My Shop -- Clean, Refurb, Enhance, etc.

mpc · 07-09-2018, 11:09 PM

You've done a few things the same way I did: a portable cabinet/box for each "bench top" tool. Mine are on locking casters though - 4 casters too, not a 2 fixed + 2 castering setup. Sometimes they want to steer in random directions but I can spin the cabinets in-place which is worth the random directions hassle. I use the double-locking casters so both the wheel and caster axis are locked... just locking 2 of the 4 is enough to make things quite solid. For a long time my cabinets were simple 5-sided boxes with a hinged door and one movable shelf plus the bottom shelf. A year or so ago I went on the "drawer building binge" after making one new cabinet with drawers for a specific purpose and found I much preferred the drawers... so several existing cabinets got converted. The old doors (=plywood panels) became the drawer fronts. Like your cabinets, mine are simple 3/4" plywood boxes held together with glue and screws... though I use the more expensive baltic birch ply as I use spray-on or brush-on poly as the finish. So my shop has a lot of light brown boxes. Mine are in two sizes: the main box is a roughly square top & bottom... the other is half as deep but the same width. So two of those back-to-back "fit" in the same row as the larger square boxes. There are a couple oddballs though - like the long (and low) cabinet underneath the lathe + extension bed. And my giant "A" shaped clamp rack. It's on beefy casters too but, loaded up, I can barely push it. And I can't steer it at all. It goes where it wants to....

I decided on dedicated boxes for each tool rather than flip-top cabinets as those may store two tools in one footprint but all of the accessory pieces still need homes... so you wind up with two cabinets anyways. From a space point of view the vertical stacking setup looks quite efficient but, when I sketched one out, I found I could only put a few tools on such shelves... I'm kinda short and I don't want to be reaching above my head for a moderately heavy thing. Nor do I want to frequently stand on a step stool while holding something in both hands.

The other thing I've done in my shop that looks similar to yours is I put the electrical outlets up high. Mine are higher than my roll-around cabinets, maybe half a foot higher than the BT3's tabletop. I had it wired when I moved in... each outlet is on its own 20amp circuit so I don't have to worry about overloading stuff when I use multiple tools (e.g. saw plus dust collector). I've lined two full walls with plain wall cabinets too as most of my "bench top" tools fit/park underneath them easily; these hold magazines/books, safety gear (push sticks, ear muffs, masks, etc), my Ridgid and Ryobi cordless tools, and one is hardware+glue stuff.

edit: router table and extension rails... Until recently, I had a full set of extension rails on my BT3 with a router table on the end. After getting a new dust collector though I couldn't get it, the BT3, and some roll-around cabinets to fit logically in the shop... unless I (illogically) faced the dust collector's control panel into the corner and made the dust drum hard to get to as well. Eventually I gave up and cut off about a third of a rail on the BT3 extensions. Wow, best change I've made to the shop in quite some time! It turns out I don't miss the extended cut capacity at all as I use a sawboard for full plywood sheets these days. That change made it much easier to park stuff along that wall, orient the dust collector properly, AND I have more room to spin the BT3 90 degrees when I need to handle extra-long pieces. My folding infeed & outfeed tables still work fine for big pieces too.

Tools that came with their own splayed-leg metal stands - including the BT3 itself - aren't on those stands. Those stands don't offer anywhere near as much storage space as a true shelf/drawer cabinet while gobbling up just as much floor space. With my setup, the cabinet for each tool pretty much has everything associated with that tool. E.g. my Ridgid EB4424 belt/spindle sander box supports the sander while my spare belts & drums are stored inside, my regular sandpaper lives in there, my ROS lives in that box... pretty much everything sanding related is in the "sanding cabinet." All drilling stuff lives in the drill press cabinet: bits, corded drill, drill press table accessories, etc. The one tool still on its stand is the drum sander as it doesn't have much "stuff" to store with it... just a couple packs of spare belts. I have the pieces needed for put it on one of my cabinets... one of these days.

