tallest tool in the shop ?

butcher_block

butcher_block

Joined
Dec 6, 2004
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so a few know i am planning on building a shop. the question i have is as far as how tall i need the rooms. i dont want to heat 10'ers and if i have a slightly shorter first floor that willl give me more loft/2nd floor space

right now the floor looks to be 24x32 barn style and im thinking that i could go with 8' so long as i didn't have any chandeliers

the building will be split into 2 parts clean and dirty shops and a loft for storage and when i need more space my honing shop

so what are your guys thoughts and hights on tools (i may add a leanto to have a hot "shop" later )
 
If it goes right into the roof rafters, and you need a tall tool just put it up through the rafters.


Now, we all know in your shop the tallest tool is you :D
 
Butch,

I'm no useful help in answering your question but just wanted to say congrats on building a new shop !

Someday..... O someday... I can only dream

Josh
 
The three that immediately come to mind as tall are: old mills, power hammers and maybe hydraulic presses. Only the mills would matter for you're talking about since you plan a separate hot shop.

So, do you have, or hope to get, a Bridgeport?
 
Congrats on building a shop. What kind of shop is it? For a wood shop 8' ceilings suck.
 
I would say 8' is fine, a full sized Bridgeport style mill is approx. 83" tall, which leaves you around 13" of space. (But in reality a 3/4 sized Bridgeport is all a knifemaker needs ... full sized is overkill).

My "shop" is a real pain, the ceiling is approx. 20+ ft high and extremely angled like a barn, so I have a heck of problem with installing decent lighting and electrical access.

The Loveless shop in my opinion is the ideal shop. It has a ceiling that is approx. 8 feet -easy access to installing compressed air lines, electrical outlets for machines and plenty of good lighting. Also, the ceiling is 95% flat.

For other makers reading this, don't forget to build separate rooms when making your shop: a "clean" room and a "dirty" room. (If you can't afford to, hang up a tarp -that's what I do).

The dirty room should be small, kinda like a hallway ... with grinders down one side, buffers on the opposite side, and keep the blast cabinet in there if you have one. There should also be an air cleaner in the corner with 4" ducting running around the room. On the short end, have a window on one side, on the other short end, have a wall fan installed above your grinding belt rack. It can be turned into a "wind tunnel" to extract all the crap when the grinding gets really nasty. A small door leading to the clean room should be located between the buffers and the blast cabinet.

The clean room should have your milling machines, lathes, drill presses and assembly/ leather bench (you could also build a separate leather room).

Try and keep the air compressor outside in a separate extension of the main building, build it from concrete blocks to lower the noise.

Post pics when you're done Butch. :thumbup:
 
Good for you Butch.

I built a 24x32 foot shop last July. I went with 10 foot sidewalls with perimeter clear panels just below the eves. They are on the south and east walls which makes the shop well lit during the day.

The open feeling of ten foot sidewalls is good for your head, if that makes seance.

Laying out where I wanted each piece to sit in the new shop resulted in the new shop feeling like and old friend.
The layout drawing was done using a scale of one inch equals a foot. When we got together to move the shop everyone involved in the move could just look at the drawing on the wall and position the object where it belonged.

Post us some picks when you get that far along.

Best of luck to you, Fred
 
I had my shop built for other than knife making (30'x32'). I went with 10' walls so that I can use a hoist to manuever larger objects around (I don't call my friends when I need to move things). Also had a 9' roll up door made to make access easier.

My tallest piece is a vert. bandsaw at just shy of 7'. I can't imagine trying to manuever it under an 8' ceiling.

I second Fred's comment about being good for your head, my previous shop got very stuffy feeling by the end of the day.
 
i was thinking the mill in the future would be the tall one
was looking at the smaller 1k lb or smaller CNC mills as i have a mini mill right now that is more jsut a good drill press

my bansaw will likly go out in the dirty shop too jsut to make more clean room (its a roll n saw 800lb of killer saw)
the clean shop i was only worried aut mills lathes and the like and honiung stones

the roof is so far set to be a barn typ roof witha larg loft/2nd floor for storage
and yes i nknow build as big as i can as i will outgrow it anyhow :)
 
I have a garage shop with 8.5 foot walls. When I finally get to a place where I can build a shop I'm going with 10 foot. I can just barely tilt my bandsaw enough to get it on a dolly to move. My mill is a little bit taller than the bandsaw which makes moving it a 3 person job.

Like someone above said, divide your shop into two smaller shops. Woodworking and dirty metal working on one side, fine metal working on the other side. This will keep sawdust out of your mill ways and other places it shouldnt be.

I've got 2 air cleaners, a dust collector and a shop vac on my dirty side and I still cant control the dust. Just the nature of the beast.

Like someone else said, put your compressor either in another room or outside in a sealed cubby. Put your dust collector in the same space and just run the ducting into your shop. This way they don't take up floorspace for things you dont use directly. It doesnt matter if your compressor/dustcollector is in your shop or in your neighbors shop as long as the ducting and air lines are run where you need them.
 
Congratulations on the new shop Butch. Very cool. The comment about clean area and dirty area are very good. I'd also suggest you bite the bullet and don't skimp on the wiring, outlets, lights etc. And if you can swing it, a truck height loading dock on one side can be very useful. And make sure the soil is really properly compacted before they pour ...But I digress...

