Your dream shop?

General Discussion
1

Hi to all of you!

I know there has already been a thread (did anyone say “several”?) on this precise topic, but I’m having the opportunity to build something bigger for my surfboard/wood business and I would really appreciate if you could give me your advices on the best set-up possible.

As soon as I get my scanner working again, I’ll be able to post detailed plans of what the building permit (what’s the name for that?) was delivered for. But you may start thinking about how you would do with a 14 x 7 meters (that’s about 46’ x 23’, right?) workshop. The idea is to have a shaping room, a glassing room (allowing 3 to 5 boards to be glassed at the same time) and a sanding room, keeping in mind that I will need some room left for the woodworking part…

Of course, I already have a few ideas of my own as to how I should organize that, but those of you who have been in the industry for a long time most probably have much better ones or think of important things I didn’t think of.

Thanks everyone for suggestions. (I’m afraid I can’t do much in return except maybe send a sticker or two and, of course, allowing free use of the shop to those of you who might make the trip to France…)

2

If I might suggest -

The major tools and workbenches on mobile bases/casters/wheels such that you can re-configure your shop for the best efficiency on whatever project you have going on just then.

Lightweight and movable interior partitions ( fabric on frames or even plastic on frames ) likewise so that you can make rooms appear and go away as you need them. While everything guys like you and I do is theoretically custom work, there is a lot that you wind up mass producing, so being able to set up production runs is a very good idea.

A shop cart, a lot of shelves on wheels, is something Really Useful. When you are going from tool to tool with a production run of pieces - fins, table legs, what have you - it’s nice and much more efficient to be able to do it in an organised way. A bakery-type cart with support for movable shelves is good, it will let you change the shelf heights as need be.

In my own shop, I have found that an area to keep ( and keep organised ) portable power and hand tools is essential, especially those that go out on jobs of one kind or another. My current solution is shelves near the door where toolboxes live between jobs, but it cou;d well be improved opon.

Likewise I am a bit surprised every time by how often I need mechanical tools: wrenches, hex wrenches/allen wrenches, screwdrivers and the like for adjusting the other tools. Those have their own cabinet and a small toolbox on wheels, with drawers.

Jigs, fixtures and such - templates, etc - need a permanent storage area, as does paint and resin, as does new stock like dry wood, as does scrap too big to throw out or burn. Paints and resins and finishes in general should live in a steel cabinet some distance from anything valuable, with a fire extinguisher nearby.

Sharpening should have its own bench, though you can combine this with your tool-repair bench.

You’ll notice I am specifying lots of boxes and cabinets rather than shelves. I’ve found that no matter how good the dust collection is, the dust will get out anyhow, so good to plan for that.

Hoses, cords - racks for those. Near the compressor?

anyhow- that’s a few ideas, hope they are of use

doc…

3

Sounds like very good advice from Doc. The reconfiguration aspect is a really good idea.

Also, I’m a big fan of using your own experience as a guide, and put everything where you brain instinctively would look or reach for them.

By being able to move things around lets you eventually have a functional and comfortable workplace that suits the work you are doing at the time.

Avoid filling unused spaces with the inevitable junk that acumulates. A clean and tidy workspace provides more motivation and inspiration.

Most of all have fun with it.

4
Quote:

Lightweight and movable interior partitions ( fabric on frames or even plastic on frames ) likewise so that you can make rooms appear and go away as you need them. While everything guys like you and I do is theoretically custom work, there is a lot that you wind up mass producing, so being able to set up production runs is a very good idea.

That’s what we call: “expérience vécue” in French… I remember when I had to make a swimming-pool deck out of iroko boards, something like three hundreds of them…

Likewise I am a bit surprised every time by how often I need mechanical tools: wrenches, hex wrenches/allen wrenches, screwdrivers and the like for adjusting the other tools. Those have their own cabinet and a small toolbox on wheels, with drawers.

Two days ago, I spent almost one hour looking for an Allen wrench of the correct size… I knew I had it somewhere in that big box or was it in the plastic bucket? Or maybe on that shelf? Not at all: backhome, in the kitchen drawer. Don’t ask me why…

anyhow- that’s a few ideas, hope they are of use Oh, yes,they are. Keep them coming! Thanks a lot, Doc.

5

Hi, Balsa -

Lets just say that if you are going to have a versatile shop, it has to be very versatile in every way that’s economical to do: I do woodwork, composites, a little metalwork and of course repairs, so I need to be what you might call ‘quick change’ -

Quote:

That’s what we call: “expérience vécue” in French… I remember when I had to make a swimming-pool deck out of iroko boards, something like three hundreds of them…

I had a situation where I was doing tables. In lots of 12. I counted every operation I did on them and how long it took, and that was counting ( for instance) sanding each side of a table leg as one operation, 4 per leg. It was 168 operations per table…and I started to seriously think about getting a small drum sander ( one of these, to be exact - http://www.grizzly.com/products/item.aspx?itemnumber=G1079 ) rather than the belt sander and benchtop jig I was using. One run of 50 tables would have paid for it, figuring my shop time at $50 US ( roughly 40 euros) per hour in time saved. And on the next production run it would have been profit, plus anything else I was going to do later on that it’d speed up.

