Woodworking: 2002 Photo Tour; A Woodshop Narrative

inthewoodshop - A Narrative

I was wracking my brains trying to figure out how to format this page so I turned to one of my all time favorite books, Setting Up Shop, by Sandor Nagyszalanczy, for assistance. I decided to borrow his basic chapter outline so that I could make this narrative as sensible as possible. I think it worked out well but if you are out there Sandor, I loved the book and I hope you don’t mind.

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1. Shop Location

This was a moot point. I am a garage man. I have always been a garage man. We always had every intention of placing the shop in the garage - for us that is just where it goes. I prefer a garage because I like the access and I am trying to keep the sawdust out of the house. I worked out of the basement for a time in the 1980's and I won’t do that again. I realize that dust abatement equipment and technology has progressed remarkably for the woodworker since then, but no dust collection system is perfect. This woodshop is, however, the first attached garage we have ever had. This is presenting some problems itself and we have yet to come up with ways to address them. More on that in a future update.

2. The Envelope

A warning to anyone considering having a house built. Get everything in writing, in simple, easy to understand words that cannot be misinterpreted, and make sure you get what you pay for. Well, no sense crying over spilt nails. The space itself is 20 feet by 20 feet. The actual dimensions are a couple inches less in both length and width but 20 by 20 is close enough for me. I have the benefit of a 9 and a half foot ceiling which is one thing I wasn't counting on that worked out as a positive.

The walls are 2x4 framed construction, 16 inches on center, and the wall area that is shared with the house came insulated and rather poorly drywalled. The ceiling was also drywalled. The floor is concrete, which is what I like, but this is the first garage I have had where the surface is sloped toward the door for drainage. This is a good thing I suppose but requires some shimming of machinery to bring them to level.

The space has its own attic, uninsulated of course, and the attic has lights which are switched from down below. There were two bare incandescent bulbs in the ceiling and one wall outlet. One entry door, into the house, was provided as well as a 16 foot overhead door. Lastly, two extra large windows looking out into the yard provide ample natural light and ventilation.

3. Interior Surfaces

The interior walls were insulated with R-13 Kraft faced insulation placed between the studs. This provides the vapor barrier as well. They were then covered with 5/8 inch T1-11 8 inch exterior paneling. I had originally decided to drywall the entire space but drywall has to be taped and mudded. I hate sanding the stuff and you need to use anchors if you want to hang anything off the walls. The T1-11 is strong enough to hang things where you want it. Everything is to be painted a nice light color.

At the time of writing, I have one corner not insulated as I ran out of insulation but the shop is serviceable. I have not placed any insulation in the ceiling either but I plan to use R-30 Kraft faced roll insulation for this. The SW wall has bare insulation as I haven’t yet bothered to buy the T1-11 to cover it. Nothing is painted and I have made no attempts to sand or fill holes in the drywall that was there when the house was built. These things will come with time but I have spent the last 2 years doing so much general carpentry, painting and finish work that it is time I did some woodworking, darn it!

4. Let There Be Light

There also needs to be power! I ran some tools for a while off of an extension cord using the single 110V outlet that came with the house. A 220V table saw won’t run off of that. Thus, I had to do some wiring. I installed a sub-panel from the main panel (which I was told would be in the garage before they built the house - liars!) in the W corner of the shop. The sub-panel is rated for 100A and the main house panel is rated for 200A I ran 50 feet of #2 AWG Romex cable from the main panel to the sub-panel (that is code for 100A application) and placed only a 60A breaker in the main panel. I am a lone woodworker and the most I will run at once is the table saw and dust collector. I shouldn't need more than 60A but I have the ability to upgrade if I want to.

I ran two 220V circuits for the dust collector and table saw and I used twist lock connectors on them. There are plenty of leftover spaces in the sub-panel if I need to upgrade and I am, as I write, considering upgrading my jointer to a 220V service. On the SW wall, where the windows are, I placed four 110V outlets on two separate circuits. These are in addition to the outlet that came with the garage. I use that one to plug in the phone charger. I placed two outlets on the same circuit on the SE or back wall, and two outlets on the NW wall on different circuits. All circuits are 20A, 100V, with GFCI outlets and placed high enough off of the ground to eliminate bending and satisfy the latest NEC code. As I mentioned before, I have plenty of room for improvement, but I tried to keep costs down.

