Hey guys need help with shaping room size. I just had a 12x 24 building built to do all my shaping glassing and sanding in.
what would you recomend for the shaping room is 11 3/4 x 14 to wide. or would 11 3/4 x 9 1/2 be better. I’m just trying to see what i can get away with to maxamize the use of my building to be able to glass and sand also. what is standard for a sanding area and a glassing area? Hope i didn’t ask too many questions-josh
Whats up Josh
Probably 11 X 9, I say that because the lights on the side walls would be closer and more directed to your shaping racks. Walls too far apart would cause the light to be thrown too far deviating the purpose for the rack level lighting.
My work area is 10 X 10 and After installing the lights on the sides, I found them too far from the Blank. I moved them in about a foot and a half in on each side. They work great.
Shorts
I’d suggest using the 12’ dim as the length of the room, and it could be as narrow as 8’. Those dims will
make it easy to wallboard too, as everything comes in 4’ x 8’ sheets (less cuts, less waste). 12’ x 24’ is pretty
small for a whole factory, the shaping room is going to have to be tight.
Maybe someone who works out of a similarly sized shop can help more, my shaping facility alone is about
300 sq feet but I’ve had up to 120 blanks in various stages in there at one time. I’m a spoiled brat now but I did
thousands and thousands out of a 8’ x 12’ room back in the day.
Mike
Aloha Josh
It probably would have been better to ask your question first so that you could have built the outer dimensions of your building correctly to accommodate proper work spaces. Working with what you have now will be a bit of squeeze.
The minimum space needed for a good shaping room is 8’ x 14’. Same for a sanding room. Same for an Airbrush room.
While some might want wider if they are a big guy, the 8’ room is ideal for many reasons. As mentioned previously the side lights perform best at this spread and you can use single tube lights which are much easier on the eyes. And single fixture fit closer under the shelf. Also, if the side lights are farther apart you will need a very wide shelf to shield them from your eyes. And once the shelf is way wider, it essentially reduces the working width of the room anyway so you might just as well go with 8’ width and smaller shelves. The idea here is that when standing at the tail or nose of the board, you should be able to see a glowing white board against a darker floor and walls. And the side lights should be shielded just enough by the shelves so that you can’t see the light tubes glaring in your eyes. The only thing nice about a wider room is being able to set longer then 8’ boards on their side to view the templates or profiles. But one can usually step outside if this is really necessary from time to time. Lastly, a wider or longer room also means more steps to get where you need to go. In production, fatigue is a killer. Make sure you set up the room so that all your high use tools are within easy reach and no more then one step or reach away.
A longer room than 14’ can be nice if you shape boards over 10’ really often, but otherwise it is just wasted space that you have to pay rent on or construction and maintenance costs. Plus… the smaller the cubic space the less your AC costs will be. Both in original purchase and in electricity. Generally speaking, you need about 2’ between the walls and the ends of the board. You can get by with 1’ but it isn’t convenient nor suitable for high production.
Where cubic feet would be nice to add if possible is in a higher ceiling. A 12’ ceiling is great for being able to stand boards up on ends and view them while also being able to feel the symmetry of the rails with both hands at the same time.
Much of the above is true for a sanding room or airbrush room. With these there is usually an exhaust system of some sort and the smaller the cubic feet the less the fans have to work to replace the airspace every minute or so.
In an Airbrush Room it is nice to have it an extra 3’ wider, total 11’, for a space that has a curtain or other separator and a floor to ceiling wall rack, so multiple boards can be cycled in and out easily. This way you can spray one color on a board, rack it for drying out of the way of over spray, and then work on another board at the same time, cycling non stop through multiple sprays at a time. An 8’ room will work just fine but you will have to watch out for over spray if you try to do more then one board at a time.
If you are only building a few boards at a time then a glassing room 8’ wide can also work just fine. But you will need some overhead wall racks where you can cycle boards on and off of the floor racks, while they dry. One side of these wall racks can be made into a UV Light Box.
So, with the above in mind. Split your shop into 3 rooms each 8’ x 12’. 1 Shape. 2 Airbrush/Sand/Polish. 3 Glassing.
The length of your rooms will not be ideal but if you are mostly shaping short boards it will be fine. Had you asked before building the shop, I would have recommended as a minimum for your shop to be 14’ x 30’. This would have allowed the needed space for a drying space for Airbrush and a floor to ceiling wall rack in the glassing room which would allow you to cycle a lot of boards through their steps with only one floor rack.
Hope this helps!