My last shop had an 8' ceiling and I had to cut a hole in it to pull the draw bar out of a mill. Other than that minor problem, 8' was no problem. The low 7' roll up doors were a bigger problem. Ideally the doors are as tall as your biggest tool, but the reality is you can frequently remove something off the top of the tool to get it under doors. It is also very nice to be able to drive a small forklift under the door, you'd want an 8' door for that too.

Since you asked, the tallest tool in my shop is 105".
 
Me.......oh wait a second, ahhhh

Seriously, I have 8 ft ceiling in the finishing side of the shop and a bit taller in the forging side, because the floor there is dirt. My hydraulic press is 6 ft which is 2 inches shorter than I am. I do not have a mill of any kind and I don't plan to have one. If you do you might want to go up to 9 ft to give yourself a bit more room, if it doesn't cramp the upper floor too much.
Thanks,
Del
 
yes the shop will be split clean side dirty side and i was hopping to show a plan that was built up on the grizzly site (did you know they have a shop planner ?)
but kelly sent me the email with the plan and it didnt come throught i will see what i can do about that

didnt know know fast i could fill up a shop when yopu have a big lathe 2 foot of bench on most the walls and many other tools the good thing is tho i planned for all my stuff and a few more tools i know i want and then made sure i had room for other stuff liek 2nd kiln /salt pot and testing gear (small cnc mill at some point too)

as much as i hate to think about it i doo think i ll need to sell the 13 inch SB on a 6'bed as its just huge for most every thing i do (would be fine if it was a 3' bed ) in its place will be a 10 inch er on a short bed (hope to find one with a big through hole )

i also know liek you guys said that pull all the power to the shop i can getaway with make sure i have lots of light and plan for air lines (tho i will not have much use for that sept to blow out tools ) and the compressor will be in a sound insulated space under the stairs to the upper floorspace
 
In my thinking about my future shop Butch, I feel it's important to not only think about the tool height, but how you'll move the tools around once inside the new shop.

Whether that means a forklift, overhead trolley, jib crane, gantry crane, engine hoist.... whatever, you will most likely need some head room for it.

And I completely agree with Fred... I think some head-room is good for the mind. On one side of my shop the ceiling is 11' and on the other side (sloping flat roof) it's only a little under 9' I feel less constricted in the high side. Sure it's in my head, but that doesn't make it feel any less real! ;) :)

Also, the higher the sidewalls you have, the easier it is for things like vertical storage racks, and higher level (out of the way) storage.
 
If you have the time check out shoptours. Its a website where a bunch of people post pictures of their shop, discuss why things are where they are and how they'd do it differently next time. There really are some amazing home workshops out there. It took me 2 weeks to read through all of them. When I finally finished I had re-organized my shop 3 times. :eek:
 
butcher_block said:
yes the shop will be split clean side dirty side and i was hopping to show a plan that was built up on the grizzly site (did you know they have a shop planner ?)
but kelly sent me the email with the plan and it didnt come throught i will see what i can do about that

didnt know know fast i could fill up a shop when yopu have a big lathe 2 foot of bench on most the walls and many other tools the good thing is tho i planned for all my stuff and a few more tools i know i want and then made sure i had room for other stuff liek 2nd kiln /salt pot and testing gear (small cnc mill at some point too)

as much as i hate to think about it i doo think i ll need to sell the 13 inch SB on a 6'bed as its just huge for most every thing i do (would be fine if it was a 3' bed ) in its place will be a 10 inch er on a short bed (hope to find one with a big through hole )

i also know liek you guys said that pull all the power to the shop i can getaway with make sure i have lots of light and plan for air lines (tho i will not have much use for that sept to blow out tools ) and the compressor will be in a sound insulated space under the stairs to the upper floorspace
Click to expand...

Don't sell the lathe. You can always do small stuff on a big lathe (collets are a beautiful thing) but it is hard to big stuff on a little lathe. You will not find a small lathe with a decent sized bore through the spindle, my little southbend is frustrating in that I can only put something like 5/8 or 3/4 (i forgot which, they are both frustratingly small through the head) even my 19x52 leBlond is frustratingly small at 1 1/2 inches. Lathes are like guitars, if you sell the good one without replacing it with something with more capability you will always regret it (I still kick myself for selling my 1967 Fender)

When you wire the shop put 20 amp breakers in each going to one quad box, and put them every 4 feet along the walls at 6 inches over bench height,and on a 4 foot grid on your ceiling with a 220 30 amp outlet every 8 feet., yes the electricians will look at you funny, but it really helps

-Page
 
some of the names are in the wron place but i think most is ok (not bad for grizzly site really ) and abig thank you to my lovely Kelly as she was the one that did most the work
wow thats a bigger pic then i thought i ll fix it then and the numbers are a bit more mixed up then i thought
will post the fix in a bit as in sort it out tho most of the tools are kind of the same shape even if they are the wrong size (like the kiln is not 3x5 but i aloted lots of extra space for it )
there i think i fixed it mostly

butchs-workshop-copy.jpg
 
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