Shop Update 2023
Not a lot has changed since 2021, relatively speaking. Many of the pain points I had then, I still have. But I have acquired a few new things that are proving useful and improving my work.
The back wall is almost completely the same. You can see the Grizzly spindle sander this time, while the Porter-Cable is flipped down. Bob at I Like To Make Stuff did an interesting variation on the flip cart with one stationary tool and two that swap places; I might try that if I end up getting another sanding tool (a drum sander, maybe). But that’s not on my list right now. I’ve acquired a few more parallel clamps, because I find myself going for these a lot, but I still need to get them stored somewhere closer to where they get used. I’m wasting a lot of time going to get the clamps and then put them back when I’m done, two at a time because they’re heavy.
You can also see the minisplit up in the corner. Best purchase I’ve made for the shop, period — it’s way cheaper to operate than the old plug-in space heaters were, and cleaning out the filter every 3-4 weeks is not that big a deal.
The shop center has become the major hub for almost all my building activities. The outfeed/assembly table and table saw provide outfeed for the planer, and all I have to do is push the trash can aside to have a nice long path for the jointer. That jointer is most effective under 50 inches of board length, but that’s enough for 90% of what I do; for longer things I can still use a planer sled or track saw.
The vise is 22 inches long and has a great trip now that I’ve got it properly mounted in the new table, and I can hold work steady on the top in any position I need to. The new top is nice and flat and cleans easily.
On the far side you can see the Laguna band saw and dust collector, both of which I still love. And the DeWalt planer on the end is still chugging along nicely with the original 3-knife head — nope, no helical head yet. I think about it now and again, but it doesn’t have any trouble with the woods I normally use. It has a problem going really thin — anything less then 3/16″ thick is a roll of the dice whether it will get thinned or eaten up — but that’s not something I do regularly. I’d probably get a drum sander instead.
This is probably the ugliest part of the shop, in terns of looking bad and wasting space. It start out as my collapsible table, but I never ever collapse it these days. And the things stored beneath it, by and large, should really not be in the garage at all (except for the saw blade cleaner).
This will probably be the next major shop project, though it will have to wait a while. I’m imagining a tabletop that raises and lowers, and underneath it a more clever storage solution for my most-used clamps, which would be much more convenient than the corner clamp rack. I may even keep the top of the table as it is and just adapt a self-raising and lowering base to accommodate projects of any size.
I didn’t photograph it, but my CNC setup is still on top of the plywood carrier and pretty much unchanged. Truth is, I don’t use the CNC very often; I need to either use it more or get rid of it and use the shop space more productively. The damned software is a large part of the that; Vectrix is apparently wildly popular for some reason, but I find it very difficult to draw with and the vendor doesn’t support any non-Vectrix alternatives. I may sell the CNC Shark and replace it with a Shaper Origin, since that can be stored in a much smaller space when I’m not using it.
We’ll see what happens next. I’m doing a small table project for a neighbor (using that big cookie on the back table right now), and I need to do some towel bars, shelves, and a new center console piece for the new bathroom first. Christmas is coming!
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