New Guy on Forum -- Shop Pics

[Gordon Bellerose]

I am a fairly new member here, and I've noticed there seems to be a healthy interest in some shop layouts.
I thought I might show a few pictures of my shop.

Like a lot of guys, I work out of my garage. It is a 2 car garage, so there's a lot of room, except for the fact that I live in Northern Alberta, Canada, and I need to be able to park both vehicles in the garage. So with necessity being the Mother of Invention, I've gotten a bit imaginative in a few things. Not as much as others with a very small space, but I'll let you be the judge.

Here's a shot of the side of the shop, from the other side. This side has the bench and a spray booth in the far left corner.



Here's a better shot of the booth. It is an open booth that I simply spray in, and then close the door. The exhaust fan moves the air out of the booth. The filtered intake is in the door. There's a couple of bodies waiting for spraying.



The drawer cabinets roll out from under the bench providing more bench space when required.



I've got an air filter mounted on the ceiling to help clean the air before spraying.



I'll go to another post with more pics.

[Gordon Bellerose]

I know that jigs are a must when building guitars, so here a couple shots of one that I just built. I'll use this for binding, and also for shaping the back of the neck.
It is able to move up and down to adjust for different heights, and can be "locked" into position using the knobs on the sides.



I've got a counterweight system to help when it is in "float" mode for doing bindings.



I've got all my major tools on wheels so they can be wheeled into the center to be used, and then wheeled back against the wall to make room for the vehicles.

Here's the table saw, the bandsaw, and the drill press. The planer, drum sander, router table, and dust collector are all on wheels also.

[Jason Rodgers]

Dang, that's quite a setup! How long have you been afflicted with our disease?

[JC Whitney]

I particularly like your long horizontal storage above the wall cabinets. Clever...

[Gordon Bellerose]

Dang, that's quite a setup! How long have you been afflicted with our disease?

I've been building and repairing guitars part time for about 5 years. It all started when I felt like I got over charged for some soldering work. Made me take a look at my own capabilities, and I did a lot of reading.
Disease is a bit light. More like an obsession!!

[Gordon Bellerose]

I particularly like your long horizontal storage above the wall cabinets. Clever...

The cabinets started as open shelves. They stayed like that for 15 years, until 2 years ago when I started spraying and dust became an issue.
I bought a few sheets of malamine, and went to work. Initially I was going to simply put a clean face on the shelving, but with dust settling on everything overhead, I thought it would be cleaner if there was nothing to settle on, thus the vertical face all the way to the ceiling.
All of the cabinets, which are on 3 sides of the shop, are built in the same fashion.

The long horizontal storage is great for all kinds of things.