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Workshop Photos
Here are a few photos of my workshop in the utility room in the basement of my
split-level home. The most recent photos are toward the top. This
page has a lot of photos, so give it a few seconds to load if you have a slower
connection.
Unfinished Projects Wall of Shame
Like many of us, I start far more projects than I finish. Here is my pile of
unfinished projects as of December, 2004. The storage tubs are ones I picked up
at Target. They are the perfect size for HO scale locomotives and rolling
stock.
July 2003 New Workshop Photos
In July 2003 I made some adjustments to the workshop to make it even more usable
to me. Here are some photos
The changes I made that you can see below include
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Two new lights. They're brighter than the photo makes them appear.
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A small fan that can pull fresh air in through the open window and across my
workspace (very important when gluing or molding)
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Peg board on the left with shelf brackets. It's amazing how much room peg
board can free up.
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A flat glass plate (towards the right center) for really flat glue-ups, and
also for pouring RTV and resin castings. (The resin gets very hot when it cures
and will warp your self-healing cutting mat, as I found out. heh)
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Moved the paper towel holder (with blue shop towels) to a spot where it will do
some good.
The lighting is still not as good as it needs to be. I might mount a
fluorescent light on the ceiling above the workbench to help with lighting.
Here is a description of each of the things you see in the photo, starting from
the left and moving to the right (some things may be more easily seen in the
photo below)
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At the extreme left, there are three white plastic storage chests, each with
three drawers, stacked on top of two large white storage chests. I picked
these up at Target.
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The three smaller ones at the top hold work-in-progress. They are
perfectly sized for HO.
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The two larger chests at the bottom hold strip stock (top one) and tube stock
(bottom one) of various types of plastic and some brass.
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The Pegboard has three shelves
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The top shelf has my NWSL Riveter, car weighing scale and some junk. The
work light clamps to this shelf
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The second shelf down has my foam locomotive cradle, a half-finished Tamiya VX
rocket and my clock/radio/cd player
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The bottom-most shelf has two blue plastic organizers and a small 12-drawer
parts organizer. The far left blue organizer has various masking tapes
and some of my stranger glues. The middle one has all of my commonly used
glues. The 12-drawer organizer has blades, pins and (per drawer) small
detail parts I am using for my current projects
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Underneath the pegboard you can see my rotary kitchen organizer. I picked
this up at a Pampered Chef show my sister-in-law held. Guys, see what
you're missing out on by skipping going to these shows with your wives?
<g> It holds my knives, sprue cutters, tweezers, needle-nose
pliers, pens, calculator, scissors, small Wahl screwdrivers, etc. It
alone freed up tons of room behind my old workbench.
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To the right of the pegboard, hanging on the wall above the yellow
organizers is the power strip that controls the lights and fan. (The
spray booth is on a separate power strip, and the clock radio is plugged
directly into the wall). When I go to work on a project, I crack open the
window, turn on the power strip and I'm ready to go.
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The yellow organizers aren't all that useful. I might get rid of some of
them in the future and replace them with something else. Right now they
hold bee's wax, soem drill bits, bits of paper board and old business
cards (for glue) and lots of little bits of dust and junk. They're just
too small to be useful for anything I do.
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The actual workspace is a 2x4 sheet of MDF. I use this because it is
hard, flat, splinterless, and easily replaced. On top of that I have a
self-healing cutting mat (from the craft/sewing store) and a 1/4"
rounded-corner square glass table top (also from the craft store) sitting up on
four rubber non-skid feet.
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To the right of the glass I have my paint brushes and mixing cups in cups in a
blue organizer
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To the right of that I have my spray booth. In front of the spray booth
is the paper towel holder.
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To the right of the spray booth, on a built-in desk is the airbrush compressor
(Testors) and the power strip that controls the spray booth light and fan as
well as the compressor.
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Underneath the workbench I have two black plastic organizers with multiple
clear drawers (see photos of old workshop at the bottom of the page).
Those hold sheet styrene, ABS, brass and scrap plastic on the left,
and sand paper, files, saws, clamps, paints, decals, chalks, etc. to the
right. They slide under the workbench (with some tilting and
persuasion). Contrary to how it appears, they do not support the
workbench.
Here is a closer shot of the left. Can you make out the little VO-1000 on
my workspace? :-) I love this workbench height. Sometimes when I
want to do something short, I'll just stand at the bench and work.
April 2003 Old Workshop Photos
In April 2003, I built a new workbench for my workshop. The problem with
the old setup (see photos at bottom) was that it killed my back. Since I
was setup on top of cabinets, there was no place to put my legs, and therefore
I had to bend over whatever model I was building. This made
model-building a less than enjoyable exercise.
My modeling organizers blocked the cabinets so I always had to roll them out of
the way in order to get into some of the storage next to them. In
addition, the lack of space made me keep my airbrush booth in the corner,
disconnected. I'm the type of person who won't use something if I have to
set it up first :-)
Here are some photos of the new workbench, and the changed layout of the
existing benches. I may modify this some more in the future, but so far,
so good.
Here's the newly configured shop. The new bench is off to the left, and
the sherline equipment is off to the right. The new workbench is high
enough so that it can be worked standing, or sitting using the drafting
chair. Of course, getting into the drafting chair when it's that high,
without it rolling across the room, is still quite a trick. heh. The
organizers on the far wall hold wheels, couplers, detail parts, tiny screws
etc.
Here's another shot of the new bench. It was built quickly out of stuff I
had lying around in the shed : plywood 1x2 supports, a 1x4 front, and masonite
on the top. I still use my exisitng MDF worktop on top of it all as
I have come to like it, and it covers the seam in the middle. I will
likely put some pegboard up to the left of the window (behind the yellow
containers) so I can hang tools there. The window provides light as well
as fresh air and, when I'm lucky, I can see birds in the bush right outside the
window.
Here is a shot of one of the wall supports. The previous owner of the
house built these nice wood brackets quite some time ago to support something
that he took with him when he moved out. The brackets were just sitting
high up on the wall supporting nothing, so I used them here.
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