New house, new shop, and new tools

[dsellinger]

Well it's been a long couple of months, but we moved into the 95% complete house last weekend and I finally unpacked and mostly assembled the jointer and dust collector last night. The shop area is full of house construction related junk still, and has no storage or work benches but that can all be sorted in the future.

The room is small, only 17x16, but everything is or will be mobile so I can spread out into the garage if needed. I have four 220v 20A circuits run into the area, and one 220V 30A in the center of the room (in floor) case I ever get a giant table saw (SawStop woo! Right now I have a Ridgid contractor that is not on site, my BT3k blew up ripping 2x4's).

Anyway, lots of work to do still to make it a usable space and a few more tools to get/move here from my 2 other temporary work shops. (router stuff, hand tools, clamps, etc.)
Of course it doesn’t count unless there are pictures.. So here is all my new green, and a little orange)



House and shop pictures can also be seen here.
http://picasaweb.google.com/dsellinger

And any tips on arrangement of the space, tool position and dust collection piping are greatly appreciated.

[dsellinger]

This is what I have so far

[Pappy]

Looks like a good beginning. Post more pics when it all set up.

[Thom2]

Nice collection you've got going there

My shop is far from a perfect layout, but this is the initial workflow pattern that I see when using rough cut lumber in my shop.

1. RAS - chop to rough length
2. BS - rip to jointer width (in my case 6")
3. jointer - face and square an edge
4. planer - second face
5. TS - rip second edge

Taking those things into consideration, here's a quick layout I did based on the patterns I see in my shop.



This assumes the BS and Planer are mobile, the BS would actually be stored against the front wall for normal use. The planer could be stored anywhere. What I was trying to show is a layout that would bring rough cut lumber in the door and a nice workflow to get it to s4s. You've got the opportunity to deal with these issues right from the get-go rather than having to fight it later.

[LarryG]

Here's my arrangement. Bigger than your space (22x24 building, essentially a two-car garage) but some of the tool relationships may prove helpful.


The layout was in part dictated by the presence of three steel pipe columns down the center of the shop, between the two garage bays. However, just this past weekend I was standing in the shop idly looking around, and realized I'm not sure I would have ... could have ... done things a whole lot differently even if the columns hadn't been there. Then again, I'd like to have had the opportunity to find out. I spent many, many hours with our CAD software working out this arrangement, and it may be that I got so locked into the presence and placement of the columns that I can't see the forest for the trees. One thing they do is complicate the handling of long stock, messing up the logical work flow that Thom talks about. OTOH, they did provide a convenient place to run my dust collection drops.

The positioning of the cabinet saw with one end against the wall is working out especially well. Each bay of the shop is about 11' wide, because of the columns, but even so with this arrangement I can crosscut to the middle of a full 4x8 sheet. We hear people talk about the table saw as "the centerpiece of the shop," and it sometimes literally is (as in Thom's layout), but if you have a narrow space it can be positioned as I have it and still work quite well.

The only tools on wheels are the band saw (13) and thickness planer (16), but the planer is the only one of the two that I actually roll around very far. The band saw is basically just pivoted around more or less where it sits, in order to provide more infeed room for either it, the planer, or the jointer (14).

BTW, the miter saw bench (17) does not exist yet. This drawing shows what I will have whenever I finally get the thing built.

Lastly, you can see several pictures of my dust collection system here.

[Thom2]

Here's 2 examples of my shop, things really aren't quite as tight as they appear in the plan, but it gets the gist across

This is the stored and normal layout that I work around:



This is the layout I end up using when first starting out with rough cut:



RAS = Radial Arm Saw
TC = Tool Chest/cabinet
WB = Workbench
GB = Grinder Bench
LS = Lumber Storage
AC = Air compressor
RT = Router table

If working with long stock, the jointer normally has to be moved to use the RAS and BS. Most times I don't bring the planer out to position until all of the jointing is done and the jointer can be put away (planer is a Ridgid and actually gets mounted to a workmate for use). Any which way I look at it tho', it's a PITA as the workflow always seems to be going the wrong direction.

I'd love to have the opportunity (which you do ) to avoid the pitfalls I currently deal with.

Of course if I didn't have 20 gallons of crap in a 5 gallon shop, I might stand a better chance dealing with the space I have