I am currently in the process of moving my shop to a larger commercial location across town. This is where it all started for my business though…a 470 sq ft. shop in the detached 2 car garage of my house. When we moved to this house 4 years ago, it was nothing more than a run down garage with a rotten wooden door and exposed framing. I re-roofed the garage before I got started on the inside. The entire space was insulated and dry walled. After that I ran 60 amps from the house to a sub panel and a 1 inch gas line for a heater.

The shop has evolved over the last 4 years like most shops do. Shortly after moving in, I replaced my Delta contractor’s saw with a Uni-saw and my 6 inch Craftsman jointer with an 8 inch Delta. The shop is fairly well equipped and for the most part, met all of my needs. While working in this shop, I out sourced my finishing and many completed projects ended up living in the dining room for a few days awaiting delivery, due to the lack of space. My new shop has a spray booth, large air compressor to power the shop, a drum sander, and lots more space for finishing, assembly, and storage.

I plan on keeping the same idea of layout and efficiency that I currently have in the new shop. The cabinets along the back wall are all from sam’s club and are great for hiding away all my hand and power tools. I will post a new shop tour when I get all set up in the new space. Hope you all enjoy!

My shop is approximately 600 square feet in a 2,500 square foot building. There is also an 8′x13′ finishing room on the mezzanine above the shop and two wood racks along the shop and back wall. When needed (like on a recent project where I had a commission for 5 dressers with upper hutches), I spill out to the other 1,900 square feet.

Major power tools are 10” Delta tablesaw with custom wing, 12” Power King bandsaw with the Carter scrolling guide, Jet 14” bandsaw for ripping and resawing, Sommerfeld router table with Triton router, 15” Jet planer, Craftsman 6” belt/9” disc sander, Jet oscillating spindle sander, 12” DeWalt miter saw, Craftsman drill press, 8” Grizzly jointer, Jet 22-44 oscillating drum sander, Oneida cyclone dust collector and Jet DC-650 (that is dedicated to the Jet 22-44ODS, sanding and vacuuming the floor). Tucked away under the stairs to the mezzanine is a 150 gallon compressor. Also present are a Foley-Belsaw circular blade sharpener, belt grinder, Tormek and hand saw filer. You might have also noticed the torsion box top sitting on saw horses and the outfeed table (which has an insert for when I want to use it as a downdraft table.

I have a decent selection of clamps, but honestly need more parallel clamps of the smaller (18” to 24” range) size. Most of the clamps are either in the framing of the mezzanine or hanging along the edge. I also made clamping cauls on the jointer to reduce the number of clamps required for glue ups.

Although I started out as a Normite, I’d say the shop is becoming more and more blended. I have to give Marc credit here. It would likely have been a long time before I knew about or purchased a router plane, for example, but have used it countless times. I know it has improved the quality of my power tool joints. I included a couple of photos of some of the handtools. My #7 and #51 Lie-Nielsen’s were tucked under the bench, as well as my DMT and Shapton sharpening stones.

I’m sure I am missing stuff, so please feel free to ask questions. You can also take a look at the Facebook page. There are more detailed photos there. Also, very quickly about me…I’m an architect by training and started woodworking when I was in my teens (I’m now in mid 30’s) under my grandfather’s watch. Still it’s only very recently that I began pushing to get a shop set-up, tuned up and running in order to make projects for myself, family and commissions.

The images were taken in between projects and originally intended for updating the insurance records, but I thought I’d post them here too. For what it’s worth, since I started vacuuming the shop instead of sweeping, it seems to stay cleaner and also cleans up faster. BUT, for those of you who hate clean shop photos…don’t worry, it is trashed now!

My workshop was bought to life after a long awaited trip around Europe was cut short (4 months short to be precise). Upon my return to Australia, I had a rather generous amount of money still left in the bank and instead of throwing it at something like a new car or using it as a deposit on a house, I decided to invest it in something I had always loved…woodworking!

I aim to create a space that is capable of taking me from being a hobbyist as I am now, to one day becoming a professional woodworker. At age 20, I still have a long way to go but I have plenty of time!

