Making New Arrangements

With a couple of new machines on the way soon, neither of which might be called petite, I’ve had to reshuffle things in my shop. So, right now, things are a bit chaotic and I’m spending a lot of time on ladders.

I had a vertical wood rack with a footprint of 4’x4′ which had to be taken down, reconfigured and set up on the other end of my shop space. It’s now a 3-bay affair about 2’x4′:

On the left side of the rack you can see some of the figured shedua planking poking up. That material came earlier in the week and absolutely met my expectations. Various woods occupy the middle bay, with bubinga on the right.

The top of the rack is a widened and lengthened deck for storing stuff I don’t need too often:

I’ve taken to storing quite a bit of stuff in my shop on elevated pallets, 8’~10′ up on the walls. Anything to get it off the floor and out of the way. I’ve got a raft of wood to tuck away –  I’ve resorted to pulling some of it off site altogether.

On the wall where the wood rack used to be I have sheathed the brick with some plywood in preparation for mounting some electrical equipment:

The 3-phase step-up transformer is in the foreground of the above picture. It will be mounted on the wall about 8′ up.

After looking at the situation for a while I decided to rearrange the positions of my bandsaw and planer, swapping them on each side of the post:

The change gives me slightly more room to move by on the right side of the planer, compared to the bandsaw table which used to stick out in the same space, and the planer now has 12.5′ of space in front of it for feeding stock as compared to 11′ in the previous position.

Moving the large bandsaw, I also turned it 90˚ to take advantage of a corridor between the jointer and super surfacer, and that also allowed for a place to tuck in the little Hitachi bandsaw:

The new arrangement requires no changes to the electrical or air systems, however a few more dust collection fittings will be needed to hook up both bandsaws. I’m still trying to figure out where the clamp racks will go!

The large bandsaw table in its new orientation meant I can use the corridors in front and behind the table more effectively for feeding stock:

A view from the corridor between the jointer and super surfacer down to the bandsaw:

I’ll be also extending the dust collection piping a good 30′ to reach the tablesaw, and this is one of the those costs which always seems to be higher than expected. “It’s just a few fittings and a length of pipe or three…”, I think to myself. Wrong. In particular the flex hose is a shocking price. The pipe and fittings are ordered from Air Handling Systems down in CT and should be ready for pick up sometime next week.

I just thought I’d share some pics of what is what in my shop at the moment. Should be another day or two and I can get back to working some teak – you can see it stacked up here, there, and everywhere in the above picture.

Thanks for visiting the Carpentry Way. There is a follow up post: Post II