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Well I am excited because I have been shopless for far too long now and my new shop is nearly completed....

I'll show you how my shop is coming along and lets see some pictures of other shops too.

Here is what it looked like when I moved in:



And this morning:



Some more pics - I am currently hanging a suspended ceiling........





This will be the table saw room when I get it done:



And the main shop:







Lets see some of your shops?

No way. My shop is sooooooo messy right now you wouldn't believe it.

Your shop looks great. How many sq. ft. do you have ? You are stoked ! I am happy for you.
Link

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Cut to size.....Beat to fit.....Paint to match.

Hesh, your shop looks great. There are a couple pics of mine on my website.

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Ron

OK, here's my little shop. I built it from the ground up. Dug out the perimeter, placed the foundation forms, poured the concrete etc..... Had some help with the electrical and framing but that's about it.

The shop is an odd shape and totals 185 sft inside. It is insulated, heated and has AC and humidity control (well sort of) between the electric heaters, the AC and a humidifier. I can hold the RH between 40-50% 11.5 months of the year The other .5 months is probably from me not filling the humidifier for a couple of days here and there.

My shop is pretty full of tools, jigs, storage, a spray booth and dust collection. How I actually work in there is beyond me.

I just stepped out and took a couple of new pictures as the ones on the net out there are rather old.

Here's the front of the shop


This is just looking in from the front door


Standing at the "spray booth" looking back toward the door


Standing at the far end of the bench/go-bar deck looking back at my drum sander and DC


Looking back toward the far end of the bench/go-bar deck




Zoot storage loft area (the underside of the loft is the top of the go-bar deck)




Here's an older picture of the go-bar deck in action


My bench and upper cabinets


My homebrew air cleaner (made from a furnace motor and fan) this thing cycles the air in my shop about 50x's /hr.


And a little storage box I made for linings, purflings and bindings.


Here's my semi-knock down spraybooth. I call it a semi-knock down because as you can see the door just swing out of the way when not in use. I have an explosion proof fan in there but I have to make a sealed box to go over the light fixture in there as well as the fan switch (which I should really just move outside of the booth) I made a cabinet in the booth which can hold two bodies and two necks while curing. I can just close the doors and not worry about them.










I love my little shop. I do of course wish I had more space, but for now this gets me by just fine. Actually with a bit more organization, I think I could probably build 20-30 guitars a year out of that little shop. Like I have that much interest in my guitars though right now. Maybe one day, who knows.

Thanks for looking. As always any comments and suggestions are welcome (except from you Hesh Just kidding bud!)

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"There's really no wrong way, as long as the results are what's desired." Charles Fox

"We have to constantly remind ourselves what we're doing....No Luthier is putting a man on the moon!" Harry Fleishman

"Generosity is always different in the eye of the person who didn't receive anything, but who wanted some." Waddy Thomson

Rod bro you are the master of making the best use of available space!

Now if we could get you to stop being such a slob........

And that knock-down shower/delousing station/spray booth is a very cool design.

Ron my friend your shop AND web site look very cool!

Link bro after seeing how messy Rod's shop is you gotta know that pics of your shop can't be anywhere as bad as Rod's......

I think that I have about 400 square feet in the three rooms. After learning to build in a spare bathroom this is going to be like free range Hesh.....

Hesh, you really know how to hurt a guy! Just as your ultimate shop is nearing completion - the rest of us can drool in envy!

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A higher purpose for wood.
Rich Smith
Issaquah, WA

My shop is in a converted 120 sq ft bedroom....good for light & wood floor. I'd love to have the room you have now Hesh. Dust collector & wood storage are in a closet to the left, with WIP storage on a shelf above them.

I currently spray Ultima, so I set up a knock-down booth (which I feed into my cleaned out dust collector) when needed.
Looking the othe way.

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Dave
Milton, ON

Here's a shot from my shop:


Here's the floor plan:


I started a thread about it after I finished renovating it this spring.
http://www.luthiersforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=16908

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Rod,

Is that fan explosion proof?

Mike

edit: never mind... just reread it.

edit: i guess the attachment isnt going to show up. oh well, you get the idea.

i was staring at your walls trying to figure out why they just didnt look right and my wife said, "they are too white, he needs his alien poster up!"

congrats on your shop hesh. my shops (thats right, i have two) are not presentable right now... maybe later.

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sweat the small stuff.

I did a reorg last week. When I was done, I think it was neat enough for Hesh.

I went and used it and now it's back to normal. Well, still a bit better than normal.







Pat

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Pat my friend your shop always looks pretty neat to me.....

Heath bro how did you get two shops and I promise to shut the heck up about the state of affairs in your shop(s) if you post pictures... Your wife is right BTW the walls are too white, especially the back, brick wall...... I had no idea it was going to be THAT white....

