# Converting My Garage from a Semi-Workshop to a full Wood/Metal Workshop



## KE4NYV (May 25, 2014)

When I bought my house over five years ago, I threw up a quick workbench the first week. A few months later, I added another stick-out platform for my drill press, another a few weeks later for a bandsaw and so on. Fast forward five years, I have a true woodworking bench out in the floor, a good table saw, lathe, CNC and running out of room fast!

Here is the (over the past five years) thrown together shop the way it was a month ago:




























It was time to tear it all out, start over and design it methodically. I planned to build a single 16-20' bench along the wall, leaving a gap near the front for my shop vac/dust collection system. I started with expanding the electrical receptacles to support all of the machines I planned to have on the bench.










Even though we typically mild winters in Eastern Virginia, we have had snow the last few and it has become fairly cold in the shop. I found a space heater barely made a dent. One thing that always bothered me was the lack of insulation, so first plan was to insulate the walls and then cover them with 3/8" sheathing plywood for mounting everything on that side of the shop.




























Build the bench:




























I still have upper and lower cabinets to build, but I have already started on things like pegboard and other organizing items like a new lumber rack.




























Here it is so far. Still have plenty of work to do, but I think it's going to be very functional once I'm done. I still have to do the other side, but that's still on the drawing board.


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## helluvawreck (Jul 21, 2010)

Jayson, that is a fine shop that you have there. Congratulations and welcome to Lumberjocks.

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


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## KE4NYV (May 25, 2014)

> Jayson, that is a fine shop that you have there. Congratulations and welcome to Lumberjocks.


Thanks! Still a lot more to do, but this has been a good start.


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## waho6o9 (May 6, 2011)

Great shop Jason and welcome to Lumber Jocks!


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## KE4NYV (May 25, 2014)

> Great shop Jason and welcome to Lumber Jocks!


Thanks!


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## dirtycurty (Jan 29, 2014)

That is a nice shop!!! All of your hard work will pay off for years to come!!!! Your title mentioned metal working. I didn't see a bunch of metal working tools so I'm not sure how much or what type of metal working you plan on doing but keep in mind that welding, cutting with a torch, cutting, grinding, etc (anything that creates sparks) DOES NOT mix with saw dust!!!!!!! Also metal cutting fluids and oils and such will not be good on your wood projects and WILL mess up your finish that will be put on your wood projects. So keep any shop rags used for metal working away from your wood working.


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## bigblockyeti (Sep 9, 2013)

Looks like you've made a good decision by setting up everything after thinking it through instead of piling more and more stuff almost on top of what you already have (like I did in the past). I've thought about having metal and wood working together, but the one thing that keeps worrying me is welding in an area with wood dust. I've made strides to keep the dust down and collect it better, but even the very best collection measures will still leave some combustible dust around and I really don't want to risk a fire. I remember at work someone setting the disc/belt sander on fire by sharpening something steel when the base had fine wood dust the collector missed. That was an eye opener, despite not being that big of a fire. However you decide to keep the danger at a manageable level in your shop, be safe.


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## KE4NYV (May 25, 2014)

> That is a nice shop!!! All of your hard work will pay off for years to come!!!! Your title mentioned metal working. I didn t see a bunch of metal working tools so I m not sure how much or what type of metal working you plan on doing but keep in mind that welding, cutting with a torch, cutting, grinding, etc (anything that creates sparks) DOES NOT mix with saw dust!!!!!!! Also metal cutting fluids and oils and such will not be good on your wood projects and WILL mess up your finish that will be put on your wood projects. So keep any shop rags used for metal working away from your wood working.


I have a CNC that I built a couple of years ago. I use it mostly for milling out panels and housing for my electronics-based company and personal electronics projects.  I also mill quite a bit of plastic housings with the mill. At some point I would like to put a welder in, but it's not on the short list of things to buy. (That money is going in the planer and turning tools fund). The black metal rolling cabinet seen under the bench has 95% of of my metal working tools, layout tools, end mills, taps, dies, dial indicators, ect. Also, I typically use oil-based cutting fluids and keep them contained to the mill as much as possible. One thing I am thinking about doing is creating some kind of 3-4 mil poly curtain around the mill/LCD/keyboard to control the amount of sawdust that gets into it.


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## KE4NYV (May 25, 2014)

> Looks like you ve made a good decision by setting up everything after thinking it through instead of piling more and more stuff almost on top of what you got (like I did in the past). I ve thought about having metal and wood working together, but the one thing that keeps worrying me is welding in an area with wood dust. I ve made strides to keep the dust down and collect it better, but even the very best collection measures will still leave some combustible dust around and I really don t want to risk a fire. I remember someone setting the disc/belt sander at work on fire by sharpening something steel when the base had fine wood dust the collector missed. That was an eye opener, despite not being that big of a fire. However you decide to keep the danger at a manageable level in your shop, be safe.


I'm mostly running the CNC to do aluminum panel milling. Here is an example of something I did on the mill, a four port, wideband RF multicoupler:


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## changeoffocus (Dec 21, 2013)

You sure did a great job on your shop upgrade, first class. While I don't have a clue what your electronic or radio device does, I know what first class workmanship looks like.


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## ErikF (Apr 3, 2012)

That's awesome, Jason. I know how the ever evolving shop life goes. I started with a thin MDF bench and a load of cheap tools. I slowly upgraded through buying and selling on CL and now have a reasonable set of woodworking and metalworking tools. I'm moving at the end of the year and can't wait for an upgrade in space. I'm hoping to get a knee mill and get my table saw back (I sold it to make room for a turret lathe). Keep up the cool work.