Like you, my shop is a separate detached building. The prior owners of this outside-corner-lot house liked their toys: a dune buggy on a trailer and a speedboat on a trailer. So they added a 2-car wide but much deeper than normal "storage building" in the back yard, supplementing the regular 2-car garage attached to the front of the house. It's why I bought this house when it came on the market. The front half is still garage for me, the back half is the shop. The walls are insulated and covered in normal wallboard... but there is no ceiling - it's open to the uninsulated rafters and roof so it still gets doggone hot out there sometimes. I haven't figured out a good way to insulate and finish the ceiling... I don't want to put a normal wallboard ceiling on the 2x4s that cross the room as I use those for some lumber storage... and I don't want the ceiling (and lights) to be that low anyway. Right now I'm leaning towards a sort-of vaulted ceiling where the center section is a few feet higher than the cross-beams and would attach to the existing secondary cross-beams of the roof trusses. I'd let the outer portions slope with the bottom of the roof. We'll see. I want to put A/C out there soon. While I'm at it, I want to win the lottery too...

mpc

p.s. It's pretty satisfying to get organized, isn't it?

WLee · 07-09-2018, 03:26 PM

Originally posted by dbhost

For what it's worth, I am in a 16x20 garage workshop, that is shared space with a deep freezer, bicycles, camping gear, and lawn and garden tools and supplies. I would LOVE to have a 12x16 dedicated space!

Oh, don't get me wrong, I truly LOVE and quite appreciate the fact that I am sort of "privileged" to (finally, after almost two decades of renting w/o even a garage or ANY "shop" area!) have been able to build and have the "dedicated" workshop area (technically 12 x 16, but I have a 5' wide opening to the two car garage {20 x 24}, so if/when I do any BIG projects, I just have to pull/keep one or more of the vehicles out)... And of course it's not just "dedicated" but separate from the house (and on a DETACHED garage -- which is also now fully insulated, & heated -- Hot Dawg 45k BTU propane ceiling mounted -- that thing is soooo sweet) so no car or painting/varnishing related odors & fumes OR any sawdust in my food, or floating into my house, bedroom etc. YAAAY!

But it's also that I live in a rural area where a lot of guys have separate "pole barn" (40 x 100, etc) workshops, so to them, my workshop is TINY (they call it my "toy" workshop, with my "toy" tools, etc -- which they're not entirely wrong about, I mean it is just my "hobby" I'm not doing commercial cabinetry or anything).

Plus conversely, I guess you gotta realize I grew up around a lot of small "makeshift" workshops, including my dad's being in our (low ceiling dank, dark, cramped) basement space (the far corner from the narrow stairs too!) -- it was deuced difficult to get equipment or even any sizable wood down into the shop area, much less finished projects back out of it -- not to mention perennially tracking sawdust back upstairs, & smelling everything etc. That experience made me decide that I definitely wanted a "dedicated" workshop... high ceilings/walls and stuff too... plus wanted it to be BRIGHT (white upper walls, ceiling, lots of light, natural & artificial, etc)...

EDIT: Also, I have a separate 10x10 "garden shed" -- actually built that FIRST (IIRC, summer right after I bought the house, just did one of those "kit" things, though I "upgraded" the flooring and subroof with real lumber {boards not "OSB" and 17+ years later I'm glad I did that}) -- needed to get the garden tractor & snowblower & assorted other crap OUT of the garage, else I couldn't even put two vehicles in there (also I REALLY don't like having/storing gasoline cans in the garage).

My tools are a bit different from yours, and I did make some mistakes. #1. The long rail kit on my BT3100 is just too big. I am planning on removing it. HOWEVER, I DO love the router table built into the right side of the saw. I had a stand alone router table, Wasn't working well for me...

My band saw is a full size 14" plus riser block. A benchtop really won't do all I want a bandsaw to do....

I need to take a peek at my own blog page to get the image link, but somehow my company is now filtering my page as adult material (?!) so apparently they misunderstood the wood I was talking about there! Anyway I have a wall mounted veritcal stacker system like you were talking about with a cabinet. It's a great space saver, but is a problem with my bad back to actually use...

