New small shop, planning for the future

[Phillip Gregory]

I recently moved to SW Missouri and there is a 20'x21' concrete-floored steel pole building there that I will be using as my workshop. I came from a 14'x23' half of an unfinished basement previously. I didn't really think much about that area as I knew I'd be moving fairly shortly. Now that I have moved I need to think about how to best go about setting up my workshop. First, a little bit about the building.

Structural: The building has a single-bay manual garage door and a walk-in door on one side. The sidewalls are 2x6s 10 feet high and there are no windows. There is some insulation between the sidewall and the steel, which looks to be about 2" thick foil-coated Styrofoam. The structure is in good shape except for the door was buggered up by the previous owner. He tried to put a door that in no way, shape, or form fit in the existing jamb and he didn't shim it either. There was an inch gap at the top and bottom striker-side corners that let a tremendous amount of roaches, spiders, and mice into the building and it stank terribly. It took me about two days to vacuum all of that crap up. I also shimmed the door and fixed the jamb so the door seals properly. I think the PO did some woodworking in the building as there was some sawdust mixed in with the bug carcasses, mouse droppings, and cobwebs.

Electrical: The electrical service is 240 V/100 A and the panel's feed comes straight off the meter instead of being a subpanel. Lights are four two-bulb F96T12 fixtures in which he put 60 watt bulbs. (He put in extremely low wattage bulbs in the entire house. Most of the bulbs in the house are 9 watt CFLs which take about 2-3 minutes to reach their full intensity.) There were initially 10 120 volt receptacles spread out over four circuits. (This is also like the rest of the house- lots and lots of receptacles and the wiring is all 20 amp.)

Building site: The building sits on a concrete slab. There was a small amount of gravel around the building site but this was not immediately apparent as the building backs up to the woods and the PO let the woods essentially grow out to the front of the building. The slab sits about 6-8" above grade and the PO has an expanded metal ramp leading into the garage door. I didn't see that before I mowed the lawn either as it was buried in weeds. There is also some junk around the site as well, namely some pieces of PVC pipe and some half-rotted boards.

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What I have done so far: Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, bug spraying, and fixing the door. I also added two 20 amp 240 V circuits as I have a tablesaw that requires a 240 V/20 A receptacle. I will also clear the brush and crap from around the building and build a gravel or maybe even concrete apron but I'll wait until the ticks, chiggers, and poison ivy dies to do that. I'll also haul the junk to the dump and probably burn the boards with some of the brush that's been knocked down behind the building in a bonfire. I'll wait to do that too as a bonfire isn't fun when it's 95 out.

My big question is that this isn't a really large building so I am wondering what you guys who have smaller buildings (e.g. not the typical-for-here 30x50 or 40x60 building) do to make the best use of your space. All I have done so far is buy a mobile base for my tablesaw so I can roll it out of the way as it's a space hog with its 52" rip fence. The tablesaw, a Norm Abram-style router table, and a wood rack are all I really have for large tools/pieces of equipment so far. I'd obviously love to get more such as a decent jointer, planer, drill press, and a dust collector but I am not really sure how to stuff it all in the building and still be able to work.

[Rick Potter]

Shotgun advice.

I like to get double duty out of anything I can. Drawer unit under saw table, outfeed table with cabinet under, and wheels, upper cabinets for the walls, with router table etc below. Workbench with drawers, pegboard where there are no upper cabs. I could not do without some windows also, and it looks like it would be pretty easy to put a side carport on the building to finish/work outside in nice weather.

Rick P

[Don Jarvie]

I have 20x20 and its pretty good. Of course I'd like more room but it is what it is. I ran power to the center of the room and incorporated my TS with router in the extension table and added an assembly table to it with storage underneath. The whole thing is around 8x8.

li have old kitchen cabs in one corner, uppers and lowers with a bench. A bench for planing on one wall and a can for my RAS with storage under neath. The jointer and DP are mobile and the DC hangs in 1 corner. I have a wood cart for wood and shelves above for longer pieces. All the walls are occupied so I have 3 ft between the assembly table and stuff on the walls.

[Kent A Bathurst]

20' x 20' ain't too shabby - not at all.

All comes down to how you lay out the material flow and equipment.

My 52" Uni has shop-made extension tables/surrounds that make it 72" x 72". Good for finishing and assembly.

THe primary workbench is 32" in front of hte TS,a nd at the same height - can lay down long lumber, sheet goods, etc, and the bench doubles as an infeed support.

You just need to be creative.

