|
 |
Here's My Workshop!
By Philip Hallstrom Olympia, WA
|
|
My shop is a converted 2-car garage. I'm lucky enough to get to use the entire space and not have to share with any cars which is good since our house is old and the garage was built out over the old driveway and had horrible sloping issues. The clean gray floor you see in the photos is actually painted (with some shark grit for grip) plywood laid down over individually cut sleepers to level everything out.
I opted to lay out the major tools in the center with access from all sides. So far this has worked out pretty well and it helps consolidate my power and dust collection drops. I just have to be a little careful leaving stuff on the outfeed/assembly table if I need to cut longer stock or use the router table, but most of the time it works great! In the last photo you can see a flip-top cart that holds a combo sander and grinder wheel with a homemade 12" disc sander on one side. The planer sits on top of a custom built cart that integrates a Thien baffle and 20 gallon can for chips. I still hook up my DC to it, but this puts 99% of the planer chips into the bucket instead of the DC and it's much easier to empty.
The back wall is where I hide my dust collector and miter saw. The silver lining is 1.5" sound proofing to help keep the noise down for the room on the other side. The offcut rack is on wheels so I can get to the backside where I keep short plywood and when I need to empty the duct collector. The miter saw dust collection works pretty well as it's a 5" straight line shot right into the DC. The panels on the left/right of the saw fold inward in case I need to make angled cuts, but otherwise almost no dust escapes.
Below are my tool walls. I got tired of digging through drawers for most things, so I screwed up some Magnetic Tool Holders and put everything I reach for,both for woodworking and general DIY, there. The right side is exclusively for clamps and woodworking tools.
And finally the work bench. Built out of sliced down 2x10 Douglas Fir it's a beast, but works great for what I need it to do. The cabinet on the right is an enclosure for my “franken vac" that is the guts of an old shop vac sitting on top of a Thien baffle and a 5 gallon bucket for dust. It's all wrapped up in more sound deadening foam so it's tolerable. It's perfect for when I need 30 seconds of suction for a quick router or pocket hold job and don't want to fire up the big dust collector.
You can email Philip at philip@pjkh.com.
Return to the Wood News Online front page
|
|
|
|
|