So yes, I have lots of reorganizing and redisign to do as well...

Well, workshops are (IMO supposed to be) "never completed" things... The day someone truly "finishes" their workshop -- with no "mistakes" left to be fixed, no more changes, or new equipment to install/swap around, etc -- is pretty much the day that they STOP using it.

Such things are not "workshops" but instead are called "tool collections/museums."

How do you like the "vertical stacker" thing? When I tried it, well given the tools I had & wanted on the mobile base cabinets, well you've seen the lineup, most of them are just too AWKWARD, TALL & HEAVY (bandsaw, drill press, mortiser) for me to really "save space" (they'd be stacked so high I'd need a ladder to fetch any of them down) -- only tools I had that I was able to try "swapping/flipping" were the router table & disc/belt sander (didn't have the scroll saw back then, and I still don't have a planer {don't really need one, kind of stuff I do}); and so it ended up being more trouble than it was worth (Q: is a vertical tool cabinet that only has ONE tool in it any different than just having another floor cabinet??? A: nope.)

And then yeah, there's the whole "ow, my aching back" thing... I saw my dad struggling with several things like that (tools in "under cabinet storage, etc) as he got older. Figured I may as well design mine for my "decrepit" years right from the getgo. (Time passes faster than one thinks... hard to believe I've been in this house for 18 years now, and that it's like 14 almost 15 years already since I "added" the workshop {slab & rough framed} to the side of the garage.)

EDIT: Also kind of ironic on the whole BT3100 "attached router table" -- that was actually one of the MAIN things that appealed to me about the BT3100, I even bought the "accessory kit" and stuff... ended up NEVER actually using the built-in router table; see I didn't have a router, and when the Ryobi stand-alone router table WITH router came on sale (same price as router alone), well I just never bothered with the one on the BT3100 (probably still have all the accessory things in a box somewhere). TBH I don't use the router table that much, tend to actually use the little 18V "trim" router more than anything else (roundovers, etc).

dbhost · 07-09-2018, 02:27 PM

For what it's worth, I am in a 16x20 garage workshop, that is shared space with a deep freezer, bicycles, camping gear, and lawn and garden tools and supplies. I would LOVE to have a 12x16 dedicated space!

My tools are a bit different from yours, and I did make some mistakes. #1. The long rail kit on my BT3100 is just too big. I am planning on removing it. HOWEVER, I DO love the router table built into the right side of the saw. I had a stand alone router table, Wasn't working well for me...

My band saw is a full size 14" plus riser block. A benchtop really won't do all I want a bandsaw to do....

I need to take a peek at my own blog page to get the image link, but somehow my company is now filtering my page as adult material (?!) so apparently they misunderstood the wood I was talking about there! Anyway I have a wall mounted veritcal stacker system like you were talking about with a cabinet. It's a great space saver, but is a problem with my bad back to actually use...

So yes, I have lots of reorganizing and redisign to do as well...

WLee · 07-09-2018, 11:11 AM

Originally posted by dbhost

Good solution to a common problem. I see most of these done as flip top stands. This works too! I've either got to cut down the column on my floor model drill press, or sell it and buy one of those WEN 12" benchtop jobs. I missed out on the 12" Ryobi and have been kicking myself ever since...

I like your build as the cabinets are less bulky than flip top stands, and you don't have the setup hassles of swapping tools on the stands...

Thanks for the reply... was wondering if anyone was even here anymore much less interested enough to read & comment (and whether I should even bother posting anything else).

About the "flip top" stuff... yeah, as I noted, originally I designed these cabinets with the idea & intent of (possibly) doing the "swap the top & stack the tools in a cabinet" thing.

But while the "swap top" (and "flip top") things are "cool" ideas... my personal experience & opinion (I tried it) is that they're just not all that practical in "real life" -- not even in a smallish workshop (lets face it, 12'x16' ain't LARGE, especially given the array of stuff I have packed in) -- any "benchtop" tool that's not out & readily available... (or accessible with at most a minute or so of minimal effort even less so if its use then somehow makes another tool "not available") well that tool then just isn't likely to be used, instead, as you noted the "setup hassles" rather than creating "convenience" actually just make it more of an impediment, less likely we'll use the tool (in which case why have it?), and more likely and we'll try to do the task "some other way."