Never be afraid to throw money at real production tools if that machine will pay for itself in a reasonable amount of time and is usable for more stuff. Including stock feeders, carts, what have you. If it saves labor, then your return on your actual time goes up and stays up. Likewise the space used for storage of those odd bits of leftover wood and such- while it seems like dead, wasted space, the jigs you can make from it to save time and produce more…I think that’s a win.

Quote:

Two days ago, I spent almost one hour looking for an Allen wrench of the correct size… I knew I had it somewhere in that big box or was it in the plastic bucket? Or maybe on that shelf? Not at all: backhome, in the kitchen drawer. Don’t ask me why…

Oh yeah. Do I ever know that feeling. You need a 13mm wrench, and it’s the one wrench that’s missing from the set. 12 won’t fit, 14 will ruin the nut and an adjustable wrench will do worse. You’ll find the 13mm…midway through next week, after you ruined the nut, messed up the bolt threads and wound up buying new bolt, new nut and another wrench.

Here in the States we have Harbor Freight, and they have wrench sets of all descriptions cheap. So, if I spend more than a few minutes looking for a wrench, well, I think of it as time to buy a new set and place it somewhere convenient. If, for instance, a tool like a mortiser uses three different Allen wrenches, which are small and get lost and swept up and thrown away, then a large T-handle Allen set mounted on the wall right beside the mortiser is a real time and frustration saver.

Besides which, if it’s a set dedicated to that one tool, the wrenches tend to get put back and not wander. The same general idea goes along with making racks for the jigs and fixtures you use with each tool. The mortiser, for instance, has a rack for the chuck key, the allen wrenches and the various mortising chisels that fit it.

Oh, before I forget…things that break, like 1/4" ( ~6mm) mortising chisels… when you get the replacement, get two of them and have the spare handy in a second row of the rack.

Shop lighting - hooboy. Right now I have three systems, as it were. An overhead bulb to find my way in, overhead flourescents for general lighting and small task lights for specific jobs, say for instance a bandsaw. or mortiser. It’s a bother to rig those last ones, but then again I do gain production and safety… fingers are expensive, you know?

Dust and chip ( no, not you, Ben) collection… I should go with a dust collection setup permanently attached to a piping system with gate valves and all that permanent for each tool, but I find it easier with the small one I have to just have one long flexible hose that I can just move from tool to tool as needed. And when I need to do a lot of thickness planing it’s easier to just let the chips fly and shovel them up later than emptying the dust collector about seventeen times during that run of work.

Anyhow - a few more ideas, take them as you will. One thing- a pad of paper, sharp pencils and a calculator may wind up being the most productive tools in the shop.

doc…

6

Thanks again, Doc.

I was thinking about building glassing racks that could be elevated with some kind of pedal, just like old hairdresser’s seats you know? Like you could have the board set-up at waist height while laminating the bottom and then just press a pedal or button and the board elevates to head-high to allow laminating the rails without bending or crouching…

Any idea about a cheap and easy way to do that (remember, three to five racks involved)?

About ventilation: I’ve read in another thread someone advising a fan at floor level rather than up. Does everyone agree on that?

Also, all of you insist on leaving the room as soon as a gloss is done and avoiding air flows: should the fan be switched off then?

7

yeah thinking about you prfect shed is a nightmare!

we just got the keys to our new house that has a 40’-26’workshop on site. my main problem is heating the glassing room 26’-16’

what are your thoughts?

ive seen these 2kw fan heaters at a good price or i just thought of running the oil heating from the house and putting in a few radiators.

thanks

im going with partition and plastic sheeting till i like the layout then ply will be added.

8

Uhmmm- just a rough sketch of what may be a second-class idea

Figure the legs as something like the wood legs in an adjustable tripod such as surveyors pr photographers use. The stop could be something like a length of wood on hinges (downwards) with springs that would pop into the notches? Or whatever is around the shop that could be cobbled together.

At least that’s a first attempt. And I think it could be made of some of that small scrap that is always around a workshop, wood, plywood and what have you. I thought about doing it with PVC piping, but you’d have to buy PVC pipe, and find some that would telescope nicely and all that, this is fairly simple.

