Small shops

[Mark Daily]

My 10 X 20 shop (3rd bay of 3 car garage) originally laid out in 2001. Still evolving and in need of improvements I wasn’t aware of back then.

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[Tom Bender]

My basement shop is 18' x 14' plus some lumber storage in the garage and a cabinet for finishing materials. It works really well for furniture, one piece at a time. Nothing is mobile. A few specifics make it possible.

Table saw is slid to the right till it is against the wall. It never moves. My shop is bench centered

Tool cabinet is 24" x 42" with 17 drawers sized to the tools. This is about 100 sq ft of drawer space. This is critical to my success

No jointer, I work around this

No radial arm / chop saw

Oversized vac system is stationary and outside the shop with a 25' hose that I connect to each machine as needed

My offcuts rack, when it overflows it's time to purge

Offcut Rack.jpg

Tool cabinet, steam bent Ash drawer fronts

Tool Cabinet.JPG

The small bench is 42" high. It's a real back saver.

Small Bench.jpg

The main bench is 27" x 67" and 32" tall.

Bench.jpg

Table Saw with sled

TS Sled.jpg

[glenn bradley]

Thursday I bought a ridgid job box and an Delta stationary sander and there's just no room.

No problem. Send the sander to me. I'll send you my address and even pay shipping.

Seriously, the Small Shop approach is a wonderful source for books and magazine articles. Woodsmith's "the Complete Small Shop" is a bit dated but I still use some of the fixtures I saw in that publication. Check places like Fine Woodworking Online and Wood Magazine for info on ways to make do with less room in a Small Shop. Lot's of good stuff out there and on this forum of course.

Mobility and multi-function are the things that kept me working in my smaller shop days. I built most of my own tool stands and made sure that surfaces either cleared where required or acted as additional support surfaces when possible. Dust collection was mobile, heck, everything was mobile. I used bench top tools versus standalone models for drill press, planer, chop saw, sanders and so forth. They all mounted to platforms with cleats. These cleats hung the tools from a rail on the wall and clamped in the bench vise during use. There are a ton of clever folks and ideas out there to help you maximize the usefulness of your space.

[Jonathan Elliott]

That's a beautiful shop Tom, and great ideas. Thanks for sharing!

Jonathan

[Rod Sheridan]

Shop.pdf

Here's the layout of my basement shop..................Rod.

[Patrick Kane]

Im in a basement, which is oddly configured and with short ceilings, but its a luxury still. I dream of the day where i have 3,000 feet and tall ceilings, but i would encourage you to enjoy what you have and not get wrapped up in keeping up with the jones.

With a small space, i would think long and hard about the critical equipment and how to do more with less. For example, i used to have a floor standing mortiser. For what i do, that is a dumb thing to have taking up space. Better to make conventional mortises with a router and chisel, or in my case, swap it for a DF700 that takes up zero floor space. Same reasoning why i sold my Supermax 37x2 sander. Drum sanders are nice to have, but it made my space impossible to move around in. In the past year, i havent had a project i couldnt do because i sold the sander. Would it be convenient to have for a lot of projects, yes, but it hasnt prevented me from moving forward. Tomorrow i could sell both my table saws, and i would still be making furniture with my track saw and band saw. In your size shop, i would minimize lumber storage. Buy it as you need it. Minimize assembly tables, work benches, and other fixed stationary horizontal surfaces. Do you glue ups on your table saw(with protection down first, of course). My stuff is a little heavy now, so the bandsaw is the only thing on wheels now. Everything else needs to be moved with a pallet jack, but some mobility is nice. My bandsaw and cabinet saw are 12" apart. If I need to rip over 5' on the table saw, i need to open a man door behind me. With that open, I can rip 30" wide and 25' long if i needed. Same for the bandsaw, i can wheel it over 2' and open the door for when i need to make cuts longer than 4-5', which isnt all that often at the BS. For 90% of the time at those machines, they are practically on top of one another to no ill effect. The table saw extension table provides infeed support to the bandsaw, which is about 1/4" lower than the table saw surface.

Minimize stationary tools to the bare minimum, maximize shared infeed/outfeed, and retain some level of mobility/flexibility, and i think you will find your space plenty big enough to work in.

[Andrew More]

I've got a two car garage, with one bay still used to park cars. 22'x24'

I honestly find this to be a fine amount of space. More is always better, but that's enough space to have a few dedicated tools in all the right places. I've got a fixed cabinet saw, and miter saw station. My band saw, sander, and planer/jointer are all on wheels. I've got a very long workbench along one wall, with tool storage above it. An outfeed table that doubles as an assembly table behind the table saw. Two minor issues is dragging the jointer out from under the workbench on one wall, and a lack of a hand tool bench. It's a bit awkward pulling out the jointer multiple times in a project, and with a little more space I could give it a dedicated space.

