Shopsmith Forums

I have been there and it is tough. My wife and I decided to move onto our sail boat and take off and we went through some pretty emotional times getting rid of stuff. We finally got it pared down to a small storage space but it was tough. My original SS 500 and heavy woodworking machinery were victims. Giving up my machinery was the worst but since I doubt I will ever have a large shop again it was a good thing in the end. We made a lot of trips to Goodwill and gave a lot away.
Paul

This relocation is not going to be near as bad as I had thought. It turns out that the space I have been allocated is adequate. It has forced me to clean out all of the nooks and crannies and to disose of many items that I might need some day but that is not all bad. My new space will be approximately 208 sq ft with a small portion of that occupied by an electric furnace and hot water heater. Every piece of Shopsmith equipment I own will fit in the area even if I retain the work bench I was expecting to discard. I am almost looking forward to moving day - weeks away.
The light gray area in the middle would be space needed if I was to bring the car in.

OK, about 18' x 20'... Nothing wrong with that as a shop.
If I removed all of the irrelevant stuff I could function fine in that. When I had my woodshop in the farm shop I had almost everything on a wood floor section that was 30' x 12'. I'm sure you well know that a shop can expand to fill a huge building if allowed to and the space is available. With me being a shop nut I love the big space I have but it certainly isn't required. I enjoy having all of those "extra" Shopsmiths but they are not "needs"...
I also suffer from horrible work habits (and will likely never be cured ) but a small work area really will encourage organization. You work much more tidy than I do anyway so it will be a natural for you.
You've got this...

Aside from the fact that I am not losing all that much floor space, I will be gaining some wall space. Items that hung on the sides of my work benches will now have a home on the walls. I'm thinking about putting up two french cleats to basically cover the two side walls. I have to give some serious thought to that however because this little short fat guy might not be able to reach across the Shopsmith stuff.

dusty wrote:Aside from the fact that I am not losing all that much floor space, I will be gaining some wall space. Items that hung on the sides of my work benches will now have a home on the walls. I'm thinking about putting up two french cleats to basically cover the two side walls. I have to give some serious thought to that however because this little short fat guy might not be able to reach across the Shopsmith stuff.

I think I can identify with that. You are a gem and will be with us for a long time giving us good advice. I am glad you have found that your new shop will give you what you want.

Yup. This will do the trick. One of my alternatives was to move to a small gated community of modular homes. No shop and noise control - major negatives. However, this place offered a huge community wok shop well equipment with Powermaticequipment that included a huge surface sander and two large table saws. Would have been fun until time to quit. The rules stated that "if you are not in the shop - neither will be your project".

One bad! The driveway begins a slop toward street level almost at the doorway. Don't think rollout onto the driveway will be practical.

Good News Confirmed

The car fits in the available space after allocation space to all the major Shopsmith items.

In fact, scale drawings give me confidence that I can not only make this work but that it will be comfortable.

The car will probably be garaged every night but the truck will remain out in the driveway.

If you are still downsizing I am looking for some legs. I just watched the "Turning Precise Cylinders" video and he mentioned a jig. I have a lathe duplicator but I would prefer not to take the table apart every time I want to turn a cylinder. If you have an extra set of legs that you want to get rid of I would be happy to pay what you ask.

The thing that most people forget is room to open the car doors.

stephen_a._draper wrote:The thing that most people forget is room to open the car doors.

Hopefully we have that covered: