Where is your workshop?

It's sort of the basement of our addition. You see we have a small ranch with a walk out fully finished basement. We build the shop behind the basement, then build a four season sun room on top of it where we spend most of our time year around. Since the yard still slopes there are a couple of steps down from the basement to the shop and the shop to the yard.
 
I have my shop in one bay of a 3 car garage. I am just starting out so I do not have many tools. Just the basics: small forge, small drill press, vice, sears 2X42 belt grinder. We are getting ready to move and the new diggs only has a 2 car garage so I may need to build a free standing shop.
 
:DOK, all you guys who have seen my "shop" quit grinning.

I have some 'flexible' space in the garage - which right now houses heat treat, cryogenics, the big metal bandsaw, the little metal bandsaw and a bunch of steel waiting to be cut. Oh yes The Mini Mill that I have never used is there too.

My knife making shop is in a 7 1/2 x 9 foot room in the basement - containing a Wood bandsaw, baldor buffer, big bench vise, Coote grinder (which is never used), a Sears 2x42 which only gets used for the disc, a 1 1/2 HP so called dust collector and - my pride and joy, a Bee variable grinder. I am sure they are all there because when I throw a switch, there are noises coming from under the dust pile. :o

The supply store is a 7 x 11 room that was probably supposed to be a dining room in someone's world - and I store extra handle materials, belt inventory, books and equipment in what was probably intended to be a rec-room, (in someone's world). The store is also hardness testing, document storage and a boot rack.

Since that is never enough, Marilyn and I use the kitchen table as an office with a perpetual pile of invoices, orders and notes beside two computers. The kitchen counter is a shipping department, unless we are etching blades at which time, shipping moves to the living room.

The kitchen oven doubles as a low temp kiln for drying wood for stabilizing. The IT distribution centre is beside the eliptical trainer in the livingroom and the HD Television gets used more for knifemaking videos than anything.

The back yard has a big box elder burl that has eaten any chainsaw I've ever put to it, not to mention shipping skids that will surely be useful some day.

We have a bathroom and a laundry room that you know that I can justify for business - (first aid - work clothes clean up - gun storage) and although I haven't quite developed the bedroom argument, I'm leaning towards an R&D think tank (with occasional diversions). The truck gets used for picking up kilns and other heavy equipment, the van for delivering postal shipment to the post office and the Saturn for out of province trips where we often include N/C deliveries to customers on our route.

I believe if I am ever audited, I can prove to Revenue Canada (OUr version of the IRS) that 100% of everything we own is business related.

So maybe, I should ask the question "Where is your worksop not?"

Rob!
 
I have a 20X20 cement block building behind my house. Half of it has my grinders and drill presses and a work bench and design bench. The other half has my anvil and forgeing tools. My forge is builton wheels so I can roll it outside. (shop has low ceiling).Shop also has heat and A/C.
 
Well when I decided to start in knife making I decided to build a small shop out back, we have 1/4 section so there is a lot of room. It is just a small 12 x 18 but it looks great to me. I was luck enough to buy a lot of equipment from a knife maker going out of business so I have everything I need to get started. I am still working on the painting , heating and lighting but I couldn't be happier. All I need now is to start building.
 
Well, my shop is in an extra large two car garage. Still park both cars in it when not working in the shop. Left side has welding/plasma cutting equip,blasting cabinet, buffer and electric heat treat. End has mill, lathe, forge, quench tank, quench plates, cyro tank, press, metal band saw, work bench, filing station and metal stock. Right side has door with large fan for ventilation, 2X72 grinder, compressor, dust collector, storage shelves and drill press. Disk grinder is portable and is moved to where ever there is space at the time. Man, gotta move to get more space. No room left to build an out building. Oh well, have to wait until both kids are out of college... 4 more years :eek:

Eric
 
I built and attached 12' x 16' shop onto the side of the house, with an attached and covered 8' x 12' deck. I purposely designed the shop so that there is no access from the inside of the house into my shop, thus no worries about dust getting into the house. I have all of my forging and heat treating equipment on wheels so that I can roll it out onto the back porch, next to the deck. It's small, but holds all of my equipment (barely). The shop has a wood laminate floor, so it is not suitable for hot work, which is why my forging/heat treating equipment is on wheels.

My shop design is such that the siding is a perfect match to my house, and the floor level of the shop is exactly the same as the house. If and when my wife and I move, we will put a doorway from the shop into the house and convert the shop into extra living space, cleaning it up and finishing it out differently to up the value of our home!