I already had a good selection of handheld power tools, but machinery was something I had to start from scratch with so I started the spending spree with my 10” table saw. Although its not the best table saw in the world, it does a good job and with a bit of a tune, it performs very well.

After my table saw purchase,new tools kept finding their way into my shop. The first of which was a thickness planer. Naturally I would need to get a jointer to accompany my planer. I had heard that the local machinery shop had a special on their 8” long bed jointer, so there I was in the car with the credit card and on my way!

With the jointer, I noticed a huge improvement in the quality of my work and as I got more confident and started tackling bigger projects, I noticed that I started “needing” new tools, so eventually a 14” band saw, drill press, disk/belt sander, drum sander, a second 6” jointer, a scroll saw and an oscillating spindle sander found their way into the shop.

This is where my shop stands at the moment and I am very happy with it. I really enjoy making contemporary chairs and coffee tables. Currently I’m working on a fairly big project, a bent lamination dining room table that I’m documenting on my website. I also do a bit of restoration work here and there and in the future, I hope to get into some projects involving marquetry, oh and possibly I would like to get into making some wooden jewelry too.

Who doesn’t love a lot from a little. So this is my shop; its the corner of the front room of a one bed room apartment in NY. With a little creativity, I have turned it into a full cabinet shop. The space is 8 feet by 10 feet.
1- saw stop
1- Powermatic drill press
1- Powermatic band saw
1- Festool table
1- Powermatic 6″ jointer 52″ bed
1- router table
1- lather
5- sanders
2- Festool vacuums attached to 2 cyclone filtration canisters inline for max suction and dust removal
1- air filter
1- tool chest, and all the festoons you can imagine as well as a planer (I roll that outside) and a compound miter saw.

Behind the saw is the couch and TV to the living room. So when its work time, I pull that tarp up and turn on the air filter to isolate the room and create a laminar flow into the filter. I’ll tell you for the last 2 years the system has worked! Thanks Marc for the lessons. Time to make some dust!

And check out my walnut coffee table to see what you can really do in a small space.

Not much to say about my shop. Doesn’t get any more basic. I’m not a hand tool guy and can do most anything on machines. The photos were taken shortly after the shop was rebuilt due to a fire. Not much of a story behind the shop. My shop was my place of employment for about 25 years. It burned to the ground in 2011 and was rebuilt. Not all that exciting, all the tools were brought in on a single delivery, so it was an insta-shop. I’ve tried to turn over a new leaf by keeping the shop clutter and dust free. Just tools and supplies that are needed daily, the rest gets stored in the sheds. I think the only things that are not in the photos are the dust collector (cyclone out back) and small power tools like routers , dominoes and sander type tools. I keep those stuffed in the cabinets and drawers. I’ve really tried to become more of a minimalist instead of a tool junkie. As a recovering Festool junkie, its difficult but I seem to be on the road to recovery.

Our shop is set up in a 24′x 24′ garage in a residential neighborhood. The shop is fully insulated including the garage door, with an AC unit in the side door. I say “our” shop, because to my great fortune, my wife enjoys woodworking nearly as much as I do. We mainly build furniture for our house and as gifts for our family.

The main machines are a Felder KF700P saw/shaper (90″distance left of blade with slider/outrigger) and Felder AD 741 16″ jointer/planer. When my wife and I went to the Felder open house a few years back, she saw how easy and safe it was to cut a piece of plywood or heavy plank, and she was sold! The precision and safety of these machines is remarkable. The bandsaw is a PM1800, drum sander is a Jet 22-44 OSC and the Shopsmith, I inherited from my father.

The dust collection is performed by a Delta 50-850 modified with the 4″ restrictor plate removed and Thien baffle installed. The duct is all 6″ tapered to 5″ at the machine drops. The runs are short, and the performance of the Delta is nothing short of miraculous compared to the stock setup with 4 inch ducting. If you have this collector, these modifications are easy and highly recommended.

On a quick note, we recently bought the PM1800 bandsaw after much deliberation and testing of the major European brands in 18-24″ sizes. There is very little out there as to reviews on this machine, so if you are interested about it, let me know. All I will say is that it is really a monster of a bandsaw, with a versatility that few of the other saws offer.

