New Dummy Needs Advice

[alex staley]

There are a ton of good ideas on this site. I am just trying to get started with woodworking and am in need of advice. I have one side of a two car garage for use. It has 110 and 240 electrical service(new 100 amp sub-panel). I already have a 12" compound miter saw. I am looking for a table saw and a router as well. Here is my dilemma. I am buying a six foot Seville Classics rolling workbench for tool storage and would like to put a table with extensions and fence for the miter saw that can be removed when needed. Any advice is greatly appreciated and I apologize for the lengthy post.

[Dave MacArthur]

Hey, first post, welcome to the chat ;) I see you've been here for a few years reading though.
Here's my small shop advice:

Get a cabinet table saw with a 50" extension or so, put it on a rolling base. Build a cabinet underneath the extension, including a router cabinet. Buy a Triton 3 1/4 HP and mount it upside down in your TS extension. In the cabinet that surrounds it and under the extension, you can probably store a LOT of your tools.

I would not personally build a miter-saw station with a long table/fence against a wall if I only had use of 1-car garage--space is too much at a premium. Instead, I'd use the TS with a cross cut sled for most things and make use of the long extension on the TS.

Here's a nice thread with lots of links to outfeed storage tables and extension router tables:
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=80057

For your Seville classics rolling bench, in a small garage shop I think you can do better by building a torsion box workbench that DOUBLES as an outfeed table for your TS. With tool storage underneath. AND, you could have a spot on that bench with a lift-off cover where you could plop your miter saw for proper height and use the bench for miter saw station, OR just put the miter saw ontop of the torsion bench, and then place some long boxes to either side of miter to transform it into crosscut station.

There are some great articles in mags and online on how to fit a full up shop in 1 car garage, and you actually can make use of both bays and just shove everything up into one side on rollers when you want to park in there.

[alex staley]

Thank you for info.