Official Luthiers Forum!

Fluorescent is good. Just get a lot of it. Have your bench set up first and lean over it in every possible place you might do that when working. You'll cast a shadow if there's a light behind you, unless there's another light on the other side. In fact ideally, you'll want your main work area lit from every direction possible. That way you'll have at least three light sources shining on your work at any given time. It's really frustrating when you've got your magnifying lenses on and you lean over your fretwork for fine detailing, only to have your shadow obscure the fingerboard. If you try to use one of those flex-arm lamps there, you'll keep bumping your head on it. You might guess how I know this. Any power tools, for instance your drill press or belt sander, need good lighting on both sides, too.

I have a couple of windows which makes it nice. I have many fluorescent fixtures and three hanging halogen shop lamps (one over my main bench, one over my router table, and one over another bench), then I have one of those long neck fluorescent ring magnifying lamps for inlay, and a magnetic base lamp stuck to the side of my bandsaw.

Ron

_________________
OLD MAN formerly (and formally) known as:

Ron Wisdom

Somewhere in the middle of Arkansas......

I like the full spectrum florescent fixtures. It took a few days to get used to
the difference in color when I swapped them for my incandescent fixtures
but I am very happy with them overall.
I also use the incandescent replacement florescent bulbs on all my spotlights
as well. They burn cooler and last almost forever.
In general you can't over do it on the lighting in your shop!

Good luck with the new shop!

Louis

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- Louis Freilicher

Oh No! Not another learning experience!

I recently bought a couple of the new style 8' fluorescent fixtures & they're WAY better than the older style.
The 8'fixture holds four 4' tubes which are smaller in diameter than the old style.
With these new lights, you don't need to spend the extra bucks for a cold weather ballast.(in case your shop isn't always at 65 degrees) When I snap on the lights on a cold morning, the new lights fire right up while the old ones groan & flicker until well after the fire is lit.
The light is noticeably brighter than the standard units & they are cheaper to buy... no down side that I can see.
As my old ballasts die, I'll replace the rest of my fixtures with the new ones. At our local building supply, the new units cost less than a ballast alone for the old ones.
I use lots of ceiling mounted fluorescents & at every work station I have one or two cheap "Z-lite" type lamps with a 60 W. bulb.

First of all, there is no such thing as full-spectrum lighting. I am an account manager in electrical sales, and I specialize in lighting. There are many variables you need to take into consideration: room width, height, and length are most important. Then figure how low you will hang/mount your fixture, followed by work desk height, floor reflectivity, wall reflectivity, floor color, wall color, and ceiling color. Then decide on how many foot candles you are trying to get to. If your height is 14' or above, I would recommend a t-5 type of high bay lighting. T-5's start at 0 degrees, are quite efficient (50% more then metal halide), last along time, put off a broader kelvin spectrum, and don't lose large amounts of lumens over time. T-8 fixtures are the most energy efficient (not much more over t-5's) and work better for lower ceiling situations. They are also more affordable than other types of lighting, and readily available. The 8 ft. fixtures with 4-lamps mentioned above are called 8ft. tandem t8's. As far as color goes, the most common kelvin temp. is 3500. I personally prefer 4100-5000 range, because it displays colors more like sunlight would. Anything over 5000 starts turning a bluish purple color, and should only be used with very specific applications.
If you are still using t-12 type fixtures, you are selling yourself short. Go get some electronic ballasts for t-8's, the tombstones (things the lamp pins go into) are the same for t-12 and t-8 so all you need to do is swap ballasts. Your fixtures will be quieter and much more efficient. (make sure your t-12's aren't High Output t-12's first though)
If you have any specific questions, let me know.
Thanks, Jeremy

Wow! A lighting specialist here at OLF. You gotta like that. A question or
two for Jeremy. What are the fixtures commonly sold at hardware stores,
kelven temp etc.? If you don't have a lighting speciality store in your town
does it say on the label of the fixture what you are buying? Are there
different tubes you can buy or is it the ballast that controls all that? AAAAnd
what colour did you paint your shop?
Thanks for the great post.
Cheers,Danny

over the years i've worked in a lot of different shops. some were professionally fitted out, others by my self or others who were not professional lighting types.

in general, the more fixtures the better. having the light come from multiple sources reduces shadows and dim areas.

but in none have i found it possible to work on sensitive detail work without specific task lighting.

so, get as many flourescent fixtures as you can afford, and be prepard to place task lights as required. for these i favour either incandescent bulbs or the round flouros with a magnifying lens in the centre. i tried the halogen lights but i found i did not like the heat they produced nor their harsh light which tended to create very deep shadow and lots of reflective dazzle on all but the roughest surfaces.

and as be prepared, as carlton mentions, to bump your head from time to time.