Dave there is something about your space that has the well worked, just a great space vibe going. It looks like a great shop!

Arnt your shop always looks fantastic and I am checking out the picture of the benches that you have along the wall wanting to do something like that in my shop.

Lets see some more shops?

Alright, here's mine.

Primarily its used to build and repair wooden canoes, etc. but the lutherie stuff keeps creeping in and threatening to take over, I think that its going viral! I don't get to work on my guitars evenings or weekends, so I have to use my "down time", a half hour here, and hour there. Most workers would call these coffee breaks or lunch time. Sometimes, after months not luthing, I get a fit and spend far too much time on the guitars that I can really justify. Oh well, it all works out in the end.

The shop is a converted 24'x 24' "garage". I've used converted garages full time for 15 years to work in, I get a little sensitive when people, especially close people, keep referring to my professional space as a "garage". I've been in this one for 11 years and I finally got the drywall sanded and painted this fall, Yeah! What a difference, it feels almost professional now, I'm not nearly so embarrassed when clients come in.

I have a 28' x 30' fabric building attached to one side for storage and some warm weather work. That went up about 2 years ago and its mostly organized, I still have some infrastructure to develop in there.

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Expectation is the source of all misery; comparison the thief of joy.
http://redrivercanoe.ca/

I ran out of room with the last post, so here are the last two pictures.

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Expectation is the source of all misery; comparison the thief of joy.
http://redrivercanoe.ca/

Douglas my friend your "professional space" looks great and there is nothing better than seeing working shops with lots of work-in-progress.

Your canoes look absolutely outstanding too!

Dont know if anybody noticed, but we had 2 Jim's, 2 Chris's and 2 Ken's at this meeting.. haw can you go wrong with a group like that

Thanks for posting the pictures!

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Reguards,

Ken H

I think Ken's post must be posted in the wrong place. And there were 3 Jims Ken.

What? Where are your shops Ken and Chris?

OOPS

I got distracted and thought I was posting on the get together thread.. my bad...

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Reguards,

Ken H

Hesh I'll try and get a pic up on here tomorrow. Too late tonight. My shop is an old 1 car garage that was built in the 30's. I had to go in and rebuild the inside entirely before I felt comfortable moving in.

Chris

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There is no difference between the man that thinks he can....and the man that thinks he cannot.

Dang there's some nice looking shops out there. I figure if these pics aren't enough to send Hesh to his grave, he must already be the living dead Muhahahahahaha. (sorry Halloween weekend and all)

I think they do require some explaining. Number one, I'm a slob. Number two, it seems that lately I've spent all kinds of time working on everyone else's stuff. So when I finally get home, I've had little time to do anything of my own choosing, including just tidying up.

Right now my shop is a two car garage that is plenty of space. I just keep trying to cram more into the space, as well as more distractions crammed into my days. Hopefully I'll have enough time over the next several days to actually clean up, set up and work.

Darrin

Darrin my friend your shop looks very cool!

Well I had a very busy weekend and actually got to start moving into my new shop!!!! After scrubbing the crappy concrete floor into submission and installing the base boards I started moving some things in.

I am still struggling with the can lights in the office and storage area and can't understand how these install with a suspended ceiling....... But like everything else in this experience I am finding that time fills in all the blanks.

Here are some updated pics:



In the pic below there will be another bench with the spindle sander, belt sander, and 9" band saw:



The bare space on the wall below is where I will put a new bench, 6', that will be my primary bench I think..... I say I think because I am also going to build a 6' island bench for the center of the room. Not sure I will will like working on an island bench or not and I might miss the back wall as a back stop......



I have to tell ya that all of my tools on wheels wheel around MUCH easier on a concrete floor than they did on the carpet in my last shop......



Here is just some of the stuff that I still have to move in and one of the benches that I will put sanders on. This will be where the table saw goes after I put some wall boards up.



This is where I plan on putting industrial shelving and storing all the crap we use and the wood stash:



Thanks for looking - it's almost there.

Hesh, not to rain on your parade but if it were me, I wouldn't move anything in 'till I had a couple of coats of good concrete floor paint down! (...unless you're putting something over the concrete.)

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Dave
Milton, ON

No prob Dave.

I considered concrete floor paint, went and looked at it and spoke to some folks that used it. This is the epoxy based stuff.

The problem with it as described to me is that it comes up if you drag anything of any weight across it. And I plan on dragging lots of stuff around my new shop for a while. So considering that this is a bone dry basement I decided to just place mats strategically where I hang out and enjoy the easy clean, don't have to give a crap nature of this rather ugly floor.....

I also thought about going the sub floor route but RH and water wise there is no need in this basement. The outer areas are carpeted and a bit more civilized.

Good thought though.

Hesh, I'd advise you to apply a clear sealer so you won't have concrete dust forever.

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A higher purpose for wood.
Rich Smith
Issaquah, WA