Official Luthiers Forum!

Hello,

It has recently begun to become an issue for me to commute to my friends shop. The drive is about an hour and I would really like to set up at in my basement and garage to save time and to make building a little more convenient. I still plan on using my friends shop for resawing and some of the dusty stuff, but the remaining tasks I would to do at home. I am curious to see how the at home luthiers do it. If you guys could offer layout advice or neat little ways to keep organized. I would like to here about your at home shop features. Also I plan on building myself a bench too. If you have some clever bench design ideas, I am very interested in hearing about them.If possible please include some pictures. Thanks for reading and hopefully your advice.

Robbie

http://www.harborfreight.com/catalogsea ... oak++bench
there are a few nice benches here . I can tell you that you need good lighting . As for building , what are you looking to do . Can you and your pal share the higher cost items ?

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

Well the shop I have access to has Two 10" table saws, 3 band-saws, shaper, planer, jointer, 10 routers, spindle sander, thickness sander, etc. What I plan to do is use my buddy's shop for jig making, resawing, thicknessing plates, and initial neck blank shaping. I would like to do the binding, bending, neck shaping, bracing, fretting, rosettes, and fretboards at home. I am trying to keep most of the dust and noise out of the house . My plan is to use the shop for doing larger numbers of things in order to make sure I am home more. For example when I make my kerfing or binding, I will make 4 or so guitars worth. I could slot the saddle in a 4 bridges then shape them at I home.I could cut 4 guitars worth of top bracing the shape and glue them on at home. I can see that an issue may be the balance between shop and home stuff must be maintained in order to justify having an at home "shop". As far as home equipment I have a 10" table saw and a few compressors. Also the lighting in my basement is very plentiful thanks to my brother.

Robbie

you may want to look as some kind of dust collection . I would suggest a good ceiling or portable air filtration or a sanding table .

_________________
John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

I'd take some pictures, but everything is Irene-ized right now - yard stuff stacked in the garage, everything off the floor and on benches in the basement. Hopefully will return to normal by this evening.

Garage: (one bay of two car garage)

10" Table saw
14" Band saw
6" Jointer
16/32 Jet Drum Sander
16" Drill press
Grinder
old belt/disk sander that needs to get retired.
DeWalt planer (no luthier use for this)
1.5 HP Grizzly single bag dust collector
Bench (my benches are all based on a 2 by 4-based bench design that was on the cover of Popular Woodworking about 6 years ago.

No climate control

Basement:

Second bench and a troji
All the hand tool and go bar deck work.
Hand tool storage
Luthier wood storage

humidifier/dehumidifier

Path in between Garage and Basement:

too much exercise.
too much dust and wood chips on floor to create spousal happiness.

Ideally, I'd love to establish heating and climate control in the garage and annex the entire 2 bay space, but I can't see it happening. I'm not as religious as I should be about dust collection, though, so I'm probably better off doing hand work in the relatively dust free basement.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

I work in a single car garage, and due to the space constraints I set everything up on risers around the perimeter so that I work in the center of a large rectangle of tools. The risers were from a closed down electronics store, but they can be made easy enough. They are 36" high, 48" wide, and 24" deep about, and they are all carpeted. If I was making a fresh set right now I would skip the carpet, but they came that way, free, and I said thank you. My main bench has a peg board above it for all y commonly used smaller tools, and there is a large peg board on the other wall, raised up so that it clears my risers and machines. On that wall go my lesser used or larger hand tools and templates. I have freedom of movement by everything being on the perimeter, and the risers even offer storage underneath. I had to cut the faces off of them to get that storage, but it's better than those boxes being empty. Get creative and really look for interesting ways to store your stuff, and you will be rewarded by an un-cluttered work space that doesn't add stress to the experience. I hope my pictures help you, and good luck with the new shop location. Oh, and my table saw is mobile, and I leave it at the back of the shop unless I need to use it so that it's out of the way.

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http://www.sixgunguitars.com

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