[Garth Almgren]

Just a few random thoughts, based on the main work space of my shop being 13.5' square.
- Making stuff mobile really helps, but so does planning out your workflow in detail; sketch it out if you have to, showing how you will be moving larger pieces around and through the tools.
- One wall of my shop opens with a pair of swinging barn doors so I have mine set up (at the moment) so that I can feed from the inside out the door if I need to. Make use of the outdoors as much as you can with that big overhead door - maybe build an outdoor work table like John Heisz did?
- Go vertical if you can - have overlapping infeeds and outfeeds at different heights so that each machine takes up less working space - for example, maybe you can hang your planer on a wall bracket above your router table.
- Speaking of router tables, look at one that fits into your table saw extensions - two tools in the space of one. Double (or more) duty should be the rule rather than the exception in a small shop.
- Along those lines, flip top carts are also very handy. I want to build one that holds my planer and doubles as an out feed table/work surface behind my table saw.
- Incorporate storage into as much as you can. I've got a bench top drill press and I built an open stand for it years ago, but in this new shop I'm strongly considering building a cabinet with drawers to hold all the bits and pieces for the drill press.
- One last thing I'm doing to save space - my dust collector is going to be outside, under the lean-to attached to the shop where I keep my lawn mower and gardening tools. That'll be quieter for me and it will free up a few square feet of valuable floor space. Ducting will be mostly S&D PVC with flex tube after the blast gates for the tools that I plan on moving around.


Oh, and a lot of great ideas come from the interwebs. http://www.woodnet.net/tips/general-...g-shop-layout/ http://www.fundamentalsofwoodworking...nt-shop-layout and http://www.startwoodworking.com/post...one-car-garage are three that I looked at when I found out how big my shop was.

[Phillip Gregory]

Thanks for the advice. I already thought of using the garage door to my advantage, particularly when ripping material on the tablesaw (outfeed would poke out the door) and when sanding. That is a big reason why I want to put a nice concrete apron outside of the shop as well. It also would give me a great excuse to get tractor seat time too, using a loader and a blade. I hadn't thought of a lean-to for a dust collector, that's a great idea too. I'll keep that in mind and let you guys know how it goes.

[Kent A Bathurst]

Thanks for the advice. I already thought of using the garage door to my advantage, particularly when ripping material on the tablesaw (outfeed would poke out the door) and when sanding. That is a big reason why I want to put a nice concrete apron outside of the shop as well. It also would give me a great excuse to get tractor seat time too, using a loader and a blade. I hadn't thought of a lean-to for a dust collector, that's a great idea too. I'll keep that in mind and let you guys know how it goes.

If I was driving the project, I would put the DC outside, with the exhaust return into the shop with goof Wynn filters. Return the heat to the shop, keep the noise outside.

And then, in the same lean-to, and I-R 5 HP T-30 compressor. Keep the noise outside.

Also - you have room, if you get creative, to keep the door closed for most things - open for ripping long material. And - I need to open my door onto the driveway when I am running anything >> 8' through my planer.

[glenn bradley]

I am also in the 'drawers in the machine stand' camp. There are no tools in my shop on their stock stands if they did not come with storage. Sometimes I replace the whole stand:
sand1.JPG19-38-stand(25).jpg

Sometimes I build into the existing:

G0529 catalog pic.JPGG0529 Cab (17).jpg

Good casters are not nearly as expensive as replacing cheap casters.
A 12ga cord reel hung from the ceiling solves unexpected power requirements.
A lean-to for DC or Air frees up shop space.
A cleat system on the wall allows easy changes as your requirements change over time or even just during a large project.
A rolling work table can be positioned as required, have drawers, be an outfeed or assembly table all in one.

[Phillip Gregory]

Glenn, I see that you have made yourself some mobile (rolling) cabinets. I spent some more time in my shop recently milling a new part of a door jamb on the house to replace one that rotted out at the bottom due to the PO's lack of adequate caulking and keeping up on the painting. That got me thinking a little bit more about how I'll set up the shop. Perhaps this is the wrong forum (design, perhaps?) but I have come up with a rough idea of what I'd like to do for a combination outfeed/left-sided table and rolling bench. My saw is a Shop Fox W1820 which is identical to the Grizzly G0691, a 3 hp cabinet saw with a 52" Biesemeyer clone fence with an L-shaped rear rail that the fence must ride on. The saw is 6' wide, 2' deep and 35" off the ground as mounted in its mobile base.

I am thinking that having two separate tables may be the best idea. I'd have a 6' long x 4' deep outfeed table sitting directly behind the saw and then a ~3' wide x 6' long table to the left of the saw so I get extra infeed support on the left side of the saw but the full 4' behind the saw for outfeed support. I would put drawers and doors in both of the units and likely use the 4x6 unit as my workbench as well. What I can't quite pin down how to do is to make all of it mobile. Would hiding ~3" casters underneath a vanity plate and using the Woodcraft hex-adjust levelers to "park" the shelves be the way to go? I have not seen many mobile outfeed tables with cabinets as outfeed tables that move tend to be flip-down and ones with cabinets tend to be stationary so this may be treading on pretty new ground.

What would you suggest as you seem to have experience in making mobile cabinets?