The cabinets themselves are sort of a happy medium "compromise" -- they're not TOO big, but also not too SMALL; not too heavy (you have to pick HALF the tool weight via the handle, but you don't have to lift it much, and so fairly easy to move around, especially in & out for quick access/use when it can't be used "in place")... but at the same time they're also not too "lightweight" (i.e. they DO have enough mass to be nicely "stable"; not "flimsy" or anything at all like that {you can stand on the things if you want, no "wobble"}).

Oh, and I find that the dual straight wheels on the back in combination with the "bumper/glider feet" on the front are actually a LOT more convenient than having "locking" caster wheels. (Only thing I have on caster wheels is the BT3100 Table Saw, and -- thanks to this forum -- I bought & installed a Ridgid "Herc-U-Lift" thing, stomp & move... love THAT, couldn't live without it).

But nonetheless, I'm pretty happy with the design and how it works in my shop (obviously, otherwise I wouldn't keep making them the EXACT same way)...

Keep in mind, the main purpose of the design & especially the base being "semi mobile" (but NOT on four casters) is to allow me to easily shift the tools around (and originally -- see pic at left-- because the shop itself, along with insulating & finishing the garage it's attached to, was a "work in progress" that took a couple of years to finish {after hours, weekends, winter vacation, etc}; and the tools HAD to be both accessible and yet easily moved, for example when I was doing the "dri-core" flooring they all lived in the garage for about a month, same thing a few years later when I decided to paint the dri-core with a gray floor enamel, which took a couple days to properly dry).

Since then I haven't rearranged it all THAT often, but compare the pics to the left & right with the one in the previous post; the arrangement of tools & locations is significantly different (and the shop has been through a bunch of different arrangements in between, then returned to close to the original way, etc).

Also, another sort of cool thing about the design -- partly serendipitous -- is that the height is "perfect" relative to the BT3100 table saw...

Literally, the things make the tool tops of the Band Saw AND the Router Table (and even the "normal" position of the Drill Press) -- just "naturally" -- exactly LEVEL with the Table Saw.

As to the drill press; yeah there have been a few times when I wished I had a larger floor model, but to be blunt -- much like the little 9" Ryobi bandsaw, the BT3100, etc -- well the kinds of (mostly "hobby") projects I generally work on, that little drill press handles 99% of what I need it to do (really if I were to wish for anything, it would be for a more recent models with the lasers, but I'm not really used to that, so I generally don't miss it, just do it "old school" like everyone did years ago).

Back to the cabinet, the really NICE aspect is that they're so danged easy (and pretty cheap) to build. Sort of "no muss no fuss" in terms of the materials OR construction, quick & simple to put together, and SOLID.

dbhost · 07-09-2018, 09:24 AM

Good solution to a common problem. I see most of these done as flip top stands. This works too! I've either got to cut down the column on my floor model drill press, or sell it and buy one of those WEN 12" benchtop jobs. I missed out on the 12" Ryobi and have been kicking myself ever since...

I like your build as the cabinets are less bulky than flip top stands, and you don't have the setup hassles of swapping tools on the stands...

WLee · 06-29-2018, 02:02 PM

Episode #2 -- Scroll Saw needs a new "home"

Yeah that just ain't gonna work. Crappy metal frame wobbles, doesn't have any wheels, is the wrong size for the tool, and just... well, BLECH!

Worse, because of all of those failings, it's become a "junk collection node"-- floor space in my little 12' x 16' workshop (addition to side of garage) is just too precious to waste, so... that's how the "box of crap" ended up underneath the metal stand, and of course since (as everyone knows), "boxes of crap" are inherently magnetic in terms of having a strange affinity & strong "attraction force" for still OTHER crap, various other junk/garbage has ended up clustering around it.

