My last workshop was just 5m x 4m and was like tha TARDIS. Two lathes, three grinders, milling machine, two gear hobbers, compressor, two welders, hoover, three benches and a load of drawers of tools and materials. People used to marvel at the way it was all packed in plus I could still get my motorbike in there and work on it.

My new workshop is double the footprint and I feel positively spoiled.

It looks less cramped than mine, which is about 15 X 6 feet internally, and with only about 6ft ceiling height.

I had to put my bandsaw, ‘Alpine’ badged but one of those generic horizontal/vertical machines, on a proper trolley so I can move it around including blocking the narrow “corridor” between a large bench-drill, a small Denbigh horizontal mill, Myford VMC vertical mill along one side, and a Harrison L5 lathe and BCA jig-borer on the other.

To the left of the door, which is about a third-way along the length, there is plenty of room between the Myford lathe and a bench holding a smaller bench-drill and manual shaper, but the saw often lives there.

Put my project-of-eternity steam-wagon in there, and it will fit in only one place, and the workshop becomes rather like those sliding-tile letter-puzzles we had when we were very young. If bad weather means it and the bandsaw can’t temporarily go outdoors, I have almost to climb over the lorry chassis to procede from one end of the den to the other, but if it’s trapping the bandsaw in front of the Harrison that far end is inaccessible anyway.

The ‘Worden’ tool-&-cutter grinder, a Hemingway Kit, lives in the kitchen. My loco presently under repair (Round Tuits are available from stockists of Spare Hands and Odd Minutes) is just behind me as I sit at the PC typing this… in the front room. Bits of the club’s loco presently ornament the nominally-dining table -yes, I have protected the table’s surface.

Photos please. Other people’s workshops are always nice to see.

However I will have to tidy mine before taking photos.

JA

I’m too embarrassed/ ashamed to show a picture, I have to climb over alsorts just to reach/use the lathe. The bench drill and vice I’ve not seen in years. Thankfully I have a second place that’s not quite so bad.  Noel.

My workshop was built in 1893 as a state of the art game larder.  On the “ceiling” are north of 400 steel hooks for hanging game. You can be sure they are well used these days for hanging tools etc. and the occasional brace of pheasant or duck.

Aah, but I bet you know where everything is, and that if the next operation needs twenty 5BA X 1.5″ bronze bolts you will find twenty-one not nineteen in the third Lyle’s Golden Syrup tin along!

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A tip for those with ridge-roofed sheds, assuming access to the end and reasonably strong structure.

A door in the gable, above the main door, facilitates using that roof space for long items like ladders and lengths of timber.

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My workshop can be summed up by such little matters as…

– Buying an edge- & centre- finder set to replace a lost “wiggler”, only then to move something and thereby find the lost one.

– Pulling out a drill from a tray on the shelf in the Myford lathe cabinet, dislodged a large-ish drill in a MT adaptor; it fell to the concrete floor not much above a foot below, and snapped the drill clean in two.

– This afternoon, finding the 1/2″ Brass taps but no proper-size tapping-drill and no sign of the die anywhere. Luckily I managed the female thread with a long-taper tap, and to screw-cut the male thread; both in the mild steel variety of brass.