As for lights, as of writing I plan to place two rows of industrial duty, fluorescent strip lighting on the ceiling, wired into the boxes where the two incandescent fixtures are. I haven't had the time or money to do this yet and I get such great natural light through my two oversized (3 by 6 feet) windows that I don’t miss it except on cloudy days or at night. I have task lights for that but they are no good when using the table saw so I will have to get after the lighting. Of course, large windows mean large curtains to keep out prying eyes, and my wife made some up out of heavy, red wool and I have them hung by sash cord stretched between the sides of the window frame.

5. Fresh Air and Temperature Control

As I mentioned before, I have two very large windows for fresh air, but the 16 foot overhead door helps too. I make use of it extensively in overly hot weather or when I am doing very dusty operation in the shop. This will be my first winter with insulation and I am planning to use an electric, oil filled radiator to maintain a temperature that will keep my glue and finishes from freezing. It doesn't get that cold around here so that heater should be good for most things. To assist in bringing the shop temperature up to a good working level I am considering one of those ceramic heaters with a fan. We will see about that. I do have easy access to the gas line if I need to install a better heater, but I want to use something vented as humidity is a problem in my shop. In the summer I have windows I can open, a 16 foot door I can open, and I make use of one or two window air conditioner units, that I picked up for free from some friends. Some days it is too hot to work, but those days can be spent working on this web site! I may need to invest in a dehumidifier to mitigate the humidity problem. However, maintaining a good coat of Johnson's or other paste wax on my machines keeps them from rusting.

6. Equipment

I have what I consider to be my bare minimum of equipment, and my maximum at the same time. I have:

You may not even need this much stuff. My lathe is my newest acquisition really, and I haven’t learned it yet. I have tried it but I am planning on letting Ernie Conover show me how to get the most out of it. I managed to ruin lumber for 18 years without it. Things like shapers are a waste of time for me. A good router table, built into my table saw outfeed, or some creative sawing combined with hand planes will do most anything. Other than the lathe and the mortising machine, all acquired while in this shop, the other tools were already decided upon so this was pretty much a moot point.

7. Shop Layout

"Aye, there's the rub", as Bill Shakespeare said it. Please note that this article is an after thought. Although everything seems perfectly logical, I had to do all my customization while moving things about and tripping over stuff. This article just makes it sound easy. And this aspect is the most mystifying to most people. It isn't that hard really.

Most of what I know about shop layout comes from putting tools and benches in places, realizing I had made mistakes, then rearranging. There are some short cuts you can take though. Fortunately for me, when I moved into this shop I knew I was buying a lathe within a month or so. Thus there wasn't any real planning for the future that I had to take into account, except for a cyclone dust separator I still plan to build. Here is what I suggest. First, do you make things now or know what you want to make? If you don’t, you better start there but I am assuming you have some idea of what you are doing or are going to do. If you don’t know the processes involved in making the things you want to build, get some plans books or magazines that give you instructions. Watch some episodes of The New Yankee Workshop or The Woodwright's Shop. Buy some videos from Taunton Press on the subject. Do some research.

Once you have some knowledge of the processes and tools involved, get out a piece of paper and make a flowchart. Be very general so that any number of projects can be made using the same progression of events. For a table, for example, you may need to break down rough lumber, mill it four square, cut to size, glue up panels, make joints, assemble, and finish. I am being very general here. The same process could easily apply to a wardrobe or armoire. Beside each step of the way, write the tools needed to perform the tasks. Then you are ready to look at your floor plan.

Make a scale diagram of you floor plan and the tools you have or think you need. Or, use Easyshop Shop Designer or some other CAD or layout software. I use easy shop because there is very little learning curve and I can make tools and drag them around and print out the results. Use your flowchart to help you arrange your tools. Some of the things I considered are:

Logical flow of work
Enough floor space to set up an assembly table
Efficient placement of storage and the use of French cleats to make is modular and mobile if I want to change my layout
Minimize the machinery footprints and maximize open space
Can I cluster tools to open floor space and simplify dust collection

Remember some tools are great against a wall and some tools may be better freestanding. For me the biggest space hog is the table saw so I try to find a place for it first, then work everything around it in a logical fashion. Many people want to place their table saw out in the middle of the floor so they have a bunch of space around it for sheet goods to move through the blade. I have the 50 inch, or whatever size it is, of Biesemeyer industrial fence and the side table to go with it so I can put mine practically against the wall to open up space in the middle of the shop. You may have to consider putting yours, or maybe all your tools, on wheels.