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## KE4NYV (May 25, 2014)

> You sure did a great job on your shop upgrade, first class. While I don t have a clue what your electronic or radio device does, I know what first class workmanship looks like.


Thanks, Bob! For lack of technical terms, it's an amplified antenna splitter )


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## KE4NYV (May 25, 2014)

> That s awesome, Jason. I know how the ever evolving shop life goes. I started with a thin MDF bench and a load of cheap tools. I slowly upgraded through buying and selling on CL and now have a reasonable set of woodworking and metalworking tools. I m moving at the end of the year and can t wait for an upgrade in space. I m hoping to get a knee mill and get my table saw back (I sold it to make room for a turret lathe). Keep up the cool work.


Erik, I'm hoping to add a mini metal lathe eventually, but it's all money. Haha! I'm finding a nice balance between metal work and wood work. Wood is so much more forgiving!


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## Gart (Jul 10, 2014)

Jason (and others),

New to the site to gather information, ideas, knowledge, etc.

One of the things on my list is to re-wire my garage for 220 plus more outlets similar to what you did. I am somewhat tossed of putting up plywood walls (have painted drywall now) after wiring/insulating.

I am wondering though why you did left the plywood raw and not paint the walls to lighten up the room?

Just curious.

Gart


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## KE4NYV (May 25, 2014)

Gart,

I want to address the power first. My house was built about three months prior to me buying it and moving in. One of the downsides when I found it was that it DIDN'T have a garage. Since the house was built without a garage, the power panel was installed in one of the bedrooms, at the opposite side of the house. I made a deal with the builder to add on the garage before I purchased the house. Since the panel was already in place, there was no way to re-locate it to the garage and I was stuck with it how it was built. Fast forward five years and now I have a hot tub (spa) behind the garage on my back patio. Right now it's running on 110V, but I'm currently looking for an electrician that will run a 220V line from my panel to a sub-panel in the garage and then run 220V to the hot tub. At the same time, I want to put a 220V receptacle in the garage for a welder and I would like to have at least a couple more 110V circuits, since right now the whole garage is only on one single 15A circuit.

As for the plywood, I guess I just liked the natural look of the wood. I know I am going to add more light anyways, so I wasn't too concerned with the "brightness" of the wood panels. It's all personal preference and taste, I guess.


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## Gart (Jul 10, 2014)

Thanks Jason for the response.


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## jaykaypur (Oct 22, 2011)

Very nice shop and I got some ideas from my own shop by looking at yours. Keep on, keepin' on !


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## doitforfun (Dec 31, 2013)

I had my garage on a single 15A circuit until one night the breaker blew as I was using the table saw. Lights went out and that spinning blade in the dark scared the bejezuz out of me. The very next day I snaked another wire to the basement panel on a 20A breaker. I kept the lights on the original circuit. I'm thinking about rewiring my saw to 220V and adding another circuit for that. That's low on the priority list, but getting the lights off the tool circuit was extreme high priority.


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## KE4NYV (May 25, 2014)

Just a small update. We're in heavy rocket launch mode at work (including this weekend). So, I haven't had much time to work on my cabinets, but I did get my nail-gun/drill rack cabinet built and hung up last night. I tried out birch iron-on edging for the first time. I didn't want to waste too much of it on this project, so I only did the outer case edge. I spent $10 on a plastic yellow trimmer tool that Lowe's sells to trim the edging. It works, but still left a lip. I was able to sand it down flush.



















I decided to try a French Cleat system for the first time. So far I really like it and I think I am going to use it to install all of my upper cabinets. Since I didn't inset the cleat on the back of the cabinet, I had to add a strip at the bottom to make up the gap created by the cleat. Not a big deal, but something I'm sure some would overlook when taking this mounting approach. I'm thinking about making a small cabinet with a swinging door to go to the left side, to make the total width of the rack equal with the pegboard.










More to come this week/weekend after things slow down for me at work.

Just a note, if you live on the US East Coast, look towards the Virginia east coast around 12:15pm tomorrow (7/13/14 Sunday) and look for our Antares rocket launching to the International Space Station. This is a re-supply mission and the biggest rocket that we launch, so it's visible from several states away. As far north as New York (maybe further north on a clear day or night) and as far south as Florida.


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## KE4NYV (May 25, 2014)

Here is my CAD drawing for the nail-gun/drill cabinet. All dimensions in inches.


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## KE4NYV (May 25, 2014)

Just an update on what I have completed in the last few weeks.

I built up a table saw organizing cabinet:




























I built up my first of many floor cabinets to go under the new wall-mounted work bench:



















Finally, I built a small cabinet with a plexi-glass windowed door for some of my CNC machine tooling:




























Now I need to get more 3/4" plywood to build the rest. Man that stuff is expensive!


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## paxorion (Oct 19, 2012)

Looking good. Just a thought, it may make more sense to document your shop progress as a blog in lieu of a forum post.


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## BillWhite (Jul 23, 2007)

Lighting, power, fire protection????
Can't have too much of any of those.
Bill


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## KE4NYV (May 25, 2014)

Lighting is coming last. I need to wait to see where everything is going to end up before I install any new lights. Also, I am going to add cabinets on the wall, above the new workbench, so I want to make sure the lights are mounted where the cabinets don't cast shadows on the workbench.


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