Mission Statement

I've added a page to the blog: Mission Statement for the shop. For those of you who are only passingly familiar with the term, a mission statement isn't a motto, it's a statement of purpose.

In Lawrence, the purpose of my shop changed a lot over time. Sometimes the shop was a learning space. Sometimes it was a productive space. Sometimes it was just a storage space, while I took side jobs to get through the recession... or while I was figuring out how to actually run a business. Sometimes it was just a place for me to stare out the window, philosophize, and decompress, while the Merrimack river slid slowly by. I never took the time to define the mission of the shop. Honestly, I'm not really sure I knew enough about how I wanted to work to be able to define it. I'd been out of school for a year and a half, it was my third shop, and I was still pretty scattered.

It was a 3500 square foot shop, shared between three people. There was a lot of room to do all of the above, without feeling constrained by square footage. There was a lot of room to collect equipment, materials, and scraps that I didn't, and wouldn't need. And so, I was able to amass so many things that I'd never be able to get to, that would never stop distracting me. It was too much room.

My new shop is smaller. I've had to streamline, and make a lot of decisions about what's important to the space, to me, and to the business. And that has meant some hard looks in the mirror. I started out as a hobbyist. After 10 years, I still want to learn, and to try as many new things as possible. But  I've learned the hard way that I need to keep the business healthy before I can afford to keep learning and doing new things.

Machines will play a bigger role in the new space, simply because they're faster. I can plan and execute complex designs that require a lot of hand work. And I love doing that kind of work. But after 5 years, it's become clear that the way I have to do things differently than I learned in school. I still want to keep my skills sharp, but I'm going to have to pick my battles on that front. Once the structural work on a piece is done, the process of adding the fine details... carving, inlay, hand planed surfaces, and so on... can begin. The more time I save with machines, the more time I have to add the little details that make such a difference. That won't always be a lot of time... but it'll be enjoyable all the same.



One side note... I have a feeling that I'll be consulting the esteemed Mr. Leach when it comes to new tools. I have a feeling that there are some old hand tools that were designed to be more productive and efficient than others. I also have a feeling that he knows which ones are which, and that he probably has things that I'd never even thought about... like the draw knife he sold me recently, with the chamfer guides that can hold a specific spacing. The ability to move the guides along the blade as sections of the blade get dull, without having to go through the process of setting up the spacing again.will be a time saver.

The other reason to focus on the machinery is that I enjoy the process of solving problems... and I'm good at it. I like coming up with jigs and fixtures, and evolving them to set up more easily or quickly, and to work more accurately. The end goal for me is two-fold:  to come up with a better piece of furniture for my client, and to give myself more time with my family. So my focus right now is on reducing lead times without sacrificing quality of construction. That's leading me towards building modular jigs, working with industrial aluminum extrusions, and figuring out what's most relevant in a jig or fixture when I use them.

So, that's where the shop is headed for now, and it's what you'll be seeing in the blog. I'm still going to wax poetic in here about craftsmanship, inspiration, the learning process, and so on. But I no longer have time in the shop to watch the river slide on by.

On learning, growing, and making mistakes

This entry is the conflation of several different things that have been bouncing around in my head for the past few days.

It started with a reply that I made to an entry on a woodworking message board. The short version is that someone was having an issue with wood that they'd resawed, and made the comment that "that's a mistake I'll never make again."

I feel that a common thread among some of the woodworkers I've met, is a confused feeling of failure when things don't go according to plan, that many of them take personally. (I don't think this is what the OP was trying to say, but it's the reaction I had to some of what he wrote.) Sometimes, this feeling is enough to throw people off of their game... or in some cases, to put the game aside for a little while.

I responded, citing John Ruskin. I had to paraphrase, but basically what Ruskin said is that the Greeks' insistence on perfection was their downfall. This insistence on perfection restricted Greek craftsmen to only using techniques that they could execute flawlessly every time. There was no room for growth, because there was no room for error. So their work, while flawless, was simple. He then proceeds to say that the heart of Christianity is forgiveness, and that this is critical for the growth of an artisan. Only someone who can forgive himself for his own growing pains can ever reach his full potential.

If ever there was a skill that required the ability to forgive a few dropped balls, it's juggling. Today I was watching a video of a juggler named Michael Moschen going through a juggling routine in an auditorium. (The video is 37 minutes long. It's fun, but it requires time.) At 13:45 he stops, and says; "Let me put you in that area of learning, which is very insecure."  He then tries to teach the audience a simple trick to do with their fingers, and it gets a laugh. Then he tries to get them to do it while following the balls that he's juggling. At 16:10, he captures the awkward moment for the audience to make his point:

"That's actually what most people face, throughout their lives. A moment of learning. A moment of challenge. It's a moment that you can't make sense of. Why the hell should I learn this? Does it really have anything to do with ANYTHING in my life? I can't decide. Is it fun? Is it challenging? Am I supposed to cheat? What are you supposed to do?

"You've got someone up here who's the operative principle, of doing that for his whole life, ok. Trying to figure that stuff out. But, is it going to get you anywhere? It's just a moment. That's all it is; a moment."

It's these moments that make us better at what we do: Feeling overwhelmed, confused, a little awkward, and very tenuous.

It's summed up very well by the Taoist Chuang-tzu: "The torch of doubt and chaos, this is what the sage steers by."

This is later paraphrased, probably unintentionally, by Albert Einstein, in his 3 rules of work:
1. Out of clutter, find simplicity.
2. Out of discord, find harmony.
3. In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.

These learning moments are clearly not an uncommon experience. The real challenge is to maintain your bearing, to keep a positive attitude, make your mistakes with grace, and Keep Moving Forward. As Steve Jobs put it, it's "the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything."

Notable Physics geek and intellectual Randall Munroe had something similar to say on the topic:

"Handy exam trick: when you know the answer, but not the correct derivation, derive blindly forward from the givens and backward from the answer, and join the chains once the equations start looking similar. Sometimes the graders don't notice the seam."

I left three years of woodworking retail jobs with the indelible impression that the stores, magazines, and tool companies are all trying to sell hobbyists on the notion that woodworking is easy, jigs will make it simpler, and all you need is the right magic wand, and the cash to afford it. The simple truth is that real learning isn't simple, and it isn't easy. (It's not hard, either, but it's not easy.) Becoming better at anything, be it woodworking, juggling, or just daily life... is labor intensive. It takes time and forgiveness and courage to move through those learning moments.

Back to Michael Moschen (while he manipulates some new objects on stage, two minutes before the end of his show):

"The latest thing that I'm working on... I don't know what it is yet. And that's good. I like not to know for as long as possible. Well, because it tells me the truth, instead of me imposing the truth." (See the above referenced video, around 34:50)

This is the opportunity that lies within the moment. If you can put aside the feelings of awkwardness, and disorientation, and not try to force your own interpretation of what's going on, a nugget of something that's real and true will present itself. You need to be willing to make a few mistakes, and do things a few times before you notice the thing you were missing. With perseverance and attention, you'll learn something productive and useful from your efforts, and you'll be ready to move forward again.

The next time you find yourself lamenting the bumps and bruises, or think to yourself 'that's a mistake I'll never make again,' take the time to find the blessing in the moment. Every setback is a learning moment. Don't waste it.

Organizing Space and Mind Part IV: Planning your projects

On any given day, my mind races around like a weasel on speed. I got hooked on woodworking for one simple reason: When I’m at the bench, I only need to focus on cutting to a line. The world stands still. I can focus, and relax, and the clouds part, for a moment.
  
