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.

My basement shop is a little more than 1,500 sq. ft. including a dust collection room and bathroom. There is a large laundry sink in the bathroom. I also have a 240 sq. ft. finishing room at the rear of the garage. The finishing room and basement workshop are connected by double doors and a 6′ wide stairway. This is great for bringing materials in and taking projects out. The finishing room is also used to store a 5′ x 10′ trailer for getting materials. There is also a traditional stairway from the shop to the living area of the house.

Some of the unique features of the shop include six 3′ x 5′ daylight windows and a 9′ foot ceiling. The shop has color correcting fluorescent lights like those used in paint shops. A dedicated electrical panel provides power to the 110V and 220V outlets that are spaced about every 3′ and 50″ off the floor. The shop stays about 60 to 70 degrees year around. Anti-fatigue mats cover the floor. The ceiling and walls have two layers of drywall with sound resilient channel between the layers. There is blown cellulous insulation in the walls and ceiling. The dust collection room has additional sound proofing and also houses the air compressor. All this creates a good sound barrier to the living area of the house above. The shop has a 37″ flat screen TV connected to a stereo. The sound can be transmitted via a long range FM transmitter so that I can listen to music or TV thru my headphones even with equipment running.

My primary equipment includes a Steel City 3HP granite top cabinet table saw, Festool Kapex miter saw, Grizzly 2HP 17î bandsaw, Dewalt 20″ scroll saw, Grizzly 3HP oscillating edge sander, Grizzly floor standing oscillating spindle sander, Grizzly 12″ baby drum sander, 5HP 38″ Woodmaster drum sander, Delta bench top disc sander, Delta 17″ drill press, Jet 2HP full size lathe, 3HP router table, Grizzly 3HP 15″ spiral head planer, and a Grizzly 3HP 8″ spiral head jointer. A collection of Festool power tools compliments the stationary tools. There is a 4′ x 8′ vacuum press for veneering. The dust collection and air filtration for the shop is an Oneida 5HP cyclone dust collector and two Jet overhead air cleaners.

The work tables include a 20″ x 40″ sanding table, 4′ x 8′ worktable with a shelf underneath for storing the current project, a 38 x 76 traditional hardwood workbench with more project storage underneath, a miter saw station with two 8′ wings and ruled stops for quick and repeatable cuts, 7′ x 4′ table saw out feed table with offcut storage underneath, two 48î x 26î rolling cabinets, and 3 Festool multifunction tables. The Festool MFTs are the most used work surfaces in the shop. In all there are 55 shop made drawers plus a few cabinets for storing hand tools and supplies. A couple of long shelves are used for storing veneer. The clamp rack holds over a hundred clamps of varying sizes. The 4′ x 8′ lumber rack holds stick lumber, sheet goods and two large rolls of waxed and unwaxed paper.

Technical notes: Press the small play button under the video otherwise you’ll be pushed to Ustream. Also, I have no control over the commercial that plays in front of the video. Ustream is a free service and they force ads into the videos to cover their costs. And finally, you’ll notice the audio clips quite frequently. That’s what happens when you do a surprise demo using a cheap webcam.

This hall table project comes all the way from the land down under and is submitted by Carl. The structure is reminiscent of a bridge and its a form that works well for this piece. And although the offset drawer begs the question, “Why?”, I believe there is a very simple answer: “Why not?”. Let’s check it out:

I thought I would submit this viewer project to you as I am so damned proud of it. It’s my first piece of “fine furniture.” I built it as part of a Hall Table Course I did here in Melbourne, Australia. It’s made from Tasmanian Blackwood and has recycled Jarrah stretchers and drawer handle. For most of the joints we used the Domino although I did make my own loose rectangular tenons to fit between the bottom stretchers.

We went through everything from dimensioning the rough lumber, selecting our pieces to match the grain pattern, assembling and finishing. Six sessions in all. I made a few mistakes along the way but all were easily fixed and can’t be seen in the finished product. The handle and stretchers were rough cut on the bandsaw and then I finessed them by hand to get it all looking good. All the other work was done using the usual tools … tablesaw, bandsaw for the inside tapers on the legs, hand scrapers and hand planes.

The finish is Organoil Hard Burnishing Oil. It’s a natural, organic oil with a lovely lemon scent! Sanded up to 400 grit, applied the oil and then sanded with the oil on the timber to create a slurry (this has the effect of sealing the wood.) I continued sanding with the ETS on the oil/slurry all the way up to 4000 grit! Then some EEE (Tripoli) and wax to finish it up nicely. I’m really proud of the final result and it now stands proudly in our hallway for anyone to see as soon as they come into our home.

Thanks again for all your incredible work and sharing your gift with the rest of us. It really does inspire. There are heaps of pics on my Flickr page. There is also a WIP discussion on the woodworking forums.

