Workshop move 2.

My wife's school is moving to a new location, and the old kitchen is being left behind. So I got permission to grab what I could and haul it back to my shop. I got some cabinets and a kitchen sink and have been working hard all weekend to get them up in my shop. It is still one big mess, but this is what the shop is going to look like.

In the back to the left is a metal working area, to the right next to the door is the wet area where I have plenty of space for sharpening and all other kinds of wet things. In front of that is my woodworking bench and on the left side of the shop are the "new" cabinets with plenty of space to finally store all my tools in a decent spot. The few powertools I have will have to live in the front of the garage, on wheels, so I can easiily manoeuvre them into position.

Most plumbing and electrical work is done by now, time to move all the tools from the boxes to the cabinets. Oh yeah, this is going to be one hell of a workshop!

Grain orientation in panel glue ups

Very often you see the recommendation to alternate the grow ring orientation when doing a panel glue up. Otherwise they fear that your panel will bow enourmously. An example I just plucked from the Internet:

When alternating the cup up and down, you should get a washboard effect in the panel, but not that enourmous bow over the entire length. Now, you almost never use a panel as a free standing object, It is usually build in a construction and the rest of the construction tries to keep your panel flat. When you have all the little cups it is actually harder for the construction to keep your panel flat, because the lever arm is much shorter.

In real life panels don't always behave like they should do either, I have an old table top standing in a corner of the garage. On close inspection it proved to be bowed all the way over the entire width.

But the grain in the individual boards was perfectly alternated, up, down, up, down:

Which shows how usefull theory can be. :-)

In the mean time I am inching forward on the workshop rebuild. The bench is moved into its new position, and I have attached the old table top to the wall above the bench to be used as a tool rack. It starts to feel like home allready!

Workshop move

There is not much woodworking going on in my place at the moment, and the blog suffers. The windows are finished, painted and all. I am now gearing up to replace 8 meters of fencing and much more painting. And in the mean time I am moving my workshop too.

Our property had a stone shed for the bicycles and garden stuff, a wooden shed that was the home of my handtool workshop, and a single car garage where the tablesaw lived, together with a motorbike, my woodstash and loads of junk. I had long since contemplated to change this configuration, but I was dreading the amount of work involved. But I had to replace a few sidings from the wooden shed, which forced me to clear out half of it anyway.

So , the idea is to move the wood stash, plus all the junk that can't be thrown away yet, to the wooden shed, and make a nice workshop in the garage. I'm going to miss my cosy little wooden workshop, but will get loads of space in return.

It is a bit of a logistic nightmare, but slowly I'm getting there. I made a sturdy rack for all the bits of wood I've collected over time. It had to be freestanding, because the walls of the shed are quite flimsy. It is now loaded with a bunch of wood, but I made it large enough for loads more :-)
And yes, that's a motorbike engine in front, A 1951 BMW R25, needing a bit of attention. One day...

The garage is clear on one side now, so I can move the workbench to the new spot. I think I have a lead on some kitchen cabinets, so I can make proper storage and a real sharpening bench in the garage. I am still contemplating to make a wooden floor, at least in part of the garage. A wooden floor is a real asset in a workshop.