Workshop Photo Tour

A while back I started getting a lot of requests from new readers asking me to show a few more pictures of the space where I do most of my tinkering.


If a picture's worth a thousand words, here's a little over 9,000 words about the workshop...


First off, it's usually a total mess:

What you're looking at here is the dust and debris piling up as part of my rush to finish all of the Red vs. Blue costumes in time for Halloween.  In the background are a set of shelves that were installed just before I decided to rehabilitate this barn storage space and turn it into a functional workspace.

Unfortunately, the space was already fully occupied with decades worth of project leftovers and broken tools.  I actually uncovered no less than six drill presses in there!  I tried my damnedest to make sure that only useful things made their way back into the shop after I overhauled it, but just about everything on those shelves is useless leftovers from projects nobody will get back to anytime soon.

Also visible in the picture above is the rolling cabinet full of hand tools, an old display cabinet, and Lopez, my Craftsman Carvewright tucked behind the lawn chair.

Here's another angle on the current mess:


A few years ago when I rebuilt the workshop, I made it a point to put in extra bench space.  I had this table to work with originally:

It was a restaurant kitchen prep table that used to have a nice stainless steel top on it.  Somewhere along the way, the stainless was sacrificed to another project, but the wooden surface is still plenty sturdy.

Under the bench you can see more of my molds from the RvB project.  Along the back wall you can see one of my new benches covered with combat garden gnomes and two of the old (inoperable) drill presses that I couldn't talk my father into getting rid of.

Here's the other length of workbench that I installed in the overhaul.  I also rewired the space to install the fluorescent lighting and an electrical outlet every foot along the back of the workbenches:


I've been doing a lot of molding and casting lately.  After way too much time wasted by running around trying to find all of my resins, dyes, and fillers when I need them, I've finally just put together a mixing station where everything's handy:


Again, it's getting a lot of use lately, so the bench is all sorts of colorful:


Since I tend to lose things that I set in drawers or on benches, I've decided that I need to start hanging more things from the ceiling.  Here's part of my clamp selection:


Here's a shot of my friend Noah helping me make some more castings:


So that was three of the four walls in the workshop.  The fourth "wall" is mostly a garage door hung on a track so that I can roll it away and leave one whole wall open for ventilation or to drive/drag larger projects in and out:


I went ahead and installed some narrow shelves on the door itself so I could put up my collection of spraycans.  Unfortunately, the doorway seems to attract a lot of clutter right now, so whenever I need to open it wide I have to spend all kinds of time moving tools and tubs and trashcans out of the way.

So that's the quick walkthrough of the workshop.  Hopefully sometime next month all of the molds will be moved to storage and I can get back to some of my other projects.