I think this thread has gone as far as I can go. Let's just wrap it up here. I want to thank all those who offered advice and shared information about their shops. I have gotten a great deal of useful information to help me plan my shop. This is a great group of people. I am happy I found this forum.
I have a much better idea of how big my shop should be and how many tools I can fit in the space. I will share the design and progress as the project moves forward.
Here are the final numbers from the survey.
Name No. of Tools Shop size Ratio of Shop Size to No. Tools Thomas Wilson 7 468 66.9 Phil Harold 7 1200 171.4 Tom Clark 11 1296 117.8 Shawn Pixley 6 480 80 Jeff Duncan 23 1496 65.0 Greg Peterson 7 270 38.7 Greg's cousin 7 540 77.1 Zane Harris 7 265 37.9 Duane Meadows 20 950 47.5 John Langley 20 3550 177.5 Wade Lippman 7 585 83.6 Mike Berrevoets 9 624 69.3 Ethan Melad 11 720 65.5 Ray Newman 11 720 65.5 Richard Shaefer 9 510 56.7 Stew Hagerty 8 429.5 53.7 Justin Coon 8 600 75
Here are the figures. I will just give two this time. I will plot the ratio versus shop size (rather than versus no. of tools as in the last post) and the histogram of the ratio.
RuleofThumbRatio.jpgRuleOfThumbvsShopSize.jpg
The participants may want to comment about why they believe their shop lies where it does within the distribution.
I think idea of a rule of thumb for shop size based on the number of tools basically works, with all the caveats that have been discussed. I think a person who intends to build mainly furniture and kitchen cabinets can plan for something in the 60-70 sq. ft. per stationary tool that is permanently set up. That is what I am going to start with. I will work out a floor plan in SketchUp for the tool layout. With my tool collection, I may want to hold a yard sale or design some storage space for infrequently used tools to get the shop size down to something that that meets other constraints (like cost and lot size.) Planning and designing is a lot of hard work but should result in a shop I can enjoy working in.
Thank you, all. I hope this discussion has been helpful to others as well.
Thomas