Here are a few other reviews and comparisons that you might want to check out:
Mike Heidrick’s Comparison on Sawmill Creek
Tom Hintz’s Review at New Woodworker
Professional Power Tool Guide Review
Festool’s Tracksaw Site

Here are a few shop pictures, we finished it’s construction about 6 months ago. It is about 1400sf inside and has a 200a service to it. I have a 10hp three phase converter as well. Building it allowed me to carefully place outlets, lights, fans etc. It is basically livable with AC/heat, it has a 1/2 bath and at the end we included a separate guest house (mostly to get the drums out of the house, per my wife’s endless requests). It is pretty full at this point with the recent addition of a JLT panel clamp, which was very worthwhile because having a dedicated clamping area has been well worth the sacrifice of space. As you can see I have a large Festool area set up with 4 MFT’s, which has been where the vast majority of the work takes place. The shop is very long (65′) so I was able to place all the tools that need dust collection at one end in order to minimize pipe runs. The undersized Oneida 1.5 hp collector I have needs to be replaced but I have not got around to that yet. This has been the first time we have had a garage in about 9 years, when I began woodworking, and it is awesome to have the dedicated space. Thanks for your witty, experienced contribution to our beloved craft.

And perhaps the most exciting part of the video is at the end when I announce the Fecool Giveaway Prize for May, a brand new MFK700 Trim Router.

I’m having a dust collection dilemma. As with a lot of entry level woodworkers, I’ve blown my tool budget on power tools many times over. (I just bought a new Powermatic PM2000 table saw for Christmas) For the past few years, my only form of dust collection has been a Delta air scrubber and a shop-vac to clean up at the end of a project. I’ve been debating between investing in the Festool system or a cyclone type stationary collector. I see the benefits of both. However, I only have the funds for one of the two right now. Would you recommend trying to collect the fine dust of sanding and routing or the larger dust from stationary tools first?

And here was my reply:
Hey Jason. The first thing I would do is pick up a $35 respirator. That will then take the pressure off of the next purchase. If the dust cant get to your lungs, you are one step ahead of the game. Now, as you said, you definitely need both in the long run. But, you already have a shop vac that can be used as a dust extractor for sanding. It might take some clever fitting, but you should be able to get it to work. If you can put a HEPA filter on the unit and use vacuum bags, you are even better off. So that should do just fine until you have the funds for a high quality system like Festool. So, my suggestion is get the large tools taken care of first. Then build up the system from there. But keep that respirator on anyway just to be safe. It might be overkill, but you do plan on doing this for a long time, don’t you? Good luck Jason. And congrats on that PM2000!

Note** – I have already received several emails asking me which respirator I recommend. The 3M 7500 (pictured above) is my favorite.

There were six guys in our group, and all of them were involved in tool sales. They were a really nice bunch of guys too. Our trainer, Steve Bace, picked us up promptly Monday morning in a Festool-labelled truck. I was somewhat disappointed that his vehicle was not Green and Black with a vacuum hose attached to the tail pipe. I guess Festool hasn’t made one of those yet. Class began every day with a hearty breakfast followed by lecture-style instruction and tool review. And lecture only gets you so far, so each day we would spend a large majority of our time in the shop working with the tools. I was drowning in a sea of green and black. Someone pinch me! Multi Function Tables everywhere, Systainers (Festool’s tool cases) stacked everywhere, and a giant store display against the wall. It really was like a tool candy store.

Obviously there is no way for me to tell you everything I learned, but suffice it to say I am now pretty well-versed in the functions and features of every tool Festool sells. Yes……I am that cool. :) But I do have a few tools that really stood out in my mind as cool. First, was their PS 300 Jigsaw. I don’t know about you guys but the jigsaw is pretty much a forgotten tool in my shop. I only use it when I absolutely must and I never look forward to the experience. Whether its poor blade tracking, blade warpage, or tearout, something is bound to bite me in the butt. After working with the PS300 for a few hours, I am starting to rethink the possible uses for a jigsaw in my shop. This saw repeatedly produced tearout-free, straight and perpendicular cuts. Just look at the picture where we cut out two blocks of wood from the end of a 4×4. There is no way I could do that with my jigsaw.

The second thing was the Festool C12 drill. In many cases, a drill is a drill is a drill. Obviously some are better than others but they all drive screws. But the C12 actually has a brushless motor which means incredibly long life. Steve mentioned that Festool stopped testing how many screws this drill would drive before dying at 1 million. Apparently, if you invest in the c12, it will probably be the last drill you ever buy. Another amazing feature was this drills low-speed torque control. Ever have a screw that is sitting just proud of the surface and you want it to be just slightly recessed. With most drills, you will either try to drive it further and overshoot your depth, or you will have to back the screw out and start over. With the C12, you can simply continue driving the screw at a super low speed until the screw is exactly where you want it. You have complete control. Pretty cool.

I would like to thank both Festool and Steve for this experience. Steve was one of the most knowledgable “tool guys” I have ever had the pleasure of dealing with. When a guy tells you several things you didn’t know about a tool you’ve owned for 2 years, you tend to listen up. So anyway, this is by no means an advertisement and I hope it isn’t interpreted as such. I was very excited about this opportunity (just ask the people in the chat room), and I wanted to share my excitement with you.