As a beginner, finding these moments are easier: One board, one tool, and the novelty of the experience will capture your whole attention. The projects are simpler, and easier to keep in mind. But over the course of years, my projects and work space have become a lot more involved, and it’s harder to hold on to those moments. Between running the business side of the shop, setting up routines, paying the bills, and making sure that everything I need is on hand, there’s a lot of work to keep the dream alive.
  
I realized pretty quickly that it was harder to work in my shop than it had been to work in school. And I began to realize that there were a lot of supporting elements in school that I’d never really noticed. Supporting elements in any good design are like that: If they’re done well, they’re almost invisible. I had to do a lot of thinking to bring back the simplicity that I found when I was in school.
  
The Space and Mind entries are an attempt to share what I’ve learned, to help other people find the focus and satisfaction that got me hooked in the first place. Part one looked back at shops that I worked in, that were filled with stuff, but weren’t really productive. Part two is organizing the shop, and storing tools and supplies in such a way that we can get to everything we need, when we need it, and go right back to work. Part three is about setting up the work space so that we can work easily. But before we can get to work, we need a plan. And that’s part four.


It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.
                                -Sun Tzu, The Art of War

  
To ‘know your enemy,’ you need to know how the finished product will come together. To ‘know yourself,’ you need to know that you have the skills required to make each part, as designed, to bring the project to completion. Given that, all you need to do is work.
  
I had a conversation at school that showed me just how important planning was, and how powerful it could be. It was my last semester at school, and I was talking to my friend, Chris. We were looking at some carved oval rosettes in a picture of a Federal style table. He wanted to incorporate them into the table he was building. Chris wanted to make sure that they’d be uniform in overall shape, depth of relief, and any other ways that he hadn’t seen yet and couldn’t articulate. He was not a freehand carver, and he was worried that he wouldn’t be able to make them all look the same. I wandered over, and we started bouncing ideas around, and together, we figured out how to lay the rosettes out and carve them in a procedural, repeatable way. I did a double-take, thinking about how we’d just broken down a complex looking element, to make it more approachable, and help create a superior table. In that moment, it felt like we were making molehills out of mountains, and that so much more was possible than I had previously realized. All it took was some problem solving, and some planning and forethought.
      
The first step of any project for me is to make a few rough sketches, and do some problem solving. Thankfully, I enjoy that part of the process. Once I’ve figured out answers to all of my questions, it’s time to start drafting.
  
Making a detailed drawing of the project is critical. It helps you to ‘know your enemy,’ in detail. Building on paper is easier than building in wood, because pencil lines and mistakes can be erased, and new solutions can be drawn over the old ones. Paper is cheaper than lumber. Save a tree: waste all the paper you need. Drafting is tedious, but not as tedious as remaking a part when something goes wrong. And I can say from experience that it’s a lot less tedious than improvising a fix when I’ve screwed something up and the assembly won’t go together.   
  
Improvising is insidious. Some people enjoy that kind of work, because it feels similar to creative, spontaneous work. It’s not; spontaneous work starts out that way. One compromise can beget another, and another, as you struggle to make everything work out the way it was originally supposed to. I was reading Popular Woodworking recently, and read an argument against stock lists that said something long the lines of: “Projects change as they go along, so the stock list isn’t necessarily helpful, because you’ll need more wood than you have anyway.“ Projects don’t change. They get modified when someone botches the job.   
  
Accurately building a single drawer is easy. Most people can picture the whole thing in their head: Front, back, two sides, and a bottom that is held between grooves. Building a drawer is not a project that changes along the way, because it’s hard to go wrong when you have a clear image in mind. But, the mind can only hold so many things at one time. Improvisation is so insidious because there’s always a detail somewhere that you forget. Once the project is more complicated than simple and box-shaped, it’s not biologically practical to try to work from memory. The mind simply can’t hold all of that information. That’s why you need an accurate drawing, and it’s why you need to work the details out in advance.
  
