Project Hal - Part 2: Space

This is the second post (the first post was the introduction and announcement, here) in my series on setting up the shop for Crispin Arms and Crispin Fabrication (an endeavor that I have decided to call Project Hal; a Shakespearean pun).

The first step in setting up any shop, is acquiring, and readying, your shop space. Depending on where you live, this can actually be a difficult, and potentially expensive; proposition.

Thankfully, when we chose our home here in north Idaho, we were thinking ahead. We chose a home in an area that is zoned multi-use (residential, commercial, industrial, and agricultural use are all allowed in my zoning area; within certain, fairly loose, limits). Not only that, but we chose a home with fairly large pre-existing shop space.

On the lower right of this picture, is my house. On the upper left, my shop:

My office/mancave/hobby/electronics/fine work/computer work space is about 3/4 of the bottom floor of the house by the way (the main living floor of the house is the second row of sliding glass doors, with the elevated deck running around two sides).

I've got about 800 square feet of space down there (under 8 foot suspended ceilings. Convenient for the wiring). My wife has her own 256sq foot craft room, with a bunch of worktable and storage space; separate from my workspace.

My main space is split into about half workspace, with desks, benches, bookcases and shelving, a water cooler, and a beverage fridge; about half "lounge" area, with a large "8 person" sectional sleeper sofa/double recliner, coffee tables, big screen TV, stereo, PS3 etc... I've also got a private 3/4 bath, a kitchenette (microwave, toaster oven, small flattop griddle, hot plate, small food fridge, electric tea kettle, and a french press) and a 64sq ft "secure" gun room. Honestly, the only reason to go into the rest of my house, is to be with my family.

At 28 foot wide by 32 foot deep (interior floor space),  the shop is a pretty decent overall size of just about 900sq feet; but it has some... eccentricities...

As you can see from the picture, it has an extra-wide (24 foot x 8 foot) garage door on the main floor. There are also a decent sized windows on each wall (large windows on the side walls, small windows upstairs and down, on the back walls), and a side entry door on the left side of the building.

Oddly, on the second floor, there's a sliding glass door opening out onto 10 feet of air. It was intended to allow for large items to be passed in (reminiscent of the classic hay loft door for a barn), as well as to provide a lot of natural light (the original owner used the space as a painting studio).

Out of that 28x32, it only has a 26x26 fully clear square. There's a 36" wide stairway, with a 36"x36" 90 degree landing at 36" off the floor; descending to a 36"x72"x12" concrete footing/concrete steps in the back right corner; taking up about 1/4 of the width of the back wall, to 72" depth (and restricting the height of another 1/4).  There are also built in 2 foot deep workbenches and cabinets along the full length of the left wall; and it's got 9 foot ceilings (8 foot clear of the garage door hardware and lights).

Basically, it's not quite a 3 car garage, but it's a lot bigger than a standard two car garage.

A note: This "two car garage" thing is actually a small point of irritation for me.

The American standard 2 car garage has a "minimum" size of 18x20 (by home appraisal standards); but in the age of the SUV, 24x24 has become the convention. There is no standard for a 3 car garage, but by convention, it would have around 36 feet of clear interior width. 

At 28 feet wide, my shop would technically be wide enough (though a bit of a squeeze by conventional standards) for a 3 car garage; with only 26 feet of clear width though, it would be a bit tight.  

Why do I say that though, when most cars are less than 6 feet wide? Or, put another way, why has the convention become 24x24 for a two car garage?

Even my bigger than full size pickup (Dodge megacab 2500), including the mirrors, is only 79.4" wide (6 feet 7.4 inches) unless I unfold the built in towing mirrors at which point it expands to 96" wide (8 feet). Its also one of the longest production vehicles in the world at just over 22 feet (including the stinger on the receiver hitch), and one of the tallest at almost 7 feet tall (It's 8" taller than a "standard" half ton pickup. That includes a 2" factory lift for being a 2500 with the heavy duty towing package; 4" more for being a 4x4; and a 1.5" lift from upgrading to 35" tires).

I personally don't think my HUGE truck should be what the "standard" is based on; but even if it were, my truck is longer and wider than any SUV currently sold, and you could still fit three of them in a 24x24 "standard" 2 car garage. A Chevy suburban is 19 feet long and 6'7" wide, and the same three would fit in the "standard" garage.