Oh, knew I forgot something: when I was doing a lot of ding work, one thing I found to be very useful was two sets of tall stands, to hold a lot of boards and go from one stage to another and move them from tall stand #1 to the work stand to the drying stand. I just used simple mortised arms into a pair of uprights with an X brace across the back, nailed on so that I could take it apart and store it easily and compactly. Though a stronger version could double as wood storage against a wall and similar.

hope that’s of use

doc…

9

well if you are the only shaper using it i would say make the shaping room pretty small like 3meters wide and maybe 5-8 m long. then figure how wide it would to have to bee to glass Xboards then jsut do the math from there, a shop vac type system is nice if suspended above the shaping area, but you could run a whole ventalation system throught the shop. BTw how are those rioters in france, hopefully not to bad where you are.

10

hey balsa,

thanks for posting this thread. i was just thinking about all of this stuff myself.

some ideas:

make wall racks to store boards during work out of 1 1/4" PVC and clamp to wall using screws, so you can remove them if needed.

make your shaping/sanding racks out of pvc, in buckets filled with sand/rocks/cement so you can move them around as needed. when i had a shed in the bahamas, i had one set of buckets, and two ‘tops’ for the pvc that came out of the buckets, i never glued on to the bases, so i could switch them up for whatever i was doing at the time. glassing or shaping etc.

i really like the idea of walls that can be moved around. the plastic would also allow the ambient light in, saving on having to install specific lighting until you got it the way you like it.

hope this is helpful. thanks doc for your insight, it gave me some ideas for my shared space also.

11
Quote:

BTw how are those rioters in france, hopefully not to bad where you are.

Where I am is called paradise… Paris and its suburbs are very far away from Biarritz. That’s why I left Paris 20 years ago.

BUT, beware of what they show you on TV. I’m not sure it’s not grossly exagerated for whatever reason… I’ve come to notice (reading swaylockians comments, mostly) that what they show us on French TV or papers about the States is often very far from the truth. I suspect it works the same the other way around…

12

Doc

You have taken the words out of my mouth!! Your shop seems to fulfill all the purposes that mine does! I use frames with plastic sheeting for temporary rooms, having to fit board building/repair, small boat repairs(resprays) and carpentry work. Hard to keep areas clean and clutter free!

Most important thing is that everything has a home and that you remember where it all lives!! Hours can be wasted in a day trying to find even the dust pan and brush!!!

I agree with your comment on shelving too, dust collectors!! I have dust extraction and an air cleaner and wood dust in paricular gets everywhere still.

I have built a room from 2" kingspan board, a small fan heater can get the temp up to 40c easily great for curing lams and paint jobs. a really cheap easy way to construct semi permanent rooms.

13

Hi Mark,

You know, every now and then…okay, lets say it happens all the time… somebody mentions something and I say to myself 'damn, what a good idea, why didn’t I think of that? ’

And that definitely applies here: making a room out of 2" board, or even standard cheap insulating foam panels from the builder’s supply with a light wooden frame around 'em and simple hardware to hold it all together. Easy to assemble, easy to store, a cheap heater ( by the way, those 500 watt work lights do a nice job of heating a small space ) will get the temp up to whatever you need and you don’t need to heat the whole workshop.

In fact, I need to do a little spraying myself ( painting body parts for my truck, actually ) and I was wondering just how I was going to do it now that the temperatures here are down around freezing and my workshop has pockets of sawdust overhead somewhere that I’ll never find…but will definitely find any freshly sprayed paint. But with this - instant spray booth, instant glossing booth, what have you.

Many thanks

doc…

14

Hey Doc,

Great to see that you’re back on top of those graphics you’ve become so famous for here in Swayville. Whenever I see a post with your reply I click on just to see your latest. Enjoy the ride!

15

Jeez, Richard, you live on a low-lying island that just got smacked pretty good with a cyclonic kinda storm…and you’re glad to see me? Hell, guy, we were worried about ya…

Everything okay, workshop and house and family and everything?

Best regards

doc…

16

Doc,

All ok here and back to normal. Storm veered to the east at last minute sparing this area for at least another season. You said you’re getting cold up there already. We’ve still got 70 degree+ water temps but waves are flat. Keep those great graphics and knowledge coming our way. Between your graphics and Epacs great photos we always have interesting posts.

17

sorry but…

I just came from my dream shop…

it has a pillow

as a matter o’ fact it has many…

…ambrose…

like I said initially … sorry

18

Tell us of any dreams you weaved while there.

19

Swinging doors can be a bummer in a tight space. One of my mentors always conserved space by using sliding doors. Ideally a pocket door so you don’t lose wall space for shelves and hooks.

How about tarp zippers? I haven’t used one yet, but I’ve been keeping it in the back of my mind. Basically a peel and stick zipper that you put on a tarp wall:

http://www.homedepot.com/prel80/HDUS/EN_US/jsearch/product.jsp?pn=161323

20 
Howzit Poobah. My doors swing outward so no problems with space.Aloha,Kokua