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One might say that your bench is your most important tool, but maybe it's your shop. This guy has a TON of ideas for a tiny shop - indeed, any shop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCtRWwvGHeY

A very worthwhile 16 minutes

Ed

That's nifty! I've learned hard lessons from hanging tools and supplies above and around my work area, but this gentleman shares many excellent ideas for efficient storage and space management.

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George :-)

That truly is most impressive.

O!

The juvenile boy in me liked the joke about the types of jobs his compressor can handle. Great, fun video.

Personally, I would not enjoy working in that small a space. I’ve done it before, and would not want to go back.

I have to wonder how long it took him to get the shop into the configuration it is in. I can't imagine trying to design something like that from scratch. It had to have been an iterative process. There are a lot of clever ideas there. It would drive me crazy though to do guitar building in a space that small and I shudder to think of the time required to make all the purpose-built caddies, etc. A good video and I enjoyed the Wallace and Gromit-like stop motion photography.

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This is awesome. Our garage experiences life as both my shop and our gym space. I’m constantly wrestling with feeling like I’m not making the most efficient use of the space, or knowing I have to move this and this and this to get to my drill press or belt sander. This guy is inspiring.


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Thank God I don't have any kettlebells in my shop. When (not if; when) I messed up something major on a guitar, I would probably put one through a wall. HULK SMASH!!!!!

I think his hobby is "completing the shop", not building anything. I didn't really see anywhere he could use that jointer plane. But I found a couple of ideas I can use.

Ed

You see it is us Brits, we simply don’t have the space like you Americans!

Seriously though it is an interesting issue as to how much time you devote to organising your workspace when what you really want to do is get on and build things. Particularly guitars.

You know that you can make things a bit more efficient by getting the layout right but you really don’t want to spend ages building shelves and ‘caddies’ even though they would undoubtably speed things up in the long term. As ever it is a balance.

I admire the superb organisation of the guy in the video and will probably use some of his ideas but I am fortunate enough to not be so spatially challenged.
However I do think carefully about where my most used tools are. And they are within easy reach of my bench which is the centre of my universe. I really don’t want to take more than a step to grasp the tool for the next job.
I am also a great hanger upper of tools but as someone above said you really don’t want things falling onto your work in progress.
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That was fun to watch, thanks for sharing it.
I picked up a few tips.


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Impressive, he's got quite the organized shop. Fortunately I have a lot more space than he does but still need to keep things organized so I can use my shop somewhat efficiently. I shut my shop down for several months a year or two ago and completely rebuilt it. Demo'd my built-in cabinets and benches, rebuilt them and added around 20 drawers among other things. Organizing and setting up workflows became it's own project so I can see how he got so deep into it.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Not to derail the praise for the video (which I enjoyed), but when it comes to organization of my shop, I turned a real corner when I bought some of the US General tool chests from Harbor Freight. We have so many little doo-dads as guitar builders; having drawers for everything has made a huge difference for me.

I agree Don. I have a big roll-away in my 15' x 22' shop for that very reason. Between the tool box and drawers I built if I recall correctly the total is up to 42 drawers

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

His shop reminded me of the Henry Studley tool chest. And it looked like he had a good handle on dust collection. He mentioned he liked to work on the lathe. That is a type of woodworking that doesn't require a lot of space and with his dust collection right there he may not need to do a lot of "housekeeping". Most of his tools are bench top types and I'm sure if the project demanded he could use them "al Fresco". I didn't notice any wood storage - he may have a barn full of turning squares off camera
I've read that Julian Gomez Ramirez worked out of a shop that was 10 ft. by 10 ft. It was on the ground floor, and he could do some work out in the street. He built fine quality and well regarded instruments in Paris and was a mentor to Robert Bouchet. Ignacio Fleta worked out of two small rooms. It seems many of the Spanish builders had a great passion and skill for building guitars, but small rudimentary shops to do it in.

Like Don and Steve, I really prefer to keep things in drawers, and boxes, and bins. My shop has a hodge podge of containers - filing cabinets, lockers, med cart bins, tool boxes and other orphaned discards that were headed for a skip. Having tools hung up, on display and close to hand can be a nice way to go, but my shop gets too dusty from the work I do. Dust on tools seems to promote rust and I deal with that enough, even with tools in drawers and cases.

I watched the video. Lots of great info on organizing work for small spaces , I specifically moved here to OK to get more space, a large 1200 sq ft shop and a large 3 car garage shop. To each his own . chacun a son gout!

Ernie,

I would really love it if you posted a tour of your shop...

TNX ed , The shop is still a work in progress . My wife and I spent all aft , cleaning up the shop today , . I have yet to stack the big boards on the wall, .Do the piping for the dust collector, air cleaner , exhaust fan , and small spray booth area . We/ve come a long way since working out of the lower half of our 2 story in surrey , and running to the airport to clear items from stew mac through cdn customs. I will have my wife post a video of the shop in the near future , we are waiting for a new camera from NYC. FYI the 2 handiest imo shop tools , are the older laguna 20 in BS with a carbide blade from laguna and the woodmaster 37 in single drum sander

I was thinking, "Wow that's a small space. I don't think I could work in there..." Then I realized just how small it is- smaller than my CNC mill (which is considered small for CNC mills).

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Thanks...

I’m specifically looking for just what to do with 1200ft2...!

ED , I also use that space for doing other kinds of woodwork . There are at least 3 benches at varying heights, an several portable work tables. plus garden machinery / rquipment , and asst other storage items we have 1 .5 acres of lawn and woods. Generally they do not build bsmts here n OK, except in certain areas . So sheds, barns, trailers , and shops are very common. here.

Another video from the small workshop person:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QgHnYNExPs

Hi Ed,
If you really want input designing your workshop you could post the dimensions of the space with door and window locations and the foot prints of the tools and benches and maybe people could offer suggestions for the layout. Everyone has their own ideas of what works best, so none of them might suit you perfectly, but you may pick up some tips that could help.

Thanks! At some point I’ll start a proper thread...

We should do OLF workshop tours like they have been showing on the Fretboard Journal site!


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That definately wouldn't work for me because half the time my shop looks like an explosion in a pillow factory...