I would recommend supplimenting your flourescent lighting around machinery / power tools with incandescent lamps - to help eliminate the strobe effect. Safer and easier on the eyes.

Try to send pics of what I have set up later.

Here are some specific recommendations that add to Jeremy's excellent
professional advice. I love the Philips T8/TL850 bulbs, and I am sure
Sylvania makes a similar one. Besides being a T8, the other critical
number is the 850 which means a CRI (color rendering index) of 85. I find
that this gives very good color perception, without excess cost.

The rule of thumb that I learned from an electrician, for 8 to 10 foot
ceilings, is to place continuous strips (almost the full length of the room)
at 8 foot intervals for very bright lighting and 10 foot spacing for good
general light. The strips are spaced off of the wall at one-half the spacing
between the rows of lights.

For example, my shop is about 31 feet wide inside. The first row of
fixtures is located about 5' from the wall. The next row is about 10' from
the first one. The final row is another 10' from the previous one and 5'
from the far wall. These 3 strips are on a 10' ceiling and give a very even
and reasonably bright light. I would have prefered to have 4 rows of
fixtures on 8' centers, but my budget did not allow it. I do have several
additional lights over the benches to help my aging eyes.

Paint your walls and ceiling white or off-white! Don't underestimate the
value of this in helping provide good light.

Brook

Go for the t-8 flourescents with electronic ballasts. They are quiet, energy efficient, and a big improvement on the old mechanical ballast fixtures. I've been running the 3500K tubes and happy with the color rendering. The higher Kelvin numbers are supposed to be closer to daylight; the 3500's are warmer and closer to tungsten. In any case, they are better than the old flourescents; your eye adapts and normalizes the color perception back at the brain end of the system, so what you see is not radically different from a daylight spectrum. Besides, what we call daylight varies a whole lot depending on whether you are getting sunlight, skylight (which is really quite blue), or clouds. I take the gits into a couple of different lights when sunbursting, though.

_________________
Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Hesh, you're looking a little green there!  Oh! Maybe it's just the light.

_________________
Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

   I just took out all my tube flouresents and replaced all my lighting with the spiral flouresent ( they fit the incadesant ) and they have halogen boost. They us 40 watts and give the same as a 200 watt Inc bulb.
   I love them I took out 12 double flouresent and replaced them with 2 of the screw in and get so much more lighting with better visability. I hope the lighting expert chimes in.
    I also have track lighting above my wookbench
john hall
blues creek guitar
My ceilings are 9 foot high shop is 20 by 24 with 4 windows

The most common t-8 lamps are 700 series CRI and 3500 kelvin. The 800-900 cri's are a nicer light spectrum. The 3500K is a warmer (yellow) type of light. As the Kelvin temp rises, it becomes closer to the light produced from the sun. The Kelvin of the sun at noon on a summers day on the equator can be as high as 12000. In some art galleries they will use a variety of different lamp colors to enhance each color in the work around them. Many times they will also direct flooded halogen lamps at paintings as well. For those of you using metal halide, be careful not to break the glass of the globe because they use UV treated glass, but they will still work fine when broken; but the open exposure will damage your eyes.
As for my shop (if you could call it that) It is in my basement in what used to be a bombshelter ( at least it's consistent with humidity and temp), it has 20" thick cement in all directions, I painted it light grey because I got 5 gallons of good quality paint in that color for $10 bucks. The cement soaked up all of it. It isn't my first choice, but $$$ is still a strong issue in my household.
Also for Danny, there are High output tubes and standards. If you have A t-8 ballast, you can use any standard t-8 lamp of any color. H.O.'s should stay H.O's but color can still be changed. For those of you that don't want to switch from your t-12's, you can now get electronic T-12 ballasts for cheaper than magnetic, and they save alot of energy.

I used to make surfboards and in the glassing process you needed very clear light so you could see bubbles under the cloth. And because it is in white bad lighting was a killer.
In the shaping bay it is usual to use a strip of fluros on each side of a room about 8 foot wide and 12 foot long. The strips had shelves over them so the light was not in your eyes but cast side shadows over the boards that made it easy to see bumps etc. All opthe light is excluded.
In the glassing room I had two long strips of fluros hanging about a foot above my head and about 8 foot apart with the board on a stand in the middle. I painted the walls below the level of the stand a dark colour so as to c0ntrol reflected light and above it in white to help with reflection. That way if I leaned over the board and blocked one light source there was enough light left to see very clearly.
I am working on these principles to get better light for my guitar workshop.
Dom