Working things out on paper in a three dimensional way will stretch your capacity to envision something in three dimensions. This will help you work out how to put it together, and that’s very useful when it comes to ‘knowing your enemy:’  breaking the project down into simple steps, and thinking about what's involved, so that you know exactly what you need to do when you step up to the bench. Writing a procedure will give you a list of everything you need to do to complete the project, and it will help you focus on problem areas, and new skills when it’s required.

‘Knowing yourself,’ means knowing what you can do, both in terms of skill, and in terms of your machines' capacity. As you're planning out your procedures, you will see potential problems crop up, well before you start cutting anything. If the boards you need to mill down are too wide for your planer, if the carving requires carving tools that you don't have, if the joinery is too far beyond what you've successfully accomplished so far... these are the sticking points that will cause trouble. And typically, those points are what lead to having to improvise. Fix the problems before they become problems: either modify the design, or modify your tool or skill set.
  
Once you have a drawing to work from, writing up a procedure is mostly working backwards. For example:

-The final step in assembling the drawer is sliding the bottom into the grooves in the sides and front of the assembled drawer box. It will slide in past the back of the drawer, which should come to the top edge of the grooves in the sides.
-Before I assemble the drawer, those grooves need to be there. 
-Before assembling the sides, front and back, I must cut dovetails.
-Before cutting dovetails, I must lay them out.
-To lay out my joinery, I must establish accurate reference surfaces, and make sure that the joinery will not expose the grooves in the front and sides. (this should be worked out in the drawing.)
-To establish reference surfaces, ends must be cut squarely to finish length, and inner surfaces must be planed to the final finished surface.
-To make sure the joinery clears the grooves, the grooves must be cut.
-Before I can cut to finish length, I must mill the stock down.
-Before milling stock, I must cut pieces to rough length from rough lumber.

  
Reading the list up and down, it takes time to spot details that have been left out... like cutting the back to proper width, after the grooves have been cut in the sides. Going over your procedures carefully, a few times, will help ensure that the final draft of all of the necessary steps are accurately described. Accurate procedures will provide a road map to guide you through building your project, so it’s time well spent. It's certainly better spent than the time it would take to modify finished parts or assemblies when you realize that something has gone awry
  
To paraphrase Sun Tzu, if you understand how the project needs to come together, and you're competent to make that happen, it should all come together well. If you don’t understand the project fully, but you understand, more or less, what you’re capable of, you will probably be able to put something together that’s decent, with a few fixes along the way. If you don’t know how everything is supposed to come together, and you’re not sure how you’re supposed to make it fit, chances are very good that it will take you a few failures to arrive at success. And nobody likes to waste that much time and money.
  
My Zen moment comes when I’m standing at the bench and simply working. Sometimes that means following a line. Or laying out the lines that I’ve decided upon. Or making the pieces that will then have the joinery laid out... and so on, up the ladder of the procedure. I find that moment when I can just work, without having to think about the work. My worst moments are when I find myself standing in front of the table saw, while it’s on, trying to do the math for something I haven’t really wrapped my head around yet, feeling like I should hurry, since the saw is on and the clock is running, not sure where I’m going, not sure how to get there... That is the time to go back to the drawing board. If I have to second-guess what I’m doing, it means I'm lost in the woods, and my Zen moment is ruined. I’m only human, and I ruin my fair share of moments. But I can trace them all back, and work my way back to solid ground.
  
Organizing Shop and Mind means organizing and assembling a shop that will support your work. It means setting up your work space so that you can work easily. And it means planning your work.
  
Then, there is only the simplicity of working.

Chris, at work on his table

 More:

Space and Mind Part I
Space and Mind Part II
Space and Mind Part III
Space and Mind Part IV

Organizing space and mind, part III: 3 simple rules of good work flow

The essence of working smoothly is very simple. You sit down, do what you need to, and you get it done, without too much effort. The work area should be clear, and the necessary supplies should be at hand to make this as easy as possible.

Sounds simple, right?

