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Thread: You guys spend too much time with "shop improvement"

  1. For me it varies over time. There are periods where it is 50-50, 0-100, and 100-0. Over the long haul, I'd guess 50-50. The good news is that I enjoy both and that it is all paid for by the work making "useful stuff" people are willing to pay for.

  2. #17
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Location
    SoCal
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    22,492
    Blog Entries
    1
    I keep a list and knock out a few things I want to have around when I am between projects or at a stage of a project where things have to sit overnight.

    Project:

    GnG Low CoD (285).jpg

    Jig:

    Dado Jig 2.0 (16).jpg

    Project:

    Niki CT Dresser (160).jpg

    Jig:

    BS Template Jig (4).jpg

    Project:

    Dave-Urn (12).jpg

    Jig:

    DP Depth Stop (6).jpg

    Etc.
    "A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg".


    – Samuel Butler

  3. #18
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Location
    Bloomington, IL
    Posts
    6,009
    While building my second shop is going on three years, its way way more than 3x bigger than a typical shop or my other shop. So I figure I am under a year for each one of the new ones so far lol. My cnc work has paid for my finishing the new shed inside. I do my hobby customer work, and my real day job work, and do things with my family first. Many times I dont even start till 9:30pm and got to midnight or better. I go out in there and it is flipping exciting to work on this crazy thing I am building. Tell your wife come over and grab an impact and she can help me be faster so I work on it less.

  4. #19
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    E TN, near Knoxville
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    12,298
    When building my shop I spent 99.36% of the time on the shop and 0.64% on projects.

    Now I spend 91.31% on projects or teaching, 2.42% on the shop, 5.63% reading in my shop office/library and talking on the phone, and 0.64% making up statistics like this.
    Last edited by John K Jordan; 03-16-2018 at 7:43 PM.

  5. #20
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
    Location
    SE PA - Central Bucks County
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    65,675
    Quote Originally Posted by glenn bradley View Post
    I keep a list and knock out a few things I want to have around when I am between projects or at a stage of a project where things have to sit overnight.
    Ditto. I have a big whiteboard on the door between my shop and the single, remaining garage bay (for the mower ) that has a list of all the various and sundry projects I want or need to keep in mind for when time allows. It's getting long, too. LOL
    --

    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  6. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by Cary Falk View Post
    My wife calls it tinkering when I am not working on anything that she wants. She would probably tell you it is 90% tinkering and 10% useful. I would say it is the other way around.
    LOL! Cary actually hit the nail on the head! "Useful" is a very subjective term. I like nice things, and I like using nice tools to make nice things. It makes me happy, and really, that's all that matters. Aside from increasing safety, there is little that my sliding table saw does that I haven't done with very simple and less expensive hand tools -- it's just a whole lot more enjoyable to me use the slider. It becomes even more enjoyable after I've invested time building jigs, accessories, proper dust collection etc. to make it even more pleasurable to use.

    Everybody has a hobby, and everybody's hobby is different. Some people find pleasure in things that other people can't understand. I've had more than a few people say things to me after like "You know that you can just hire people to do that stuff, right?", or "you know that there's places called furniture stores that sell that stuff?" Probably one of (what I considered ) the weirdest hobbies I've ever seen was when I was getting a tour of an airport by a buddy in Manchester, UK. We came across a guy sitting in a chair on a platform just outside the fence at the end of the active runway. He had a notepad, a pen, a watch, a pair of binoculars and a portable VHF radio. Every time a plane took off or landed, he would write down the time, the aircraft type and registration, the call sign, the airline, and any notable details, such as color or distinguishing markings. I talked to the guy for a bit and he said that he'd sit out there for 4 or 5 hours every day recording this information in his notebook. When the notebook was full, he'd pull out another, and add the completed one to his collection at home. I told him that it was very interesting. In my head, I was thinking, "this guy's lost his freaking mind!!"

    Everybody has a hobby, and everybody has a different idea of what is considered useful!

  7. #22
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
    Location
    Perth, Australia
    Posts
    9,467
    I am generally hyperfocussed when building, sticking to the task. My interest ilies with designing and building furniture, and once a piece has begun, little else is allowed to interrupt the process. I try to find something new each time, with new techniques to challenge. As a result, the build can be an intense, but very satisfying, time. Between each build it is great to chill out by building a new tool - hand plane or a jig for the next project. Between projects is a good time to get the shop back in order again. The shop gets messy when a project is underway, and so it is time to clean up, tune up, and ready everything for the next dive into the deep end.

    Regards from Perth

    Derek
    Last edited by Derek Cohen; 03-17-2018 at 5:26 AM.