My actual passenger car (a Cadillac STS) is only 72.4" (6'0.4") wide and 196.3" (16'4") long; and it's a bigger than "average" car.

In fact, of the top 20 best selling passenger cars in America, the Chevy Impala is both the longest at 200" and the widest at 73" (The Camry is 190" long and 71" wide. The Accord is 195" long and also 73" wide). So ALL of the best selling passenger cars are under 17 feet long (and all but one is under 16 feet long), and all but two are 6 feet wide or under.

At 28x32 I could fit 8 "average" cars  in my floor space. Even in my 26x26 clear square space, or in the 24x24 American "standard" 2 car garage; you could still fit six "average" cars. 

Of course, no-one would be able to park, get out of, and unload a car, without a few feet of clearance to the sides and rear; but the idea that a two car garage needs to be 24x24 is ridiculous. You don't need six feet of space between two cars, three feet to either side of the two cars, and 8 feet behind their trunks.

My personal opinion, is that the two car garage "standard" should be a clear floor space of about 22x22; which still gives plenty of clear space between and around your vehicles, and room for cabinets and wall hanging storage. I think you could comfortably get away with 18x20 and still have more space than you do parking at the mall. The three car garage "standard" should be a clear floor space of about 32x22, and you could get away with 26x20.

What the "standard" really reflects, is that our garages aren't used for vehicles. Mostly, they're used for workshops and storage space; and the vehicles are an afterthought...

Frankly, even in cold states, most people I know with a "two car garage", don't use their garage for cars at all. Most of the time, if there's a vehicle in the garage, its a motorcycle or a quad.

The shop also has about half the main floors usable space (with 6 foot or higher ceilings) on the second floor, with  a very large amount of storage space under the rafters (behind the six foot walls).

Really, it was never built as a garage, and was always intended to be a shop, and office/work space on the second floor. As I noted above, the original owners even built in cabinets and work tables along one wall; and they deliberately built the stairs very wide, with a wide landing and clear entry zone, to allow for large items to be brought up and down.

Even with the eccentricities though, I've got enough space for all my shop tools, workflow and walkaround room, materials storage etc... Particularly since all my shop tools are on mobile bases.  I can just reconfigure things as I need, for the project that I am working on.

It's not ideal; but ideally I'd have 10000sqft of climate controlled space, with 24 foot ceilings (to fit a tall tail on a plane) a 48 foot hangar door (to fit wings), and my own landing strip.

Ideally, I'd also have an unlimited budget. This shop is included in my house payment. It'll do.

The bigger issue, was that, by the time I actually started this project; we'd had over 18 months of crap accumulating in the shop.

I started cleaning it out a couple months back; but up 'til a few days before the announcement, about half the clear floor space was taken up with "crap".

A few weeks ago, this is what the shop looked like:

It's not clear from this angle, but basically, there's about 200 square feet, piled a solid 5 foot high (some spots 7 foot), of nothing but (mostly flattened) cardboard boxes:

This was MOST OF the first load (we closed the tailgate and packed some more in):

And what was still left after the first load... probably two more loads:

Again, it's not really clear from the pic, but that pile is STILL 5 foot or more high, 10 foot deep, and probably 14ft wide.

That would be most of the boxes we moved with, plus most of the MANY MANY boxes we get from mail order (probably 1/2 our monthly shopping comes from Amazon. Thank god for Prime); and of course, a large percentage of the boxes from all the tools bought for the shop.

I'mna leave you hangin here though; because I'm not going to be showing pics of the whole shop, until I'm ready for some of the tool and storage posts.

An off the cuff shooting bench

I couldn't sleep last night, and I had sketchup open anyway, doing the lathe bench; and the last thing I said in that post was that it would be pretty easy to take this same basic design and make a shooting bench out of it... so what the hell, I did.

Again, sketchup seems to be adding or subtracting random 64ths to my dimensions; as they were even numbers when I laid them down. the top is intended to be 27" wide; the center part of which should be 9". It should be 48" long, 34" high (before you add height adjusting feet to the bottoms of both front legs, and either the center of the back leg, or to both uprights... you can adjust the leg length to suit your preferences), and the straight sections of the the top shown in the plan view should each be 19.5" long, with the angled sections being 9" long and 9" wide.