Hope you enjoy the tour, and I just wanted to give a public thanks to my wife for making all of this possible! Also, thanks to all others who have posted shop tours, they are VERY enjoyable to look through.

My shop is a two car garage where no cars live. I have one wall dedicated to lumber storage, one for my work bench area, and one for racks holding equipment. Lots of storage has been squeezed in. All my large equipment is on wheels because most of the year it’s sunny out and the drive apron expands the working space a ton. Great natural light too. At the end of the day, everything gets rolled back in. It works out great!

Thanks to Marc for shop set up tips and ideas on how to get the most out of a small space. Plus the shop machine maintenance and set up guides have really helped. The videos on projects and instruction are awesome!

I decided to start woodworking about two years ago after my wife, Michelle and I went shopping for a new bedroom set. We visited the local furniture mart and Michelle found a set that she liked. It looked nice and each piece was priced around $500. When I asked the salesman what it was made out of, he talked in circles for a minute or two, fed me a line of BS, then walked away to ask his manager. It certainly was not hardwood and didn?t seem any better than the IKEA stuff we had. Frustrated, I left the furniture store and made a decision to start building my own furniture.

I went to my local big box store and loaded up with tools that I thought I needed. I somewhat successfully built my first project–a bookcase for Michelle. I had some real problems with the finishing process. Frustrated with how the bookcase looked, I took a hammer and just start beating the crap out of it. It was literally one of those “tiger got out of the cage” moments. Michelle heard all the pounding and expletives coming from outside and quickly ran to see what was wrong, fearing that I might have already injured myself during my inaugural build. Seeing the look on her face as I was turning her bookcase into kindling, I realized that injuring myself would have been far better than the wrath I was about to endure for ruining her bookcase. Needless to say, I made “nice” and managed to salvage the project and turned it into a bench. From that moment it became clear that it was going to take a lot more time, practice, tools and most of all patience to build furniture!

Over the past couple of years, my shop has gone through a couple progressions. I bought a cheap Delta table saw and Dewalt router from CL and built a couple more projects with some major issues as I continued to struggle. Not happy with the performance of my cheap table saw, I decided to try the all hand tool route. I sold my table saw, router and some of the other unnecessary power tools. Talk about biting off more than I could chew. I loved the idea of working with hand tools, but not the results I was getting. It is a slow, tedious and somewhat difficult process to learn for a new woodworker. It was driving me crazy and I was ready to quit. I took some time off and tried to figure out what it was that I was trying to accomplish. I figured out that I did not have to live in a world with only hand tools or only power tools. I now think of my shop and woodworking as a constant progression and try to enjoy the process as much as the end result. For me there is no finish line, timeline or deadline only enjoying time spent in the shop when I can.

This is my shop in its current state, part of a large one car garage. My workbench is a very basic and inexpensive design. Two IKEA tops laminated together with 3/4? dog holes drilled into it. The top sits on a base built out of 2 X 4?s joined together with pocket holes. Not super sexy, but after I added bench dogs, wonder pups and a couple of Gramercy Holdfasts, it became very functional. I also added a T8 light above the bench that I got from Home Depot for about $40. On the bench are a few of my hand tools. I have two LN independence saws, one filed crosscut and the other rip. I have a Veritas Plow Plane, Router Plane, Spokeshave, LN block plane, Stanley Jack Plane Type (Type 14), Tite Mark and Veritas marking gauges and a Blue Spruce marking knife (worth splurging for). On the back of the bench I have a set of LN chisels, two Buck Brothers pairing chisels (wood handles made in Maine) and a Starrett combination square. Underneath my bench is where I store a very generic version of a tool chest, its actually a footlocker from a deployment I went on a few years ago and has come in very handy for storing my hand tools until I can build a legit tool chest. Inside of it I have a Stanley hand brace, Jennings pattern bits, sliding bevel, winding sticks and a couple other miscellaneous tools.