  8. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by Keith Weber View Post
    Probably one of (what I considered ) the weirdest hobbies I've ever seen was when I was getting a tour of an airport by a buddy in Manchester, UK. We came across a guy sitting in a chair on a platform just outside the fence at the end of the active runway. He had a notepad, a pen, a watch, a pair of binoculars and a portable VHF radio. Every time a plane took off or landed, he would write down the time, the aircraft type and registration, the call sign, the airline, and any notable details, such as color or distinguishing markings. I talked to the guy for a bit and he said that he'd sit out there for 4 or 5 hours every day recording this information in his notebook. When the notebook was full, he'd pull out another, and add the completed one to his collection at home. I told him that it was very interesting. In my head, I was thinking, "this guy's lost his freaking mind!!"
    Call it a sign of the times, but in a post September 11th world, this guys' hobby gave me the creeps.

    But getting back to your point, there's an old saying I heard one time: "Everybody else's hobby is stupid." And ain't that the truth?

    Fred
    "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

    “If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”

  9. #24
    Ha, after beginning retirement in January and getting the ok from SWMBO to take the whole garage as a full time workshop I got stuck in shop reorganization quagmire.
    There was nothing going on other than just moving stuff around and thinking about how moving it somewhere else would be better.
    I am kinda over it now, but for me it's an easy rabbit hole to jump into.
    I actually use the jigs I have built and consider the time spent on them very worthwhile.
    There are still some shop projects on my short list and I do not know if they will be functional/utilitarian or if I will use them to learn techniques that can be applied to higher quality furniture.
    This is a hobby for me, but like many I wouldn't mind selling some things to support new tools and replenish the wood and hardware.

  10. #25
    It all depends on what I need at the time. Sometimes, it will be all shop projects, I'm making new clamp racks at the moment and not much else. But others, it will be no shop projects at all. It just depends on what I need. And the better the shop operates, the more efficiently I can make non-shop related projects, so its win-win all around.

  11. #26
    Join Date
    Dec 2008
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    Northern Michigan
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    I am building a house inside a shop right now, so I am good............

  12. #27
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    sykesville, maryland
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    861
    I do this as a hobby and I like an organized shop. Like many others I build a project, build jigs as I need, and clean up and organize in between. One of the issues with jigs is storing them. After a while you need a bigger shop just to hold your fixtures and stuff,and you have to build more storage in your shop just for them.

    My personality is that once I start building something, I can be pretty compulsive until it is completed. Others start 6 projects at a time and take forever (if ever) to finish one of them. My compulsiveness to finish can get in the way of other chores. So, I largely confine my wood working to late summer or winter when all other things are done or can't be done because of the weather. I also still work full time, and that is always in the way.

    I know a few engineers that are hobbyist wood workers. Sometimes they are too consumed with perfections of accuracy. So they spend all their time worrying about that 0.002" out of perfect that a tool might be whether than just making stuff. Sometimes they are completely paralyzed by these simple matters that don't really matter. I'm glad that's not me. "Good enough" is my friend. I've come to recognize it easily.

  13. A couple other things I didn't mention...

    First, I think that my time spent doing shop improvements and jig/gadget building was directly tailored to improving my ability to generate a quality product in a timely manner. I didn't fall down the rabbit hole of doing shop stuff just for the sake of doing it. It all was directly related to actual work quality/productivity. I build musical instruments so I think that specialized jigs may be a bigger deal than for some shops.

    Second, I find that the moving around of stuff and general reworking of the shop is best done more than once with some productive shop time in between. That way the work directs the reorganization in a way I couldn't manage up front.

  14. #29
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
    Location
    Griswold Connecticut
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    Osvaldo

    I have to agree.
    I use to build a lot of jigs, just because I thought they'd be handy someday. Most have now found the scrap dumpster at the dump. Most actually never got used They got in the way, or warped through the years.
    The last jig I built was a coping sled. It's pretty good actually, but it's going to hit the dump too. The plywood base distorted, curved,a little bit. I'll copy it using aluminum, or buy the one from Infinity. I'm kind of tired of making jigs, just to eventually throw them away for one reason or another.
    Other than rearranging some stuff, and throwing a bunch of stuff out, to make more room to actually work, I haven't done much in a few years. I want to work on projects, not the shop.
    Oops! I do have one "shop improvement: project.
    A tree took out the corner of the garage, which was formerly a greenhouse, so I have to rebuild that corner of the garage this spring. That corner will become part of the shop space. I lied. Sorry.
    "The first thing you need to know, will likely be the last thing you learn." (Unknown)

  15. #30
    Join Date
    May 2005
    Location
    Highland MI
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    I will spend two hours making a jig that might save me a half an hour because I "might" need it on another project.
    NOW you tell me...

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