• Hauling iced teas and coke out to the workshop refrigerator.

• Putting away the boxes of Christmas decorations you’ve been moving out of the way since January.

• Wondering where in hell you put your measuring tape and gloves this time.

And

• Wondering how the hell the shop got this messy since you swore you cleaned it last fall and didn’t actually spend all that much time in it over the winter.

(Yes, spring is horribly late this year in the Pacific Northwest.)

My father-in-law was a woodworker, and when he died we were faced with what to do with his shop, I wasn’t a woodworker at the time so we had little use for his tools and stash of wood. So we gave his tools away to some woodworking friends of ours (and took a lot of flack from relatives for not selling them). His wood stash ended up in a friends barn with the idea that I’d trade wood for woodworking.

Some of wood was indeed traded off as planned, but most of it just sat in the barn. In time I became a woodworker too… The friend who has stored it all these years is in the process of remodeling his shop/barn, and knowing my remodeling was essentially complete, he asked me to come get it. (Fair enough, it’s been six years.)

Today we unloaded the wood into my shop.

(The left hand stack is pine. The next one over is oak – there are three more boards just like amazing one on top. The next, Alder – some if it spalted. Finally some walnut and maple.)

Handling the wood brought back a rush of memories. I remember being in his shop as Dad worked on a project. He was a careful and thorough woodworker who got great joy out of building things for the house and for those he loved. He’d smile the biggest happiest smile you ever saw as he thought about the recipients using and enjoying the fruits of his labor.

Here in the house we have so many things that Dad built… within arms reach is a bookcase he gave us for our first anniversary. In my shop are two sets of shelves he built for the storage room in our first house. He built the coffee table I rest my feet on at the end of day, and lamp the lights our living room. (And they were in his living room for many years.) In my wife’s studio are two shelves he built… And so much more throughout our house.

I’ll forever be forever saddened that the tiny spark of interest in woodworking he ignited didn’t flare into a fire until it was too late to learn from him. Thank you Dad for that gift.

So without further delay, here’s the before-and-after pictures with some updates on how the shop arrangement is currently planned:

North wall before remodeling:




North wall after remodeling:





The open space is where She Who Approves Tool Purchases (AKA, the LOML, my Lady Wife) parks her car on winter weekday evenings and where the big machine tools are pulled out into for use. On the left is the tool parking area. I did some preliminary figuring earlier today, and I think I reverse the positions of the (not quite visible in this picture) jointer and planer and the table saw and possibly be able to have a permanent place for the saw (with outfeed table) and plenty of clearance front and back.

East wall before remodeling:




East wall after remodeling:





Here you can see the tool parking area a little better, along with the storage along the East wall. Long term, these shelves will be replaced by something that fills the whole wall and with lumber/cutoff storage up near the ceiling.


Storage shelves (visible in the picture above):




South wall before remodeling:




South wall after remodeling:





You can see on the left how convenient the new shelf position makes the toolboxes to my workbench. On the open area of wall to the right of the bench will be a french cleat system for storing clamps and frequently used tools. Roughly where the box (my drill press) is sitting I should be able to fit in a proper woodworking workbench with access from both sides.


My current bench (seen in the picture above):




West wall before remodeling:




West wall after remodeling:





This wall houses my miter saw (barely visible on the right, I need to add some lights in strategic places) and soon my drill press. Long term my current miter saw will get a better workstation built here.


My current miter saw workstation:





Now the real work begins – I’ve got a ton of tool sorting, storage sorting, shop projects, etc… to do. But it’s starting to come together like a real shop!

I’m in my shop trimming up some plywood. In walks R. Lee Ermy who admires my work and gives me some pointers on (whatever it was I was doing, this part of my dream wasn’t clear). He asks me to explain the construction of a set of shelves (which in actuality I’m currently designing) and as I walk over, he notices a pack of smokes on the workbench and asks if he can bum one.

