Co-existing With Columns

[SARGE..g-47]

Afternoon break even though what was once several shipping pallets (parawood.. rubber trees from Indonesia) that turned into chairs are demanding even more atttention to match the kitchen table which is good ole American white oak. So.. a cup and coffee and make it brief.....

Regards for the day which is beutiful in Atlanta (68* degrees and sunshine)...

[ChrisD]

Wow, nice shop there, Sarge!

Nice job on the chairs, too!

[JR]

Sarge, your layout is pretty much what I had in my mind when I posted earlier in this thread. Except Larry has a bench accross the back that he sounded like he wanted to keep.

I guess now that I'm over my fit of pique over finishing, I could see a station at the back right in Larry's shop. Maybe a drop down table with a fan to the outside.

Oh, Sarge, I wouldn't mind getting a walk through of your chair project. Those look nice!

JR

[LarryG]

Lots of good ideas in this thread. Thank you, everyone.

The building is 22' wide x 24' deep. The net width of each bay is about 10'-8" from the inside face of the outside wall to the columns centerline.

JR raised a good point early on: wall space, or the lack thereof. Not shown in my sketch are three windows, two walk doors, and the electrical panel. I purposely didn't show these because I was afraid the discussion would get too bogged down in exactly where each tool would go based on the locations of these items. Of course that all has to be worked out eventually, but for now I just wanted to talk conceptually.

I'm thinking that one of the two overhead doors (not sure which, yet) will essentially be permanently closed, either by positioning tools or benches in front of it, or possibly even by building a demountable wall on which to hang clamps or whatever. This'll gain me about 12' of uninterrupted wall space. For the other door, I'll probably position tools with big infeed/outfeed needs (table saw and jointer, primarily) so they can take advantage of this door being open when additional room is needed.

Wood storage will be elsewhere. Finishing may be, too.

In my current shop, nothing is on wheels except my bandsaw. In the new shop, that could change. But I definitely don't want to have to move one tool every time I need to use some other tool ... that takes too much time, and complicates stuff like electrical and dust collection piping. Ideally, the only things I'd like to have on wheels would be the bandsaw, thickness planer, and the drum sander I don't yet own.

The building isn't mine; I'll basically be renting (long story). But installing a beam to get rid of one of the columns (probably C) isn't out of the question.

My early thought is a hybrid between what JR and Tom suggested ... close up between A and B, and then cluster some tools on both sides of C. The tools themselves might block access from bay to bay but they would still be able to use both bays for infeed/outfeed. For example the band saw might cozy up to column C, sort of like Sarge's, with workpieces fed crossways on the sketch, so that there would be about 10' of infeed clearance and the same amount on the outfeed side.

Again, I appreciate all the feedback. I'm going to fire up our CAD software and start playing with some different layouts and will let everyone see what I come up with. You'd think that with more than twice the room I have now, everything would fall right into place, with room to spare. But, strangely, the first few back-of-envelope sketches I doodled out didn't work at all.

Oh, a couple other advantages of this building. Whereas my current shop has only six feet of headroom, this one has a whopping seven. Also, the building is fully insulated and there's even a little wood-burning stove near Column A. Having just gotten my current shop more or less the way I want it, I'm really dreading the thought of starting over. But I know I'll be a LOT happier in the long run ...