Designing Woodshops

[bmwpower]

My Dad wants to build a new workshop. He only does woodworking, no automotive. He does paint and stain stuff. He does it outside now, but it would be nice to have an area inside the garage to paint/stain.

He's got the typical stuff: several table saws, sanders, planers, etc.

I'm familiar with how to setup a garage for automotive work, but I don't really have a clue about how to setup a woodworking shop. There's probably an order to things. Does anyone have experience with this type of garage?

What should be placed where? Can one make a small paint booth for shooting furniture, etc.

I figured some of you would have experience...

 

[Detroit Diesel Man]

The best shops I've seen flow really easily...rough stock lumber in one door and out another...rough lumber in to the Table saw,planer,jointer,..followed to the Chop saw for face frames and parts cut to length,...an assembly area and finally a seperate finish area...I build cabinets and small furniture as a side business and have my small shop set up in a double car garage..it flows length wise..in the service door with material and out the overhead door with finished product...biggest thing to think about is to set it up so your not back tracking if possible..I have my bench and my mortise & tenon machine set up next to my finish table saw and drill presscut parts to length ..make tenons/mortises drill for hinges etc...their will un doubtably always be some back tracking for certain projects but the less the better..also its good to have a small drafting area..or computer set-up for CAD...hope this helped..I have a list of some woodworking sites if you'd like a few links..also get the book by Scott Landis titled "The Workshop Book"..excellent read he also wrote
"The Workbench Book"..alot of good ideas in both.

DDM

 

[Detroit Diesel Man]

Take a look here as well..get some ideas from what others have done..


http://www.woodcentral.com/shots/shots.shtml


http://www.amazon.com/dp/1561582719/?tag=atomicindus08-20


Hope some of this helps.

DDM

 

[idoine in toronto]

There's a good book on the subject called "Setting up Shop" the practical guide for designing and building your dream shop, by Taunton press. The same people who publish "Fine Woodworking" and "Fine Home Building" magazines. I haven't studied it in much detail yet, but it does cover arranging equipment, shop layout, material storage, lighting, and also has plans for work benches and equipment carts. Lots of good ideas to get your father started.

 

[Freejack]

Dust collection is an important consideration, if you are starting from scratch, you can go under the slab, but in most cases, you'll want to go overhead for versitility's sake. There is an excellent site about dust collection sizing, materials, equipment etc: http://billpentz.com/woodworking/cyclone/Index.cfm

One thing to note, most home dust collection systems are adequate for "chip" collection, but do not so a very good job catching the paticulate matter in the air.

Jake

 

[PAToyota]

Spray booth? Just happened to come across this on the Fine Woodworking website the other day: http://www.taunton.com/finewoodworking/SkillsAndTechniques/SkillsAndTechniquesArticle.aspx?id=29677

A lot of the layout depends on what tools you have, what you are making, and how you work. One tool is the Grizzly shop planer: http://www.grizzly.com/workshopplanner.aspx

Even if you aren't using Grizzly tools you can likely find things that are about the right size of your equipment to move around and judge things.

For me, my woodshop is upstairs of my garage shop - about 32'x18' with a little office cubby at one end and the stairs downstairs at the other. Along the front wall is a continuous workbench with the miter saw in the middle of it. Cabinets underneath and cabinets and pegboard for tools above it between the four windows. Across the back of the shop is storage - more cabinets and a countertop on one half and two cabinets and lumber storage on the other half. Tablesaw, jointer, planer, sander, etc. are all on mobile bases to bring out to the middle of the floor as they are needed and moved back out of the way when not in use. Along the one sidewall is my scrollsaw and drillpress. Along the other side wall is more storage. I think the next thing that I have to do is make up a mobile assembly/work table that I can bring out for things that are larger than I can use the workbench for.

Would get some pictures up, but currently everything is torn apart and pushed to the corners to lay down the hardwood floor - which is on hold because of overtime at work...

 

[ScottC]

Check out www.woodnet.net - great forum for the "sawdust" guys...

 

[IanF]

+1

I get a few woodworking magazines and it seems half of the articles are about setting up shop and various storage systems.

Only thing else to add would be to build a seperate utility room for the dust collector and air compressor - making sure to leave enough room to service them.