My shop

It's spring time cleaning in my shop.  With all the hours I've been working, cleaning hasn't been a huge priority.  It was getting to the point where I was no longer walking on the actual floor, but on wood shavings.  While sweeping up I took the opportunity to take some pictures.

My shop is the back half of a two car tandem garage.  It measures 15 feet by 20 feet, more than large enough for the hand tool work I do.  It is a simple wood-frame with wood siding, as you can see from the pictures.  My projects for this year will be the installation of some windows on my bench wall, as well as a new floor to go over the concrete.  I am blessed to have such a comfortable space in which to work; it just needs some more natural light.

My new Roubo bench with my Grammercy Tools holdfasts

Over the winter, as time allowed, I put this Roubo bench together.  The legs are 6" x 6" posts with pine stretchers.  The 24" wide top is actually made of laminated birch drawer sides with a quarter-sawn white oak front board and is 8 1/2 feet long.  The total cost of the top was less than $50, with another $40 for the legs and stretchers.  I used an adze to level the bottom of the bench before assembly and a 28" wooden jointer to level the top.  It was a lot of work to get a nice flat bench but I really couldn't be happier with it.

Extra top pieces. It took over a gallon of glue to put them together!

 The dog holes in the bench

 The leg vise... you might recognize it from an earlier post

I also took some pictures of some of my tool storage locations.  I use a wall mounted tool rack in front of my bench to store some measuring and marking tools, as well as a few of my most-used chisels.

My tool rack

My plane till holds my user metal planes, while a pair of cabinetmakers chests hold just about everything else.  The plane till was made to my own specifications, but based on a similar one by Chris Gochnour of Fine Woodworking magazine.

 My plane till, which also holds my scrapers and burnishers

My spokeshave and drawknife rack.,

My new springpole lathe

Finally, we come to my new springpole lathe.  This took me about ten hours to build, based on the plan from Roy Underhill's book, The Woodwright's Guide: Working Wood with Wedge and Edge.  I've only used it for a few minutes since finishing it, but I'm quite pleased.  I will probably build a sash-saw attachment similar to the one Roy shows in The Woodwright's Shop: A Practical Guide to Traditional Woodcraft. Don't worry about the cobbled-together tool rest; a real one is in the works.

Well, that's a brief look at the important elements of my shop.  What do you think?   As always, here's hoping you get some time in your shop and the time to shop for your latest treasures.

Zach