Me trying to organize my shop or shittiest game of D&D ever?
Designed and cranked out my shop in 12:1 along with all the crap I have to fit in it so I can nail down an arrangement that’ll work and still allow a car to park in the shop. Over engineered… yeah. But fun, also yeah. I mean for the folks here, our shop is our temple. And my temple currently looks like the Blitz happened.
I also took a few minutes to break out the @Luke recommended lube and do some robot care on the linear rails.
Shop organization is a moving target. Everything in my shop is on wheels. I have a tool coral and pull out a tool to work on the center of the shop. Then it goes back on the coral ready for another use. I lived in Kingwood Tx for 9 years and never had a car in the garage. My tools were worth more than my cars, at least to me.
The car won’t live in there most of the time. But I need to keep it in mind for repairs, and being able to pull the wife’s Crosstrek for snow storms. Most things are on wheels as I too pull out the tools when in use.
When you cannot go out you go up. Wall storage can extend your shop tremendously. Cabinets with doors keep your shop cleaner and look less cluttered. Floor to wall 24" cabinets can make a difference. These are 8 feet tall and 4 feet wide with 2 fixed shelves and adjustable shelves inside each compartment. These hold a tremendous amount of stuff. In the bottom of the larger center compartment I put drawer slides and a drawer to pull out to get to the back of the drawer with full extension slides.
The cabinet boxes are just Pine BC plywood and the face frames and doors are oak. I took the time to take a full sheet of quarter inch ply for the door panel and cut them up and numbered them so the grain would match.
Josh,
Following the rest of the comments. My shop does not hold a car very often - I have an attached garage for my wife’s car and the yard tractor, the shop is for my hobby stuff. My tools are more valuable than my cars. Almost everything in my shop is on wheels and the layout shifts by projects and flow. Cabinets and wall shelves really play a role in holding and making tools readily available when needed. My shop is 24x30 with a 9’ ceiling. That 9’ ceiling is a feature I address with anyone designing a shop or garage. It is a God sent feature. The table saw sits in the shop for small cuts, it moves into the driveway for those annoying 4x8 sheets of plywood, I am thankful God invented the wheel.
Nice job at planning so you realize what you can and cannot do.
The questions I have are related to things like placement and access to 120 / 240 VAC outlets, compressed air ports, dust collection, and lights. I ended up with five sets of two 48" lights (ten total fixtures) on five different control sets in my shop and I still have shadows in some spots. So my lathe, originally up against a wall in a corner, had to get rollers or another set of lights.(It got rollers.)
Reality sets in with every new job aspect.
Great plans, I love the work and detail.
Thanks,
Rex
The M6 T-slot nuts are a commodity item. We include a set w/ the machines — more are available from pretty much any shop which sells workholding hardware.
Rex I have a 52 inch Powermatic 66 and I have a hard time cutting full sheets of plywood. I buy a 4x8 piece of 3/4 inch foam insulation. On the driveway I lay the foam down and then the plywood and use a shooting board to rough cut the plywood down to manageable pieces that I cut to final size on the table saw. The shooting board is just a piece of 1/4 or 1/2 plywood 8 feet long. My Ridgid circular saw has a 5 inch base between the outside of the base and the blade. I cut n 8 inch piece of plywood and another 2 inch piece both 8 feet long. I screw and glue the 2 inch piece to the edge of the 8 inch piece. Then I run my circular saw down making a zero clearance cutting board. I just mark my cut lines on the plywood, line up the edge of the jig, be sure to mind the width of the blade, and cut away. I adjust the saw blade thickness to cut the plywood and about a 1/4 inch into the foam. That way I get very little splintering on the plywood which is oves sized anyway. I have tried saw horses but you need 4 to keep the plywood from crashing around when you get the cut finished.
I am going up with storage, anything not on wheels has storage area, and anything on wheels can usually fit into something without wheels.
My miter station is huge since I have a sliding miter saw that extends far out the back. But the back will get sortimo racks, and it is tall enough for my planer, jointer, part of my table saw, trash bin, and rolling AC unit can fit under it…for example. That’s why part of the model table saw is on the model miter station, and the whole planer model is on the miter station. But things still need to be planned.
I’m also super fortunate in the electrical situation in my shop. It’s 75% of the reason I wanted to buy this house. There is 200A service to my house and 100A goes out to a sub-panel in the shop. It is well done with lots of plugs on a couple of circuits and a couple 220V outlets. So I’m luckily in that placing things doesn’t rely on one or two outlets.