The primary structure is all 4x4 dimensional lumber milled down to 3", with 3/4" plywood top, shelves, and gussets. All wood joins are glued and screwed (face screwed, pocket screwed, or lag screwed, depending on the join). The benchtop is finished with tempered hardboard, glued and screwed, with thin sheetmetal edging, supplied by drywall corners.

The main structural member, is a T-beam, created by jointing, then gluing and lag screwing three, four foot lengths of 4x4 milled down to 3" (tip: mill to 3-1/8" before gluing up the three across pieces, then run the glueup through your planer after it's dry... presuming you are using a soft resin glue that wont damage your planer of course... to smooth and true up both sides and get down to 3" thickness); with a fourth length of the 3" lumber glued and lag screwed to the center piece, forming the T shape.


In these two views, I have shown only the front plywood gusset, the rear being obscured; but it should be obvious that it is a simple rectangle, extending to the bottom of the lower shelves subframe.

Also the front gusset is shown as ending above the shelf, but this was just for clarity, to show the 3" crossmember between the front legs, underneath the shelf. You could leave it this way, or you could extend the gusset to the bottom of the crossmember, for improved looks, and added rigidity.

In these views it is hidden, but the front benchtop crossmember is one piece, extending the width of the top, and saddle joined over a half lap notch cut in the cross-t  section of the front of the  T-beam; then glued and screwed.

In these views there are also three frame members you cannot see.

There is a long frame member running from between the rear leg uprights and the bottom of the rear gusset; glued and screwed to the shelf, and lagbolted into the front crossmember, under the front gusset.

There are also two diagonal braces under the benchtop; running from the end of the front upper top supports, back to the T-beam (to which they are pocket screwed), at a 45 degree angle.

Oh, and on the back legs, there are two little shelf cleats, just to keep that back end of that shelf stable. You can make them out of the scrap cutoffs from the 3" stock pretty easily. 

You may want to forgo the metal top coaming, and  perimeter edge the entire top with thin trim stock (1x2" pine trim board works fine). It will add somewhat to strength and rigidity, plus improve the longevity of the plywood top, while also dramatically improving the looks of the thing.

The dimensions of this bench are 27"x48". It could easily be extended out to as wide as 48", and as long as 72".

If you extend the width of the top beyond 32", I recommend you double the width of the center section to 18" with a six timber wide main beam section, and two timber wide center "t"; and instead of just a diagonal cross brace on each side of the top, run a full perimeter frame on each wing, with a second top crossmember across the point where the cutout begins.

You may also want to run a support brace, from the outer corners of the wings frame, down to the lower crossmember on the front legs; pocket screwing them into the legs at that point. If you do so, I recommend making the front plywood gusset, extend to at least half the width of the bracing frame; for additional rigidity.

Alternately, if you extend all the way out to 42" or 48" you could take vertical members straight down from the wings; making them the primary front legs, and meeting up with the splayed central members, as crossbracing (miter cut the center angled members to meet the vertical face of the legs, and pocket screw them into place.. or even rabbet them or birdsmouth them in). In this configuration, you could add an additional crossmember across the braces if you wanted additional support and rigidity.

Frankly, this is a little overkill structurally. It's going to weigh something like 150lbs as is; but it should be extremely stable, and last until the pine rots.

UPDATE: 

The question was asked, why use 4x4s, and why mill them down to 3x3?

Good question, and I never did explain it in the last few posts.

You mill the 4x4s down, to get them flat, square, and true; something most dimensional lumber is most definitely NOT from the lumber yard.

It's an old cabinet makers trick for getting clean and relatively cheap framing wood. 4x4s, 4x6's, and 4x8s (if you can find them anymore) are generally pretty decent wood, just ugly, and twisted, bowed, skewed, knotted etc... by milling and resawing them you can get good, even dimensioned wood.

Also, it's very convenient to work with square, evenly dimensioned stock. It makes for good corners, good miters, mice face joins etc...