Hey bill thanks for your post, you got me thinking now. Since I’m stuck with the 12x24, what if i got rid of the sanding area( do this outside). Make the shaping area 12x14 but make two mini walls about 4feet tall x8feet long . at 2 feet off the the side of each side wall making the area 8x14. This would allow me to make wall racks that are offset from the light walls, so i would have more head room around the shaping racks. Would this be a good idea or bad. I wasn’t sure how this would affect the lighting aspects. This would leave me with 10x12. The majority of boards i do are fish and shorties. The actual height of the of ceiling is 9ft and my body height is 5’11 if this helps at all-josh
My original recommendations still stand. Your idea below is complicating things. Since you don’t do that many boards the space above your head say 6’2" up to the 7’6" ceiling will hold 4 wall racks set at 5" centers using 3/4" dowels drilled into the studs. If you do this on all 4 walls you will have room to store 14 blanks or so as a couple walls may have doors.
Since you mostly do shorter boards a 12’ room will be fine. My room is only 14’ and I can shape up to 12’ boards.
Don’t short yourself on dedicated space. Having a proper room to do each process, Shape, Dust, Vapors, is so worth it to keep them separated and fully capable of each task without resetting up the room each time to use the same room for all the different tasks.
In the shot below, you can see the space available over my head. Plus the valuable wall space between the wall racks and the light shelf, that is available for templates etc. Forget the 4’ sub walls. Trust me Josh… for 50 years, plenty of guys have tried all the variables possible and while the dimensions of a work room may vary by a couple of feet. The standard set up, is the standard because it works best when everything else is taken into consideration. Don’t stress so much about it! Slap up the 2 partition walls and get to making boards!
8’X12" is pretty standard, with lights at 4’…
One trick I learned early was to have each side of the lighting on separate switches so you can turn one side off. Its absolutely the best for seeing concaves and vee.
Speedy
Aloha Speedneedle
I know what you mean about independently switching the side lights. Personally I don’t have mine switched independently. Just the overhead one from the sides. Many shapers use dual bulb side lights so they over flood the board with light. In this case the independently switched side lights are necessary or at least a big help. With single bulbs the light intensity is much less and allows subtleties to show that wouldn’t otherwise. I use single bulb side lights, that’s mainly why I don’t find the independently switched side lights to be much of a necessity. Of course, that is not to take anything away from those who do find it useful.
When are you and Bert going to come to the North Shore and put some Sunova’s to work on some Hawaiian waves? Would be fun to see you guys here and check out the boards.
Hope all is well
Hey BB,
Yes, single bulb fluoros allatime…
The number of longtime guys I’ve demonstrated the one-sidelight-off thing to, you’d think a light switch was a new-fangled thing! It can of course also be done by merely twisting the bulb off its contacts. But for sure it contrasts the high and low points of a bottom contour really well.
Man, I’d utterly love to get to the North Shore. For me its long been a “one day…” thing, but yes, now I’d expect it to be both a business trip and an R&D mission… We have designed guns for our model range but the North Shore would be another league.
I’d certainly like to look you up in the future.
Josh
Howzit Bill, No need for 2 switches, just turn the bulb til it goes out.Aloha,Kokua
BB,
I have always used side lights with two lamps/bulb per side. I just started a board and will try it with just one lamp/bulb per side to see how it goes.
art
Howzit Bill, No need for 2 switches, just turn the bulb til it goes out.Aloha,Kokua
Hmmmm… Hey Kokua, most 8’ lights are single pin connections. Rotate them forever and they won’t disengage the contact and turn off the light unless there is something wrong with the contacts. Maybe you use some other kind of bulbs and fixtures??
BB,I have always used side lights with two lamps/bulb per side. I just started a board and will try it with just one lamp/bulb per side to see how it goes.
art
Give it a try Art. I think you will prefer it and find in much more comfortable on the eyes. But there might be a bit of time needed to get used to it since you have been using twice the amount of light.
You can just paint one of your bulbs black or tape over it. But best is to get the single tube fixture. It runs cooler and costs less and is easier to maintain. Look for the newer ones with electronic ballasts. They run cooler and don’t hum.
Howzit Bill, That’s right, bad day yesterday, first I got the wrong Kelly and now forgot about single pins in lights. Most of the time the shaping rooms I spend time in have 2 bulb fixtures with double pin bulbs. Mind on big job I’m doing for a client. Aloha,Kokua
Quote:BB,
I have always used side lights with two lamps/bulb per side. I just started a board and will try it with just one lamp/bulb per side to see how it goes.
art
Give it a try Art. I think you will prefer it and find in much more comfortable on the eyes. But there might be a bit of time needed to get used to it since you have been using twice the amount of light.
You can just paint one of your bulbs black or tape over it. But best is to get the single tube fixture. It runs cooler and costs less and is easier to maintain. Look for the newer ones with electronic ballasts. They run cooler and don’t hum.
