A tour of my woodworking Shop

As I said in a previous post I've always wanted a woodworking shop. With our country home there was a fabulous building that was built by the mennonites a few years back and it is huge ... about 40 feet by 20 feet. I've slowly but surely turned into a space to set up my equipment and to work on projects. It is now fully insulated so I can work during the winter cold months. I have four ceiling fans to move hot air from the rafters in the winter and to create a breeze to cool it down in the summer. I ran a sub-panel for electrical so I have the power I need to run my equipment AND most important of all I installed a state of the art security system because you never know????

Following are some pictures of the equipment I now own and the layout of my shop.

Every shop starts with a place to store your wood.

Then you need a chop saw to cut it to length.

A lot of stuff you would built would be from rough sawn lumber so you need a thickness planer to mill it down to size.

Once milled to size you need to square it up and you do this with a Jointer. I bought a five inch one which they tell me is all an amateur would need ... the six inch was also much much bigger and unwieldy and thus would take up a lot more space ..  I hope I made the right decision.

Back view of the Jointer

A table saw is the centre piece of any shop and in this case I bought a top of the line King ... General equipment is suppose to be the best but the place where I got a great deal on my equipment didn't carry General.

 Last year I bought legs for work tables and made up four of them for around the outside of this shop. I moved one into the centre behind the saw as a support for the wood I'll be cutting on the table saw and it doubles as a very large workbench. 

The first few times I used this shop my legs were hurting badly by the end of the day since I have hard interlocking bricks as a floor so I picked up some rubber mats to stand on to provide some cushioning  ... made a huge difference.

 Also note the air compressor under the saw ... its temporary location. I'm going to install a system around the shop where I can just plug in my hoses ... it is also noisy so I will likely move it outside somehow.

One the best pieces of equipment ... this is a drum sander ... it sands panels perfectly level like the raised panels in my kitchen. It sands panels up to 25 inches wide and also has an open end so this allows me to sand up to 50 inch wide panels as well although I have no idea why I would ever need a 50 inch path.

A band saw for slitting thicker pieces of wood and cutting curves when necessary.

A belt sander for working with smaller pieces

 A scroll saw

Clamps clamps clamps ... one can never have enough clamps which I quickly learned when building my kitchen cabinets ...  I now have enough ... I think???

And of course a lathe ... just a small one and I'm not sure I will ever need a great big one ... they also take up a lot of room.

Some equipment I haven't even taken out of the box yet .. a spindle sander for getting at those nasty little places that are difficult to sand.

I plan to build a fair amount of furniture so bought a chisel mortising system which is critical for this type of work ... also not used yet so still in its box.

Now I also live on a farm so I bought this welder as well ... not sure it has anything to do with a woodworking shop but it was the right price and I should find it useful around the farm.

More  clamps

With a shaper which is the next picture they advise getting one of these which helps save fingers and feeds wood through the shaper ... looks like a belt sander but it isn't, underneath are rubber wheels which grab and hold the wood.

My shaper ... a monster of a machine but necessary if you want to do raised panels etc. It worked real well on the kitchen cabinet doors albeit somewhat scary to use.

Two of my work benches ... messy and needs to be cleaned up but that can wait.

Another work bench, one of four all together. Notice the yellow magnets screwed onto the shelf ... incredibly handy for putting things on so they don't get lost but still at your finger tips to use.

Perhaps one of our best investments ... four 'Snap-on' swivel stools to sit on ... I've rested my weary butt on these many a day.

A Busy Bee work bench we found on sale ... it is ok, especially the vices, but it is too small and moves around easily when used ... I think I'll just build a bigger one.

One of Daniel's better ideas ... we bought a big roll of white butcher paper and hung it underneath the work bench that extends from the table saw ... it is useful to write or draw on or to figure designs of things and to keep track of measurements .... also keeps the bench from getting all full of glue when assembling things. After it gets dirty just tear it off and pull out another length. See below picture.

There are three vacuum systems in this workshop ... my trusty Ridgid shop vac ... a central vacuum with outlets around the entire shop to plug in the hose and indeed outlets outside as well for clean up of cars etc .... and finally a dust  collector system in the last picture .... I haven't installed it yet  but after building these kitchen cabinets it is very high on my list ... man-o-man does woodworking create a lot of dust. Almost all of my machinery has a four inch hole to attach a large hose to this system and I bought gates that automatically open and close when you are using each piece of equipment to direct the dust out to the collector. I plan on putting this beast outside ... less noise inside and it will take the dust outside so the entire workshop will be cleaner.

The trouble with a shop vac is that it fills up very quickly and the filter system loses suction quickly as well ... good for the short run but my dust collector system is a much better choice.

My central vacuum system ... has done the job so far but with the amount of dust created when actually building something I needed a proper system.

This is what a dust collector system looks like. There are  two bags on top that act as filters when in operation and when done they collapse back into the bottom collectors. There also will be a garbage pail installed before the piping reaches these bags .. it will catch the saw dust and larger pieces and only the dust will end up in one of these bags.