in the picture has steel legs; I rebuilt it with 2×4 legs and I am selling the lathe to get a Steelcity granite lathe. For lights I have two 4′ florescent lights and two heat lamps for spot lights on the miter saw. Lastly I have a 1940 Craftsman scroll saw thats not set up and besides that there are drills and things like that.
Ken’s Workshop – Shop Tour
This week’s we are featuring Ken’s Workshop. Let’s check it out as he gives us the grand tour.
I thought I would send you some shots of my home shop. I have been a hobbyist woodworker for the past 10 or so years. Not only is my shop a wood shop but it is where I fix all the household stuff. Lamps that stop working, bikes, etc. Come on into my shop. It is down two flights of stairs in the basement, it’s the door on the right, photo #1. It is 12′X12′ square with a 7′ ceiling. I have an ongoing battle with the house furnace that takes up about a 3′ square patch of the room. Needless to say I think it would be classified as a “small shop”. I have built a king size bed as well as two large rolling storage cabinets for a school in the shop but most of my work is much smaller. CD/DVD cases, boxes, coffee and side tables, etc.
Photo #2 & 3 are shots looking through the door into the shop. All of my tools are either bench top or able to move around the shop so I can accommodate larger pieces of wood. This includes my Delta contractor saw which I can spin around to face the door and out feed wood through the door using roller stands as out feed support if needed. I have a bench top craftsman drill press that sits on its own shop built rolling stand.
In photo #4 there is my King Canada 6″ jointer, Ryobi bench top belt/disk sander and tucked under my bench is the router table. The cabinet in the corner is an old kitchen corner cabinet that has a lazy susan inside that holds all my finishing products as well as sand paper and household paint. The two wall cabinets (again from our old kitchen) hold miscellaneous parts for machines as well as books and magazines.
Photos 5 & 6 are shots of my bench. It is about the simplest bench that could be made. Using 2X4s and a maple veneered chip board top. When the top gets too beat up, I flip it over and then replace it all together when that side gets destroyed. Hanging on the wall are some of my hand tools. Some “C” and spring clamps as well as a light hanging from a bar above the bench. On the bench are two recently finished CD cases and a lift lid box that are Christmas presents for family. In photo #6 is my Steal City hollow chisel mortiser. It sits on another old kitchen base cabinet. This cabinet holds stuff that I can’t find another place for. Beside that is my Dewalt thickness planer. I have passed lots of board feet through this machine. The chip collection for the planer is a garbage pail inside the shop-built cabinet that the planer sits on.
Photo #7 & 8 are looking from the bench back to the door and the table saw. The wall cabinet holds mostly household stuff, light bulbs etc. My other hobby is mountain biking and the top red tool chest holds all my bike related tools parts. The bottom rolling cabinet holds hand power tools as well as the majority of my hand and marking tools. Hanging on the wall above the table saw is my Ryobi scroll saw. As I don’t have a band saw, the scroll saw doubles as my band saw with major limitations. I hate to throw out any wood except for the smallest pieces. I have my off cuts scattered around the shop and all my larger pieces of lumber stored either in an outdoor shed or in a small storage space under the stairs.
The last photo shows where I store my bar clamps. All my quick grip clamps hang off the cold air return on the furnace. The shop has gone through several makeovers in the last ten years and one of the projects for the New Year is another shop make over. All the old kitchen cabinets are going to go and I am going to build floor to ceiling cabinets to house all the stuff. I am also planning on building a new bench, most likely a torsion box style but I am still working on the plans for that. As you can see it is a small space but one of the things I really like about it is I am only a few steps away form anything in there. Thanks for taking a tour of my shop!
John’s Basement Woodshop – Shop Tour
This week’s shop comes from John. Let’s see what he has to say:
My shop is 46′ long and 17′ wide at the widest part of the shop. When I added the shop to our home I had a sub panel installed for the shop. I have four 220 outlets and a bunch of 110 outlets. The lighting is T-8 fixtures and they really light the space up. My situation is ideal as far as basement shops go, as I have a straight shot from the garage right down to the basement. I have no corners to navigate, which is very helpful when moving sheet goods and finished projects. The pictures of the shop were taken after I put the shop back together after a brief lay off, that is why the shop is so clean. I did something crazy….I sold off my old shop tools to get back into the golf business. (Custom Clubs and Club Repair) Well, the itch for my shop did not go away and the golf market is not doing all that well, so, I sold off the golf shop stuff and put the wood shop back together. One good thing about buying tools after you sell everything off is you only buy the tools you are going to use. I had a lot of tools that I sold off that I rarely, if ever, used. I now have a great little shop with a great inventory of tools, and I love getting to spend time in there.
Here is a list of some of my tools:
Delta Unisaw Grizzly 20″ Planer (Man oh Man was it ever fun getting that down the stairs); Delta 13″ two-speed planer; Jet 14″ Band Saw; Yorkcraft 6″ jointer with a spiral head cutter; Delta Drum Sander; HF 2hp Dust Collector; Old Craftsman RAS; Makita Miter Saw; Leigh Dovetail Jig; Quick lift router lift; Lots of Jet clamps (Thanks for the heads up on those Marc!); and lots of other miscellaneous tools and stuff. As you can see from the pictures I have lots of benches and counter space. The assembly table and the outfeed table were just quick and dirty 2×4 tables, until I can make the Assembly table that I watched Marc make, and I would like to do a little better outfeed table that would incorporate some storage into it. I would also like to build a little cabinet for saw blades, dado sets, wrenches, etc. under the right side of the table saw extension table. Currently, I have my router set up in the extension table of my table saw; I would like to build a free standing router table soon. I purchased my workbench from a friend. I plan to make some changes to it. I plan to add an Emmert Clone as a face vise, and a Veritas Twin Screw as a tail vise. A wood shop produces a never ending list of things to do. All of which are a fun part of the hobby.
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