Gentry Design Shop 2010

[Rick Gentry]

Here are some shots of my freshly cleaned and organized shop. Every winter when it gets slow I try to upgrade things and make it ready for the Spring rush. 

[Tim Mace]

pictures are nice but how about a spreadsheet of your tool inventory ?lol great lookin' setup! Can you fix my ocarina?

[Frank Ford]

Great looking space, RIck!

Maybe you could help me organize my shop:

[William F.Eden]

I had a guy call me one day and he said hello Bill would it be alright if I came over to see your Shop? I said sure but I can tell you befor you get here that it is a mess and that Iam not proud of my Shop. It's what comes out of it that I am proud of. Iam not a good shop keeper but I do clean it up after each prodject. Good luck with yours Bill.""""""""""""

[Eric Steven Johansen]

Nice Rick, a place for everything and everything in its place................... Now Frank, on the other hand, makes me feel organized.

[Ned Knepp]

Ricks work space looks like a nice place to visit... but , unfortunately, Frank's looks like "home" to me. I like to think I'm developing my brain with my "remember where I used it last" approach to work space organization.

[Mike Kolb]

This is a big source of angst for me. I've got a 30' X 40' shop, and it's packed with crap. My dentist was going to toss a perfectly good operating dental chair. It's in the shop. A library ditched a great double-sided oak file-card cabinet. It's in the shop. I run studded tires during the winter... the regular ones are stored, yes, in the shop.

Worse than that, is that I 'lock-up' whenever the urge to clean and straighten strikes. The job is so overwhelming that I literally don't know where to start... so I don't. It's much easier to go sand a piece of mahogany for a job... and block-out the obvious. No one's invited over anymore because of the embarrassment factor that Bill mentioned. I deal with customers at the music stores or at their home... never mine.

I've bought new tools and parts to replace "lost" ones that aren't really missing... just under the rubble. It's funny in a way, but it's really distressing to deal with... like a bad little secret I don't want to acknowledge. My wife tells me to "just put things where they belong" but that's the problem.... nothing really has a home, everything just floats! Arrgghh.

OK, better now. Thanks for allowing the therapeutic rant.

[Rick Gentry]

I feel your pain, and worked like that for too long.

Things just work better for me when I can put every thing back at the end of the day. My shop is just over 900 square feet, including a storage area in the back, which gets a little messy. I simply feel more freedom in a shop where it is easy to get a project started and easy to tidy up. My dust collection has improved also, in that the table saw is on the same switch as the dust collector, and the miscellaneous vacs get 90% of the rest. It is quite a change from about 12 years ago when I just let the dust fly, and began a rather awesome chisel collection due to them "disappearing" under the days work.

I taught a class once called "Setting Up You Shop". Good luck.

[Mike Kolb]

Just to put a face on the problem, here's 3 shots of my shop, done in 'panorama' style to capture the, um, situation. The illusion of spaciousness is mostly in the panoramic mode of taking the pictures.

OK, there's a certain amount of brag in having a relatively large shop, but that just compounds the problem in two ways: (1). there's simply more room to fill and lose thing in, and (2). whenever someone sees the shop, they usually say "gee, what a shame to waste this much space... if it were mine, I'd clean it up and have a ball". And that one hurts because, in reality, I'd love to do just that...but it doesn't seem possible.

Anyway, that's the end of my angst-rant! Hope the pictures come through OK, as that's not my forte'. Rick, do you still have teach your class? I'm your next student! .... mike

[Frank Ford]

Well, you won't hear that from me. When I see a big shop like that, my first thought is how much more machinery I could move in.

My home shop picture I posted above is a bit of a red herring. In photos, and the first time you walk in, it looks like it's too crowded to manage, but since the space is so small, I have to keep everything organized just to move around. The photo flattens perspective, so it looks like a great big, unorganized pile.

My shop is 324 square feet (18' x 18' with 8.5' flat ceiling) and in it I have, not including small tools that are stored in drawers or on shelves:

Full size milling machine
Full size lathe
Bench top mill
Small turret lathe
Two 14" vertical band saws
20" Heavy duty drill press
Surface grinder
6" bench grinder
7" diamond tool grinder
8" bench grinder
10" pedestal grinder/buffer
5 hp. 60 gallon air compressor
13 Craftsman rolling tool cabinets
Small die filing machine
6" vertical belt sander
1" x 42" bench mount belt sander
Shop vac on cart
Oxy/Acetylene welding tank cart
4' x 2.5' x 6' Class B fire safe
3' x 1.5' x 6' paint cabinet
8' long work bench



No kidding - if two people walk into the shop they have to go out in the same order. . .

[Rick Gentry]

What a great shop! You have so much space to play in.

I prefer to see anything that can be behind a door, behind a door. If one tends to make dust, then design a simple dust collection system and run vac ducts to the main areas where you can hook a tool up when you need to, otherwise leave a trap door there, including a dust pan connected to the vac system that stays in the same place on the floor all the time, so you can flip a switch and sweep right into it.

With a shop your size, you can afford a huge work bench on wheels in the middle of the floor. Make sure there is an empty wall space where you can stick it when you need to roll your motorcycle in there.

Everything that is not attached to the wall should be on wheels. I can roll 90% of my benches, stations, drill presses, etc., into the back of my shop and have a cleanable, absolutely dust free area for large finishing projects. Understandably some machines need to be planted or bolted to the floor, and the location of these are primary to the rest of it.

I understand that tires, etc. must vacation in your shop on a temporary basis. I propose to build a ceiling hung storage rack, or even a simple closet which you can put that stuff away. I keep my bandsaw, antique shaper, etc. in my mechanicals closet and bring them out when they are needed, allowing more floor space.

An air cleaner is an essential piece also. Mine can clean my shop air in about ten minutes, and there is something pretty awesome about making tons of dust and not having to breathe it.

Some of those hokie DIY mags suggest that you layout a scaled drawing of your shop and cut little pieces of cardstock the shape of your various tools and play re-arrangement. Unnecessary, as far as I am concerned. If everything is on wheels, and you leave extra wall space, large items will always find a home.

I appreciate this conversation. rg

[Frank Ford]

I'll second the wheels thing. All my stuff that can be on wheels, is. Unfortunately that excludes the drill press, mills, and lathes. They are either too heavy for wheels (a ton or more) or too unstable if not bolted down. My slab floor is old (1922), cracked, and slopes an inch in six feet, so leveling can be an issue for sensitive metal working gear.

Others are on wheels - grinders, tool cabinets, band saws, even the paint cabinet - you betcha.

Also on wheels is the Unisaw, which must be used outside and lives in a canvas sided shed.

Dust can be a problem, but since I've dedicated my home shop mostly to metal working, I keep the sensitive tools covered against contamination. With such a small space and so much gear, cleaning up dust amounts to vacuuming with a long 1-1/2 diameter hose (no way to roll the shop vac around effectively). And, I have a reversible 12" spray booth fan mounted in the wall diagonally across from the garage door. So if the dust gets a bit bad, I blow air in with the fan, and dust out with air hoses.

For serious resawing on the band saw, I wheel it outside, into Nature's Dust Collector. . .

[Rick Gentry]

I would like to do more metal working. If I had a double car garage I would put a welding set-up out there. My large drill press is actually on wheels, with 4 layer thick base of laminated MDF. I gave it a good shove and it stayed vertical on its casters.

Living in Minnesota, the quality seasonal driveway time is limited, but finishing out there is a nice experience.