Shop Tour

I just moved from a 1000 SF commercial warehouse to a shop in my garage and basement. I now have a bit more space (1060 SF) but it is divided up into 2 areas. This has turned out to be beneficial as I can more easily move a project from the machine area in the garage, to the handtool area, to the finish area. The doors make sure the piece will fit in the cutomer's house when it is done! Lumber storage is the biggest issue and I will be building a lumber shed behind my house to address that concern.

Here's a list of my machines:

Robland NLX-31 Combination Machine (sliding table saw, shaper, 12" jointer, 12" planer, Horizontal slot cutter)
Steel City 26" Double Drum Sander
Rikon 18" Bandsaw
Powermatic Mortiser
Ridgid 12" Lunchbox Planer
Ryobi drill press
Ridgid Spindle Sander
Rykon Disk Sander
FESTOOL Domino
FESTOOL Random Orbital Sander
FESTOOL Circular Saw
FESTOOL Jigsaw
FESTOOL Router
FESTOOL Vacuum
Dewalt Compound Mitre Saw
Delta Dust Collector
Jet Dust Collector
Jet Air Filter
And now on to the tour....

This is the main machine area (formerly the garage).


This is my Robland Combination machine, which is where a lot of the rough work is done getting the wood flat and square.


Here's my handtool area.

Here's my workbench and a hanging cabinet with many of my handplanes.

This is my assembly table and my 2 helpers. In that back corner is where I keep all my FESTOOL machines. They are used here at the assembly table.

You can never have enough clamps.

Here's the finishing area. I use hand-rubbed oil and wax finishes so it doesn't have to be a "clean room" but keeping it away from the dust is still nice.

Templates are used whenever a part has a curve. This way I can be sure that all the parts that need to be are the same.