 |
|
|
|
|
STORAGE SOLUTIONSWhen I moved into my new shop in July of ’99, it was a 30’ x 50’ open area with about 10 steel shelving units around the walls. For awhile I left the shelving in place. It gave me somewhere to put a lot of my stuff, and I thought I had a lot of stuff. Little did know. The first order of business, the piece that would dictate the layout of the entire shop was the table saw. At this point I was still a dedicated ”Normite”, a power tool woodworker. I had already been visualizing and thinking about the placement of my “tablesaw/workstation” . I wanted to expand on my Delta 10” contractor’s table saw. I needed a large work surface with my saw at the heart of it. An area large enough that I could work comfortably with a full sized sheet of plywood, etc. Placement would be immediately inside of the door through which the large goods would enter my shop. With enough space to work with an 8’ sheet of plywood with that door closed (winter). The cabinet would provide storage for tools and equipment, a large/flat work surface, and also house the dust collector for the saw. I decided early on that for my tool stations I wanted utility grade construction (stout but ugly) with painted surfaces. The saw was placed and leveled, and the cabinet was built around it, this was necessary because of the un-level floor. NOTE…You will notice in my pictures there have been some obvious additions and changes in my shop that will appear as inconsistencies in my photos. These are because my collection of photographs from which I have pulled these pictures span about a year and a half and my shop is always changing, as I acquire tools and strive to make the shop more workable.
A lot of the stationary (as opposed to hand-held) power tools in my shop have been acquired since I moved into it in ’99. I had a compound miter saw when I moved in, but it was mounted to a small commercial tool stand. I replaced that with this cabinet. At the time I did not have a Radial Arm Saw so this was my main cross-cut tool. And once again I used this cabinet to provide storage space. Cabinet space left and right with a double bank of small drawers down the center.
The Radial Arm Saw was added a couple years after I moved in and I placed it against the wall and built a large cabinet for it. This cabinet provided another large block of storage, along with a large table surface for the saw.
It really seems as if the entire time I’ve been in my shop the major focus has been storage and keeping the floor area open enough to allow a certain amount of flow to my work. Certainly my work flow could be improved upon but then I’m not doing production type work so a little inconvenience is allowed. I’ve tried to provide storage for my tool stations and tools either onboard or near each of them. Routers…
This picture shows both my router tables, on the right is my small router table (Porter-Cable ¾ hp Model 690 router) and on the left my large router table (Porter-Cable 3 ¼ hp Model 7598 router). Each has on board storage for bits and parts and in the case of the larger one I have enough storage to keep my spare routers in it. Sharpening bench….
On my sharpening bench I have provided storage for almost all of my sharpening supplies and equipment The Exception being the granite and glass plates that I use for my Scary Sharp ™ technique and lapping the bottoms of planes. Another storage solution I’ve used is to build some short (in length) partitions that extend from the wall, creating a little more wall space. On these “walls” I created an enclosed area at the bottom with a door and an upper open area for hanging tools etc. These two walls are placed, one to each side of my lathe area. To the left of the large lathe the wall provides safe storage for glass and Plexiglas below with tool storage above and the one to the right of the small lathe is granite slabs and glass plate below and spring clamps, etc. above. The back side of the one on the right also holds my pipe clamps.
These bins contain a lot of assorted stuff I’ve collected over the years and the shelves hold paints and other chemicals, etc.
Here is a picture of wood and sheet goods storage…
I’ll end with that although the are a lot more nooks and crannies and walls that are dedicated to storage.
|
|
|
