Jimbo's Knife Making Adventure

[PNWJimbo]

Hey guys, figured I'd start a little thread to keep ya'' up to date with my progress. I've been making regular posts on my facebook group but have gotten most of my information here and would love any comments or feedback as I am sure to make plenty of mistakes. For those out of the loop, I have made a couple of crappy knives with primitive tools, stuff I could use in a 1 bedroom apartment. I was house hunting for a while and the 2 biggest criteria I had were that it had a nice backyard for the dog and an area to build a legit knife workshop in. I lucked out with a place that had an unfinished 2 car garage. I moved in on March 10th and went to work making some other more pressing improvements to the property such as fixing the plumbing and building a fence to keep the pup in. Over this time I became good friends with my neighbor who is actually a contractor and machinist by trade, and we obviously ended up talking about my future plans for the garage. He agreed to help me finish it out and outfit it with work benches and even some tools he wants to use for other projects. Really impressed by the progress we've made just over these past couple of months. Feeling like we have a lot of potential together as business partners! Anyway, on to the PICS:

Original state of the garage:

Insulation:

Installing Drywall:

[me]

[dustin]

[ceiling done]

There is a gap of pictures between here and finishing the walls, taping/mudding the whole thing and spraying with PVA and paint. Here's the final result:

Back when we bought all of the drywall stuff for the garage, we also got an epoxy floor kit to redo the cement. This required a ton of mopping, brushing grease spots with detergent and.... more mopping. I've been fueling myself with slurpees lately

And on to the floor job! This was a lot of fun and I realized I am bad at spreading flake evenly.

Maybe my flake spreading technique improved a bit as I moved towards the garage door. Anyway, Thanks for looking folks. I sure am excited to fill those back walls with work benches and cover them with tools! I've already got the frame for an oregon blade maker 2x72 sitting in storage waiting and just picked up this blasting cabinet off craigslist a couple of nights ago for a steal!

Anyway, if you guys have suggestions for how to lay out my work benches along the back wall with the outlets, I'm ALL EARS! I've been watching a bunch of youtube videos and looking at pictures of shops for ideas but any advice helps. I am heading to the bark river grind in this weekend but will be continuing progress on the benches right away when I get home next week. That's all for now!

-Jimbo

 

[Col Defender]

Nice!

 

[Robert Erickson]

Looks like it's going to be a nice shop! I'm in the process of building a shop as well. I have tried to think about work flow and will install benches etc accordingly. You might want to improve your lighting. LEDs are less expensive now and put out a lot of light. Creating a small "clean space" to do glue ups etc is helpful. Looks like it may be too late but are any of the plugs 220?

 

[Kitten Party]

Excited to see the progression!!

 

[JTknives]

I don't think I see any 220v plugs and it looks like all his plugs are on the same circuit. But it's looking good.

 

[Matthew Gregory]

Wow, JT, I hate to say it, but it looks to me like you're right. A single circuit for an entire shop...? Aww, man, that's a travesty. Probably don't want to hear this, but SERIOUSLY consider tearing that wall up now, before you get any further, and put some of those outlets on other circuits, and add a handful of 220v ones, as well.

Sorry to be telling you this now, but better now than even further on in your setup.

 

[JTknives]

My last shop had one plug, one freaking single plug. One 20 amp circuit for the lights and plug. It was very frustrating to say the least. The new shop has 4" square steel boxes every 10 feet with 2 plugs (4 outlets total) in each box and each box is it's own 20amp circuit. That's a total of 8 20 amp circuits and 4 50amp 220 circuits. I am never doing the single circuit again, ever. To make matters worse I had a deep freezer in the shop on the same plug. I wired in a 30 amp outlet for the welder/plasma cutter becaus even though the plasma could run 110v I could not run the tiny air compressor and plasma on the one plug lol. So I do hope I am wrong and you split up the outlets.

 

[PNWJimbo]

Haha oh jeez.... This is why we make posts like this, right? Thanks for the electrical advice guys... Definitely better now than when the benches are in front of the walls.... Gonna talk it over with my neighbor and discuss our options... updates to follow.

EDIT: I think I'm lucking out with my ability to access the ceiling through a pull down door. I believe we can just cut some holes for the new outlets and run new wires behind the drywal from the top. 220v outlets on their own breakers coming up! Will take pics

 

[PNWJimbo]

Okay, BIG thanks to JTknives for noticing that electrical issue before I learned the hard way myself. Luckily the wire running from my house to the garage could pump 220 so I got a couple of outlets and put them in on their own breakers. Also got a matching main 40 main line breaker.... there was a 30 in there before for some reason, even though it was attached to a 40 inside the house. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I'm going to put my 2x72 in the back right corner and hang all my belts on the wall to the right of it. Going to home depot today to get materials for the work benches so stay tuned...


Cut Holes in the freshly painted drywall

Run 12-3

Holes and wire for outlets:

Wire'em up... home depot guy said hot side on the right

Looks good so far...

The 2 installed:

Box and breakers all wired up... those things cost a fortune

But it's all worth it to see this

Even remembered to get some face plates!

And we're back on track! Can always install more 220 plugs if I need more than 2 but for now this should work. My motor and vfd are on their way from amazon and we're heading to home depot after work for wood to get started on the benches today. Plenty of updates to follow... thanks again.

-Jim

EDIT: It was Robert Erickson who first noticed the 220v issue... THANKS!!!

 

[Matthew Gregory]

Man, that's so good to see. Glad you got it squared away!!!

