Building a shop
Posted: Sun Jun 04, 2017 3:22 pm
Last fall, a momentous event occured: we bought a house and I now have dedicated shop space. For a time, I've continued working out of the co-op shop that's been my woodworking home for some years now, but it's becoming clear that the way forward lies with getting my own collection of machines in order. My first task is to get my head around what I need, in what order, for my work. Thoughts on that, in some rough priority order:
- Power. There's a separate sub-panel in the shop, but it may not be sufficient. May also want a 3 phase power converter; I doubt it will be practical to have utility-supplied 3 phase, but need to investigate here.
- Dust collection. Ceiling height is an issue; it's relatively low. I can possibly add height if I'm close my opening ceiling drywall. Alternative: build an adjacent, external enclosure for the dust collector, which also serves as noise reduction.
- Jointer
- Planer
- Table saw. I have a lot of workflows that leverage the table saw for both crosscutting and ripping right now; it's a tool I'm used to. I've had little experience with a well setup resaw-type bandsaw to know how far that could get me with "precision" ripping.
- Drilling. I have a decent drill press, but may sell it. I'm thinking of upgrading, e.g. to a Mill-Drill type unit w/ DRO that will work well for my workflows. These have a tradeoff that the quill movement is often vastly lower (say, 2" vs. my current 6"), but add a huge amount of Z travel with the head on a dovetail. My goal is something much more precise than my current drilling setup, with the opportunity to add some versatility, ala "Chibi Zimmermann FZ-5V".
- Small bandsaw, setup for adhoc shaping work. Just too useful and versatile. Don't expect to resaw, seem to be plentiful on the used market.
- CNC. I need to go revisit Chris' old posts on the topic, and do some soul-searching here as well. In my case, success will mean a fair amount of producing repetitive parts: I'm expressly designing a small set of designs intended for reproduction. Something which takes the load off of the most grossly repetitive and error-prone steps would be a boon. I've worked around this so far with improved jig-building...
- Horizontal belt sander. These have been occasionally quite useful for certain tasks, refining shapes, quickly flattening hardwood end-grain, etc. I'd like to avoid one. Good dust collection here is hard, and many of the tasks can be handled efficiently by a shop well set-up for hand tool work, which my co-op never really was.