Big garage workshop

In April 2017 we moved out to the country and sold our house in the city. This "big garage workshop" was my main workshop until we moved again in 2018.
Getting the workshop organized was a project in itself.

I first moved stuff into this shop in 2014 when it became vacant, moving my second-best tools into it.

I made another video about the workshop in February 2015:

The article below is about the shop in January 2014, before I even painted the walls and ceilings.

Through a convoluted set of circumstances, I have a large garage building out in the country. The building is 30'x40' (8 x 12m) in size. It used to be rented out, but isn't anymore. Rather than leave the building completely unused, I figured I'd use a lot of my "extra" equipment to set up a rudimentary second workshop there.

I have my original bandsaw, and my original 6" jointer in there. Both machines obsoleted by building better homemade ones. Also my homemade table saw, which isn't as good as store bought ones. My goal is to set up a basic workshop in the building without spending a lot of money because I'm not sure how much I'll use it once it's set up. It's a 45 minute drive to the country to get there, so not terribly convenient. And being so large, it gives me an appreciation of the coziness of my basement workshop.

A number of recent articles were related to this shop. Here you can see the dust collector I bought cheap, and the simple table and my green homemade table saw

Here's some of my light stands, and, in the back left, a storage shelf

In this photo, in the far corner, partially obscured by green Styrofoam and red plastic is the cabinet with wood hinges, which is there to keep a water tank from freezing.

Not all the lights on the ceiling work, and some hum loudly. Also, the metal walls don't reflect much light, and the building has an awful lot of echo. I want to try some things to reduce echo a bit, and try to fix the lights, maybe paint the walls. With 16.5' (5m) high ceiling, a scaffold would be best for those jobs. I could buy a suitable scaffold for about $850, or I could build one. Leaning against the wall on the left is the material for one. I also brought along my pantorouter (on the table with the blue tarp) to cut the joinery for that scaffold. Update: Built the scaffold

Another shot of where I have my tools set up. Mostly obstructed from view in this photo is the quickie workbench, with the radial arm saw on it. I hadn't used that radial arm saw in years, so I moved it out of my workshop to make room.

I always felt that my basement workshop was a bit too small, but with this building, it occurred to me that a shop could also be too big. Lighting, heating, and echoes are much less of a problem in a small space.

The workshop has a very powerful but loud propane heater mounted to the ceiling, plus a wood stove below it. The wood stove is enough to keep the building warm, but the propane heater is good to get it from -5°C to about 15°C quickly. The stove has a hole on the back to blow air through an internal cavity. I rigged up a bathroom fan to blow air in. That fan turned out to be a bit loud, so I made this baffle to cut down on noise a bit. There's actually a hole through the middle of the fiberglass insulation, but even so, it cuts down on noise quite a bit.

At left, the view from the shop, right, the shop seen from further back. It's out in the country. Many people commute from this far into the city every day, but for me, 45 minutes each way is further than I like to drive. Taking the stairs to the basement is a much nicer nicer commute.

The above video was from January 2014. Unfortunately, I never filmed any sort of "shop tour" once I had the shop organized in 2017/2018.

I hung some drop cloths to cut down on the echo, then later made some more sound absorbing panels

Articles and videos at my big garage workshop:
In 2014:

Quickie workbench

Building a big shelf

Building a scaffold

Wifi antenna
booster dish

A cynical take on
making bookends

Dust from a 14" bandsaw

Anti-deer tree cage
(video only)

Wasp sucking
machine XL

Lawn mower
of destruction

Bandsaw repair fail

In 2015:

Reducing echoes in the
big garage shop

Raspberry Pi computer
and camera holder

High tech mousetrap monitor fail (video only)

Making tool holders
part 1 and part 2

Up-high garage shelves

Mortising and tenon
on the table saw

Welding cart from an
office chair

Pulling nails without
heads / pallet recycling

The steadycam you
already own
(but didn't know)

About the old barn
(video only)

Chip carving knife from a saw blade

Building a better
mouse trap using
video surveilance

In 2016:

Workbench on wheels

Burning branches and crap (video only)

Grinding a machine taper with an angle grinder

Double tenon shelves

My big tractor

Forklift toy payloader bucket

Tractor vs tree

Lawn tractor vs. tree

Building a lawn tractor trailer

Angle grinder cutoff jig

A better hand plane
wall tool holder

Wild mouse maze experiments

In 2017:

Big lumber rack

Wooden bandsaw riser block

Office chair wheel dolly (video only)

bandsaw-on-a-dolly sawmill

Buring sawdust in a
wood stove (video only)

From May 2017 to August 2018, this workshop is my main workshop, so there is no longer a need to list projects in this workshop separately. The majority of my projects from 2017 and 2018 are in this workshop. However, in September 2018, we moved away from the country property, into the suburbs of Fredericton, New Brunswick, about 1000 km away. the decision to move and another vlog about why.