Setting Up Shop, Revised
The Practical Guide to Designing and Building Your Dream Shop

By Sandor Nagyszalanczy

To a woodworker, there is nothing more personal than the workshop. Creating your ideal sanctuary involves hundreds of practical decisions from where to locate the shop and which machines and tools to buy to where to put the lights and electrical outlets.

With the expert advice of professional woodworker and author Sandor Nagyszalanczy, you'll make the right choices to fit your space and budget. Detailed illustrations and useful tips help you handle every job, from insulating walls and organizing storage to installing dust collection. "Shop Profiles" give you a look inside the shops of well-known woodworkers, so you can see how they've tackled common shop problems.

With all the ingenious solutions in Setting Up Shop, you'll never run out of ideas for improving an existing shop or planning the shop of your dreams.

Introduction:

There's a magic place in the back of every woodworker's mind: a place where all the lumber is straight, the blades are sharp, the tools are precise, the benches are sturdy, the light is good, and the air and the floor are clean. While heaven might be the only place that accurately fits this description, the place I'm talking about is the ideal woodworking shop.

As primitive and compelling as the urge to find shelter, kill food, and attract a mate, most woodworkers are driven by a deep desire to create the ultimate shop. This powerful desire affects (or infects) woodworkers both great and humble; professional and amateur; traditional and modern. So all-consuming is the inner fire that drives many people to lay out, set up, organize, equip, and improve a woodshop that it often drives them into bankruptcyor even divorce court.

There are lots of reasons for wanting a good woodshop. Professionals create a workplace to facilitate earning a daily dollar. Their shops are often the poorest and most sparsely equipped because they are too busy meeting deadlines to worry about how cleverly arranged their machines are or whether or not they have all the latest, greatest power tools known to mankind.

Others create workshops mostly for their own entertainment. To these hobbyists and weekend warriors, woodworking is an engaging pastime, a source of enjoyment and personal fulfillment. For still others, the raison d'etre of donning an apron is the creation of their workshop; the act of planing boards or cutting mortises is relatively uninteresting compared with the satisfaction of setting up a fastidiously appointed woodshop they can show off.

It's clear that what constitutes an ideal workshop means different things to different people, but there are some basic qualities that any shop worth its druthers should possess. Without getting into an argument about the exact specifications of such a shop (its size and proportions, how it is laid out, where the best place is to put the workbench, and so on), here is a list of things I think most of us should expect from a first-class woodworking shop.

• Provide a shelter that protects us (and our tools and supplies) from the effects of bad weather and harsh sun and keeps us warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
• Provide a cozy place in which we can earn a living or escape from all the burdens and distractions of our daily lives.
• Provide a secure place to keep our valuable tools and supplies.
• Control humidity so that we can work comfortably, our tools won't rust, and our lumber won't swell or dry out excessively.
• Provide fresh air to breathe and some means of controlling wood dust and fumes so we don't have to breathe them.
• Contain and control the noise generated by loud machines and power tools.
• Provide abundant light, day or night.
• Provide safe and adequate electricity to power our machines and portable power tools.
• Provide a well-organized space to work in as well as easily accessible storage for building materials, small tools, accessories, and supplies.
• Provide a space that's flexible enough for future changes in equipment or work style.

The book begins by looking at the nature of the physical structure itself: where it's located, how much space it provides, how easy the ingress and how secure, how to keep its climate comfortable and well ventilated, and how to provide adequate electricity and lighting. Subsequent chapters examine equipment: what kinds of hand tools, portable power tools, and machines are required for woodworking, how to decide what to buy (or what not to buy), how to get the most out of tools you already own, how to arrange machines and work areas to make your shop safe and efficient, and how to choose or build comfortable benches and workstations. The final chapters deal with several other important shop issues: storage of tools, lumber, and supplies; the control and collection of sawdust and the use of compressed air; and both personal and material safety issues.

All of the ideas and suggestions presented in this book are tempered with the knowledge that every woodshop is highly individual in character and substance: A strategy for storage or electrical wiring that is the Holy Grail for one woodworker may well be the Tower of Babel for another. That is to say that there is no single right way of doing something. This is especially true when it comes to things like shop layout, choosing equipment, and designing storage. What works for you and suits your tastes, budget, and style of work is best (and don't let any busybody know-it-all tell you any different!). That said, there are less-subjective elements of shop setup that are worth following more closely, such as the design and installation of compressed-air and dust-collection systems.

Throughout the book, I invite you to learn and benefit from the experience of veteran craftspeople who have contributed to its pages so as to avoid their pitfalls and mires of frustration. While you can always remodel, reorganize, and rejuvenate your shop, which, incidentally, is part of the process of keeping pace with changes in the tools we own and the way we work, few of us have the time, resources, and patience to endure working in a shop that doesn't suit us like a comfortable pair of shoes.

Whatever a shop is to you, what it isn't is just some place with four walls and a door. Like the difference between a house and a home having to do with where the heart is, you have to follow your heart as well as use your mind when transforming a simple building that others might call a shed or a garage into what you proudly call your woodshop.

Table of Contents:

Introduction 2

CHAPTER 1
The Quest for Shop Space 4
Advantages of a Home Woodshop 5
Setting Up a Shop inside a House 6
Setting Up a Shop Attached to a House 9
Setting Up a Shop in an Outbuilding 11
Building a New Shop 15
Shop Profile: Sam Maloof 16
Remodeling a Shop 19

CHAPTER 2
Walls, Ceilings, and Floors 21
Walls and Ceilings 21
Floor Treatments 32
Shop Profile: Michael Cooper 34
Sound Abatement 38

CHAPTER 3
Electricity and Lighting 43
Upgrading Your Electrical System 44
Lighting Your Shop 57
Shop Profile: Michael Dunbar 58

CHAPTER 4
Heating and Ventilation 72
Heating Your Shop 73
Ventilating Your Shop 82
Shop Profile: Garrett Hack 84
Ventilating Your Finishing Area 86
Controlling Shop Moisture and Humidity 90

CHAPTER 5
Equipping Your Shop 94
What Tools and Machines Do I Need? 95
Choosing Brands and Models 104
Shop Profile: Frank Klausz 106
Which Add-Ons and Accessories Should I Buy? 109

CHAPTER 6 Shop Layout 112
Develop a Layout That Works for You 113
Machine Placement 113
Machine and Workspace Proximity 117
Accommodating Work Flow 119
Multipurpose Shops 121
Shop Profile: James Krenov 126
Strategies for Gaining Space 129

CHAPTER 7 Benches and Work Areas 133
Workbenches 134
Shop Profile: Art Carpenter 140
Portable Work Surfaces 142
Assembly Tables 143
Workstations 144
Portable Work Centers 147

CHAPTER 8
Storing Tools, Lumber, and Supplies 151
Toolboxes and Chests 152
Stock Storage 159
Shop Profile: Pat Edwards 160
General Storage 168
Special Storage 174

CHAPTER 9
Dust Collection and Compressed Air 177
Dust-Control Methods 177
Shop Profile: David Ellsworth 192
Compressed-Air Systems 194

CHAPTER 10 Shop Safety 203
Fire Safety 203
Shop Profile: Wendell Castle 208
Personal Safety 210
Power-Tool Safety 214

Index 218

Soft-cover, 8-1/2 x 10-7/8 in., 224 pages with over 250 photos and drawings

ISBN: 978-1-56158-838-1

Paperback, 236 pages

Setting Up Shop RC-T070887 $21.95 $14.93 Usually ships in 24 hours