Then I woke up…

Reading various entries here over the last week or so about wives interfering with workshops, I counted myself lucky. Except for keeping enough room available in the winter for her to park her car in the garage, the shop is all mine. She knows not to touch or move anything, or to put anything out there. It’s my place. (She has her studio, I have my shop, it balances out.)

Sunday, she was helping me out in the shop with the seemingly interminable shop remodel I’m mired in, and we had to go up to the local Borg for a few things. As we were finishing checking out, the clerk called a guy who was loitering with a cart nearby to come on in and the clerk would start ringing him up. “I can’t” the guy said, “my wife has the honey-do list and she’s not done picking out stuff yet”. I kinda chuckled over the poor guy and made a comment about how the roles were reversed for me this weekend – she was helping me with my shop, no honey-do’s.

My lovely bride’s reply…

“What, you think I don’t have a list of projects for you to build when the shop is done?”

My buddies should start arriving shortly, and we’ll be hitting it hard all day – and it’s going to be a long one.

I am so looking forward to it!

• Cleanup/storage – Practically everything is in the storage room, leaving only my table saw and workbench in the workshop proper. I’ve put some stuff on Craigslist and local mailing lists and got rid of some of it… The rest goes to 1-800-GOT-JUNK on Mon or Tuesday as I’ve been unable to arrange for a truck.

• Electrical/lighting – upgrade canceled. This is my own fault, as life interfered with me getting with the guy who was going to do my electrical in time and his schedule filled up. There’s enough capacity for some limited lighting upgrades, so I’m mostly good there. This leave me limited to 110v, but as I pretty much have a full suite of 110v tools and upgrades to 220v are years away anyhow…

• Insulation – insulation and vapor barrier is up on the walls. I’ll do the ceiling insulation once I have a ceiling to insulate.

• Windows – new windows wouldn’t fit into the budget, and nothing useful has shown up at Habitat for Humanity. Those really can be done at anytime, so no biggie there.

• Materials – getting prices today and tomorrow for Thurs/Fri delivery.
  
  

Overall, not where I’d hoped to be.. I’m not completely happy about the electrical, but that was more an issue of trip hazards (dust collector ducting running one way and the tool’s power cord another) than of capacity. At the end of the day, I’ll have a clean and warm workshop useable year round, and that’s the whole point of this exercise anyhow.

• Almost finished with cleaning and moving things into the storage room. Just a few more hours of work to be done there. It was a bummer this weekend to dismantle my clamp rack and move my toolboxes and clamps into the storage room. Even with the big power tools still being in the shop area, moving the clamps and tools out seemed to me to mark a major transition from a workshop to just-an-empty-space.

• Working with an electrical contractor to come up with a plan that fits my budget and the building code. Sadly, this seems to mean that the 220v upgrade is off the table. Since upgrading to 220v tools is years away due to budget issue (unless we hit the lottery), this is an inconvenience rather than a problem or disaster.

• Finalize the electrical plan and bid.

• Make a final decision and get bids on the windows.

• Make a final decision and get bids on the insulation system. (Walls only, the ceiling will be done separately later.)

Things I’m trying to avoid obsessing about:

• Shop organization. I really need to spend another year in the shop learning my workflow before starting to spend time and money on permanent fixtures.

• Upcoming projects. I have two project with hard deadlines the first weekend in June and the first weekend in July. (Though the July one is self imposed and can be deferred to Christmas.) So after the remodel is finished, I’ll have to unpack, set up, and start rolling pretty quickly.

Things aren’t in a crisis stage yet, but much the slack I originally built into my schedule has vanished. Really, all there is to do now is cross my fingers and plow ahead.

• Cleaned out the storage room, moving a bunch of stuff meant to be in the house into the house. Mostly they are currently clogging the foyer, but theoretically this will make us actually make a final decision as to where they are supposed to end up.
  