I guess the tape or paint will have to be my temporary solution. I tried just removing one bulb and the fixture doesn’t work. I’m going to give the tape a try today I think the paint idea is a little to extreme and would ruin a perfectly fine working bulb… I am really anxious to use the modified Bosch that I finished from the Paul Jensen/cleanlines thread along with the single bulb set-up.
Also thanks to joshmjosm for starting this thread.
art
[=Blue]Aloha Art
Sounds like a good plan. When you tape the bulb tape it all the way around so that you block all the light possible.
Good luck. And let us know how it works out for you.
Speedneed…
I’ve used both, it’s nice to be able to click off one side. Guys can twist the bulb or they can get a cheapie clicker and splice it into their cord to interupt service if they are using fixtures that came with cords…cheapez fix.
I’ve had 8’ wide rooms but when I got big into sailboards I built 10’ rooms. They were 10’x20’…built two of them at The Underground because Pan Am salboards (13’2") looked like they were going to be popular…it didn’t happen, but it was nice to have the room. I agree with BB, all you need is 14’ long…that’s what my new room is, but it also worked out to be 10’8" wide.
As we all know, people’s shaping techniques vary and my personal style works better with a higher rack (saves on my back for some strange reason)…I also don’t use the sling like a lot of guys do, that’s probably why I liked them high…plus I run the planer backward as much as forward, and back in those days, I was running.use the planer extensively then a combo off sanding blocks with very degrees of hardness, lengths, and grits…I don’t use a sure form surfform? Uh, cheese grater!) hardly ever. They’re okay for blending but people overuse them and they become a crutch tool.
The Underground’s racks weren’t adjustable, like is so common today… The interesting thing is that I’m nearly 6’2" and when Brewer came over, he borrowed my room and really liked the setup…and he’s a little guy! Go figure.
I’m still partial to wider rooms, but I also use double tube lights, but hate getting hit in the face, and I’m real sensitive to light bouncing around. I don’t use a vacuum, so when I’m roughing out a group I periodically ‘wash the room’ with air.
Rennie (Yater) had me try his room some years ago, and it he had a different approach altogether…instead of doing flat shelves above lights set at 4’ he had angled deflectors of 1/10 or 1x12’s higher up the wall and you could adjust the tilt to your liking. Obviously the shelving doesn’t force the light straight toward the floor, rather, the straight edge determines where the light height ends up. There was LESS LIGHT with this set up, but the lighting was really good and I felt less weary in the room. I really liked it and I’m finishing my new room right now with this set up. This works well if you are shaping lots of different boards ranging from menehunes to mals & LB’s, to waveskis and everything in between…esp. if you have set racks.
Some might complain that you lose the shelving for storing tools close by, but you can put a strip of wood as a stop and put sanding blocks or crap if you’re so inclined.
So this is just another option people can consider…if you don’t have a rack that has height adjustment, you can adjust your delflector shelves with some hooks and chains, a door hinge or two…hell, you can put protractors on th ends if you want to get pissy technical about it…but Bill’s right…get in there and get shaping, then you can dial it in!
I read in some other thread that a guy used a 4’ light in a real narrow room (like 6’ wide!) and used a mirror on the other side to bounce the light back…the guy sounded like he’s a production shaper nowadays and that was when he was maybe starting out. Of course we know about those “production” guys that shape with the overhead lights on to wash everything out…otherwise ‘they see too much’ and it slows them down!!!
I even knew a guy that had affixed incandescent lightbulbs in a row (like makeup mirror lights) with sockets about every 6" on a couple strips of wood…guess it takes all kinds. (LOL). I even had a friend that was a Merchant Marine and he shaped on a ship enroute to Asia…
…guess whatever works for you is all that matters, eh?
Happy New Year.
Make the shaping bay into a dual function room.Shaping and sanding.It worked for me when only doing a few boards per week.Just a thought.I had an exhaust fan mounted near the floor that would suck a cat out through the vent.
Cleanlines
I’ve alwways felt shaping rooms make good sanding rooms. What kind of fan do you have? If the room is wide like mine, I use cheap $20 box fans to blow the air to a narrower drop chute that dumps the dust and allows the air to keep flowing…always found that it’s easier and cheaper to direct the push than to effect the suck, if you know what I mean. Also, I’m not dealing with the dust collecting on the push fans rendering them useless.
Of course my real factory had the Saddam model (mother of all fans). That could suck a Guernsey thru it.
One word of caution when using exhaust fans.They are a fire hazard if you don’t keep them maintained.The Spectrum factory in Fla. torched off due to clogged up fans in the sanding room.Anyway…my fan is a relic from the past with a lot of twist in the blades and it runs via a belt drive from an enclosed motor.I use it in a spray room for paint now that I don’t do boards anymore.I live in the country so it just blows out in to the field.I keep a filter on the inside which catches just about everything.I vaccum it clean when it gets clogged up.