When I started learning woodworking, my projects were small, and so organizing them wasn’t really so hard. But over time, with bigger, and more complicated projects, I learned that there’s a lot more to working efficiently once the project is bigger than the bench can handle.

Rule 1: Work space is not storage space.

The first, simplest, and (for me) least obvious rule of work flow is that the work area is not a storage area for ANYTHING, and that includes parts for the current project. It always seemed natural to me, if I was building a table, for instance, to have the parts at hand. The problem with this is that if they’re in the way, they will either get bumped, or need to be shuffled around to somewhere else. Even with an eight foot bench, this is logic. The face vise is at one end, the tail vise is at the other, and if I’m moving from one operation to the next, then the stuff in the middle of the bench is in the way, and probably sitting right on top of the dog hole that I need. An auxiliary table to hold parts, or even just a pair of sawhorses, is part of good work flow, because you’re free to do what you came to do, without having to rearrange piles of crap.

This is something I noticed in my kitchen while I’ve been musing over this entry. The actual work space is a small butcher block island that’s two feet by three feet. Pots, pans, knives, and ingredients are all close at hand, but on the block, I only work, so it doesn’t bother me that it’s so small.

Without the compulsion to cover your bench with stuff, the work area only needs to be as big as necessary to perform the task at hand. That’s worth thinking on, too, especially for those of you who are dreaming of expansive work benches. Once you learn to keep your functional work area clear, you may find that you need less of it than you think.

This rule isn’t just for bench work, it’s for the machine room, too. Each machine has a platform for doing work, but not to store parts. And there aren’t many other horizontal spaces in the machine room, except for infeed and outfeed tables. So I built a rolling work table with shelves underneath, that’s a cross between a cart for moving parts and assemblies from one station to another, and storage for those parts. It helps me to keep the working spaces clear of junk... sometimes. I was also lucky enough to have the foresight to make the height of the table match the height of the band saw table, so that if I’m resawing something heavy, the cart can support the other end, and roll along as I feed the wood through the saw.

I’ve seen one shop where the work table didn’t move, everything else did. Rather than move pieces from machine to machine, this guy moved the machines one by one to the table, where all the parts were sorted out. Ingenious system, really. It was a very small shop, and he didn’t have much space to speak of. But he had enough space to move the machines around, and careful planning of the work kept things moving smoothly along. For those who are partial to machine woodworking, the Festool system of tools lends itself to this very nicely. No infeed, no outfeed.


Rule 2: Work space should be functional and easy to use

Basic functionality is easy: everything that you need to work at that station should be there. As an example, I have a drill press station with drawers to hold all of the various bits and gizmos that I use at the station. Lathe tools are next to the lathe, bench tools next to the bench, and water stones are in the bathroom next to the sink.

Easy to use is a little harder to define. One my earliest learning moments on this subject happened in my basement. I’d set up lateral lumber racks against one wall, and set up my chop saw against the other wall, with my bench in between, because that’s where things would fit at the time. But once I started to work, I realized that I had a problem. Every board I pulled down that was longer than a few feet had to be ‘helicoptered’ overhead while I turned around to put it down on the bench. Heavier or longer pieces were even worse, because I had to hold them up without swinging them around, while I did a pirouette underneath, trying not to drop the board on my head while I shifted my grip around. Putting the chop saw under the lumber rack solved that problem. Reach up, pull down, chop, was much simpler. In my next shop I set up the chop saw underneath the lumber rack. And I set up my jointer and planer very close to my chop saw.


Rule 3: Keep the walking around to a minimum.

One of the exercises that I read in The Toyota Way involved drawing a map of the shop, and tracing the footsteps involved to bring a product from raw material to finished product. This is one very good reason to keep all tooling and accessories with the tool that they belong to. But there’s more to it than that.