The problem with using 2x4s is their true dimensions are 1.5"x3.5" and by the time you've got them flat, straight, and true, you're probably below 1.25"x3.25"; which is an awkward dimension, and not particularly strong for primary frame members.

If I were looking to not overbuild here, I would make the primary t-beam and the legs from 4x4 stock milled to 3x3; and then do all the secondary framing with 2x4s milled to 1x3.

Visualizing the Lathe Bench

So, I got some comments about my lathe workstation idea, saying that people couldn't visualize what I was thinking of.

Well, thanks to the wonderful people at Google, that's easy enough to resolve.

Someone asked for a threeview; but I think reciprocal isometric views, and a face on view (rather than two faces and an isometric) would be more illustrative.

So here's a couple of shots of a quickie sketchup model I did...

first the left iso:

Then the right iso:

And the end face:

Not sure exactly why sketchup added and/or subtracted 1/64th inch to the measurements, because I know they were accurate when I drew them up.

The lighter wood is 4x4 dimensional lumber, milled to 3". The mid tone wood is 3/4" plywood, and the dark wood is tempered hardboard.

I'm not sure whether the center uprights are necessary or not. I'm thinking with the T-Beam for the top, it's probably strong and rigid enough without them. Also, I wouldn't be doing any silly through joinery on the middle shelf. Just a gap around the legs with some edging.... if I even put the legs in at all.

What the drawing doesn't show is the metal top coaming (done with drywall corner probably), shelf edging (probably some premade molding trim strips), bottom framing, or the casters and height adjusting feet.

I left them off for clarity; and because I haven't found exactly what I want to use yet. Same thing for whatever dust and chip collection system I end up rigging (probably one of those big ABS chutes into my shop dust collector).

Also,  I need to reduce the height of the legs based on whatever heavy duty locking casters I find, so that the worktop ends up at 40 inches.

Now that I've clarified with a drawing, let's confuse things again.

I'd probably put in another 3" frame member across the bottom center of the upper shelf (between the center legs), and a triangulating crossmember between the leg uprights, crossbolted into the legs and the shelf member, and screwed into the bottom of the plywood end plates.

The end plate is a full structural gusset, glued and screwed into each individual member, for rigidity.

For the drawing, basically because I didn't feel like taking the time to do it, I just show a simple miter and butt join from the top of the outboard legs, to the bottom of the T-Beam. For the real thing, I haven't decided whether I'll rafter cut it, to give a two face join; or cut a corner block and pocket screw through it (thank god for Kreg jigs).

I'll probably put 3" longmembers and crossmembers across the bottom of the outside legs, and from leg to leg, both on the bottom and the top of the base shelf. Then I'll do inside corner bracing on the bottom frame, with a 3" brace, and a 3/4" ply gusset glued and screwed over it; to bolt the casters and feet to. Finally, I'll run two more 3" longmembers,  from one the inside edge of the corner brace, across the entire bottom to the other inside edge of the corner brace, on each side... or if I decide to keep the center legs, I'll just run the two long members underneath the legs and screw up through them..

All that will edge the base shelf, keep the center of the base rock solid, add mass, AND make for a seriously rigid frame structure.

If I end up dogboning the bottom shelf, I'll leave the end crossmembers, but move the outer long members inboard to say... an 18" wide center section; then triangulate the frame with outside corner bracing (making a 7" right triangle with diagonal members on all four corners, from the end of the outboard legs, to the long members).

However, I don't think I need to dogbone it. Looking at it drawn up, and given the mass of the thing; possibly including a few bags of lead shot, or sand... I think I can reduce the width of the bottom shelf/splay of the legs, down to 28". Given the lathe is 8" wide (the benchtop it's on is 9" wide) and the toolrest is right on the outside edge of that width, that would only leave 9.5" sticking out further than the tool rest, which should let me work just fine without leaning in...

...and frankly, even at 32" wide that's still only an 11.5" reach; and I've personally got a 14" reach from 90 degrees, elbows straight down from the midline of my body to the center of my fist (add another 5" from the center of my fist to the tips of my fingers). In a normal working stance, I don't think the full width bottom shelf would restrict my movement or force a reach at all, especially with 4" or 6" casters on the thing, so I can get my toes under the frame (somehow, I'm not worried about the frame collapsing and falling on my feet).

