Building Shop - Going to Need Thoughts and Ideas!

[Fasttrack]

Well ... I'm broke. I'm worse than broke. I'm in debt by a pretty substantial amount.

On the plus side, I'm a homeowner as of about 2:00 pm today. The house was built in 1960 and needs some updating, but all in all it is in very good shape. It was a once owner house and they had all the original documents from when it was built. The owner also owned an excavation business so a lot of the construction was done by him or by other contractors through the barter system. All of this and receipts from purchases to build the house are still around. Pretty neat to know the history of the place.

I plan on posting a sketch of the basement floor plan and a video walk through. Then I'd like to hear some ideas on how to arrange my tools and equipment in the most efficient way. It won't be easy to move my big old beasts around once they're in there, so I'd like to have a pretty definitive plan before moving them in.

I'd like to have some small part of the basement as a basic woodworking shop with a compound miter saw, etc. Then I've got two lathes, a milling machine, a drill press, a shaper, a welder, a granite surface plate, a 3 in 1 machine, work benches, welding table, a bench grinder, band saw, stock rack, metal chop saw, hardware bins, and tool chests to arrange. I'll post details later ... but until then ... get your space-optimizing thinking caps on

[Carld]

How much head room does the basement have and what is the dimensions of the floor.

[Boostinjdm]

It would be wise to find a separate place to use the grinders and welders. Those produce fine dust and smoke that covers everything.

[Fasttrack]

Carld - Details soon to come! (And pictures!)


BoostinJdm - Yep. The basement is divided into two big parts: The garage and the basement proper. The garage is seperated from the rest of the basement by two big double doors (with no lip on the bottom, so the machines will be easy to roll in ... the old man who built the place also had a shop down there ). I plan on keeping the grinders, torch and welder in the garage section where venilation will be easy and the dust will be kept out of the rest of the basement. There is also a bathroom, fireplace and washer/dryer in the basement. Even has air lines piped in from the garage where I just need to hook up my compressor.

[toolmaker76]

Of necessity, my machines have been bunched together, awaiting the rest of the shop to be finished. I have noticed one of the good things about this is that I can easily get to everything- finished a job the other day where I could set the lathe on automatic feed, while that cut was being made do some chamfering in the drill press, and also chuck the pieces up in a second lathe to file a chamfer on an outside edge. The result was that all three operations were finished at about the same time.

I had another recent job that ran similarly, most of it milling operations done while I had some long cuts being done on the lathe.

So my thinking is in my final shop layout that I will be putting machinery in a "cell" configuration. Lathe and mill facing each other where its not too much of a stretch to be working on both machines, with access to a drill press, bench grinder, and perhaps a second lathe. The bandsaw will be outside of the cell, but I want close uncluttered access to it, for the same reason; I can position another cut while something on the lathe or mill is working.

At the moment, my mill and lathe are too close together. Easy enough for one person to work, but impossible to get help from a second person on one or the other. So my thinking is enough room for two people to be comfortably working back to back, but close enough where one person could easily get at either machine.

That has been my thinking these days, hope it gives you some food for thought. Congrats on the new place!

[john hobdeclipe]

Fastrack, you haven't said how big the place is. But I can promise you that it isn't big enough!

[Mcgyver]

congrats....so do we get to see the Pacemaker going down the stairs? Take pics please

[Fasttrack]

congrats....so do we get to see the Pacemaker going down the stairs? Take pics please

Ahh hell ... I was just going to push her down and let gravity take care of the rest.

Actually, it's a walkout basement with one side made into a garage.

John - you're absolutely right! There was some property and a pole barn behind the house that I would've liked, but I wasn't able to get them for a variety of reasons.

Toolmaker - I like that idea and it will probably need to be set up pretty close together just for space concerns. The basement looks big when it's empty, but I expect it to fill up fast!

[DICKEYBIRD]

If you have CAD skills, draw the space to scale including doors, windows etc and all of your machines, toolboxes. Then it's easy-peasy to shuffle things around until it works best for you.

[duckman]

It might be old school but get a large piece of card board and using 1" to 1' ratio draw your cellar with all the posts, doors and any thing else that will be in the way, make cut outs of all your machines including walk around room and travel of machines, make your self a 2' square (you are the square) and use it to position the machines, CAD is all right but you lose the perspective of size. As an aside I helped a friend by building to scale a house he was modifying after I was done he realized what he wanted was not possible.