 

[Kevin McGovern]

My last shop had one plug, one freaking single plug. One 20 amp circuit for the lights and plug. It was very frustrating to say the least. The new shop has 4" square steel boxes every 10 feet with 2 plugs (4 outlets total) in each box and each box is it's own 20amp circuit. That's a total of 8 20 amp circuits and 4 50amp 220 circuits. I am never doing the single circuit again, ever. To make matters worse I had a deep freezer in the shop on the same plug. I wired in a 30 amp outlet for the welder/plasma cutter becaus even though the plasma could run 110v I could not run the tiny air compressor and plasma on the one plug lol. So I do hope I am wrong and you split up the outlets.

I feel your pain. i have the exact same situation right now. It really sucked before i got a VFD and 3 phase motor on my grinder. Prior to that, I had to turn off all my lights, and start my 1.5 HP 1ph unit with the belt OFF. Then turn off the motor, put on a belt, start the grinder, and turn the lights back on. Thankfully, that was only the case during the first start up, when the start capacitor was "empty".

 

[JTknives]

Looks good glad to see the added outlets. But one tiny hitch, the reasion the breaker inside the garage was 30 and the one in the main panel was 40 is becaus NEC "CODE" does not allow 2 breakers of the same amp on the same feeder. I also think if your backfeeding a breaker like you are (to supply power to the sub panel) then that breaker needs a retaining clip so it can't come unplugged. Most people just put lugs under the two feeder bars at the top and don't back feed through a breaker. Is your garage attached to your house? If so then you don't even need a main breaker in that sub panel. Code says if the sub panel is in a separate building from the main panel then it needs its own disconnect. Also another issue is all outlets in a garage by code are required to be protected by a GFCI. I have been fighting that becaus most of my tools will trip GFCI plugs/breakers.

Only reasion I bring that up is when you get it inspected the inspector could be a stickler on it and make you change it. My original plan when planning the shop build was to just bypass the electrical inspector and not even deal with him. But then I found out that can cause a big issue when selling your house in the future as well as possible insurance problems if somthing ever happens. Your panel gets a little sticker inside it that is signed that it's been inspected. I also noticed that you have to call for electrical inspection befor you cover anything that includes the ditch I'm digging to run the power from meter base to my sub panel.

So those are just the things I have uncovered in my search for how to go about wiring my shop the proper way. I'm still not sure what to do about the GFCI thing, but if I can get away with claiming each outlet is a dedacated plug for a tool then it can fly. The outlet closest to the garage door will be gfci becaus that's where you would plug in an extension cord if you needed power out side.

 

[PNWJimbo]

Looks good glad to see the added outlets. But one tiny hitch, the reasion the breaker inside the garage was 30 and the one in the main panel was 40 is becaus NEC "CODE" does not allow 2 breakers of the same amp on the same feeder. I also think if your backfeeding a breaker like you are (to supply power to the sub panel) then that breaker needs a retaining clip so it can't come unplugged. Most people just put lugs under the two feeder bars at the top and don't back feed through a breaker. Is your garage attached to your house? If so then you don't even need a main breaker in that sub panel. Code says if the sub panel is in a separate building from the main panel then it needs its own disconnect. Also another issue is all outlets in a garage by code are required to be protected by a GFCI. I have been fighting that becaus most of my tools will trip GFCI plugs/breakers.

Only reasion I bring that up is when you get it inspected the inspector could be a stickler on it and make you change it. My original plan when planning the shop build was to just bypass the electrical inspector and not even deal with him. But then I found out that can cause a big issue when selling your house in the future as well as possible insurance problems if somthing ever happens. Your panel gets a little sticker inside it that is signed that it's been inspected. I also noticed that you have to call for electrical inspection befor you cover anything that includes the ditch I'm digging to run the power from meter base to my sub panel.

So those are just the things I have uncovered in my search for how to go about wiring my shop the proper way. I'm still not sure what to do about the GFCI thing, but if I can get away with claiming each outlet is a dedacated plug for a tool then it can fly. The outlet closest to the garage door will be gfci becaus that's where you would plug in an extension cord if you needed power out side.

Once again, thank you for the invaluable reply. I will make sure to follow up on the 40>30 and retaining clip. Does this mean I need to upgrade the breaker inside the main panel to something higher than 40 or should I put the 30 one back in the garage?

 

[JTknives]

Your wire running to the sub panel is only rated for so many amps so increasing the breaker in the main panel with a larger one would be bad unless you knew exzactly what size wire goes to the sub and it's length. Lots of people just put a larger breaker in the sub panel as it's just used as a disconnect. But like I said the NEC says it's ok to just run the main feeder into the bush bars (normaly how is it's done). Here is a pic

That's how I'm running mine. My shop is detached but my main panel is right out side the shop so I don't need a main disconnect.

 

[JTknives]

 

[Robert Erickson]

Looks like you're getting there, congrats!

 

[PNWJimbo]

Productive weekend... Built 10 and 14 foot long workbenches along the walls. Also scored a drill press and bandsaw cheap off the 2ndary market. Building a rolling table and putting plastic on all of the benchtops today hopefully... updates to follow soon. Hope everyone had a great Independence Day.

 

[PNWJimbo]

A couple of small progressions this week.... Still waiting for Dustin's old job to hook us up with some plastic for the bench tops(hoping it's this afternoon) but we built the rolling table and I spent some time last hitting the rust on those 2 machines with some wd-40 and 400/600 grit... I think they look good now! 2x72 belts and 1084 steel are ordered also... need to start setting up my grinder!!!

 

[Busto]

Moving along nicely....Sniff Sniff oh yeah got that new shop smell...

 

[Jrmysell]

Looks good.