jpierce

Yeah, another agreement here with the multitude of others; I don't need, (or particularly want) a detailed cutlist, but a quick "we built this using 4 sheets of 1/2" cabinet ply, and roughly 30 board feet of lumber.", One sentence. Perhaps two after the caveat about individual results varying, or something.

Still leaves me to figure out how much I actually need, which obviously depends on the quality and sizes of each of piece of lumber, etc; and how to get those pieces out of what I have, but at least gives me an idea.

I don't know, I love Grafted Coatings KTM-9 waterborne finish. I use it on electric guitars. It polishes to a high gloss if need be, and looks like "real" lacquer. It changed my opinion of waterborne finishes.

I like the David Gingery approach myself, although I've yet to attempt it.

I've built quite a few guitars and pieces of small furniture using mostly hand tools and a few hand-held power tools, all on a third story porch in a small apartment in burlington vermont. It was very very tiny.

The key was getting easy to access my tools (in a closet in the apartment) so that I could quickly obtain and put away what I needed for the day. A five gallon bucket with padded bottom and one of those slip-in "toolbox" things helped immensely for getting a variety of handtools in and out without making a hundred trips. (most of the handtools lived on a series of pegboard and cubbies in the closet)

I ended up using the railings of the porch as my work surface to do most of my rough work, and a cheap fold-down workbench with a piece of MDF for more exacting things, or as a platform for the router table or small drill press. (Although I did a fair amount of drilling work indoors.)

It limited my woodwork to warm weather, (although with a pair of insulated work gloves, I could work well into the beginning of winter)

Dust collection was a shop vac hooked to things that made dust. I tried to use hand tools and edge tools over sandpaper whenever possible to cut down on flying airborne dust and noise.

The hardest part was turning around, particularly when holding a piece of lengthy lumber! Wacked my head a couple of times.

So you can always make do! I'd suggest storing tools inside, and making it as easy as possible to get them outside as needed. Perhaps this means making a rollable tool chest.

My new "shop space" is about the same, although we have a spare bedroom for some work to take place in. I'm jealously eyeing Blum Tool companies portable workbenches and thinking of building something similar.