...And, Into the new. (Tour of the new space)

This is a quick rundown of how the space has shaken out so far. My area here is not a full, standalone shop. I'm sharing a fully equipped machine room, with 4 other woodworkers. We all have our own work areas, and our own table saws in those respective areas. A few of the large pieces of equipment that I pulled out of the old shop would have been redundant, so they're on pallets in another part of the building.

Central to the space is the table saw, with a Festool MFT work table sitting behind it to serve double duty as a work table, and as an outfeed table. The MFT was a new purchase when I moved in, but the potential I see in it has had my head buzzing now for weeks. More on that in a future post, and on why I won't carve it up to clear table saw sled rails.

I also have plans to mount a cast iron router table to the SawStop sometime in the near future. That's going to be a project, since the two components won't simply bolt together. I'll explain that one when I get there.

Festool storage and long-term lumber storage is on the right hand wall. I don't like a lot of long-term storage in my work space, but it had to go somewhere, and since it's up and out of the way on the wall, it's not such a concern.

I already have a reputation in the building, for having so much Festool equipment. I don't mind.

Looking out from the back corner... the stub wall that comes out from the windows is going to be the designated area for short-term storage for project materials. The big storage tower was there for a while, but it didn't make sense to me for workflow reasons. I want materials to come into short term storage, flow over and past the table saw and MFT as they're processed, and move from there to the big bench for detail work. Sub assemblies will flow back to the short term area for assembly, and fully assembled projects will flow right back out of the entrance to the space.

That's the theory, anyway.  I want to map all of this out in a future entry, and explain some of my logic.

(Side note: There's a separate area for doing finish work downstairs, with a fully set up spray booth, so I won't be doing finish work up here.)

Back in the corner, you can see that my office is directly behind the work area. (I share the office with one of the shop-mates.) I've been wanting a separate area to do admin and design work for a while, as well as a place to pull out of what I'm doing to regroup when projects get stuck. Taking a moment has been problematic in the past, because it's so easy to get side-tracked by something else in the shop. Having a quiet office that's close to, but separate from the work flow will be a relief, and should help me focus more.