Truth be told the blog is not running in real time (shocker). There is about a six month lag between what is happening here and what is really going on at the shop. Several large projects have come and gone, but I will try to bring this part of the website up to date. Also, some people have expressed interest in the process of setting up our shop.

I walked you through my thoughts for the shop and the decision to divide the shop into three rooms:the finishing room, the bench room and the machine room. We decided to use an existing office as our finishing room so that space is already built out, although some modifications will be necessary. Our insurance company is mandating that we have explosion proof lighting and a fire-proof cabinet, which we were lucky enough to find on craigslist for a mere $75 and $100, respectively. God Bless the internet. We also need to provide an exhaust fan and a filtered inlet for fresh air. In addition, we are going to build a loft above the finishing room for storage. (More on that SNAFU later.)

The first major hurdle is building the wall between the bench and machine rooms. We were able to accomplish that in a timely manner. These rolling stairs came in so handy that we decided to purchase a set from our landlord.

Rolling Stairs

Framing

Bench Room Side

Machine Room Side

We decided on painted sheetrock for the bench room side to help bounce the light around the room to brighten it up for close hand work, and we used OSB, (oriented strand board) on the machine room side to make it easier to hang hang jigs, clamps, duct work, patterns or your favorite Studley tool box poster.

At the center of the wall will be a pair of 4×8 doors on double hinges, which will be the main passage way into the machine shop. At the far end of the wall is a second 4×8 door that will be next to the lumber rack in the bench room and next to the radial arm saw/band saws in the machine room to help with work flow. The doors are oversized to make the moving of large materials (4×8 sheets of plywood) and machinery a little easier.

Now for the fun part, starting to fill the space up with machinery…

-CB-

Tags: Workshop

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 14th, 2009 at 7:56 pm and is filed under Shop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.