With making sure I can park a car, I'm guaranteed to have the space to work on anything. I've also got some saw horses that enable me to add some assembly space.

So what would extra space really get me? The ability to give some of the tools permanent spaces, but otherwise I think 400-500 sq feet is fine for most DIY/weekend warriors such as myself. I guess I could also work on large projects, not sure what I'd do if I was replacing an entire kitchen's worth of cabinets.

[Ole Anderson]

Mine is in the basement, about 350 sf, and oddly shaped. TS moves back and forth to maximize floor space or to rip 8' lumber. Most everything else moves either on castors or on felt pads which moves easily on my Pergo floor. My little workbench is about 45 years old and built from 2.5" laminated deck planking from my dad's sloped roof over his pool enclosure, so it is special. New owners have since torn down the pool and house and rebuilt. At one time I did some production work here making aluminum barefoot ski booms, about 2500 of them, explaining the mini mill and cutoff saw. Dark brown cabinets were from our first kitchen, then replaced with Builder's Square white euro cabs, then replaced with Hickory raised panel cabs built in this shop.

[Jan Smith]

Mine is a bit over 400sf former cow tending structure converted to a garage which is now my first real shop
but I also have a little shed for lumber storage.
As said before only have what you really need and keep stuff mobil.
I just did a big prolonged purge and painted the cinderblock walls white
and it is amazing how inviting and less stuffed the shop feels now.
Left wall is workbench and cabinets, right wall is “stationary” tools on wheels
and the back wall is miter saw stand with more cabinets.
I also have a 4x8 assembly table on wheels I just attached my small tablesaw to.

[Jim Dwight]

My house is on the shore of a large lake on a small lot. I added a 14x24 third stall on the garage for my shop because that was the space I had. I've built two queen sized beds and a double in it as well as cabinets for the house and other stuff. I usually spray in the car garage next door.

The long solid wall dividing my shop from the car garage has a RAS and CMS sharing a long fence with flip stops. The router table is also along this wall and a jointer. The jointer has to be wheeled out to use but the router table doesn't always. There are wood racks on the wall above the bench.

In the center is a table saw and outfeed/assembly table. I have my old table saw in there too but it is going out so I can add a bandsaw. DC is in the corner. Floor drill press in on the short wall. I have a hollow chisel mortiser on a flip cart with my 10" lunchbox planner but I plan to get rid of it. I got a Domino XL and it takes up less space and it easier to use.

A track saw resides in the assembly table and got used today. I needed to rip some cherry for drawer fronts and the board was 12 feet long. I have that much space on outfeed but not infeed of my table saw. I could have just joined my tracks and done it with the track saw but instead I cut a couple pieces to rough length with a circular saw and then ripped a 8 foot cherry board on the table saw. Track saw got used to cross cut some 5mm luan for drawer bottoms. It was an 8 foot piece and too wide for the 12 inch CMS. The RAS could have done it but there was a bunch of junk on that table so I just used the track saw. Even in a small shop I have options - but need to think about how I will do things.

To me the secret is to figure out what you really need to do what you want and be really picky about large stationary tools. My table saw has 36 inch rip capacity, for instance. Track saw does bigger pieces. I do not ever plan to have a 12 inch jointer or a wide panel sander or many other tools which I know would make things easier sometimes. But I can make things my kids and I like without these tools.

I am working out how I will make a 10 foot dining table, hopefully later this year.

[Günter VögelBerg]

this is roughly the size you describe. It's tight. I had to figure out precise placement of everything to get infeed/outfeed. It's definitely a one person shop. I'm pretty content with the size because I have learned to make it work for me. This is the basement of a 1910 bungalow, with the other 1/3 of the basement dedicated to furnace, water heater and storage of a lot of other misc. tools. The hardest parts are the low ceilings and the narrow/steep stairs.

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[Rob Luter]

I have about 300 Square feet in my basement, with a support column inconveniently located in about the middle. Dust collector, planer, table saw, and belt/disc sander are all on wheels. The saw has a genuine locking mobile base. The rest are homebrews. The bench, band saw, drill press, and sharpening station are stationary. There is one 220V outlet and one 120V duplex receptacle. Most powered work must be elaborately choreographed. The space is better suited to hand work.