Of course, I'm taller than most, with longer arms than most.

Oh and yes, I know this is a ridiculously heavy, and overbuilt design.

That's the point.  All up, that's about 96 linear feet of 3" milled 4x4 and most of a sheet of plywood. It should weigh in around 280-300lbs, depending on the total weight of the hardware and fasteners used.

I WANT it to be very heavy to absorb vibration. I want lots of doubled up structure to improve rigidity; but I also want it to be of very slightly elastic elastic wood construction, to better damp out that vibration.

Oh and incidentally, the total cost, including fasteners, would run about $180 if bought from a home despot in my area.

One might also note, that if you took the 32" wide dogbone base I talk about above, graft it to the top T-Beam instead of just the 9" wide benchtop, and run a couple of legs down the outside corners into the base frame; one could make one hell of a rigid, heavy, solid, and ambidextrous shooting bench.

Building a lathe workstation

So, I've had this lathe for a few months, but haven't set it up yet:

http://www.woodstockint.com/SHOP-FOX-Shop-Fox-Mini-Wood-Lathe/W1752/

And the extension bed for it:

http://www.woodstockint.com/Extended-Bed-for-W1752-Shop-Fox-Mini-Wood-Lathe/W1753/

The extension bed stretches the distance center to center up to 38" (so I can turn full spindles and table legs, canes, and other long items, in addition to the 15" and under tool handles, pens etc...); and extends the overall length of the lathe to 60".

The manufacturer makes a stand for the lathe without the extension bed, but not for the lathe with it. There are a few sets of lathe legs that can bolt to the lathe bed; but I don't like leaving the bed extender join unsupported.

There are some generic stands out there that are large enough, but they're all sized for much large lathes. Besides, they're really quite expensive (much more than the lathe itself cost), and I don't think any of them are quite what I want. Frankly, I don't think any of the commercial lathe stands are heavy enough, and they're all made of the "wrong" material.

The lathe itself only weighs 140lbs (with the extension. 102lbs without). The commercial lathe stands for smaller lathes are all stamped and bent sheetmetal, with bolted together construction; and most of them on their own weigh less than 60lbs. For a lathe of this size, I'd like to see at least 300lbs weight overall for stability and to damp out vibration. Not only that, but sheetmetal is a poor material for damping, especially when bolted together. Wood or cast Iron are much better choices, being both heavy, and naturally vibration damping. If you have to have sheetmetal, you want it fully boxed out, with welded construction (and if you want to improve it, fill the boxed tubes with foam, sand, or concrete, for more damping).

Since I don't have the capability of making a cast iron stand, and boxing out and welding up a sheetmetal stand is a hell of a lot of trouble and expense; I'm going to go for wood.

Frankly, just about every serious woodturner I know has either a huge, heavy, and expensive cast iron or welded steel stand made specifically for their lathes (usually by the manufacturer of the lathe); or they build their own wood stand. Most guys using smaller lathes (and yes, this is a very small lathe by "serious" standards) build their own.

...plus, I've already GOT a bunch of 4x4s and plywood, in the right sizes, plus all the hardware I need, as leftovers from other projects; cost being a not insignificant factor here.

So, what I'm thinking of, is milling four 6 foot lengths of 4x4 down to 3" wide, flat and true, gluing and lag screwing three of them together across the top and one more as a stringer down the middle creating a T. That will give me a very stable structure to bolt legs and a top into.

Then I'll glue and screw a 3/4" plywood top down over the T, and glue a tempered hardboard surface down over that. Then I'll reinforce the edges of the top with drywall corner bead.

For legs, I'm thinking an A frame style (like a sawhorse only bigger), with three uprights rafter cut at the top to notch into the T truss. I'm thinking about a shelf at the bottom of the a frame gussets (call it 12" below the worktop), and a floor shelf at the bottom of the legs; with heavy duty locking casters on one end, and height adjusting feet at the other, with non-slip pads.

Oh and there is one other major problem I have with most commercial stands: they are all WAY too low.

