Some Shop Shots

Once the beer fridge was removed from the garage, I was amazed to see how much space had opened up. I decided to take the opportunity to clean the shop and rearrange things, again. An added bonus was a trade with my dad for an old workbench he salvaged from a high school woodshop over 20 years ago. He got some drawer storage units that I couldn't figure out where to put. He's happy and so am I.

The first pic below is how the shop looks as you walk in the door. The lathe area is way in the back and can be seen better in the third pic. I need to get a few cabinets made and put up on the walls and then it will be time to get back to turning and making the shop dirty again!

New Shop Layout, In Progress

I have finally put together a plan on how I want the shop to work. A pic of the layout is below. The items that are in yellow are still in the building stage or not yet purchased, but adding them now seemed like a good thing to do. It won't be the last reorganization for me, a shop is never finished right? In the future I will be hanging a couple of clear shower curtains to enclose the turning area, in the bottom left corner, to keep the fine curlies contained. That should also allow me to use a small heater to keep things warmer during the colder months. Anyone have any ideas on how to tweak the layout to improve it?

A Shop/Studio In Progress....

Over the past few weeks, I've been cleaning out the garage to enable my wife to park her car in it. Still not there, but I just finished a new workspace along the wall of the shop area. The bench is attached to the studs of the wall on the back edge and then a simple 2X4 frame and legs. The compound miter saw (CMS) is built into a dip near the center and has worked quite well. I have about 5' to the left and almost 7' to the right of the saw. The top is just 1/2" plywood as it won't see much abuse.

Under the CMS is where my air compressor will go. There will be air lines to the right for the lathe and upward to the 50' of hose on a hand crank roll up. To the left of the CMS is a salvaged 2 drawer set from work that stores my skil saw and other power tools. It is on wheels too just in case I might clean behind it. To the right is a mobile assembly/finish table that is 46" wide and 23" deep. It tucks away very nicely and hold hardware, old mags and other assorted junk and such. The top is still a work in progress but will be 2 layers of MDF and 2X2 fir edging. Above the bench are two cabinets (also salvaged from work) that I cut down to 10" deep from 18". They house finishes and paint.

This picture shows what I had on the wall prior to building the bench. Basically all the salvaged stuff mentioned above, just all crammed together. I think this is an improvement! Once again thanks to my frugality, I managed to make all these improvements with out spending much at all. About $5 for some of the 1/2" ply material from the cutoff bin at the local HD...they have pieces marked from 50cents to $2 all the time and it's hard to pass it up.

I have more updates to do soon in the lathe area, but now I need to get back to the lathe, I haven't turned it on in almost 3 weeks!