  

• Encouraged She Who Buys Me Tools to make a decision as to what stays, and what goes, and miracle of miracles she did so except for one item. She also accepted without debate that she may not be able to park in the garage that is also my shop for the rest of the winter. (A major concession on her part, as one of the things that we bought this house for was so she could park indoors during the winter – long before I got into woodworking.)
  
  

• Compacted the storage structure in the storeroom, stacking filled containers to full height where they were only one layer deep and nesting the unused containers.
  
  
  
  

• Loaded a bunch of cardboard that had accumulated in the garage into the van, I’ll be running this to the recycle station later today.
  
  

• Moved most of my wood into the storage room.
  
  

• Started sorting the stuff that will just being going away (to charity or to the dump) and stacking it together so that when I can borrow a truck I’m ready to go.
  
  

• Finalized the electrical plan (I.E. wish list) so I can start getting bids.
  
  

All in all, a very productive weekend. I have to stay focused and keep the momentum up though. I have projects with hard deadlines in June and July, and most of my friends schedules are fixed already through September. If I don’t hit my target weekend, it’ll likely be another year before it’ll get done.

I’ve got quite a few challenges to hurdle and things to accomplish over the next two months though…

I need to:

• Move everything possible has to be moved into the already crowded storage room to clear floor space for stacking material and for access to the walls.

• Get bids on the electrical work, changing how the 110v outlets are distributed between breakers and adding a 220v system. (Thankfully 220v is already available in the garage.) Of course I need to come up with a plan to get bids on…

• Make a final decision on the insulation system.

• Decide if the budget will extend to replacing the single pane windows that currently grace the shop.

• Remember to add blocking between the ceiling joists in the two possible future locations for lumber racks.

• Work on my lighting upgrade plan. (There are already outlets for lighting in the ceiling, so this is a separate issue from electrical planning.)

• Get bids on materials.

I’ve decided to table the issue of what-goes-where and what fixed cabinets, racks, etc, I need. I figure I really should spend another year or so in the shop experiment with layouts before nailing things to the floor as it were.

And yes, the shop is long overdue for a general cleaning and reorganization – that’s next summers high priority project after insulating and dry walling.

One of the reasons for the delay in getting the new cutting board going (on top of not being able to work in the shop) was just being too dang busy to get over the Seattle and find the wood. Two weekends ago, I was finally able to get over there and found two nice pieces of turning stock at Woodcraft for the decorative parts and happily Crosscut Hardwood had some nice hard maple on sale…



It’s always a bit sad for me to look at a pristine board, even though it will be reborn as (hopefully) something wonderful, it will have to undergo much transformation and torture along the way.

Anyhow, I let the board rest in the shop for a week. As my little Ryobi chopsaw isn’t up to the task of tackling such a large and hard board, I headed over to a buddies where his big Makita made short work of cutting it down to size.



Here we can see all the components of the board-to-be as they were last week, the cherry and walnut turning stock, some cherry and maple veneer I may or may not use, and the maple that will form the bulk of the board cut down into 30” slabs. I’d have liked to cut it a little longer, as the length of the staves that will eventually be cut from the slabs determines the thickness and length of the final board… But the turning stock that I’m using for the decorative stripes is 30” long, so the maple must match that.

Since the week before I chopped down the board had been the hottest and driest in Kitsap County history, I decided to let the slabs rest a week before cutting them down further.

Which brings up a great worry for me – the board is being built in the Pacific Northwet, but will be used in the dry heat of Southern California. The possibilities are endless for problems. So I’ll make it as thick as possible to resist moving, and rest it as much as practical so that I don’t “lock in” any stresses.

Monday, I got up and headed out into the shop fairly early…



If your brain is the most important tool in your shop, a nice cup of coffee is the most important accessory for that tool! Especially on a cool and damp morning.

Other than getting enough caffeine in me, the other task to start the day is a little cleaning and organization in the shop.



Isn’t she pretty? All clean and freshly waxed for a days work. I took a moment to enjoy it as it won’t be so pretty at the end of the day!

