Woodworking in an Apartment

[Tom Bender]

Eventually I may have to downsize, with no place for a shop. Thinking ahead to smaller scale, with no machines or mess. The work would no longer include new pieces of furniture but I have plenty of that now. It might be a birdhouse, repair a chair, model building, artwork, etc. Looking for wisdom from those who do or have worked this way.

[jared herbert]

I have a nice fully equipped shop. I have built a lot of things here. But lately I have gotten real interested in carving. It doesn’t take much space, no noise, no dust, just some chips to s sweep up. The only power tool you need is a small bandsaw to cut out carving blanks. Give it a try

[Andrew Hughes]

Your time would best spent wood carving that’s what I did when I had to. I’m glad I did because I learned a lot about sharpening and how to read wood grain.
Here the last Santa clause I made in walnut.
Good Luck

[Ed Aumiller]

In the mid 90's I had to relocate for a year or so into an apartment in St Louis area...
I built some furniture using only hand tools. No bench, etc, just simple tools, but was able to
do it quietly.
Also learned to do stained glass since it was quiet also...
Was glad to get back to my shop when I retired !!!!

[Richard Coers]

Furniture was made for centuries without any noise nor machinery. Green wood chair making would be one. Saw it up and rive out the blanks outside. Chips and curls from draw knives and spoke shaves clean up really easily. Google gentlemen's workbench as well. FWW recently ran an article. https://www.finewoodworking.com/2019...ans-tool-chest

[Ed Aumiller]

Check out the "Neanderthal Haven" forum on this website also.....

[Ed Mitchell]

In addition to hand-tool woodworking (to minimize space requirements, noise and dust) you might consider getting an apartment not too far from a so-called "maker space".

[David Bassett]

Barry (Dima?) of FWW has, on their podcast, talked about an apartment shop. He's found some things that surprised me, but made sense after he explained. E.g. pounding out mortises by hand is not quiet, so a hollow-chisel mortiser is something he found important.

[Bill Dufour]

Search for Koza Hiraoka who made live steam engines in his Tokyo apartment.
Bil lD

https://www.craftsmanshipmuseum.com/Hiraoka.htm

[Tom Bender]

Ok, Mr Hiraoka has completely intimidated me. I will not be building model steam engines. But my hands will keep busy. And it's still years off, hopefully.

Thanks for the FWW article. Lots of ideas there though a working bench/cabinet would be more appropriate than a storage/display piece.

[Jim Dwight]

When I was first married we lived in a two bedroom apartment. I moved in with a queen sized matress and boxed spring and a fold leaf table that was my grandfathers. I bought a couple wood chairs at Walmart. I set up the spare bedroom for woodworking. I put a canvas drop cloth over the carpet. I had a small table saw, a few hand tools, a belt sander and a router. I reached an agreement with the upstairs neighbors about when I would be making noise and built a headboard and footboard, a kitchen table and four chairs, a sofa frame, loveseat frame etc.. It was all crude stuff of construction lumber but we used it for years. The sofa folded down into a double bed. It and the loveseat got used the longest. Not everything worked the first time but we still got a lot of usefullness out of the things I made in that apartment. We were there less than 3 years. I've always lived in a house since.

The key for me was the agreement with the neighbors about noise. Woodworking isn't really worse than some peoples loud music. If I was to do this again, I hope I don't have to, I would probably scale down to a portable table saw, track saw, quieter shop vac, etc.. But I would not go hand tools unless I absolutely had to. Too slow for me.

[Gary Ragatz]

Lee Valley sells plans for an Apartment Workbench of the type described in the FWW article mentioned above.

https://www.leevalley.com/en-us/shop...n?item=05L2501

I considered it, but decided it was a little more elaborate than I wanted to build.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

I really like it.... very nice!

[Tony Shea]

I worked in an apartment spare bedroom for over 5 years. This is really how I started woodworking and is what spurred me to go down the hand tool rabbit hole. I personally am very pleased with the fact I had these limitations starting out and required me to develop hand tool skills before I was able to get into the power tool side of woodworking. I learned how to flatten and thickness and flatten rough with hand planes and became extremely efficient at it. Because of this I learned everything I could about the use of hand planes and how to tune them to suit my needs. I've eventually collected a very close to full set of LN planes but much of this work was originally done with Stanley planes that were tuned up. I also learned how to cut all the important joints with hand tools and really dialed in my sawing and chisel techniques, along with using specialty joinery planes. There is nothing better than knowing that if I have power tool issues I would have no issue with creating or finishing a piece with hand tools. One of the best skills I've learned from hand tool work is learning to sharpen my tools razor sharp and do it efficiently.

Eventually I ended up with an 18" bandsaw and a drill press in the extra bedroom in the apartment. The apartment was on the second floor of the building so getting those tools up there was very difficult but was well worth the effort. As a hand tool woodworker a bandsaw was really the only tool I lusted over for some time. I also built a Roubo bench up there which I did make using Benchcrafted bench bolts in order to take it down once we moved. I will say that I eventually became concerned about the weight I had on the second floor of this old building and was happy to move out when we did. Now we own our house and have setup a shop in the basement. This still isn't the most ideal situation but I do have room for a table saw, jointer/planer combo, bandsaw, dust collector, drill press, and the big Roubo workbench.

Long story short, I was able to woodwork till my heart was content in an apartment and actually really enjoyed it. I had the room setup really efficiently and really enjoyed the aspect of being close to the living room and kitchen so I still was able to interact with my fiancée while woodworking. That is probably the thing I miss the most about my last apartment shop, I was close enough to the living room that I could literally have conversations with her while in different neighboring rooms. Now that I go down in the basement I have to completely isolate myself in order to woodwork. I don't think you necessarily have to stop building furniture and transition into something like carving, you just need to re-evaluate the way you work wood. Having said this, now that I own a jointer/planer combo machine I would be really hard pressed to want to go back to dimensioning rough stock by hand again. It's fun for a board, maybe 2 but after that it becomes a chore.