After I bought an 18” bandsaw, I started to resaw lumber. The bandsaw was on one side of the shop, and the jointer and planer were on the other, very close to the chop saw. And I had my sawhorses set up in between. As a result, the process of resawing and milling up lumber involved taking a board from the pile, cutting to length on the chop saw, walking around the pile, cutting it apart on the band saw, walking around the pile to get to the jointer and planer, and mill the board. Put more simply, every time I resawed a board, it meant making a lap around the shop. This particular shop space was less than 800 square feet for bench space and machines, and I was astonished at how much walking I was doing in such a small space. Moving the big band saw closer to the jointer and planer saved me hours of work on some jobs, and probably a mile or two of walking.

After this, I started to lay out a basic flow for most of my work. I really wanted to lay the whole shop out to minimize the walking around, but I ran into problems with this pretty soon. In short, a custom shop is not an assembly line, and after milling and dimensioning rough lumber, there’s no easy way to know what’s coming next. So, most of the other shop equipment is on wheels, and I can roll related workstations together when I need to. I also use the rolling work table with shelving underneath, that can be rolled around from station to station if that’s easier.

---

There’s more to good work flow, obviously. This is just a decent starting point. The Toyota Way is a great book if you really want an in depth look at keeping a shop running smoothly. Not everything applies, but enough of it is relevant that it’s worth reading.

More:

Space and Mind Part I
Space and Mind Part II
Space and Mind Part III
Space and Mind Part IV

Organizing space and mind, Part II: Guidelines for storage

 My apologies for the length of this entry. Since it went up, I've edited it considerably, but there's still a lot left.
-----
I’ve seen two approaches for shop storage: Store anything that might conceivably be useful, or store as little as possible.

I knew a guy who built custom cabinets in a very small shop. Every job was planned out meticulously, and he ordered only what he needed for the job at hand, with a little extra. He didn’t keep scraps, and he returned full sheets. Throwing out scraps didn’t bother him: It had all been paid for with the materials deposit, so he wasn’t throwing any of his own money away. He ran a very profitable  business, and his shop ran VERY smoothly. It's not for everyone, but if you're trying to work in a tiny space, this strategy may be worth considering. 

I prefer to keep scraps and other things around. It’s a delicate balance sometimes, trying to figure out if it’s useful stuff, or borderline hoarding. But I make a point to shrink my collection of wood, and get rid of projects that I’ll never finish.

I’ve seen shops and art studios, and bicycle mechanic's basements, that have similar piles of special parts or materials, so I know I’m not alone. Some are much messier than mine. But in many cases, it's because the proprietors simply haven’t figured out efficient storage, or paid attention to organization. The end result is often a messy shop that’s less productive... and a bench that’s covered in crap.

I didn’t have an organized way to store things when I started. Things got dumped on the bench, and later got moved to another surface, and again if they were in the way. I ended up with a chronic case of the bumble-bees, buzzing around the shop looking for things, and my ability to work suffered horribly. My goal then became to keep an uncluttered workspace, but that wasn’t really enough either.

When I moved, I found a lot that I’d stored and forgotten, or didn’t properly put away, because I was more worried about storing everything, than I was about doing it well. I’ve since worked out some basic guidelines for good storage space in the shop. These are suggestions, not rules. Read them with the understanding that most workable systems will evolve over time, and with use.

1.) Everything must go in easily.

Think about bringing home groceries. Milk goes in the fridge, TP in the bathroom...  everything gets put right away. It’s all established routine, and it cuts down on clutter.

A shop should be no different, and there should be enough storage that there is a place for everything. If you have to move a project out of the way before you can get to the lumber rack, odds are good that the lumber will end up on the bench, or the floor.

I've also found it helpful to have a place to group supplies for a specific project, so I know exactly where those knobs or hinges are when I need them. If they end up kicking around, chances are pretty good they’ll get lost, and then the project will languish, and the shop will get clogged.

2.) Everything must come out easily.