To the right of my bench is my sharpening station. I use Shapton 1000, 4000, and 8000 grit stones, a DMT duo sharp (coarse/fine) to flatten my stones, a Veritas MKII honing guide and a Rockler LED light courtesy of a monthly drawing on The Wood Whisperer site. The surface is just a piece of 3/4″ MDF bolted on top of what used to be the base for my table saw. The Ridgid jointer is a recent addition found on CL. I was not in the market for a jointer but it was only $100. It was in pretty poor shape–there was a lot of surface rust and it needed some serious TLC. After a couple days of hard work, all the rust was off and it looked pretty good. As far as functionality its okay, but I am not in love with it. The bed is short, its finicky to adjust, its only 6? wide and it I don’t like the amount of tearout I am getting, but it was only $100. Right behind the jointer is where I store my parallel clamps, nothing fancy but it works.

The planer was my first power tool addition. Its a Delta 12 1/2″, 2 knife lunchbox style planer that I got off CL. This was a great find, I bought it from an older guy and it looked like he had only used it once or twice. The manuals where still in plastic unopened and it came with the mobile base. Its only a two-knife plane so I take very little off each pass; it takes little longer but sure is easier to thickness a board with the planer then by hand.

My newest power tool addition is a Grizzly G1022 ProZ, contractor style table saw with a Shop Fox Classic Fence. Another CL find and the one I am most proud of. It was almost a two hour drive to pick it up, but well worth it. The saw is in great shape, with limited use and very well taken care of. It came with a mobile base that the previous owner built, but I added the drawers, which are from Lee Valley and excellent for extra storage in my small shop. I added a couple of accessories–an Infinity Super General Combo blade, Onsrud Rip and Dado blades (eBay finds recommended by Knotscott). I have not used either of the Onsrud blades so I can’t offer any personal experience but from what Knottscott told me about them, some various opinions around the Interwebs and their very reasonable pricing, I am confident they were a good buy. Can’t forget about the safety equipment–3M respirator and a Grr-Ripper, which is a must have, love that thing! Oh and of course a WW push stick!

There is a very basic outfeed table behind my table saw. Under the outfeed table is my temporary dust collection system. Its a Dust Right Vortex Dust Separator hooked to a shopvac. The shopvac is loud and not the greatest when it comes to DC but it gets the job done.

Finally, we have what serves as my assembly table. Just a piece of plywood mounted between two beams in my garage. On the table is a Ryobi grinder, storage cabinet for screws and favorite new toy?I mean tool, a Festool CXS drill! Oh yea and a pair of Festool safety glasses.

I have an idea of where I want my shop to go over the course of the next couple of years but nothing is set in stone. I will just let my projects dictate my next couple of shop upgrades and continue to enjoy the process of working wood. I will post all of the shop updates on my blog www.jamscroll.com

Hi folks! I always wanted to build small furniture and musical instruments but I only have about one quarter of my basement available for a shop. Nevertheless, I managed to cram in a contractor table saw with an out feed table and router table attached, a press drill, small belt sander, jointer, portable thickness planer, a mitre saw my brother-in-law gave me (thanks Jean!), a sink, compressor, homemade dust collection system and air filter, and an always-too-small workbench. In order to still be able to work and go around the equipment, I installed some of them (the planer and mitre saw) on slides and the jointer is on casters so I can stash it under the mitre saw. It’s not perfect, but it’s workable!

My shop is located in the lower level of my home. Three years ago we relocated to this home and one of the requirements was to have a dedicated space for a workshop area other than having to share with the car and lawn mower and be able to work in the winter months.

The space is made up up two areas that are separated by double doors. The combined space is 730 square feet. There are double doors that open to the outside for bringing in materials and machinery.

My heavy tools are located in the larger shop area and the other area is used for assembly and finishing. I have all of my tools installed on mobile bases so they can be rolled quickly to where they are needed. I use a Jet roll-around dust collector plus a JDS air filtration unit to reduce dust from getting into the living area. A feature that I never had in my shops until this one is a large utility sink that makes clean-up easier after those finishing projects. When possible, I try to use water base finishes.

My tool storage is in drawers and tool boxes located around the shop area. Storage for clamps is on a Rockler roll-around clamp rack. The Rocker clamp rack has several shelves that I used to store my glue and other items needed when doing a glue-up and has worked much better than a fixed wall-mounted rack. I have reorganized my work areas several times but the current setup works great.