My Cluttered Little Shop

[ssmith1627]

Guys, here's the best arrangement I've come up with to get my shop back in action. I can't believe how long it's been -- we bought this house in January ! But I just got my shed built to get the yard stuff out so I could put the shop back together.

http://ssmith1627.myphotoalbum.com/v...umName=album06

The best plan I could come up with was to put the HF DC in the corner and run basically a straight line along the floor with branches for each machine. Bandsaw, jointer, planer, table saw.

I left a branch there with a blast gate also. My garage door opener is pretty much above my router table in the end of the table saw. I'm going to go up to that and then back down with a short section of flexible hose. The flex hose I will be able to switch back and forth between the Shark guard and the router table fence.

I hope to start building a lumber rack with some storage for sheet goods in the near future. The weird thing about this space is that our laundry room downstairs was enlarged to make an office. This bumps it out into the garage with basically a deck like flooring structure. I lose some space because of that but I still have about 3 feet of space underneath. I plan to use that at least for storage and possibly for the lumber rack. I could create some kind of racks there and store any length of wood that I wanted.

Once that's done, I'll have a better space around the jointer. But even now I'm able to use each of the tools with clearance from the others. I could rip or crosscut sheet goods on the table saw. I could joint or plane an 8' long board. I still have a bit of open floor space and I have an assembly table separate from my work bench.

Seems to be working out pretty good. Now I need to put all this time and money to use making something !

Steve

[pelligrini]

That 3' space should fit quite a bit of lumber. It looks like you have a lot of headroom too, if that is a 6'8" garage door.

Hehe, you call that small and cluttered. That's pretty spacious compared to my little wood box.

Do you have any problems with that PVC pipe being on the floor, like tripping or just getting in the way? Did you consider running a line down the long side of the bump-out wall and straight across to the bench with the miter saw? You could probably T off that line to the tablesaw and maybe another T to the planer & jointer. Just suspend those lines from the ceiling.

[ssmith1627]

I wish they'd just extended the upper roof line all the way out over the garage and given me that bonus room above the garage. Instead, the roof line over the garage is just 6-8 feet lower than the rest of the house and I have a garage with 13 foot ceilings !

I've thought about getting a 2nd DC from Craigslist to provide dust collection at the miter saw area but will be a shop vac with a HEPA filter for now. I really want a cyclone dust collector but I may try to get one of the Delta 50-760 DC's at some point and use the HF DC separately. I want something to really move some air and collect it at every point that I can. Breathing this stuff at all seems to really get my sinuses screwed up so the DC thing is something I spend a lot of time thinking about !

So far no big issue with the PVC pipe being in the way. This setup is only a few days old so not exactly well tested yet ! Between table saw and miter saw there's a corridor with no obstructions. There's one other "crossover" place that I do set over the PVC pipe. So far I seem to be moving left to right for the most part through that corridor between table saw and workbench. So it might work out fine. Also, all my electrical cords follow along the PVC pipe for convenience and to keep them out of the way.

I installed a sub-panel in the garage last week so I have good power in there now. So nice having that done.

I love the idea of building a nice lumber rack there that will handle the sheet goods and also something similar to Norm's miter saw station that would give me space to use the mortising machine and my bench top drill press as well. But at some point you have to stop trying to set up the perfect shop and actually produce something, right ?? Right ?? lol

I hope you guys don't get bored with my ramblings. I just throw things out there sometimes to see what comes back. On this board, you never know what useful ideas people will come up with. And to be honest, I just enjoy talking woodworking and don't get to do it enough ! So half of my posts are just for conversation !

Steve

[ironhat]

On the upside of the 13' ceiling, Steve, hot air rises and you can vent it to the outside with a vent-fan at the top, on the wall. As for the piping, I would think that you would feel the shop expand by getting your piping to the periphery (along the walls). I would also put your jointer and planer side by side along the wall and put them on rolling bases. Then, hook them up to the PVC with flex tubing. Since these things are only used occasionally you just freed up some space. I have most of my equipment on mobile bases which keeps the bulk of the piping along the wall and the floor space free. JAT!