It felt like I  had to unpack my lateral lumber racks whenever I wanted a particular board. That sucks when the other boards are 8/4 or bigger. Big and Tall lumber now gets leaned up in the corner, on end, because it's easier to sort through. I store short pieces (less than 4-5’) on deep shelves, ends out, so I can locate and pull out specific boards.

I've had similar misadventures with bins, milk crates, and other large, open storage. If something gets buried so deep that you don't feel like digging, it might as well not be there.

3.) Everything should be in evidence, and accessible.

Half of practicing good storage is to keep the working area free of clutter. The other half is setting up so that you can find what you need, get it out, and get back to work, without undue effort.

I want to be able to see what I have, and get to it, so that all of it remains useful. In some cases, it’s as simple as being able to see what’s on the shelves. In other cases, it may be labeling drawers, so that I know what’s in them, or at least bins for certain categories. 

4) Things should be stored in places that helps the shop flow.

When I was set up in my basement, my chop saw was on one wall, the lumber rack was on the opposite wall, and my bench was in between the two. Whenever I pulled a board off of the rack, I had to ‘helicopter’ it overhead, so I could put it on the bench, and then move it to the chop station. Not the greatest solution, and sometimes it was downright awkward. Now I put short-term rough lumber racks in line with or above the chop saw, to help things flow. Similar issues exist with sheet goods and table saw placement.

I’ll get into shop flow in part 3, but it’s worth mentioning here, because smart storage helps. If you trace out your workflow and your storage, and find yourself criss-crossing the shop a lot, you’re setting yourself up for trouble. This is doubly true for small shops: One unfinished project taking up the walkway can make parts of the shop inaccessible... even though they're right there. Three feet or three hundred, if you can't get to it, you're in trouble.

5.) Be safe.

Nothing heavy should be stored overhead, particularly lumber. If you’re on a ladder, heaving 12’ long, 8/4 oak over your head to get it out of the lumber rack, you’re asking for trouble.

Don’t store heavy ‘benchtop’ tools under the bench if you can help it. They’re light enough to be portable... but only barely. A strong and stable shelf at bench height will provide storage without risking injury. Moving them with a cart that’s also at that height is even better. Small, rolling workstations that match bench height are probably best, but that takes time, effort, and money, so it's something to pencil in as a long-term project.

6.) The storage area should be larger than you need.

Again, I think of the bike shop that I mentioned in the last entry. The building was huge, the work area was small. But everything had its place, and productive work flowed merrily along. And that’s the whole point.

If you’re setting up a new space in your basement or garage, and space is limited, dedicate 1/2 of the space for storage. There's a lot of normal stuff that goes into a shop, that shouldn't end up on your bench. But you also need space to put the things that aren’t planned for. If a broken chair arrives for you to fix, or a windfall of tools or lumber comes in from an unexpected event, it needs somewhere to go, so it doesn't clog up the work space.

To be Continued:

Space and Mind Part I
Space and Mind Part II
Space and Mind Part III
Space and Mind Part IV

Organizing space and mind, Part 1

I used to work as a mechanic in a bicycle shop. I enjoyed the simple pleasure of making something functional with my own two hands. Since then I've met a lot of other bicycle mechanics and cyclists (there's a lot of overlap) who have huge collections of bicycles, parts and frames. The common theme seems to be that when people learn how to build and fix things, they realize that it doesn't matter how old some of this stuff is, it all works well if it's properly maintained, and a lot of it can be reused. So, they don't throw most of it away.

I've seen similar behavior in woodworkers (including myself): I'll take the hardware off before throwing this out. This table is trashed but the material is good for repairs. These old tools can be cleaned up and used... and this old laminated iron is going to sharpen up really well. Don't throw that out, it's almost fixed! (Rough translation: after 6 months, I still haven’t put in the “5 minute” half of a day that it would take to do the repair.) I like the chisels that I have, but these are going to be really, really cool once I clean and sharpen them. Would you believe someone left this perfectly good tree trunk out for the trash? Can you help me load it up?

