Hello all, as a result of a move to a more pleasant climate, (Edmonton AB to Victoria BC) I have lost my 26 X 30 garage/shop. Gained great weather but lost the shop… oh well… Presently all of my tools etc. are stored in my basement (with 6ft ceiling). I have the space to build basically a large shed, approx. 12 X 15 or so.
Looking for ideas, pictures of your small shop, doesn’t matter if it is in the basement, outside, work trailer…no matter. I saw Matthew Teagues article in Tools and Shop, his was 9 X 15 IIRC so I think I can make 12 X 15 work.
Thanks in advance!
David
Replies
David,
Switch to hand tools! They're safer, much more quiet, cheaper, AND (drum roll...) take up much less room! (Clash of cymbals!)
Alan
(Whose advice is worth every penny you paid for it!)
True enough, I actually use a lot of handtools. My table saw is a 1950's vintage Beaver 8" with a 24X30 top so even it is tiny compared to todays contractors saws.
David
David,
My shop is about 12x15 in the basement with no windows. It includes a 250 gal oil tank, a workbench, lathe, table top drill press, cabinet saw with drop down outfeed table, 14" bandsaw, Norm style router cabinet, a 2x2 rolling table for sharpening and a cabinet on wheels that houses the chop saw and planer as well as a couple of drawers for drill bits. The drop down outfeed table makes the whole thing work.
I built wall hung cabinets over the workbench to hold hand tools(box doors) and hand power tools. I built over the lathe table a cabinet to hold those tools. I have an 8' x 2' x 12" deep cabinet for storage.
I get my sheets of ply cut in half (or about)where I buy them....or cut them in the drive way if necessary. I do not have any real storage area for wood..I may have 1-200 board feet up against a wall.
Notice there is no jointer...can't fit....hope this helps
BG,
This is a shop tip I found in some early FW magazines I bought over the weekend. A guy had made a jointer fence for his tablesaw by adding a small shim to the back of the fence and bringing the left side of the blade parallel with it.
As for doing a shop in a small space, the more focused your work the easier it is to do. I sure as heck can't make it work, my table saw sits outside in the rain along with my jointer. I try and keep them tarped but the weather doesn't always cooperate. My chop saw and planner are set outside when I am working.
How one stores material in a small shop even if you are brutal and burn all the figured hardwood shorts is a mystery to me.
I want a 30X30 shop SO bad.
Mine's 30 X 40 and seemed cavernous when it was built 15 years ago. Now 40 X 60 would be a bit small if I were building a new one (which I'm not).
Wood working is like a gas; it expands to fill it's container regardless of size!!
It's not how big or well equiped your shop is, it's how you make it work!"WISH IN ONE HAND, #### IN THE OTHER AND SEE WHICH FILLS UP FIRST"
"It's not how big or well equiped your shop is, it's how you make it work!"
So, what you're saying is: Size really doesn't matter.
Bill Arnold
Food for Thought: The Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals.
12 X 15 ???? hmmmmmmmmmmmm ............................
Could you make it 3-4 stories?
My shop is my half of our garage -- a standard two-car variety. You can see a lot of it in the attached photos. Table saw has a fixed location where I can do most of the cutting; I added a long electrical cord (10ga) and a mobile base so I can roll it out for cutting full sheets. Plenty of storage in wall cabinets and under-bench drawers. Sanders and planer on roll-out carts with drawer storage in both (sander cart shown).
As you can see, I now have a Jet cabinet saw. I had a cabinet on rollers for my old saw. This cabinet has five storage drawers. Top center is a flat panel that can be removed for access to the dust collection area. Back panel has 4" hole for dust collector hose connection.
Our house, including the garage, has 10' ceilings. There's about 16" above the garage door, so I built a wood storage area from 2x4's that has an area about the size of the double garage door.
My wife likes being able to park her car inside at night. And it really pays to keep peace in the home!
Bill Arnold
Food for Thought: The Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals.
Bill,
Nice shop. I too use half of my garage as my shop. While viewing the photos, I was wondering where you store your wood. Please advise.
T2
Thanks, Trusche2.
Here's a repeat from my original post:
"Our house, including the garage, has 10' ceilings. There's about 16" above the garage door, so I built a wood storage area from 2x4's that has an area about the size of the double garage door."
Bill Arnold
Food for Thought: The Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals.
Nice shop Bill,
Is that the Norm workbench I see in one of the photos? If it is, I made the same one a few years ago. It's been great for me.
I also like the floor mats, where did you get them?
Thanks in advance.
Bill Murphy--Reading, PA.
Thanks, Krewz.
You're right -- it's the Norm workbench. Serves me well, although I really need to add a side vice to it.
The floor mats are from Home Depot. They also have them in black now. I like the colors because it's a mixture of 'energy' and 'calming' colors -- I certainly need both throughout the day. I've also seen the black version at Pep Boys.
Bill Arnold
Food for Thought: The Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals.
Hi Bill,
You're right about the vise. I have a Record 56-1/2 behind me on my tool bench, but I've been thinking about adding a traditional style Shoulder Vise to the Norm bench.
Frank Klausz has a nice shoulder vise on his bench. There is a great diagram of it on pg. 57 in Scott Landis' "The Workbench Book".
After I saw Frank Klausz's bench at the woodworking show last year, I fell in love with it. So there is a Klausz bench on my to-do list. (when, I don't know) My Norm bench will sufice nicely until then and will become my tool bench thereafter.
