This is the current shop. This shop is made up of three rooms: the main Cutlery Shop, a separate Grinding Room and a separate Woodshop. When we purchased the land, house and this building (which is a two bay garage with two rooms on each side), I had to start by rebuilding the entire south wall because it was rotten and had a fairly thriving population of termites making their living there. After installing three windows and four doors, building three walls, putting in a 60 amp subpanel and wiring the three rooms with dedicated lighting, multiple 220v and 110v circuits, insulating the ceiling and walls and sheathing the entire thing, it ended up being a fairly nice place to work. I did all the designing, framing, wiring… well, everything, myself (well, I did get some help from my wife) so I am kind of proud of it. The rooms may be small, but they are easy to heat with radiant oil and cadet heaters so they work fine for now, and this shop is much more than I ever had in the past, so I am happy. Almost all of the “furniture” in each room I salvaged from dumpsters, for free. I built all the bench tops and the bench in the Grinding room. Of course the shop will probably never be completely finished; lots of little things that still have to be done, but we should be here for a while, so I should have plenty of time to work on it. I have included a few pictures of what it looked like when I started.
I would like to emphasis that it is possible to have a fairly “nice” shop and good tools on a very tight budget. I doubt I would be considered monetarily wealthy, but, I am patient, a fairly good scavenger and am skilled at fixing, modifying and making the best of what others throw out. As I mentioned elsewhere, almost all of the benches, chairs, desks cabinets, etc came from dumpsters and demolitions, a few from garage sales. I keep my eyes open and am not afraid to ask if someone is throwing something out if I can make a deal on it, and they usually just give it to me so they don’t have to haul it to the dump. I think the real trick is knowing your limitations, both in skill and space, and knowing when to go after things that you know you can use, and passing on those that you aren’t sure about. Scrounging can lead one to begin to take anything home because “it was such a good deal”, “hey, I could save a bundle if I could figure out how to fix that” and “I might be able to find a use for that someday…” That is fine, and I have been guilty of it, too. But just try and not fill your shop to the point you start moving it into the house; that may not work out so well.
I have acquired the tools over many years of patience, flexibility, watching sales, visiting used stores and garage/barn sales and spreading the word. It adds up over time. I feel that because I went about it this way, I have grown to appreciate what I have much more than if I had just bought everything new outright to start with (even if I could have).
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Looking toward the northeast corner of the Cutlery Shop: End of sharpening bench; a storage cabinet (old file cabinet with roll out doors); door to Woodshop and my old cheap but effective Harbor Freight drillpress. Note the fire extinguisher and cadet heater. |
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Looking southeast in the Cutlery Shop: The drillpress; the door to the Grinding Room and the east end of my main bench. |
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The southwest corner of the Cutlery Shop: The west end of the main bench; storage for various parts and material and a wall cabinet for more storage; the machinist chest; desk where I do most of the leatherwork, etc. Note the stereo; got to have tunes! |
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Looking toward the northwest corner of the Cutlery Shop: The desk; the subpanel for the shop and garage; the main entrance door from outside; the sharpening bench and a storage shelf. |
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A close-up of the sharpening bench, with my EdgePro sharpener on the left, a Norton stone in the rear and a strop in the foreground. |
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A close-up of the desk with a custom sheath in progress for an older Al Mar SOG. |
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A closer view of the main bench. The bench top is constructed of four layers: the bottom is ½” CDX plywood recycled from a shipping crate, next is a layer of ½” particle board recycled from a remodel, then another layer of new ½” CDX plywood. These layers are all glued together. The surface of the bench top is a sheet of ¼” masonite screwed to the bench top so that it can be replaced when it wears out. All corners and edges are rounded. This bench top is then screwed up from underneath to the metal bench units. All in all, pretty solid. I considered using plastic laminate (used for countertops), but prefer the feel of wood, and find the laminate to be a little slick, although it would last a lot longer. |
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Looking into the Grinding Room: The Grizzly, KMG-1, grinding belts on the back walls and the unfinished dust evacuation system. |
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Looking back toward the Grinding Room door: Grizzly grinder, Jet 4×6 metal bandsaw and the cabinet that holds my buffs and compounds. |
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This is the steel cabinet where I store my buffs and compounds, all sealed in recycled ziplock tortilla bags (yea I eat a lot of tortillas, what is your point?). |
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Here are some photos of the small Woodshop, which allows us to work on remodeling our old farmhouse and where I will be building furniture and toys for our child and our daycare. I have several Grizzly tools in here, and highly recommend them if you are looking for some very well made tools at very reasonable prices. Many of their tools are far form low quality imports. | |
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Building Stage
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