The first task I tackled was to machine the turning stock. The first step is to make two sides flat and square to each other on the jointer.



One can’t forget one’s safety equipment!



I keep mine on the filter handle for my dust collector. When I step over to it to turn it, it’s right there at eye level where I am less likely to forget it.

Once two sides are flat and square to each other, the next task is to move over to the planer to make a third side parallel to one of the sides flattened on the jointer.



Then the last side is brought into true on the table saw.



You can also do this on the planer, but doing it on the saw lets me remove the excess material and cut all the pieces being machined to the same dimensions in one easy step.



To take off even this small amount of wood would require either multiple passes through the planer, or a fairly aggressive cut. It’s a philosophical thing really. (If you asked ten woodworkers how to do a simple task, odds are you’ll get eleven answers. At least)

Now, some may ask what I worried about getting the thickness consistent between the two pieces, but not the width. The answer is simple, I’ll be cutting these pieces into thin strips, so the width at the point is irrelevant. A little forethought can save you from doing work that doesn’t need to be done. Failing to think things entirely through can lead to problems down the line – and will later in the process.



A thin strip ripping jig (the blue thing in the picture) makes this a breeze. Once it’s set the proper distance from the saw blade, all I have to do after each cut is move the fence over to hold the stock firmly against the jig and featherboard to make another strip of the same thickness.

With the decorative bits done, I turned my attention to cutting down the slabs into staves.



The setup here is a bit different from cutting the thin strips… because I don’t want to trap the heavy stave between the fence and saw blade (it could be caught on the blade and hurled towards my face with great force), I use an auxiliary fence to set the distance between the edge of the board and the saw blade. Rather than moving the fence between cuts, I just adjust the featherboard between each cut to hold the slab firmly against the auxiliary fence.

One of the things wood working shows mislead you about is how much time adjust the setups between cuts takes… It’s kinda like watching a cooking show where the chef slides a dish into one oven, then turns to another oven and slides a finished dish right out… :)

The staves were cut a bit oversize – the wood can move considerably after being so dramatically cut (from stresses locked into the board either while the tree was growing or while the lumber was dried, and as the newly exposed interior acclimates) I need to leave room for this to happen before machining down it’s final size. I’m racing to get this all done before cooler weather means I can no longer work in my unheated and uninsulated shop. Labor Day is fast approaching, and while everything needs time to rest, the weather rapidly turns colder afterwards.

Anyhow, several hours after setting the coffee cup down on my bench all the wood is done and ready to rest for a week…



If you’re wondering why there are only two pieces of walnut and four of cherry when both started the same size… let’s just say I cut the walnut first and there was a learning curve involved in using the jig mentioned above. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Besides, there are no mistakes in woodworking – only design opportunities.

Despite all that, I messed up a little bit on my planning (remember what I said earlier about forethought?). The thinner pieces are already trimmed to their final dimensions, while the maple staves are not – which means it will take more effort to make everything come out right next week.

Experience is a harsh teacher.

Nothing to be done about that now, so it’s time for my best Scarlett O’hara imitation – “Fiddle-dee-dee, I’ll worry about that tomorrow”. (My best imitation isn’t very good – be thankful you’re only reading it, not listening to it.)



What this morning was a pristine operating table is now a bloody abattoir covered with sawdust, shavings, and tools.



Like geological strata, the dust collector bag is a record of what has transpired in the shop. On the bottom, some pine from one project. Above that, some poplar from another. Then a thick layer of sapele dust from when a buddy brought over the pieces for a large bookcase and we flattened and squared them. The layer of dark walnut dust is barely visible above the dark sapele and below the lighter layer of cherry and maple above it. Topping off the whole layer cake is a melange of wood dusts swept from the floor and cleaned out from inside the table saw cabinet.

All done for the day, so time to turn off the lights and head into the house for a belated lunch. See you next week, same bat time, same bat channel!

But, even though the first piece has too many mistakes in it to go out the door with my name on it, a promise is a promise.

