Spent a couple weekends getting the shop open for business this spring. Caught a raccoon hanging out in the wall when I hung the doors on the house, ended up stripping out old insulation and plywood that had been a nesting ground for mice and the furry bandit. Bodhi and I gave him a good scare and chased him off. Also was in bad need of some new work benches as I had no room for tools and hardware and was constantly playing hide and seek with essentials. When the shop shuts down for winter it very quickly becomes a tool shed for urgent household projects, like windows or a new water heater. Something very therapeutic with getting things in order. Even found a spot for a lathe that Calvin has in storage and says he his happy to lend me indefinitely until he sets up a shop.
Next stop is the lumber yard, time to start in on my backlog of projects. I think there is a wedding coming up or something.
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| Fish eye view of the shop. John, the shop foreman, getting our work plan ready. |
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| New workbench and vise I got on kijiji for 50$. All the tools at arms reach finally. Put a little paint up and trimmed the windows out while I was at it, makes for nicer work space, perfect spot to work on detail stuff as I can see anyone coming. Shelves here and on the hardware bench are all basswood from the wedding table milling session. The 3" thick plywood bench top was a bit of a cop out but once I trim the edges in oak and drill some holes for bench dogs it should work just fine until I can build a proper 3" maple work bench. Despite the appearances of my nothing is square or level shop the bench top is perfectly flat and level. |
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| Hardware and sharpening station. Will need to figure out a better place to keep my gas, turpentine and kerosene before I fire up that bench grinder, but my chainsaw is happy. Hardware all visible in jars, my favorite being the "trip to town avoidance jar" with all the odds and ends I find around for that rainy day when you need just one of something. |
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| Knocked out a new stand for the chop saw, nice place for processing stock and closer to the dust collector, long stock comes in, gets stacked up then can be jointed, planned and cut to length all in one footprint. Then over the benches for joinery. |
