As I mentioned in my last post, the new workshop is going to open up a lot of options for the projects I work on. Previously I had two workspaces, a 9′ (2.75m) x 3.5′ (1m) space in the spare room of my apartment and a 2.5′ (0.76m) x 4′ (1.2m) mobile work bench in my parent’s garage.
Old Apartment Workshop
Old apartment workshop, much cleaner than usual for photo day
The apartment space was nice but limited in size. As can be seen, with a CNC machine and a 3D printer there was hardly any clear workspace left over and minimal storage. There wasn’t any room for more tools and all projects had to be packed away if I wanted to work on something else. Another limitation was the requirement to keep the noise levels down while working. This meant that my CNC machine had to have a low power spindle instead of using a full speed router. The limitations of apartment living is one of the reasons I got into hobby electronics. If I had access to a wood shop at the time I don’t think I would have spent the time playing with Arduinos and other apartment friendly hobbies.
My other space was this mobile work bench that I kept in my parent’s garage. The bench is a modified version of this design from Wood Magazine.
Mobile Workbench
As can be seen it is equipped with a drill press, disk sander, wood lathe and a grinder. When not in use it tucked neatly away in a corner of the garage it was design to fit into. The downside of this set-up was that my parent’s place was a 20 minute drive from my apartment. This meant that a small job that took half an hour would require two hours to complete when travel time, set-up and clean up were taken into account. Having my shop in the basement will mean that travel time will be counted in seconds and I will have all of my tools set up and ready to go once I get there. As with the apartment, space was at a premium. In my new shop I hope to have room for the combination of a table saw/ jointer/ thickness planer which will allow me to take on more traditional woodworking projects. I also hope to incorporate metal working equipment in the form of a mill and/or lathe that I simply didn’t have room to consider before. The extra floor space and the fact that I don’t have to put everything away to make room for a car when I’m done, will allow me to work on projects that are physically bigger in size.