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Shop Tours...
Spike Cornelius and His Shop
My shop is in the basement. As you come down the stairs, you see:
The hole in the wall was created when the old furnace flue was removed about a year ago. I recently had the furnace ducting updated and it made maneuvering in the basement much easier! As you walk through the opening that the chimney once filled and turn to your left you see the utility bench and main tool wall. A lot of my hand tools live here, and it is, of course, in constant flux. The hole in the ceiling is where the duct used to be, it came out of the wall where the little drawers are. The red light is on a moveable pedestal. Small tailed apprentices live under the bench.
As your gaze drifts to the right, this s the south wall with my source of natural light.
This is my sharpening station, at least the part with the bench stones. There are other uses that this table gets as well, but I will leave that to your imagination. Just visible on the right is the lathe disc sander yada-yada combo machine. One of these days I’ve got to change the wall color down there, maybe paint some trees or something. I need to do something about the wire routing, too. The wires mainly feed the grinder and air filter these days. Sitting in the middle of the space is the joiners bench. When the upstairs bedroom ceiling was vaulted I saved the joists. The house was built in 1926 so the wood was nicely aged and dry. After making sure that all the nails were gone I used some of that wood to build my bench. It isn’t exactly Frank Klaus, but it gives me a stable platform, and I did it all with human powered tools! Looking toward the north wall you can see another source of natural light for the shop. My meticulously organized wood supply is kept in this area for the most part. Behind the saw horses you can just make out the power planer, and near it the power jointer. They kind of get buried sometimes. In the lower middle of the picture you can see the 2 tool boxes that belonged to my grandfather.
The 2 black hoses back there are not in use right now, I use them when I want to use the dust collector on something that is across the room from it. The other part of the sharpening station is over there on the left. You can’t see it in this picture, there is more of the room back and to the right, it has a bunch more wood and stuff back there. Also behind the stool is the first table I ever made back in 1974 or so. It was built out of (mostly) two by fours with a Black and Decker saber saw and a hammer. My large collection of vintage Fine Woodworking magazines and various books live in the shelf unit on the left. When you walk back to the saw horses and turn around this is the view of the south half of the area. It’s about nine feet from one wall to the other and about thirty feet from south to north. It can get a little tight for some things, but so far I’ve been able to make do. Full size sheet goods generally get cut to rough shape out in the garage before moving downstairs. I have the Shop Smith on wheels so I can pull it out when I want to use it, I drag the joiners bench over and the lathe is pulled out to the tool rack over there on right wall. The Jet unit back there is also on wheels. The key to sanity in a space like this is mobile tools and flexibility. Spike Cornelius Email: Spike Cornelius |
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