Scott Oldre's Workshop

My workshop, as most have to be, is a roll-a-round shop. During the week, the wifes car occupies one side of the middle of the garage along with a Harley Electra Glide. Every other Saturday my wife has to work, and that is “Woodworking” day at our house. The car is gone and replaced by a Sears contractor table saw with an Incra TS fence on the top, a BenchDog Pro router table extension on the left with a Porter Cable 890 underneath it riding up and down on a Jessem router lift FX.

For dimensioning the wood, there is a Ridgid 6.5” jointer riding on a home made platform. A Grizzly G055 bandsaw with the 6” riser block is used for resawing and quick cuts on small stock. A Dewalt 734 12.5 inch planer gets the stock as close to the thickness I need as possible, always using a home made sled to get the small stuff. A Dewalt 20” scroll saw gets the really small stuff smaller and curvier. A Ridgid Oscillating spindle sander was a Christmas gift this year and I have yet to really use it. There is also a Delta 10” miter saw for odd jobs, and an incra miter express with an Incra 1000SE attached to it most of the time. Depending on the cuts, I usually switch between the miter express and a homemade cross cut sled.

For glue ups, I use a Dewalt biscuit jointer, a few Jorgensen cabinet clamps, a few Bessy Duoclamps, a few 48” aluminum clamps, and an assortment of other pipe clamps.

Other items: Porter Cable pancake compressor, which never fails me or fails to scare the crap out of my wife when it kicks on at 3:am after I’ve forgotten to unplug it. A Shopfox oscillating bench top drill press. Now that I have the Ridgid, the usefulness of the oscillating part is a moot point. Currently I have a small roll around dust collector which does help some, but not really what I need when playing with paduk and bloodwood. And a myriad of power hand tools, like the 18v Royobi drill I use nearly on a daily basis, a Bosch colt trim router, Porter cable 15ga and Bostich 18ga nailers, Ridgid ROS and more.

As suggested, I’ve uploaded some pictures of the shop. Its not a pretty site, but the smells you can make cutting that wood. When the Miata goes away every other saturday, everything under the bench rolls out and the sounds of woodworking sing through the neighborhood. Eventually the next door neighbor comes up and says “Whatcha making Wilson”, in reference to the Tool time. I’ve built 15 neighborhood cedar mailboxes in this garage.

The dream would be to build a 24×24 shop behind the house, but in a neighborhood, a shop doesn’t necessarily increase the value of your home, just the value of the time spent living there. So one day…maybe.

I will post more pics of when I have everything rolled out for a project

-- Scott, Irmo SC