So, as I’ll talk more about in the next entry, I’ve started work on a new board. I’ve decided to blog about it to talk about the lessons I’ve learned along the way, as a tutorial to accompany Marc’s excellent video (from his site: part 1 and part 2) and as something I can point her to so she knows I haven’t forgotten.

Because it’s aimed at such a diverse audience, parts of it may seem a bit odd, so bear with me. I invite my fellow Jocks to chime in with advice and commentary on the various steps.

This morning, I’ve been working on bolting up a project and listening to the birds assault the blackberries across the alley. All of the sudden I realized that their calls were coming from inside the shop… For about fifteen minutes, while I stood and watched in awe, a pair would poke among the berries, fly into the shop and perch a moment to sing to each other, and then fly back to the berries. Then suddenly whatever will o’ the wisp brought them into the shop whisked them away again.

To whoever keeps the universe cranking – thank you for that brief time of beauty and awe.

I was working on the router table, and after starting the router noticed I had left a tool on the table right next to the bit. (Stupid mistake #1.) So I reached in to remove the tool from the table… (Stupid mistake #2, and I bet you can see where this is going…) and hit the spinning bit with my right index finger and took a nice chunk out of the tip.

Now I’ve got this huge splint/bandage on the finger (typing this has been amusing to say the least), and will have it for at least two to three weeks. This halts a number of projects, and I may still be bandaged when I’m supposed to be helping with a culinary demonstration… :( :(

Ah well. If it were easy, what would be the point?

But this entry is in my shop series, not my general grumping because I got truly good news for the shop today:

First you have to understand, I know less about electricity than I do about woodworking. I can replace a lamp socket, or a light switch, but that’s about it.

We’ve been having some problems with a kitchen outlet, so I had an electrician out today. While he was here, I asked him to look at my shop/garage (which is detached from the house) to see if we can run 220 out to it and to get an estimate as to the cost. He checked inside the panel and it turns out there is already 220 to the panel, they just tapped the 110 the shop is wired for off of the 220. So just by replacing the subpanel in the shop, I have 60 amps available whenever I am ready.

I’ve been annoyed because the weather prevented me from insulating and finishing the walls in the shop, but that’s turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

But I got a visit from the insomnia fairy last night, and despite caffeine am still mildly groggy and slow. Too groggy and slow to work smartly or safely.

I love Lumberjocks, but it’s no substitute for actual shop time.

Grumble, whine, whine

Off and on over the winter I’ve been pondering the 21st Century (or New Fangled / Seven Clamp) workbench by Popular Woodworking’s Robert Lang. A few days back, it occurred to me that it could also be designed and built using a box beam structure (inspired by the beam-and-base system featured in FWW’s Winter 2008/2009 Tools and Shops special issue) and converted into an assembly bench using the center well to hold jigs rather than a clamping system. (Though there is no reason you couldn’t install a clamping system and use it as a workbench.)

Though I’ll probably never build it, the mental exercise of designing it is fun so I thought I’d toss my work to date up here on LJ and see what you think.

Version 1.0

General pondering on the design:

All of the box beam are identical, allowing them to be cut from 1/2” plywood with a single setup. The beams are glued, and could be held together with screws or brads. (Given the number of beams being assembled, using a brad gun sounds like an awfully good idea.) The beams for the top are then glued to each other and then further strengthened by adding a 1/2” MDF top.

I’m not entirely sure how to attach the base boxes to the table top without assembling the individual components (tops of the base beams and bottom of the top beams) and then assembling the boxes on top of that. Thinking about this as I write, you could also design the table top beams around a single sheet with dadoes to hold the vertical webs…

The center well is deep enough that a length wise clamp system (as in the original) could easily be installed, and could also possibly be designed to be easily removable.

With sufficient forethought, one could also also the width wise clamping system. You’d need to drill all the required holes prior to assembly.

Links:

• Sketchup Model