My Shop: The Beginning

I have what I consider a fairly large shop and I am very thankful to have access to it. The building is owned by my mother's truss manufacturing company which is located in a small industrial park in Dothan, Al. The building I am using is one of the smaller buildings in the park but it is turning out to be a good workshop.

I have actually had tools in the shop for over a year now, I first put them in there when I was making furniture out of some reclaimed heart pine that I had easy access too and was able to get it at a good price. The economy was falling out when I started that so it seemed that no one wanted to buy furniture made out of the expensive wood. Anyways, that little venture opened my eyes up to the world of furniture making.

In the past few months I have gotten serious bout fixing the shop up and getting some quality tools inside. I have fixed a few leaks in the flat tar roof but there are still a few which I am hoping to spend some time on this week.

Here are some photos of the shop right now. The things that I have added in the past couple of months are: the 3 different sets of shelves, the Grizzly table saw, the sawhorses that are being used as lumber storage, the stackable saw horses, the small pegboard board, shop vac



Here you can see an old metal drafting table that I have been using as a workbench and an assembly table and it does neither one well. The top on the thing is warped big time so everything is out of wack that I try to assemble on the table. I usually work on the side with the drawers so thats where my clamps clamp onto and the drawers always get in the way, and the overhang isn't sufficient.

Behind that you can see a small pegboard board that I put up to get some of my handtools off the floor and the old desk, boy was this helpful although the clips in the pegboard don't stay on as good as I had hoped even with the little black clips that are supposed to help. The shelves there are some that I recently put in the shop that I got from a remodel job.



In this picture you can see my "miter saw stand" that I built with some 2x4's. It serves it's purpose to hold up longer boards when they are being cut but that is it. I plan on building cabinets down this wall with the miter saw built into them. There are my stackable saw horse, and some green metal shelving that we had in storage. I think they came out of a grocery store or something, they aren't very sturdy as they stand there because they don't have the correct bracing. I am probably going to do away with these.

There are a few sheet goods stored against the wall there and one half sheet of pegboard leaning against the metal double doors. Last but not least my new Grizzly table saw (if you look closely you can tell this picture was taken before I had the saw hooked up to 220v).



In this photo is a shelf that I built about a year ago just to get a few of my power tools off the floor. I recently put a few pieces of 1 by between the braces to hold a few clamps. Underneath that is a small table that I build while I was building my plywood sailing dingy. Also right in that area is my new Grizzly air hose reel. At this point I hadn't installed the hose on the reel yet.

Just beyond that you can see a few air hoses hanging up in the entrance to the hallway which goes back a pretty good ways. Down it are two bathrooms and a side door.

There is a poplar table that I built for a local church as an offering table. To the left of it is another area that i am currently using to store lumber and my shop smith stuff.



Here you can see the storage area with the lumber and the shopsmith. I bought the shopsmith when I was getting into the heart pine furniture in hopes that it would do everything I needed to make the furniture. It is capable of doing alot of things but not many of them very well so I think it has to go. It has the table saw, band saw, scroll saw attachments and I even have the planer/jointer.

To the right are two rickety "tables" I made out of 2x4's. One has a skil router table on it which I don't plan on using much longer. I want to build a router table and maybe incorporate the skil table into it.





Here is the front corner of the shop with some big windows that let in alot of natural light (and alot of heat!).



Here you can see the boxes that the table saw arrived in, I am keeping them few a few days to make sure that the table saw is in good working order. If something is damaged I would need the boxes as proof that the damage could have occurred during shipping. Luckily it looks like the saw is unscathed.

Just to the right of that is a table that I built out of heart pine that I am using as a desk right now. Behind that is the door to a small office that I am currently storing some of the heart pine furniture that I built in. Also you can see the 3rd shelf unit that I added to the shop recently to the right of the table.

That's about it! I plan on making alot of improvements in the next few months, maybe I can get some furniture to build too!