I'm 6'2", and I like my tool rest to be at 44-48"; which is where my forearms arms are 90 degrees from the elbows out, when standing up straight with my feet shoulder width apart. Most lathe tables, or lathe leg sets, put the tool rest at 38"-44"

The top is going to be 9" wide, and I'm thinking a 28" wide base should be wide enough to be stable, without forcing me to lean too much... but I'm not sure. I may need to dogbone the base shelf, making the end frames 32" wide, and make the center uprights perpendicular members, cutting the center shelf in along the working length of the bed so I can stand closer to the toolrest.

I think I'll put a bracket/upright/holddown for a dust and chip collection system on the backside, and some chisel racks, and layout tool racks; on the front side, in the upper shelf area.

Finally, some hinged or sliding covers over the shelves, to keep out the dust and chips. 

So any ideas? criticisms? experience? suggestions? Anything I'm missing? Think I've got the dimensions right? Any cool features I should be thinking of?

UPDATE:

So, I got some comments about my lathe workstation idea, saying that people couldn't visualize what I was thinking of.

Well, thanks to the wonderful people at Google, that's easy enough to resolve.

Someone asked for a threeview; but I think reciprocal isometric views, and a face on view (rather than two faces and an isometric) would be more illustrative.

So here's a couple of shots of a quickie sketchup model I did...

first the left iso:

Then the right iso:

And the end face:

Not sure exactly why sketchup added and/or subtracted 1/64th inch to the measurements, because I know they were accurate when I drew them up.

The lighter wood is 4x4 dimensional lumber, milled to 3". The mid tone wood is 3/4" plywood, and the dark wood is tempered hardboard.

I'm not sure whether the center uprights are necessary or not. I'm thinking with the T-Beam for the top, it's probably strong and rigid enough without them. Also, I wouldn't be doing any silly through joinery on the middle shelf. Just a gap around the legs with some edging.... if I even put the legs in at all.

What the drawing doesn't show is the metal top coaming (done with drywall corner probably), shelf edging (probably some premade molding trim strips), bottom framing, or the casters and height adjusting feet.

I left them off for clarity; and because I haven't found exactly what I want to use yet. Same thing for whatever dust and chip collection system I end up rigging (probably one of those big ABS chutes into my shop dust collector).

Also,  I need to reduce the height of the legs based on whatever heavy duty locking casters I find, so that the worktop ends up at 40 inches.

Now that I've clarified with a drawing, let's confuse things again.

I'd probably put in another 3" frame member across the bottom center of the upper shelf (between the center legs), and a triangulating crossmember between the leg uprights, crossbolted into the legs and the shelf member, and screwed into the bottom of the plywood end plates.

The end plate is a full structural gusset, glued and screwed into each individual member, for rigidity.

For the drawing, basically because I didn't feel like taking the time to do it, I just show a simple miter and butt join from the top of the outboard legs, to the bottom of the T-Beam. For the real thing, I haven't decided whether I'll rafter cut it, to give a two face join; or cut a corner block and pocket screw through it (thank god for Kreg jigs).

I'll probably put 3" longmembers and crossmembers across the bottom of the outside legs, and from leg to leg, both on the bottom and the top of the base shelf. Then I'll do inside corner bracing on the bottom frame, with a 3" brace, and a 3/4" ply gusset glued and screwed over it; to bolt the casters and feet to. Finally, I'll run two more 3" longmembers,  from one the inside edge of the corner brace, across the entire bottom to the other inside edge of the corner brace, on each side... or if I decide to keep the center legs, I'll just run the two long members underneath the legs and screw up through them..

All that will edge the base shelf, keep the center of the base rock solid, add mass, AND make for a seriously rigid frame structure.

If I end up dogboning the bottom shelf, I'll leave the end crossmembers, but move the outer long members inboard to say... an 18" wide center section; then triangulate the frame with outside corner bracing (making a 7" right triangle with diagonal members on all four corners, from the end of the outboard legs, to the long members).

However, I don't think I need to dogbone it. Looking at it drawn up, and given the mass of the thing; possibly including a few bags of lead shot, or sand... I think I can reduce the width of the bottom shelf/splay of the legs, down to 28". Given the lathe is 8" wide (the benchtop it's on is 9" wide) and the toolrest is right on the outside edge of that width, that would only leave 9.5" sticking out further than the tool rest, which should let me work just fine without leaning in...

