I was pondering my shop layout the other day… knowing what I know now I would have done the following:
1) Built a shorter workbench. My current bench is joy to use, it does everything I ask of it and I absolutely love working on it but it’s long at 92″ (longer with the end vise open). There was no reason behind the length, it was totally arbitrary when I built it but if I were to build another one I don’t think I would go any longer than 72″. A long bench is nice but for 99% of the work I do I simply doesn’t need more than 6′ of workbench.
2) Rethink dog layout. I originally put 4 rows of dogs in, figuring if 1 was good well 2 rows would be better and if 2 rows were better than 4 would be great. After 5 or 6 years of screws falling into the center dog holes I pounded in some wedged dowels in the 2 center rows and even today I don’t think I use the back dogs more than once a year. I would go with round holes again… but I don’t want to unleash that debate again.
3) Plywood floor my shop from day 1. It’s too much of a hassle to do it today but I sure wish I had a plywood floor in my shop. It’s warmer, more comfortable and heck it even looks better.
4) A few more compressed air drops. I have 2 air drops, one central with one of those self-winding reels and a second drop over my bench with a coiled air line. It would be easy to add a few more but like most things in the shop, once you put it in and it works fine it’s tough to get the motivation to tear into it again. I wish I had put another drop right by the exterior door.
5) Skylights. There nothing like natural light, I wish I had more of it… I may still do this.
6) When I built my lumber and sheet good storage rack I never thought about putting in some storage for cutoffs and small stock. Now I have a less than ideal solution, a plywood box that I screwed to a furniture dolly so I could roll it around and out of the way. Sure wish I had thought about this when I built my lumber rack.
7) I-beam and electric hoist in the rafters. I store things I use infrequently up in the rafters, it sure would be helpful to have a hoist on a track up on the roof ridge to help move things up and down.
8) Considering that I didn’t know squat about dust collection when I built my system, I actually did a bunch of things right. I put the collector outside in it’s own shed, sealed up all the pipe and connectors with duct mastic, and ended up with enough drops to where I’ve never not been able to relocate a machine because there was no DC drop in the desired location. I would, however, have put one more drop to the floor with a floor sweep and I think I would have spent a few extra $$ to get those slick gates that open up automatically when they sense the machine being turned on.
Replies
Do you have any pictures of your shop so that we may see what you did do.
Comments comparing mine with yours:
1) Built a shorter workbench.
Don't have a real one. Just a rolling assembly table. Works OK. Mostly use the TS and outfeed table.
3) Plywood floor my shop from day 1.
I laid Blandex directly on the concrete floor (T&G) -- no glue. Added it after I had moved into the shop.
4) A few more compressed air drops.
Put in a compressed air spring loaded 25' hose reel. I like it better than drops.
5) Skylights.
I worry about heat and AC losses.
6) When I built my lumber and sheet good storage rack
Could sure use more storage.
7) I-beam and electric hoist in the rafters. Ceiling is 12 foot.
8) Dust collection. Separate room. Absolutely a necessity.
Bottom line -- shoulda, coulda, woulda. I know someone who has built for himself 4 houses. After each has said if I build another, I would ...
I'm happy with mine and I hope you enjoy yours as much. Thought you might enjoy another's view.
Woodman,
Built mine in the garage.
Two issues, one the mistress of the house likes her car out of the heat and in the middle of the shop. Two, everything makes noise, and the bedroom is over the top, the living room next to it. So I have to be careful of disturbin her...
NEXT move is the neighbors garage, they are gone most of the time <GRIN>
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#8 - You still can add the "automatic blast gates" - it's never too late. But, I would skip the vibration sensors and go with the "current-sensing coils". They're easy to install and don't give the maintenance problems that you have with the others.
Frosty
"I sometimes think we consider the good fortune of the early bird and overlook the bad fortune of the early worm." FDR - 1922
I’m in my second freestanding shop and I’m still wishing for things I would have done different.
Ditto on the skylights, I’m building an addition this year so they will go in the new section.
My primary bench is only 60” long and I never wished for more, it has only one row of square dogs and a Yost patternmakers vice.
More compressed air drops would be nice.
A finishing room/space.
I’m going to sell the joiner and planer and go back to a combo with a slot mortiser. I liked that much better than the separate machines.
Napie,
Could you elaborate a bit on why you like the combination joiner/planer better than separate machines? I go back and forth in my thinking on this. Some days I think the combo would be the way to go as floor space is a big issue for me and I like the idea of a 12" joiner to match a 12" planer. Other days I think that my current lunchbox planer works fine and a decent 8" joiner is a lot cheaper than a combo machine.How do you assess the tradeoff?
Chris
Sure. I had a Robland jointer/planer/mortise for a number of years. I sold it when I moved to a larger shop and replaced it with separate machines because it seemed like the conventional wisdom, WRONG, and I have missed the capacity of the combo ever since. Having a wide jointer is great and the slot mortiser is the best. Change over took so little time as to be unnoticeable. A better move when I got more room would have been a bigger combo machine. I’m currently looking at the Laguna (that used to be Robland, the machines look just about identical) 16” with a spiral cutter head.
I have a combo machine and I can tell you that aside from the size of the jointer, the shear mass of a combo jointer/planer makes for a better machine overall. The slot mortiser is the cream on the deal, it's really pretty surprising that jointer mfg'ers have not offered a slot mortiser attachment given the simplicity of the engineering to do it.
Which one do you have? What size?
I have a minimax, 12".I previously had a 15" powermatic (spiral blades, very nice machine) and when I was shopping for the Minimax I thought long and hard about planer size. What I realized is that while I often wanted more than 8" for the jointer, I rarely - if ever - needed 15" on the planer. Turns out the 12" combo is pretty much perfect and the changeover is literally 90 seconds. Very happy with my purchase decision.
Did you look at the Laguna? Any thoughts?
yeah but I've been impressed with Minimax on several levels and their machines consistently rate very high. If I could have afforded a few extra $$ I would have bought a Felder, those machines really are best in class.
I have a MiniMax 12" combo with a slot mortiser and am very happy. One consideration for me that I have not heard mentioned before is dust collection. In demo videos it looked like all the others switched DC hose connections from one end of the machine to the other on changeover. That would have presented a big problem for me.On the MiniMax the hose moves 12" on changeover - always pointed in the same direction.Frosty"I sometimes think we consider the good fortune of the early bird and overlook the bad fortune of the early worm." FDR - 1922
Hi Napie,
I see I'm not the only one working on new shop space. Actually, I'm starting from scratch with an addition on the house. Have been without a shop for quite a while -- it's been painful -- and I'm really looking forward to getting into a new space.
It occurred to me the other day that it might be interesting to start a new thread for/by folks who are contemplating or in the process of building or expanding; something more along the lines of "Things I intend to do differently."
Interested? Anyone else interested? Verne
If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to cut it up and make something with it . . . what a waste!<!----><!----><!---->
It works for me, I'm in.
See my new post at "Things I intend to do differently."Verne
If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to cut it up and make something with it . . . what a waste!<!----><!----><!---->
A plywood floor is much kinder to tools too.
Chris @ www.flairwoodwork.spaces.live.com
(soon to be www.flairwoodworks.com)
- Success is not the key to happines. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. - Albert Schweitzer
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