What you are trying to do is reduce the amount of time and effort spent lifting heavy objects and lumber over other tools and things to drag them to another corner of the shop. It is fine if there comes a point in the process where you have to do this once, but putting your jointer and thickness planer in opposite corners is going to mean many trips with your stock back and forwards across the shop and over the other machines just to get your lumber four square. This is a lot of effort and time wasted. Try to keep your workflow smooth and logical.

8. Work Surfaces

Lots of woodworkers like to have numerous benches and platforms on which to work. I am a pig so I like to restrict my horizontal clutter space. This way I have to keep what I have cleaner by tidying more often. I have three categories of work surfaces.

First is my actual bench space. In 1989, after the episode first aired on PBS, I ran out and bought the materials to build Norm Abram's work bench. Before that I had a slab of 3/4 inch plywood on 4x4 legs. It was not a pretty site and about as functional as a foam rubber wind chime. That was 13 years ago as of the date of writing this and it s still going strong. I think I will need to stabilize it with a few lag screws this year as numerous moves have started to make it slightly shaky. I would love to have a Frank Klausz masterpiece, or a Shaker style bench, but right now I have too many things on my plate to get into that.

Second is my table saw outfeed table. It also doubles as my router table and all around extra bench space. One of these days I am going to remove it and make a rolling version, but I would have to level the floor to make that work and I am not ready to do that yet. It is a slab of 3/4 inch MDF on a 2x4 frame with a drawer for router bits suspended under it.

Lastly, I made some New Yankee Workshop style saw horses after I saw the episode air many moons ago. I have sized them to me just right for hand sawing, standing on, sitting on, or holding a low assembly platform, which is just a piece of plywood. This shop is the smallest I have had since 1988, so I am trying to find a clever way to store them and right now it isn’t working out.

9. Storage

I would like to break storage into five categories, lumber, sheet goods, tools, hardware, and finish materials, but I am sure I will miss something. Here goes anyway. I built three sets of lumber brackets that I bolted directly to the wall studs before insulating and adding T1-11 in the NW corner of the shop. This gives me three, very sturdy, lumber shelves. They are not adjustable and that is fine. I have only so much space so I believe I can buy it more or less as I need it. I realize there are windfalls of lumber to be had, but I don’t want to afford the space to properly store and heat/cool the space to keep them in workable condition. The boards would have to be acclimatized to the shop in any event so it makes very little sense to be sitting on a whole pile of raw lumber.

I placed the lumber racks high enough on the wall that I can store sheet goods directly underneath leaning against the wall. This combination allows me to really free up floor space and restrict the footprint of my wood supply.

I have three Sears rolling carts to store tools. They are not enough to store everything so I am going to have to build out other areas of the shop to provide storage, such as in the spare space under the table saw extension. I bought them because my last shop was huge and I needed portability, and they were all on sale and so cheap I couldn’t hope to build them for the same price.

Hardware and finish materials are all over the place. I hate it. As of writing this I am planning on installing French cleats all along the back wall (the SW wall) so that I can hang up a mass of upper cabinets in which to store these. I have some hardware stored in one of my rolling cabinets but means there are tools and other items that are all over the place. It will happen… someday.

10. Finishing Touches

Last and certainly not least are the dust and air systems in the shop. I hate leaving them until last but they always seem to take a back seat to productivity. As of writing I have my compressor stored under the wing of my table saw, where it will stay, but I have to string hoses wherever I go. My dust collector is on wheels but right now has a broken hose fitting between the blower and bag so I'm back to the wooden stick with bristles on one end for dust collection. I plan on piping air and dust collection through out the shop but I have never been this far in a previous shop, so although I have some drawings prepared, I will wait until it is done before I post any further information. I also plan to build a cyclone dust separator and I have already saved a place for it and drawn up my own set of plans, based on extensive research into the topic.

Final Notes

There it is, my process of deciding on how my shop will function. I don’t spend too much time worrying about it. I do a quick overview then live with it for a while. Keep note of the good ideas and the bad ones. You can change those. Remember, woodworking is supposed to be fun, both when setting up the shop and using it. Don't let the setup part drag you down into the dumps. My shops never get all finished like the lovely pictures in the pretty books. So what. I can use mine!