104 – October 2009 Shop Tour
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Finally, a thorough look at my new digs. Now my hope is that this shop is just temporary, until we sell the other house. But until then, I can make my 3-car garage a comfortable place to produce great projects! Enjoy the shop tour!
Kerry’s New Shop – Shop Tour
This standalone Viewer Shop comes from Kerry in New Hampshire. He writes:
Nearly two years ago I tore down the old 16’x12’ shop that was behind my house in preparation of building a new one during my three-month sabbatical from work. One week before my sabbatical was supposed to start I was diagnosed with stage 2 thyroid cancer and all my plans went on hold.
Finally last fall we decided it was time to rebuild the shop if for no other reason than to provide a distraction from what we call “Cancer World”. I have fairly recently found out about The Wood Whisperer (as well as Wood Talk Online and Matt’s Basement Workshop) so I thought it would send along some pics of my mostly completed new shop.
Here’s a shot from last fall. The new shop is 16′ x 24′ with a 9 foot ceiling.
Here’s where we ended with daylight fading on the last day of that weekend.
It’s now nearly 9 months later and here’s the shop as it set up now. Here is the view from the front door.
Just to the left of the front door is my benchtop drill press, my big manly air compressor, in the beginning of my 20 foot long workbench. You can also see my first old portable table saw tucked under the bench.
Next we move into the back corner and the back wall. Someone gave me the metal rack along the back wall and all my power tools and battery-operated tools to do not have their own case live here.
Here’s a full shot of the back wall. I’ve got a fairly good-sized wood stove in the back right corner. The picture in the upper left corner is a shot of my father who passed away last year.
As we move back up towards the front of the shop along the right-hand wall we will find my Rigid table saw, that I really really like. He’s very old hand-me-down four-inch jointer. And the hand-me-down radial arm saw (one of my wife’s favorite tools). Up top is my lumber storage currently dominated by left over 2 by stock from the shed construction. Under the wood 16 more feet of shelf for all of my power tools that have their own case. You can see my pitiful supply of clamps.
Back to the front of the shop we have my chop saw on its portable stand and a 2′ x 4′ workbench (for my wife) with a flip top and some six-inch deep storage bins.
And finally here’s a shot of the old talk to the radial arm saw that was honored when I got it, and a shot of the new top ready for its first cut through the fence.
Just a couple of weeks ago we were told that my cancer is now “stable” and I have to go back in six months my tumors re-measured. Now I have some time to finally finish a set of built-ins we started almost 2 years ago.
Dan’s Work Shop – Shop Tour
Here’s something a bit different. I’ve enjoyed looking at all the dream workshops, but for those of us with extremely limited space and finances, one can still turn out pretty fair work. Here’s my little shop. It’s a 10′ x 12′ room off the garage. As you can see from the photo, it’s pretty crammed, and rather messy. But a lot of nice stuff has come out of here in the past 20+ years. It may look disorganized, but I can lay my hand on any tool with my eyes closed. (Except a running table saw) The photo was taken from one end of the shop. Behind me is a drill press, disk sander, buffer and cabinet for supplies. There is wood storage overhead, and high shelves for jigs, forms, etc. The portable Rigid table saw was a recent upgrade. I have just room enough to rip 6 foot boards in place, but I can quickly wheel it out into the yard for cutting longer boards. (You can no doubt tell from the picture that a fixed cabinet saw would be impossible in so small a space). If I remove the guard and lower the blade, the saw doubles as an assembly table. In this shop I build banjos, guitars, and other moderately sized projects, as befits the space. I occasionally tackle something bigger. My largest project was a 17 foot cabin cruiser, which was assembled in the back yard–the smaller pieces of which were fabricated in this tiny room.
Recently I decided it would be nice to have a watchmaker’s style bench for small, non-messy projects like guitar repair, inlay work, etc. It would allow me to work in the comfort of the house on cold days. After pricing watchmaker’s benches, I decided to cobble one out of an old solid birch desk I picked up at the Goodwill store for $40. I added a raised top to bring it up to about 36″, and saved myself six or seven hundred dollars. Nine drawers of storage for my hand tools, jeweler’s tools, etc. And a nice neat area for working on items up to guitar size. The Versa-Vise quick releases for removal if I need to get it out of the way. I originally planned to build some drawers to fit under the table top, but I’ve found the space is perfect as-is for stashing tools and other items that tend to clutter the bench top while working.
On the desk is my little Sherline metal lathe showing a saw attachment I recently fabricated. I turned a mandrel to hold a 3″ precision, thin-bladed slitting saw which I can clamp in the lathe chuck. I built it because I wanted a fine-kerf saw for cutting tiny marquetry tiles for classical guitar rosettes and other such finicky stuff. This blade makes a kerf of only .017″. I made a table and fence out of scrap aluminum, which clamps into the lathe vise, to create the miniature table saw. It’s limited to 1/2″ depth of cut, but is very precise with almost no material waste. As a test cut, I sliced off a piece of cedar you can see sitting on the saw table. It measures an even .4mm thick. A perfect, smooth cut. I can even use the lead screw handwheel to make cut adjustments as small as .001″. Should come in handy for fabricating small parts like guitar nuts, saddles, inlay, etc. If you can’t buy the tool you need, you can always make one.
Here’s an example of one of the instruments I built in the garage workshop. If the projects are not too large, one can do decent work in very modest space.
77 – David Marks Shop Tour
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Last summer, on our Gadget Station delivery trip, we decided to stop and visit the one and only David Marks. If you’re not familiar with David, he is an incredible woodworker, and used to host a show on HGTV and the DIY Network called Woodworks. But the show has been over for nearly 5 years and David has moved on to bigger and better things. While we were there, he was kind enough to give us a nice shop tour. This is pure gold for any big Woodworks fans out there!
Also, David recently released his Scrapers DVD. It contains everything you need to know to properly sharpen card scrapers, cabinet scrapers, and gooseneck scrapers. I watched this for the first time last week and I instantly felt like I was watching a new episode of Woodworks (only more REAL!) You can pick the DVD up here.
Check it Out!
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