Time for metal stand to go BYE BYE! Consigned to the pile of other crap out by the garden shed (awaiting either "bulk collection" day or else being placed roadside with a "FREE, Take Me!" sign attached to it).

Saved the MDF of course (already been repurposed!)

OK time to get cracking and make another (6th? 7th? who knows) of my "patented" (see previous post for plans, etc) Mobile Tool Base Cabinets. Two 2'x4' "handi-panel" sheets of 3/4 plywood (or of course a 4'x4' or a "half sheet" -- one 4'x8' full sheet makes TWO of these cabinets -- oh, and CDX is fine, whatever, the grade doesn't matter since it's all gonna be painted, just don't skimp on the thickness... 1/2" or 3/8" ply will 'bow out" with the weight of just about ANY tool). Plus a single 8 ft long 1"x4" piece of pine (again grade/quality doesn't really matter, knots are fine) ... all material already have on hand. (Oh, and screws, biscuits, two 2" straight {non-rotating} caster wheels, and 1/2" high "rubber baby buggy bumper" things for front "feet" -- also all "on hand" things -- meaning no need to go shopping, no new "money" required. YAAAY!!!)

See the build progression photos below -- these things go together REALLY fast! -- biscuits, glue, clamp & brad-nail the parts together, and VOILA! It actually takes more time to paint (mostly watching/waiting for it to dry) than it does to build, especially when you're on iteration #6 (or is it #7? 8? 10? who cares). Wheels & bumper feet can be attached anytime.

Tool gets installed onto the top via drilled holes and bolts (usually 5/16") into the captive pound-in "Tee" nuts.

Then the top (with tool) gets secured to base with 2 screws from each of the side panels -- top already has built-in "handle" -- via drilled/cut slot that's been rounded over with trim router and 1/2" round-over bit.

(I typically do a round-over on essentially ALL of the corners/edges of the piece before priming). Generally I finish it with brushed or rolled-on "Rust Oleum" enamel, makes a nice fairly hard, smooth & glossy surface for both the top and sides (easy to clean, sawdust is visible, but wipes or vacuums right off).

And now the Scroll Saw fits in the "lineup" like it belongs...

Bonus pic at right... the rest of the "Family" -- Drill Press and Motiser -- are off on the other side of the shop. (But of course the whole point of the Mobile Base is that I can shift these things around -- just pick/lift on the front and -- if needed -- slide the tool out from it's home; or else shuffle it around in place of some other piece).

The design of the base cabinet was originally intended to be able to do some "stack" cabinet thing -- that is be able to swap a tool & top onto different cabinet base as needed -- hence the cabinets are all the same exact size, etc -- KEWL IDEA, RIGHT?... Yeah, butin practice, well my personal opinion/experience (having tried that) is that power tools mounted to cabinet tops are just TOO heavy and unwieldy to be doing that on any regular basis. Even the Mortiser -- which I rarely use -- is better off having its OWN base.

And yes, you see those nice RED DRAWERS on the Router Table Cabinet?

Yeah, all of the other cabinets were (still are) intended to someday -- "Someday... over the rainbow, pigs will fly..." -- have various drawers (and/or doors) as well -- I even have a couple dozen drawer-slides just waiting... but I'm missing the critical component: a ROUND TUIT. Just haven't been able to buy any of those (at least not in regards to the drawers), so if'n any of y'all see somebody having a SALE on those, please alert me ASAP.

Besides the bottoms of the cabinets work almost as well just as "open" storage. That may change in time (someday I'll probably go on a "drawer making binge" and do them all one after another, mass production style) but for now, well other matters are more pressing; like...

Episode #3: Mini-Cyclone Triggers (finally) Hard-Piped "Dust Collection" system...
But -- critically -- with ZERO "blast gates"

Say what? No Blast gates? How?
You'll just have to stay tuned... same Bat-Time, same Bat-Channel)

EDIT/UPDATE: Started "New Topic" for Episode #3 (gonna be a "multi-parter" on it's own) CLICK here to jump...