Is your hobby woodworking or building your shop?

[George Yetka]

I feel attacked
I took a break on shop building a while back to make some cutting boards. But rest assure I'm back to setting up the shop, rebuilding drawers and hangers for my clamps. One day I may build something for outside of the garage though. Im almost ready to get into a project.

I actually have tons of materials/hardware for Box building(20 or so), pen/bottle stopper/misc turning kits(30 or so), Adirondack chair kit, toy chest. And on top of that CNC machine will finally be ready to start setting up in a week or so.

Just need more time. I get a few hours a week at most. So building a french cleat holder lets me enjoy and be able to complete.

[Tom Trees]

Does this thread involve or is it intended for something in between hobby and a profession?
If one's on a shoe string budget, and intending to get some sort of pay outta it,
then that involves lots of work on the workshop.
I can't see how one would get around that, unless not using much tooling, but even that's a stretch.

I favour machines which won't have trouble down the road, and as little cost cutting as possible,
like not having much throwaway tools, i.e universal motors
which don't seem all that universal to me, and often gets deemed for the recycling centre.
Read of plenty of lunchbox thicknessers end up like that.
Only had an angle grinder let the magic smoke out last week for example.

Something decent and cheap likely would be needing work, and is a rabbit hole which pays off, should you ever envision
a lot of work ahead, you don't want to be fiddling with the shortcomings of budget machines.
Some would rather work with wood and do all those upgrades later, but likely are in the getting paid for work category already,
and lets hope they get enough that they can get a decent machine this time round.

Either way, they are likely spending time in the shop, maybe not theirs, but the work is likely very similar.
I would sooner the extra skills and really getting to know how my machines inside and out.

Tom

[Michael Schuch]

I have never had the budget to go out and purchase a bunch of new top of the line tools but there are some tools that I have always wanted for which I keep a mental list. When a used one comes along at a price I can afford I jump on it. This past year has been a pretty busy year for acquisitions.

$200 for a Delta 19.5" drill press with Reeves drive variable speed.
$400 for a Casadei EMA KS/1400 sliding table saw with a 52" slide.
$100 for a Long arm 16" Delta turret arm radial arm saw.
$150 for a 5hp dust collector with a sizeable cyclone.
$40 for a 4' x 6' stainless optical table to be used for a perfectly flat assembly table. (I need to make a stand for this bench)

I have been keeping an eye out for some duct work for the dust collector which will be a pretty major expense if I have to purchase new. The dust collector will also be a time consuming install but each of these acquisitions take a good bit of time to fix up, organize and integrate into the shop.

[Darrell Bade]

Definitely building projects, but I am in the process of finishing the shop for the second time. Had the 32x20 80% finished in 2011. Kept building projects and finally in 2016 said I am finishing the shop before building anything else and did. Expanded my shop in 2019 to 40x32 again about 80% complete. Been building stuff since. Finally said a few weeks ago I am finishing the shop before another project. Too much stuff laying around that needs a home, wastes to much time building a project. Two wall cabinets, drawers for under the saw extensions and extending the ductwork for two machines and it will be done. Maybe by the new year if the funds hold out with today's prices.

[Warren Lake]

what darrell said ive spent way way too much time over the years trying to find stuff. People say im super organized im not but ive done what ive done and more will happen for sanity and efficiency when working. If you want to do any type of custom work you will need stuff to be able to do it and the stuff has to be stored somewhere. I pefrer wall cabinets as much as possible. Stuff is out where i can see it.

[Jim Becker]

I'm going to add that sometimes a woodworking project will spawn a shop project...kinda a "lessons learned" thing that might involve workflow or some other factor that could have been better. And, of course, sometimes a change to the shop or a new tool will spawn a woodworking project because of new or changed capability.

[Phillip Mitchell]

LOL, Jim - every time I do a project / build that I haven’t done before it pretty much always spawns at least a couple of immediate shop improvements and usually a tool/machine added to “the list” as I think of about 5 ways to improve the initial process that I fumbled through.

