Small garage shop and assembly table

[dlminehart]

With my garage floor painting project almost complete, I'm ready to commit to some shop organization. I have a number of tools (BT3100, CMS, DP, OSS, planer, small bandsaw, belt+disk sander, routers), the first 3 of which have their built-in stands with no storage. I plan on remedying that by building mobile cabinets under them, as well as some mobile (and combo) cabinets for the other large items. By using rotating tops on cabinets, I can just barely fit all the tools plus a 5' bench into the space.

It seems that, to successfully put together any of these mobile cabinets (let alone other such projects), I'm going to need an assembly table, since my garage floor (altho' freshly painted) is not perfectly level. An assembly table plus a workbench, however, would take up the entire available wall space in my 9x20 garage bay. Using just the workbench would seem to be too high to serve comfortably as an assembly table, and would preclude doing anything else on the workbench until the project was complete.

How are others dealing with this issue? Storable or fold-out or fold-up assembly tables? Improvising something on the floor?

[RayintheUK]

quote:Originally posted by dlminehart

How are others dealing with this issue? Storable or fold-out or fold-up assembly tables? Improvising something on the floor?

In my limited space, I use these:


Folded up, they're about 3' x 4" x 4" and they stand on end. I salvaged a hollow core door from a job, which is stored on its side against the far wall. When I need an assembly table, out come the trestles, on goes the door - great mobile space, inside or outside. The trestles are so easy to store, transport and carry when folded, that I wouldn't be without them. HTH

Ray.

[LarryG]

David, if you haven't already, you might want to take a look at the pictures of my shop. It measures 10'x19' inside, pretty close to what you have.

I built a torsion box assembly table measuring 42"x60" and placed it in one end of the shop, peninsula-fashion, with one short end backed up to my clamp rack. Obviously this means I cannot walk around all four sides but since I only have to reach halfway across the 42" dimension, this has not been a problem at all.

Another space-saving trick was to set the top of the table only 18" above the floor. This was largely done because there's barely six feet of headroom in my shop, but I also realized that having the top at roughly knee level would make it "feel" much smaller and less obtrusive than it actually is. If the top was up around waist level, I would constantly be bumping into it, with my own body or with the material I'm handling. But down low, it's surprising how open and spacious that end of the shop feels even though it appears, on paper, to be the most cramped of all.

Although I didn't do it, I suppose the end of the table that abuts the wall could be hinged so it could be folded up out of the way when it's not needed. That's about the only way it could realistically be made "portable," though ... it's made of MDF, and is far too heavy and unwieldy to wrestle around on a regular basis.

[crokett]

David,

One thing I'd suggest is to keep wall-mounted storage up off the floor high enoug so you can roll mobile tools up against the wall under your cabinets and still leaves the middle open for an assembly/work table. In my old 10x12 shop I wish I'd done this rather than take up almost one whole wall with a work bench.

I would make a permanent (but mobile) work table that can act as an outfeed table when necessary.