I'll be picking some of those mats up this weekend. Thank you.
Bill/Reading,PA.
Two table saws? Wow.
I sold the old one after I got the new one set up.
Bill Arnold
Food for Thought: The Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals.
Have you looked into some of the pre-fab kit sheds that are available? They seem to come in a wide range of sizes and I think they're pretty cost competitive on a $/sq ft basis. Some look pretty industrial, but others look really nice.
12 x 15 is significantly less area than a one-car garage, which may be enough if you are building bird houses and band saw boxes, but would not be enough if you are building any kind of cabinetry, where you are dealing with larger quantities of wood, and need a larger space to cut and assemble the larger pieces.
Note that you probably could not cut a sheet of plywood in that shop... If you move the wood over the saw, you need over 16 feet. If you use a circular saw, there probably isn't room to lay out the sheet with other tools in the shop.
Lots of people, including myself, use less than half of a two car garage (about 500 sqyare feet) but "borrow" the space of the cars while the projects are in-process. Thus our garage workshops may dedicate an amount of space equivalent to 12 x 15, but the working space is much larger.
________________________
Charlie Plesums Austin, Texas
http://www.plesums.com/wood
I'm just starting to rehab my shop in a space about this size. Mine has 2 rooms about 9x13 with a small corridor between. I want to have one room a "cutting" room, and the other a finishing room. The ceiling is only 8 feet.
I envision double doors on the side/end leading directly to wood storage, in the form of shelves of pipe. Wood seems to be taking over the current room. I want the storage to be near the door, because I don't want to carry the wood over all the other stuff in the room. The wood storage wall will also have cabinet storage of some sort.
The wall to the left of the wood storage will, if there is room, house the miter saw, along with more storage including some panel storage, and maybe a dedicated shop vac.
Facing the wood storage shelves will be the infeed side of the contractor's saw, on wheels. The outfeed table for the table saw will be my workbench, also on wheels (Vega has an internet deal, 2 bases for $50, no shipping). I am trying to retain space on all sides of the bench, because I like to work around it. If this doesn't work, I may need to put it against the wall. I expect to find space for my planer in a mobile cabinet in this side of the room, and leave space for the jointer I hope to buy. The walls around the bench will be storage. A mobile shop vac will travel around. Beyond this "cutting" space I will put the router table, drill press, finishing and whatever else I can fit.
I'm going to put as much on wheels as possible. With this small space, I anticipate needing to make extra room for the table saw at times. I also will keep surfaces level to allow for extra infeed/outfeed.
I'll be interested in the suggestions you receive. Todd
I am imagining a mobile base on the T/S which is my only large tool (even it is tiny, a 1950's vintage 8" Beaver saw). I have a dust collector which I will house in an addition outside. Mitre saw, drill press are the only other "stationary" power tools I own. I imagine I might buy a planer and a jointer but I would have to balance use against cost & space.
David
David,
What type of dust collector do you have? I want to put mine in the room next door. I also have a small shop (12X18) and need to get a dust collection system. Would love to know what you are using.Regards,
Buzzsaw
Buzz, its a 2 or 3 HP unit I bought it used at an auction (man I love auctions!) I had it checked out and it draws over 1200 cfm @ the inlet. Plenty of capacity for my needs. I plan on building a cyclone for it with a filtered return. Soon as I get the shop built...
David
Hi David. Your story is quite similar to mine. I recently moved to Nanaimo from Calgary and my shop has been reduced from a double garage to a dedicated shop, approx. 12.5' x 16'.
I use a mix of power tools and hand tools for my work and used this as the basis for designing my work area. I was in the position of upgrading some of my tools but I didn't want the building size to restrict my buying decisions, so I needed to do some careful planning.
In my shop I have the following tools:
I built a small storage area directly outside the shop where I keep wood and my dust collector. I found that by putting everything on wheels (except for the bench), I am able to maintain constant setup for everything, but move it if I need to. Some tools have "not being used" positions and get rolled back into a corner.
I can't work with full-size sheet goods, but most of my work is with solid lumber anyway. If I need to cut sheet goods, I knock them down with the circular saw and then trim them up with the table saw.
My advice is keep as much as you can off the floor and build up as high as you can with storage and such.
David,
Drop into "Tools and Space" in Victoria - it's a well equipped woodworkshop where you pay by the hour to use the equipment. You may be able to do the heavy machine work there and tune your small shop in for the rest of the job.
Another idea to make a small shop bigger - My shop is 12 x 24 feet and I put 9 foot wide overhead doors on both ends. I can open the back door and put up a tarp when I need more room. I can rip a full sheet of plywood by just lifting the back door half way. As you get used to the Victoria winter weather you'll understand that you can work outside most of the year. I'm about 150 miles north of you.
Edited 9/2/2004 11:46 am ET by Corners
Funny you mention that, I dropped by there a week or so ago. They are less inclined to rent time on thier machines now as they have had issues with adherance to their necessary safety rules. I did get the feeling though that if you seemed to befriend the owner you were likely to get a little more latitude... They had an impressive array of tools... 48" wide belt sander... was very nice...
David
On a different topic... who are good hardwood retailers in the area?
D.
David,
I suggest Reimer Hardwoods. Just a little way out of town off the highway to the ferry.
http://www.reimerhardwoods.com/
Thank's I will give them a try...
David
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