Popular Woodworking 2006-12 № 159, страница 36

it might be the relationship between machines that are used most frequently.

Suppose, for example, you expect to resaw stock for bookmatched panels on a fairly regular basis. The process involves a band saw (to slice the full width of a board) as well as frequent trips to a jointer so the cut side of the board can be trued up. In a shop like this, the work triangle might include band saw, jointer and possibly a cutoff saw or table saw.

The work triangle in kitchen design is a relatively rigid planning guide. Some designers go so far as to prescribe minimum and maximum distances when you add up all three legs of the triangle. English kitchen designer Johnny Grey favors a much more flexible approach that can be applied to a workshop as well as a kitchen.

Grey starts by accounting for all the important work stations in a kitchen. That includes the sink, food preparation areas, stove, refrigerator and so forth - roughly a dozen in all. Then he thinks of the paths people will travel to get from one function to another. These are not necessarily straight lines that can't be bent. Instead, he thinks of them as rubber bands that have some flexibility but can't be completely severed.

In a workshop, as in a kitchen, no floor plan will perfectly accommodate everything we do. The idea is to think about operations we commonly undertake and design around them. As long as movement around the shop and between machines is unobstructed and logical, the machine layout will probably work most of the time.

Some Machines Don't Need Much Space

It's easy to think of machine placement only in terms of the bigger pieces of equipment. That makes sense because they are the hardest to place and tend to dominate the work environment. But there are many smaller machines that can be worked in around the edges of a shop. They may not need as much room

A power miter saw centered on a bench against a wall can cut be used to cut long pieces of stock into more manageable pieces. By locating the saw near the entry door and storage racks, you won't have to maneuver long pieces of wood through the shop.

around them because the workpieces we usually bring to them are much smaller.

A bench grinder doesn't take up very much space and can easily be tucked in a corner because the workpieces are short - you sure don't need much clearance for a chisel or plane iron. The same is true of a drill press and a horizontal boring machine. They seldom require the kind of clearances that a table saw, jointer or planer must have.

Smaller tools can sometimes share space. A hollow-chisel mortising machine doesn't have a very large footprint but you occasionally may want to cut mortises in fairly long pieces of stock. Housing the tool on the same long bench as a chop saw is one way of dealing with it.

In finding homes for small pieces of equipment, a key consideration is how often they are used. That grinder, for example, may be only an occasional tool for many woodworkers, something we use once a month to regrind edge chisels or plane blades. In that case, it can be housed in a distant corner of the shop, preferably near good natural light, or even mounted to a board that can be put in a storage cabinet when it's not needed.

If, on the other hand, you're going to do a lot of turning, you may need to make frequent trips to the grinder to touch up your tools. You'd probably want the grinder right next to the lathe or at most just a few steps away.

Don't overlook out-of-the-way nooks and crannies when trying to shoehorn in all your tools in a shop. There's no reason a compressor has to take up floor space in a small shop when it could just as easily be stored beneath a bench. You may not need a separate router table if you use part of your table saw's extension table for that purpose. In a small shop, consolidate where you can and

Making the most of a small basement workshop, Popular Woodworking Publisher Steve Shanesy pushes his lathe right up against the wall. Some tools don't require much space around them, making them good candidates for overlooked corners and nooks.

popularwoodworking.com i 36