I'm not going to mention that tuning up all of the old tools that I've collected would probably be a concentrated month's worth of work and sharpening. I'm also not going to mention the scraps that just never find a home. And I'm not going to balance the virtues of recycling versus the hazards of potentially hoarding. Not today, anyway.

But I do want to help out those poor souls who haven't been able to do anything because their workbench is covered in crap.

---

My very first shop was in the basement. I built a plywood cabinet to hold things, and a bench to work on. I put up a shelf or two, and hung hooks from the floor joists overhead. Whenever I re-organized the shop, the end goal was to find a better way to fit 30 pounds of crap into a 5 pound bag that I still hadn’t gotten around to fixing up. Fitting things into the space had a higher priority some days than getting finished work out.

I piled stuff under the bench and against the walls. I put new machines in where I had space... and eventually, this choked off productivity. After a few years I was forced to admit that the basement was too crowded to be anything more than tool storage. I paid more attention to building a bench and buying tools than how it was all going to function as a shop. And I really hadn’t considered storage. 

I can say from experience that when you’re short on space, a bigger shop sounds like a good solution to the problem. I can also say that it’s not the whole solution.

Years later, I realized that I was still having problems. I had moved from a  basement shop that was overcrowded, to a 2500 square foot shared space, with lots of light and high ceilings. I had towering shelves, an 8’ tall cabinet, plus an 8 foot long auxiliary table...  Lots of storage, lots of space. But  I was still having a hard time working effectively. So, I thought about other places, where the work moved more easily.

At school, we had just enough storage space around our bench for our tools, and one, or potentially two small projects that were in motion. That was it. Long term storage for lumber was up in the rafters. Space around the bench was reserved for tools and projects that were in motion. There was no room for anything else, let alone a collection of unattended projects and crap. Any storage in and around the work area was used for storing tools, or parts for current projects.

At the bike shop, I had a bench, a work stand, and a small box of tools that lived on the bench. Bikes were stored in boxes up against the wall, or hanging from hooks in the basement. The work area was for work, the storage area was for storage. Bicycles came out of storage to be worked on, and they went back into storage when they were done. The store had a significant amount of real estate, spanning a couple of buildings, and including basement space in all buildings. The vast majority of it is used for storage; the shop area is much smaller. Normal repair parts like tubes and shifters and cables and things were in a storage area that was directly adjacent to the shop area, but were not stored in the shop area. In fact, there was vary little in the shop area, if anything, that didn’t contribute to maintaining work flow.

The lesson was pretty clear: keep storage and work flow separate. I was still thinking like I was in my basement, and trying to fit as much in as possible. What I needed to do was to get the inactive stuff out of the active area, and keep it out. 

I moved the towering storage cabinet into an unused corner of the machine room, and I cleared (almost) everything out of the bench space, aside from my tool chest. Now I can park an auxiliary table there to hold parts, if I need. Or a pair of trestles to hold boards. I can roll an assembly table into place. I can pull a paper back drop down into that area for taking photos. Ultimately, I plan to clear out the shelves on the wall and use them for this purpose instead. The space is still evolving, but it’s a much more functional space now.

To do work, I typically need the following things in my work area: A bench, a place to keep my tools and supplies, and some auxiliary storage that will keep project parts safe and out of harm's way. This may include an assembly table, while the project is being assembled, or sawhorses.

I would never have been able to build this bookcase in my old cluttered space:

I’m going to go into strategies for dealing with and organizing storage in part 2, but if you find yourself staring at your work area this weekend, and you feel the need to rework the space, I’d start by dividing the room into ‘work’ and ‘storage’ areas. I don’t care if the storage area is all milk crates for now, as long as it’s off of your bench, and you can work, I call that progress.

To be continued...

Space and Mind Part I
Space and Mind Part II
Space and Mind Part III
Space and Mind Part IV