Simple low-cost wood shops

[Andrew Joiner]

I'm fascinated by minimal shops that can produce high quality wood products.
I worked in a shop right out of high school in 1970. They made a line of kids furniture and a line of butcher block furniture. They also did lots of custom store fixtures. I started there in their first year and they had 4 woodworkers in the shop. They kept growing and made good money. When I left to start my own shop after 3 years they had 8 woodworkers.

In the 3 years I was there they only had:
2- radial arm saws
1- Safety speed cut vertical panel saw
Lots of big routers, belt sanders and porter cable 505 1/2 sheet sanders

They bought butcher block slabs in bulk for the common size furniture. Some was cut to size on the panel saw. 2"x2" hard maple was ordered surfaced in random lengths for table legs.
The kids furniture was 3/4" hardwood plywood mostly birch. We had tons of router jigs.
This was at a time when Scandinavian Modern furniture was big.
We did all our ripping on the radial saw and some on the panel saw. We never had a table saw in that shop!

Anyone have any stories about minimally equipped shops?

[Kevin Jenness]

I visited a professional turner's shop that was pretty stripped down. 24" long bed lathe, 36" bandsaw, bench grinder, chainsaw. It opened my eyes to what you could do without if focused.

[Carroll Courtney]

I always wonder about this, I believe that knowledge has lot to do with it where less is more and mass production is not priority. But then again trying to run business and meet all the requirements that just having a business such as insurance,taxes,rent,etc how can they survive now days

[Mark Bolton]

Focused offering of work with the demand to support it would sure make it nice to be stripped down to a small equipment package. Does seem hard to do nowadays where things move so fast. But I also know a of a couple businesses that run pretty stripped down. I know one shop that, how I dont know, makes truck load after truckload of that, low end, blast it out, primitives type stuff. Buys multiple full units of 1x10 pine and chops and slaps it together into peg hooks, dry sinks, cabinets, stars, key hooks. Gobs of disposed of, thinned down latex wash, to look like milk paint. Literally moves miles of it and the shop is covered in dust. Zero dust collection, barely a broom in sight, a small box truck, and runs a large route every so many days. Dozens if not hundreds of different items but all the same flavor, country, fast, primitive. No idea how they do it or how they can be profitable but is what it is.

That said, as Carroll mentioned, even they are having to a little forward thinking. DOT regulations for the truck are becoming an issue. If OSHA or the fire marshall ever strolled through the door it would be locked up or bankrupt almost instantly. Not to say it wouldnt be possible to do it legit but when you start adding in the extra expenses and time of dust collection equipment, keeping the shop clean, tools that meet OSHA standards, having insurance, and so on it gets difficult but not impossible. The shop you mentioned with the kids toys I have no idea how that would even be possible for a small shop on the up and up. My liability is bonkers over kids stuff. No kids furniture allowed, no toys, zero. I had asked about it at one point and the answer was dont even bother because they will simply not underwrite a policy at any rate. The liability now its in the big boys camp.

There is a lot of merit to keeping your offering very focused and specializing. Its a lot harder to be profitable when you are a varied job shop in my opinion but its equally as hard to find those select items that move at a high enough and consistent enough long term volume to support a shop. Definitely possible but tough to land on in my experience.

[Kevin Jenness]

My background is in custom cabinetry and millwork. Due to the nature of the local market and my own penchant for making what I sell in a wide variety of styles, I have wound up with a large collection of equipment, especially for milling solid wood- jointer, planer, shaper, mortisers, sliding table saw, cnc router, multiple handheld routers, vacuum press for veneer, and on and on. When I worked for a local custom design build company the situation was the same- seemed like we had to have everything in order to do anything. But the fact is that there are successful cabinet shops that get by with a panel saw or cnc, an edgebander and possibly a line and construction drill if not cnc equipped, plus a tablesaw,assembly tools and a spray booth. You can outsource many components and run a barebones shop while putting out a salable product. It's not the way I operate, but it can be done and it doesn't have to be crude.

[Andrew Joiner]

At the time wood dust was not declared toxic. We had zero dust collection. The woodshop was in the back of the companies retail store front in a trendy area of Minneapolis so it was all "above the table".
When we moved the woodshop to a bigger industrial building 2 blocks away, things got more restrictive. We were told one morning "sweep up all the dust, an insurance inspector is coming today". However nothing big changed. We still had the same minimal machinery and no dust collection. We even had a 4'x6' open vat of Watco danish oil. We worked 8 hour days breathing fumes all day

The owner was a unique guy and frugal. A woodworker but a better salesman. When I left to start my own shop he subbed out a lot of the high end custom work to me. One day he was in my shop looking at my ripping set-up on my Powermatic 66. He said "maybe we should've bought a table saw back when you first suggested it"

[Mark Bolton]

One day he was in my shop looking at my ripping set-up on my Powermatic 66. He said "maybe we should've bought a table saw back when you first suggested it"

Sounds like the typical guy that was not a butt head but a business man and made the decisions of the times that you all were tools, you got a pay check, and no one was aware of the potential issues. The kind of person that built the country. Times change.

I went to a shop auction a long while back. I would bop into his shop occasionally... knee deep in sawdust, always a cig in the mouth, drank heavy, none of those are deal breakers. Shortly thereafter big investment in new tooling, big 4 bag dust collector, new tools,.. barely any of it even got a scratch and doc's saying he has lung cancer. Long story goes longer, shop shuts, in for surgery for the lung cancer and they somehow find lungs jambed up with dust/finish/whatever. Sure cig's didnt help. Poof.. all gone for pennies on the dollar.

Dust/toxin to me is no different than arguing for the short-shafted driver of a diesel smoke jacked up 4x4 puking black smoke down the interstate to be wasteful for the sake of being wasteful. I HATE sweeping up dust and I enjoy a bit of a clean shop. Value my lungs and anyone in my shops lungs. Its a win win just like the short-shafted drivers truck getting 100 miles to the gallon. Its just plain smart. Your guy did what was the norm.