...and frankly, even at 32" wide that's still only an 11.5" reach; and I've personally got a 14" reach from 90 degrees, elbows straight down from the midline of my body to the center of my fist (add another 5" from the center of my fist to the tips of my fingers). In a normal working stance, I don't think the full width bottom shelf would restrict my movement or force a reach at all, especially with 4" or 6" casters on the thing, so I can get my toes under the frame (somehow, I'm not worried about the frame collapsing and falling on my feet).

Of course, I'm taller than most, with longer arms than most.

Oh and yes, I know this is a ridiculously heavy, and overbuilt design.

That's the point.  All up, that's about 96 linear feet of 3" milled 4x4 and most of a sheet of plywood. It should weigh in around 280-300lbs, depending on the total weight of the hardware and fasteners used.

I WANT it to be very heavy to absorb vibration. I want lots of doubled up structure to improve rigidity; but I also want it to be of very slightly elastic elastic wood construction, to better damp out that vibration.

Oh and incidentally, the total cost, including fasteners, would run about $180 if bought from a home despot in my area.

One might also note, that if you took the 32" wide dogbone base I talk about above, graft it to the top T-Beam instead of just the 9" wide benchtop, and run a couple of legs down the outside corners into the base frame; one could make one hell of a rigid, heavy, solid, and ambidextrous shooting bench.

Another Workbench Post

So, last time we saw the humble workbench/blogstation, it looked a bit like this:



A bit crowded, a bit messy; not very efficient etc...

Well, over the past few weeks, I've built a second workbench for the gun room (and two for the shed that I haven't built yet, that are currently taking up half my car port).

But that wasn't enough... so a couple days ago, I built a powder hutch

But that wasn't enough... so this morning, I grabbed this riser and cabinet set on sale for $50 (I was going to build one anyway, this saved me some time and money).

and now... well, it's still not enough, but it's a ell of a lot better, and it looks like this:



...and from the other side (the blurred out bit is a wooden cut of my ham call sign):



Most of my frequently used small tools are now within easy reach on the pegboard; the rest are either in drawers under one of the benchtops, or in the rollaway which is about three feet to the left of my chairs position.

Immediately to the left is my ammo storage rack, a six foot five shelf black wire shelving unit. Theres about four feet of space behind my chair position and then a four foot long table, with a "love seat" (which is actually the third row bench from my truck, which we never use) next to it against the wall and two more sets of blackwire shelves the same size and configuration as the ammo shelves; for general storage; one of which has the short end of the table pressed against it.

The whole thing makes a wraparound J from the ammo shelf on one wall, around the benches and love seat, into the rear shelving, and then hooking out with the table. Basically theres a work surface and storage space accessible from every seating position in the room.

I'd get pictures of the rest, but the place is a bit of a mess at the moment. I still havent re-built it form when we destroyed it before and after the Texas trip.

So, still not done... but better.

Oh and the large empty space behind the press and powder measure on the left side of the bench? Yeah pretty soon that press and measure will be gone, replaced with a progressive press. I'm going to build a small portable bench for the other press and measure so that JohnOC can load at home (technically it's his press and measure. I sold them to him like two years ago; but he doesn't have a home workshop space).

I should note, this is just my small project, gunsmithing, and reloading bench. My woodworking area (excepting the scroll saw; which is for fine work) is two 3'x4' flat top heavy work benches, built to te same height as my tablesaw.

The tool addicition gets more organized

Sometimes teh intarweebs are useful; for example, I just snagged this deal:

Craftsman 40 in. Riser & Overhead
For $50, marked down from $400...

Though honestly I couldn't imagine who would pay $400 for it... since it's a rollaway accessory (it can also be mounted on a bench) though, you'd be amazed...

I also saved the 90lbs worth of shipping by doing an in store pickup. The warehouse guys were wondering why when they'd never sold ONE of these things in the two years they'd been there (they'd had a half dozen sitting in the corner), they sold ALL of them today (I'd snagged the last one);so I told them about the clearance deal. They agreed only an idiot would pay $400 for it; but for $50 it's a pretty damned good deal.