Joe's Workshop

My shop is an expanded 2-car garage with a small attached shed housing the dust collector and air compressor, which are both piped through the wall. The shop itself is 631sq.ft. which is my largest of the three I’ve built, but it’s shrinking rapidly. I keep it workable by having everything except the table saw and (to be) large jointer mobile. The table saw is positioned with the infeed to the garage door where all but the longest rips can be accomplished without opening it. This also frees up the center of the shop. Other equipment includes Laguna 19-38, Laguna 16HD BS, Jet 1442, Jet shaper, Router Table, My Dad’s old Craftsman DP, a Powermatic 15” planer and a Jet 6” Jointer. I’m restoring a Northfield, pre-serial number 12” medium duty (haha) jointer. At this writing, a friend is welding up a motor mount as this beast only ran on a line shaft in its life. You can see it hiding behind the bandsaw with its current coat of red oxide primer. I’ll be replacing the originial head, which was a 2-knife, with a Shelix cutterhead. The original head threw a knife and I’d like to not relive what that experience must have been. Northfield estimated it was manufactured around 1920. My bench and assembly table are patterned (read: copied) from Frank Klausz’s workspace in The Workbench Book except I built my bench left-handed. For the floor, I put down a T&G plywood floor over rigid foam insulation and the shop is heated and cooled by a mini split. Winters are pretty temperate here. Even with the reduced height from the wood floor, I’m still able to tip a 4×8 on its corner without contacting the ceiling, lights or overhead d/c duct. To help move stuff around, I have two mobile carts and also put a panel flipper on the side of one of them. Service is provided by a 200a single phase panel and nearly every machine is on its own circuit. This is my space, I hope you enjoy the tour as much as I enjoy working here.

-- - I've cut this board 3 times and it's still too short -Joe