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View Full Version : Grounded or Heavenly?



Roger Los
11-16-2005, 4:32 AM
Hi,

Great forum, I'm glad I found y'all. Thank you for providing yet another time sink for me to get lost in... :rolleyes:

Assuming I don't run out of money, never a safe assumption, when we start on our little house construction next year I will be building a shop. My other hobby is restoring old cars and motorcycles, and the shop will mainly be focused around that. But there would be a possibility to sneak a woodshop into the plans.

My ambitions in the woodshop are relatively modest, and I imagine mainly cabinet and furniture projects in my future.

There are two possible places for it. One would be a smallish 12' x 24' space on the ground floor, with a double door at one of the 12' ends. The floor would be a slab. A separate room will already be housing a couple of air compressors (two "smaller" in series is cheaper than one "huge" one), and that room can easily be expanded somewhat to handle a dust collector. Dust collection would be overhead. A separate paint and finish room would be shared by the machinery shop and the woodshop.

The other possibility is kind of exciting but may be excruciatingly stupid. The shop will have a storage loft, and by raising the sidewalls a bit I could have a roughly 50' x 18' stand-up space for a workshop up there. Plenty of room...but of course, how do you get raw materials 12' up and then finished goods 12' down. Some of my past projects certainly wouldn't be made any worse by simply dropping them from that height, but I hope to improve over time. :)

On old barns you often see block and tackle for hoisting hay up into the loft, and I suppose a similar arrangement could be used, probably with much cursing and white knuckles. I imagine after one close call the huge worshop would be relegated to building things out of materials I could carry up in one hand on the stairs...

I can also imagine some sort of super-dumbwaiter, which would probably need to be 4' x 12' to be usable, with all sorts of engineering to insure it simply doesn't crash down when an armoire is loaded onto it or refuse to budge when the new table saw is ready to go up. Or ten sheets of plywood.

I guess I'm really wondering if anyone else has a shop in a loft, or whether I should simply be satisfied with the ground floor space and leave the loft to the decaying car parts. Thank you for any thoughts.

John Bailey
11-16-2005, 5:20 AM
Roger,

Welcome to the "Creek." As you are aware, it's a great place. Ah, I have found memories from the 70's on my Harley. You'll get lots of advice here and it will be good. There are a couple of guys that post that have upstairs shops that will probably chime in.

Again, welcome.

John

Chris Giles
11-16-2005, 5:25 AM
We faced a situation like this back in Chicago when we were looking at buying an old lumberyard building for our workshop and showroom. The previous owner had a shop in a 1500sq.ft. loft about 12' up with no vertical conveyance other than a narrow staircase. Since he only made window and door parts in the shop, he was able to get away with a trough-like rig that was raised and lowered to a large opening with an electric winch and cable. Being cabinet builders, this would be insufficient for our needs, so we checked into having a freight elevator installed...:eek: Might as well buy the building again! We decided on purchasing a hefty used forklift, and mounting a lightweight cage on the forks to lift and lower the materials to the loft. The building had a concrete floor which would support the weight of this rig, so it seemed a reasonable solution. We never got that far, because the guy just wanted to much for the building, but as long a the inspectors don't look, and you set up and follow strict safety guidlines, I think this could work. And you can always detach the lift cage, and use the forklift for your other stuff as well.

Alan Turner
11-16-2005, 5:52 AM
Welcome to SMC.

There was a short article in FWW within the past 2 years where a fellow did a 2d floor shop over his garage, and the article gave a bit of detail on a removable section of floor with either an elec. winch or a chainfall which he used to get things, including tools, up and down.

In my shop now, we have a 6 x 6 foot hole in the floor, floor section is removable, and use a triple mast forklift to get larger things up and down, but also have an inclined conveyor belt which is used daily. The false floor is a PITA, and next summer I will knock out two windows, lower the sill to floor height, install french doors, and use the fork lift right through the new doors. It will be much easier! The floor height is aobut 15 feet above grade, and our triple mast has a lifting height of 16'. God bless pallets.

Ken Fitzgerald
11-16-2005, 7:22 AM
Roger....Welcome to the Creek! Wade right in...the water's fine!

Several of our members have 2nd story shops and I'm sure they'll provide you with some friendly recommendations.


Again.....Welcome!

Tyler Howell
11-16-2005, 8:23 AM
Welcome,
Keep us posted We love pictures.

David Wilson
11-16-2005, 8:37 AM
Roger, Welcome aboard

Lee DeRaud
11-16-2005, 11:55 AM
Welcome,
Keep us posted We love pictures."Love" pictures?!? As in "absolutely require pictures and go stark raving bonkers if they're not provided"?

Yeah, that's what I thought you meant.:cool: :p

Dan Stuewe
11-16-2005, 12:26 PM
I don't know if the system that Rockler sells would work, but there might be something the manufacture has that would ...

http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=10837

Brett Baldwin
11-16-2005, 1:10 PM
I also thought of the article Alan mentioned as soon as I read this. The basic idea was that when he built his workshop, he knew it was going to be on the second floor so he made the ridgebeam of the structure with a large steel I-beam and left bottom lip of the I-beam free of obstructions so that he could put an electric chain hoist on wheels and use the I-beam as the track. He put a trapdoor directly beneath the I-beam so that he can hoist things right through the floor. That's about all the detail I recall off-hand but if you'd like to know more, I'll track down the article for you.

Steve Clardy
11-16-2005, 3:11 PM
Welcome to the Creek Roger!!

Roger Los
11-16-2005, 3:38 PM
Thanks all for the warm welcome!

My initial thoughts thinking about this, without reading any articles, was that you could do it with a hoist and a platform of some sort, so it's nice to hear that others have already done that. My second thought was to figure out a track system on the outside of the gable end...I was imagining something similar to a tailgate hoist, not hydraulic, though.

Time to do some investigation. Pictures will be forthcoming, but right now the "shop" is a grassy patch of ground that the neighbors are eyeing with increasing dread.

Steve Stube
11-16-2005, 5:04 PM
I use this to bring up some items to the second floor woodshop.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v19/ceethese/Shop%20Photos/SecondFloorCableHoist.jpg