Junked Up Workshops of your Nighmares!

Take a look at Harry Pope’s barrel shop or Einstein’s office. All the grand masters work in a clutter ;-) BTW, I know a barrel maker whose shop is a total clutter. His barrels dominate the winner’s circle in Schuetzen matches.

-- "some old things are lovely, warm still with life ... of the forgotten men who made them." - D.H. Lawrence Wake Up America!! Please read; http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/26-0

Ya got plenty of nice clamps on a good lookin’ rack. And, we’ve seen your tall stool once before. Serves you nicely. Thus, even with a little clutter you sure perform beautiful work.

-- Russell Pitner Hixson, TN 37343 bassboy40@msn.com

Topamax, I have watched the guys in Louisville making whiskey barrels. They never have a clean shop, but they always know where what they need is. I can wander for 15 minutes looking for one of 6 tape measures until I finally get out my antique folding measure or go get some coffee.
I did clean up before freidadad came to visit the other day, otherwise there were enough plane shavings on the floor and little wood chunk cut-offs laying around from cleaning up edges of cutting boards that there was no floor to be seen.

By the way, my shop is our old Rec hall at the campground. It’s all carpeted and what you see for flooring is the backside of the worlds ugliest formica. The stuff was called “Electric Cowboy” with all that entails. I taped it down with some $12/roll duct tape that has worked well for two years. Some spots I didn’t have enough of it for so I used a heavy FEMA tarp and some 6 mil plastic to make a cover.
I’ve also found that with the crappy post and pier and mud sill foundations and ant infestations over the years, I can’t even put one whole green oak log worth of slabs inside to dry.

Handtooler, those are all Harbor Freight clamps, I do have a few Bessy clamps and a few Jorgy, but the ones you see are all HF. Some of those are 20+ years old. (Wooden handles). If I could have gotten the picture from the other ende there are another 40 clamps on the end of my tall assembly table. I figured that if it took 3 HF clamps to do the job of 2 Jorgy clamps, and the Jorgy’s were $20/ea but the HF clamps were $6/ea, I was way ahead to buy more of the HF clamps.

-- Improvise.... Adapt...... Overcome!

I went out and took a picture of my current state of disaster, just for this thread…

-- http://www.garagebulletin.com/

a messy shop shows somebody is working there. a clean shop shows a guy who is more interested in making it look nice, so he can find his stuff, and be neat and orderly. I clean mine whenever i get fed up walking around stuff.

There’s something about horizontal surfaces in my shop that just attract clutter. Whether my workbench, my outfeed table, router table, or my table saw. It’s hard keeping them clean. I was finally so fed up with it that I spent all of last Saturday cleaning it up, or else I would post a picture here.

-- "hold fast to that which is good"

yep my shop is a disaster area also, but sometimes I rearrange my junk and then I have a organized disaster area, its like windstorm instead of tornado, or flash flood instead of sunami

-- Stevo, work in tha city woodshop in the country

I’ll have a messy one in bout a month

-- Roger from KY. Work/Play/Travel Safe. Kentuk55@bellsouth.net

Here you go:
http://lumberjocks.com/topics/46252

-- http://www.etsy.com/shop/KandJWoodCrafts

I never clean… I just re-arrange the clutter!

-- Perform A Random Act Of Kindness Today ... Pay It Forward

The Dungeon Shop

Ready-use tools on the work table. It does have a vise out on the end.

Electric Table Saw ( It is a saw, sitting on a table)

Main work area, in fact, the only work area

Hiding spot for a few planes. Oh, and as for the floor

Some things just never change….

-- A Planer? I'M the planer, this is what I use

I know a shop can never be to large but now after looking at the photos I might be glad I’m limited in size :), I have no choice but to keep it organized, sweep and picked up or I wouldn’t be able to get around at all, actually as much as I hate to say it my workshop is cleaner then my house. LOL

Side note: Dallas I noticed we are close to being neighbors, I’m in south end of Austin, was up in Hutto several days ago picking up a downed Walnut tree (free) grins got some good wood out of that.

-- Randy - If I'm not on LJ's then I'm making Saw Dust. Please feel free to visit my store location at http://www.facebook.com/randy.blackstock.custom.wood.designs

A recent ‘end of day’ pic of the bench…

-- Don't anthropomorphize your handplanes. They hate it when you do that. -- OldTools Archive

One other thing I failed to mention that I know for a fact, once you do a full-on attack on cleaning and organizing you’ll find items that you’ve you been missing for ages and or had forgotten. Ah damn there it is

-- Randy - If I'm not on LJ's then I'm making Saw Dust. Please feel free to visit my store location at http://www.facebook.com/randy.blackstock.custom.wood.designs

I think most people’s shop get’s out of whack every now again. It’s just the nature of the beast.

helluvawreck aka Charles
http://woodworkingexpo.wordpress.com

-- If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. Henry David Thoreau