Yes, I actually planned ahead. A 12' x 16' bonus room off the formal dining room would make a nice rec room, or office, or bedroom.
 
I have been working in my 2 car garage and a 12X20 room in the house set up just as a shop. The room currently houses my lathe, mill, buffer, drill press and various gunsmithing equipment. This summer I built a 24x30 concrete floor building as a shop for all of my knife making equipment, including forge and 50# Little Giant. It is nearly complete except for painting inside and lights. It is insulated and has a Heater/Air conditioner in one wall. Have 100 amp 220 panel and lots of circuits. I will be moving the band saws, KMG, mill, buffer, dust collector, etc soon. Still have to install the garage type door. It is about 5 feet from the back door of my house and even has running water(cold only). Now that I am retired, I may actually get to work in it. Will post pictures as soon as it is complete.
Chip Kunkle
 
A separete area for hot work is a necessity, IMO. I have a 12x16 forge shop for the anvils, hammer and forges.
Right now I'm finishing up a 13x27 room for grinding and building. Until this sumer I did all the non-hot work in part of my bodyshop. With the ridiculous price of fuel oil, I decided I'm still young enuff to cut firewood so installed a woodstove in what was the spraybooth. Plenty of room and after lowering the ceiling, very comfortable.
Oh ya, lotsa receptacles and lights, twice what you think you need.
To do it overagain, I would install in the floor heating.
 
Well, When i got the feeder calves out of the barn, i put walls up for a 15x30 shop...LOts of tools and room to visit with friends that stop by...Lots of knives have been born in that barn.....MOstly for deer hunters.............carl
 
I have an 8 X 10 shop in the basement where I do all the work of knifemaking. I often do some of the leather work on the kitchen table.

The nice thing about the basement shop is that it is heated in winter and cool in the summer. The only drawback is the constant battle of dust control. No matter how hard I work at keeping things clean with dust collection systems, I get dust in the house.
 
Home garage, about 2/3 of it though. The rest is regular garage stuff, bicycles, tires... The plan is another house someday with a separate garage, a BIG one.

Pad
 
Farmer Phil said:
Well my shop.... Nagh, I'll have to get some pix, otherwise, you'll never believe it.
Click to expand...

Now I'm interested :) :confused: ... Waiting the pics....

I have a 26 ft X 32 ft shop for HT and stock removal at our large orange garden. At the farthest corner of the garden I have also a forging shop (away from people)....

Emre
 
The company I work for just provided me and my family free on site housing (fish farm). The new place has a 1200 sq. foot steel building with concrete floor, roll up door etc that is about 50 feet from the house. I am really happy, but now the down side. The guy who was here before me wrote into the deal that he keeps his stuff in the shop until Sept 1 of 2009. The shop is packed full of crap. Barber chairs, gas pumps, phone booth and 1150 sq feet of other various crap, and he has a second shop that is twice as big and also packed with crap. We hauled six 20 yard dumpsters of garbage/junk off the grounds and there is still a long way to go. Amazing. Other major down side is that he built this really nice shop and there is no power, but that will be remedied before Sept 1. At least I can wire it how I want it. In the mean time I am in a little 10x10 shed. At least it has 4 outlets and one 220 outlet, but man is it tight. I just need to be patient.

-Mike
 
Right now my grinder and bench tools are set up at a friend's garage about 2 miles away. I had to run 220v power to the garage and wire the garage from scratch.

I finally set up my forge and anvil behind the garage in my new apartment. My landlord is quite cool allowing me to do that. Eventually I might have 220V run to the garage so I can move everything there but not for a year or so.
 
My shop is a 12x24 portable storage building, heated with a wood stove. I want to insulate it next year and put a small AC unit in. It has an exaust system and all the tools I need for stock removal work, well most all the tools I need, seems there is always some other tool that would be nice, like a Rockwell tester. J.D.
 
My shop goes through seasonal iterations. The leather and fine metalwork spaces are on a covered porch. Most of the rest, grinders, drill press, forge, disc sander, bench space- is in the back yard.

7 months out of the year it needs nothing more than shade. The other 5 months can be killers with rain. I've tried the lean to, random tarps. This year I have a solid frame on the back fence, giving me about 24x9, with most of the roof made out of some old heavy tenting. Pretty low budget, but I like the airflow (even when it's 40 degrees) and until my wife gets out of nursing school, we're not owning a house.

I've considered getting a 16 foot trailer for everything but the forge and leather work
 
10" X 12" shed in the back yard. small but it works! expanded outside for the anvil and forge:) it is a wooden shed with a wooden floor, not good for forging!
 
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