[Jim Becker]

Yup...that's, um...normal.

[Phillip Mitchell]

They both have to go together for me, but I do this for a living and (occasionally) as a hobby / necessity for my own household.

As Warren (and others, I’m sure) said, if you do custom stuff and want to be even somewhat efficient, you need a somewhat deep stable of stuff and you need to have it available, organized and ready to set up if there’s any hope of making a profit. I know most here are doing this as a hobby, but even then the satisfaction and ease of workflow you have from a decluttered, organized and well-outfitted shop is worth it for peace of mind.

My shop is an ongoing project with to do lists that revolve and morph as certain goals are reached and the shop is used and “lived in” for a variety of different types of projects. The shop has never been “done” since I’ve started woodworking. It’s also very small which means I have to pay a lot more attention to that type of stuff because I need use every square foot wisely.

I keep a handful of dry erase white boards in my shop and one of them is dedicated to shop improvements / upgrades, planning them out and keeping up with progress.

[David Publicover]

I seem to be mired in the shop building phase lately. I decided a year or two ago to finally revamp my one car garage shop to make it more efficient, organized and easy to keep clean. I replaced some equipment and made new storage cabinets and shelves. I was just finishing my new bench last spring when we decided to move. Now I have a much bigger shop but much work to do to get all set up. Once I’m operational I expect I’ll have plenty of projects to work on. We are doing some extensive renovations and while the main job will be contracted out, I intend to do a lot of the smaller jobs plus make some furniture for our new home.
I’ll be honest and admit that I enjoy both aspects of the hobby a lot. Why choose?

[David LaRue]

Great job picking up deals!

[Michael Schuch]

Great job picking up deals!

Thank you. All of these were picked up from businesses. A couple of the businesses were closing (one retired, one closed do to covid supply problems), another one was changing direction, and another was just cleaning out old machines (same guys that sold the $800 Inca 130 shaper to another member on here). In a typical year I might pick up one machine and often none at all. All of these except the optical table were upgrades to existing tools and just too good of deals to pass up even though I didn't have a real "need" for them. If I really needed any of these they would have been many times more expensive and unavailable on the used market.

I have wanted an optical table or a used granite ~4' x ~8' surface plate for a work bench since college physics 30+ years ago. The one I purchased doesn't have the threaded 1/4" mounting holes on the surface on a 2" x 2" grid like I was hoping. But the lack of holes has some positives as well as negatives. I will do a thread on this build when I get to it I definitely need input and ideas for this one. I am thinking the 4' x 6' size is actually going to work out much better than a 4' x 8' table in my shop.

I am working on a mobile base for the sliding table saw which is, of course, causing a reorganization of the entire shop.

[Alex Zeller]

I don't know how it's one or the other unless you either have a huge shop set up with every possible tool or if you only build the same thing over and over. As you expand on what you make you will need a tool or piece of equipment. Then there's the you started off with a contractors table saw, for example, and then upgraded to a cabinet saw (or a slider) that required a reorg of the shop to make it fit. Finally there's the "I now have enough clamps" so you are now tripping over them requiring focus on the shop to keep them handy. I don't know how your hobby can be woodworking without also focus on the place you do it.

[Jim Dwight]

You would only have to see my shop to know it's all about the projects, not the shop. It is messy constantly with a mixture of nice drawers and really crude pocket hole ones. It's all about function, not about appearance of the shop. I buy tools because I need them for a project. If I stop using them because I got something better, they leave (like my hollow chisel mortiser).

[Steve Demuth]

Making and repairing/restoring things are my primary forms of relaxation and distraction. My shop is just another tool in the belt for doing those things, and it serves woodworking, metalworking, farm mechanics, and increasingly, electronics projects. And, I really like incorporating new techniques into what I do. Learning is my only true lifelong passion. So, my shop's way too small for all the tools and materials I've tried to stuff into it, and I'm fixin' to build another one. But, the shop is not my focus, the projects are, even though inevitably, given my penchant for wanting to new things, I keep changing the shop to accommodate.