It was exactly one week ago that I first shared with you our shop. In between, I showed one small space, the finishing room, and details of the spray booth. This time I want to share with you some of the tools, using a bird’s eye view, with photos taken from the ladder that leads to the attic in the shop. Being on this ladder gave me a high angle, and using a wide angle lens gave me the spacious shots I thought would best convey the layout.
By way of background, I must explain that my wife is also a woodworker. She uses the scroll saw; wood burning tools for her pyrography work; carving using chisels and a small turbine; and she also does all the woodturning, from bowls to hollow forms to spinning tops. I make the boxes, and everything that looks like a box; this includes jewelry boxes of all types and sizes, chests, armoires, entertainment centers, and shop and kitchen cabinets, including the doors.

Before we go inside, I want to show you the shop from the outside, not in the snow, but on a wonderful and sunny afternoon just two days ago. It is nestled among many large, old trees, near the play area for our granddaughters:

OK, let’s get started with the tour of the inside. All of the following stuff is dedicated to woodworking, in one way or another. Starting from the door at the finishing room is the scroll saw; just to the right of the scroll saw are two cabinets that hold carving tools, for the most part. And at the bottom of the photo is the carving bench. On the base cabinet you can spy some of the bowls small hollow forms turned on the lathe; and several stacks of small heart-shaped boxes for the Christmas Toys for Girls & Boys to be donated by our Guild to the local program:

The same area, from floor level:

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To provide some continuity to the views, I include the following perspective shot. It shows the woodturning area, just beyond the carving bench. Immediately beyond the carving bench are a spindle sander, a chop saw, and a small cart with part of the stash of turning blanks; right behind these, and facing the lathe, is a large cabinet that holds woodturning chisels, etc.; in the far corner is the door leading to the outside; the yellow machine on the black stand is a planer, and on the far right are the router table and the Jet dust collection machine:

A floor-level shot of the woodturning area. Left-to-right: A fiber drum filled with chips from the lathe, to dip freshly turned pieces to slow down the drying to minimize the risk of cracks; just beyond the drum are the base cabinet on the floor, and the upper cabinet on the wall, both hold turning tools; on the floor is the sharpening station, and just to the right is a turning chisel holder, at the ready for use on the lathe, or to sharpen as needed; on the right is the Jet 1442 lathe. On the far right is the gray entry door into the shop:

Up to now, all the tools are for the (pretty much) exclusive use by the LOML (Love Of My Life). The next few photos will show the tools that are much more familiar to me.For continuity once more, we continue the tour with the router table on the left/center; the lumber storage area; the 17-inch band saw; disk/belt sander, and a 22/44 drum sander; the table saw/outfeed table; and, squeezed between the table saw and the router table, is the 8-inch jointer:

In case you are curious about the orange-color things on the left-hand side of the photo above: They are push blocks screwed on to cabinet door-making jigs (you can see a couple of prototype doors leaning against the drum sander). And the boxes on the router table are drawers for a cabinet I am in the process of making.This next photo gives you the perspective of roughly the same area as above, from floor-level. As you can see, it gets busy and crowded:

Again from floor level, the perspective from near the jointer, toward the sanders on the far wall, with the door-making jigs on the adjustable saw horses, just this side of the table saw:

Looking from the other side of the jointer, we can see the table saw in relation to the scroll saw and the carving area. You can also see the ladder to the attic toward the top/left corner of the photo; I stood near the top of that ladder to take the high-angle photos:

Continuing to turn to the right from the drum sander you can now see two cabinets along the far wall with mortising machine on the cabinet on the right, then the drill press, followed by another cabinet on the right-hand side, and the workbench on the near side. Those are rough, quarter-sawn sycamore boards on the bench, ready to start a new project:

If we now turn around 180° from the drill press, and look over the workbench toward the table saw, we see the following from floor level. The dust collection system is a work-in-progress, to be completed in the coming Winter months (it has been too hot in the attic to do much of anything up there, for the last several months):

Just behind the work bench is the clamp rack – I prefer to keep the clamps within easy reach. Just behind the clamp rack is an open office area; on our left is a hardware storage cabinet we picked up at a local auction; to the right of this cabinet are a filing cabinet, followed by a hot/cold water system on top of a small refrigerator; and on the far right is a peg board storage system:

Edited 9/26/2007 to add one photo:The following is our “central” pegboard system, used to store small tools. It has a relatively small footprint, compared to the wall space it could take up (much of the wall space in the shop is dedicated to old tools…). We picked up this system at an auction – it used to display video tapes at a local library. I modified it by installing beefier hinges, since these tools weigh more than videotapes:

If you slide around, and behind the clamp rack, you find the desk area:

To the left of the desk is the reference library. We have full collections of Woodsmith and ShopNotes magazines (in the white and the green binders), plus incomplete collections of WOOD and a couple of others. In addition, several books on woodturning, pyrography, cabinet design and construction, etc.; the door on the left is the access door to the air handling room, where all the electrical stuff is:

On the right-hand side of the desk is another shelving unit, to store cleaning supplies, some hardware, and a temporary storage area for cut plywood, awaiting finishing. The little room to the right of the shelving unit will be home to the Jet dust collector:

Well, THAT pretty much completes the tour. I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for looking!

Well, first Marc, and then Warren, requested additional details on my home-made spray booth.The details first:1. I used four 3/4-inch thick foam insulation sheets: One for the back, one on each side, and one for the top.
2. Foam sheets are 4 X 8 feet, about $7 each – a LOT cheaper than 3/4-inch plywood, and also a LOT lighter and easy to handle!
3. I taped all the foam edges with wide duct tape, to stiffen and protect the edges .
4. I used wide Velcro strips with the adhesive backing, so that I could stick the strips to the foam insulation.
5. I purchased a 2,200 CFM tubeaxial exhaust fan from Grainger; it has a Dayton motor. It is explosion-proof, which is probably not necessary, since I spray only waterborne coatings.
6. Although I did not do it, it might be desirable to use duct tape all along the sheet edges, to firmly attach the sides to the back. I have not found this to be necessary, except for short runs.NOTE: I believe that any high-capacity blower behind the booth will do, as long as it can somehow be attached securely to the back of the booth.

Now for the fun stuff:

On the back sheet I cut a hole which is identical to the inside diameter of the tube – this allowed me to use duct tape to secure the flange on the tube to the back:

The back sheet with metal mesh, to prevent the filters from being sucked into the exhaust system. I made a simple frame and taped it to the back with duct tape to hold the screen in place, and to allow easy changes, if needed. The black stuff is some of the Velcro strips I used to “hinge” the sides to the back:

In this next photo I show a little more detail on how the Velcro strips make up the “hinge”. One strip is simply adhered to the back of the back sheet, and the other strip is adhered to the inside surface of the side sheet of insulation (as is also shown in the photo above):

The shop is heated in winter and cooled in summer, so I tried to minimize hot and cold air losses. Discussing options with the Grainger Tech Support people led me to buy the exhaust louver system, which opens with high air flow and closes when the fan is shut off:

The finishing touch: To keep rain, snow, sleet, etc., out of the finishing room, the Love of my Life (LOML) made a Naugahyde cover for the louvers – this also helps to minimize losses of hot and cold air:

That’s it! I sure had fun creating this booth, and preparing this writeup for your enjoyment. Good night.

Al