For me, organization is an important part of creating an efficient workspace and keeping frustration to a minimum while I’m woodworking. It’s hard for me to keep it organized but, I like to start a project with a clean slate. The smaller the workspace, the more important it is to me. Whether workshop or desk, organization is important, that and not trying to put 10 gallons of stuff into a 5-gallon bucket.
I know there are woodworkers out there that will disagree with me or, at least, they don’t mind working in what some would consider a cluttered and disorganized shop. And, that’s fine. They know where everything is in their shop and they create projects of wonderful craftsmanship in an environment that they are comfortable and familiar with.
You can see from the photos on this site that my shop is far from organized in its current state. So, how can I be talking about organization you may ask. The fact is that I had odd pieces of lumber and sheet goods stacked all over the place. One stack in my shop area and two stacks in the other part of the garage. I had to keep looking in each of the stacks to see if I had what I needed at the moment and I had to keep moving the stacks around to get to things behind them.
To solve this problem, I built the Materials Cart shown above. I don’t have very much space overhead and no open walls at this point so I searched around for materials storage on wheels ideas and found a design I liked in ShopNotes, Issue #55. It had storage for lumber, cut-offs and sheet goods. It had a panel-cutting guide as a bonus. Originally designed to store a full 4’X8’ sheet of material on edge, it was too big for my small area. I adapted that design to a 48” X 25-1/2” footprint that works better in my space and left off the guide since I figured that I would have to have already cut the panel down in order to use the guide on this smaller cart.
Additionally, I changed the method of construction and the material from plywood to OSB; it saved me a lot of money (2 full 4X8 sheets, $20 vs. $50+). The most expensive single component of building the cart was the 3” casters. I’ve since found a cheaper source for those as well; which is good because I have several mobile workstations, storage and cabinets yet to build.
Now I have all of my larger pieces of lumber and sheet goods in one place, out of the way and easily movable if needed. This is just the start but, it will help to reduce the frustration level on my next project. Do you store your lumber and/or sheet goods on wheels? If so, or if you have other recommendations, I invite you to share them.
I’ll go through the building process of this materials cart in upcoming posts. Stay tuned.
Unless you have tons of experience or unlimited space and funds, setting up a woodworking shop is an evolutionary experience. Mine started out in a corner of our garage, a garage originally set up for vehicle/trailer housing and general utilitarian handyman activities and storage. After getting rid of the trailer, I was able to expand my woodworking area but still had to share space with general storage shelves and use the cut-down utility bench for a woodworking bench. it’s not much good for woodworking even though I did cut it down to a more woodworking friendly height. The top is made from 3/4” particle board with a 1/”4” MDF cover. The humidity changes over the years has left it anything but flat or solid.
Anyway, since I don’t have a lot of experience, funds or unlimited space, I thought I would use a couple of computer tools to help me layout my existing shop and help me plan its evolution in an effort to maximize the available space.
The first computer tool or application I used was Microsoft’s Visio. It’s a quick and easy way to create a floor plan. The floor plan below is future look at my shop. It may seem crowded on the one end (that’s the machine or dust generating end) but, everything is on wheels so it can easily be rearranged as needed or pushed out of the way, as shown, if I want more elbow room.
Like I said, Visio is good for quick floor plans. What it’s not as good at is giving you a 3-dimensional feeling for the shop unless you want to created additional drawings from various angles. For the 3D model of the shop I went to Google’s SketchUp (SU) app. Depending on the level of detail you want in your virtual shop and what all you have in your shop, you can create a 3D model in a short time or a while longer. Once the models of the shop and it’s contents are created it’s easy to rearrange and modify the floor plan.
I’ve uploaded a new image gallery of some scenes created from the SU model of my shop. While the Visio drawing is of the future layout, this SU model is just the start of modeling my shop as it is today. I have a few pieces of existing shop furniture in there including my workbench. If my real workbench looked as good as my virtual one, I might not be planning to replace it with a Roubo-like bench that Chris Schwartz and several others have built. You can get to the gallery from the menu of by clicking on the image below.
I will update the post and the gallery as I get more of the virtual pieces and details created. Once the model of my existing shop is completed, it will be fun to start designing and building the new pieces that I hope will add more flexibility and free up some space.
How do you go about planning and setting up your shop? What do you do to make your shop flexible and create space so you not wasting time and energy walking over, around and through a mass of tools and debris to get to tools or materials that you need at the moment and then over, around or through the maze again to get back to you project?
