- The Wood Whisperer is sponsored
by Powermatic, Titebond,
and today's special sponsor, SimpliSafe.
Welcome to my wood shop.
It's a four car garage
in Denver, Colorado.
I've been here for about three years now,
and while this shop is about half the size
of the one I had in Arizona,
I really couldn't be happier.
In this tour we'll talk
about layout, tools,
storage solutions, security,
courtesy of SimpliSafe,
additional tech, and my favorite
safety related features.
I've done a lot of upgrades
in the three years that I've been here,
but the most significant
change came this year
when I hired this guy.
My brother-in-law, Jason.
So let's start by talking about layout.
So people always say that the table saw
is the heart of the shop,
and that still holds true for me.
I've got the table saw almost dead center.
And everything kind of happens around it.
Layout in a shop is really important.
So we have set up so that near the door
we have our storage.
That's where material comes
in, goes against that wall,
and then we could easily take
that over to the chop saw.
Having the chop saw near the
door is really important too.
Once we break the material down,
then we're gonna take
it over to the jointer,
process it from there through the planer,
possibly the drum sander,
and then roundabout to the table saw
to finish for the final operation.
Over here, of course,
I've got my workbench.
It is just a little bit
offset from the wall
so I could work on all sides.
And I really think it's
important, if possible,
to have windows near your workbench.
Natural lighting is a great thing
for visibility and just being
able to see what you're doing.
So I've got a nice decent
sized window over here,
as well as one just behind this side.
Now if you have a location
that's literally right in front
of a window, that's great.
I just don't have the
option to do that here.
And behind the workbench,
strategically located where I
can easily access everything,
you can see all of my hand tools.
Now over here I've got my
Festool multifunction table.
The primary use for this for me
is breaking down sheet goods.
If I need to make nice
square cuts on sheet goods,
this is how I do it.
But layout isn't always
perfect, unfortunately.
Over there, all the way by the front door,
is where we lay down foam sheets,
and that's how I do my initial
processing of sheet goods.
We cut it down,
then I bring it back over here.
When it comes to layout
in most of our shops,
we can't master design these things,
so we just do the best with what we have.
Another important thing that I considered
was a layout of dust collection,
and that relates to where
your tools are positioned.
If you've got big power tools
scattered all over the place,
and you want to do ducting,
it's gonna be really difficult
to get that stuff to those tools.
So I have a wall basically
of a bunch of tools
that require dust collection.
Makes it easy for the main line
to come across and have
dropped where they're needed.
And then in the center of the shop,
I have two other drops
for other big power tools.
But I don't really have anything
collecting on the far wall,
just for simplicity sake.
It makes the dust
collection more effective.
Even though this is a four car garage,
two of my doors are completely disabled,
insulated, and boxed in.
I have one functional door.
So it still does operate as a garage,
although we never really park in here.
This area over here is a multiuse space.
Everything is mobile.
If there's an emergency,
like a hail storm,
and I have to bring a vehicle
in here, I can do that.
This also helps me move
things out of the way
so that we can cut that
plywood on the floor.
Now just a little bit more about
these covers for the doors.
I can't recommend this from
a professional standpoint.
This is just something
that made sense to me.
It makes a big difference
in the efficiency,
the cooling and the heating of the space,
and just keeping it cool.
I don't currently have an air conditioner.
Someday I might add one.
I do have heat and it's important
to keep that heat in here.
So this is basically just a
framed out wall with sides.
I've insulated it.
It is only temporarily installed.
If I ever have to sell this place,
these are gonna come right out.
It should probably take me
10 minutes to take them down.
So now let's talk about the tools
that make up the shop.
I've got a Powermatic PM2000.
It's a three horsepower model here.
Nice big table to work with.
I've got a VerySuperCool Tools fence,
which utilizes a nice
extruded aluminum fence.
A really good system for adapting things,
using tall fences, hold
downs, stuff like that.
I have a guard, I get a lot
of questions about this here.
This is an HTC Brett Guard.
Unfortunately, they
don't make 'em anymore.
So if you wanna call HTC and
petition them to make one
this is really one of the
best guards on the market.
Got a little bit of dust collection.
It doesn't really do very much,
but it's one of those Festool
bluetooth controllers,
which is pretty sweet.
The other thing about
this that I really like
is you loosen this guy up here
and then you could rotate
that out of the way
if you need to make through cuts.
On the bar here, I thought
this was a great place
to put one of those magnetic strips.
A lot of the add-ons and
things that I use here
require special tools.
I've got my little angle
meter, dust collection remotes,
and a tiny hammer, because
everyone needs one.
But this is a great place to
have some tools at the ready,
specific to the tool that they're on.
Under the extension
wing I do have a cabinet
just for table saw accessories,
everything I need at the table saw.
This is one of the upgrades
I really need to make
sometime soon is to have
a really nice cabinet
with drawers and good storage down here.
But this does the trick for now.
Over on this wall I've got my band saws.
I've got a 14 inch and a PM1500,
that's a 15 inch saw.
I like having two band
saws, it's a good luxury,
because I have one with a really
tiny blade for curved cuts
and then over on this guy
is basically where I
do all of my resawing.
And the other day we
had this saw blade break
and it was great to have a backup,
because we didn't have to stop working
and we could fix that thing
up when the time came.
Obviously I'm a big fan of Powermatic,
they've been a sponsor of ours for years,
so you're gonna see a lot
of Powermatic in this shop.
Next up I've got my grinder.
It's on a mobile cart,
so I can move it around
and do sharpening here.
All my sharpening gear
is on the shelves below.
I primarily use Shapton ceramic stones.
I find them to be really reliable,
they last a long time, and
you don't have to presoak them
like other water stones.
I've got them in about
four different grits.
A little further over,
one of my favorite tools
is the oscillating spindle sander.
I do a lot of curves in my work,
so when you're fairing curves, circles,
anything that's not flat and straight
the spindle sander is a
fantastic tool for that.
This is my combination
disk sander, belt sander.
I don't use this as often.
The most used portion of this
is definitely the disk side of it,
but when you need it it's there.
Believe it or not, I do
actually own a lathe.
I only use it like once
a year unfortunately,
but it's been great.
Because when Ashley Hartwood comes to town
she can turn some great
things on this amazing lathe.
Seriously though, I
don't really turn bowls
and things like that.
If I have to turn it's
typically a furniture part
or an accessory that goes
with the piece of furniture.
So it's nice to have
a good, powerful lathe
to be able to get that job done.
I really love my router table.
INCRA makes a good product
and it's one of their bigger tables
with their adjustable positioner fence.
This thing is fantastic.
One of the most amazing parts of this
is the dust collection.
They have a box that
goes under the router,
it encases the router and allows you
to hook up full scale dust collection,
which then collects from
the plate on the top,
as well as the fence.
Now for our setup here,
because this is mobile,
I can't have this hooked up all the time,
but I do have some magnetic
quick connects over here
and I'm able to take
this one on the planer
and just borrow that for dust collection
here at the router table.
Over here I've got my
Powermatic 12 inch jointer.
I started out with a
six inch jointer, used,
it was a benchtop model.
That worked fine for a while,
but then I upgraded to a
bigger six inch Powermatic
with the really long beds.
Then eventually I upgraded to eight inch
and now I'm at the point where I just,
I get so many wide boards
that I'd rather not cut
down into smaller sizes,
so we went for the 12 inch.
This thing is an absolute beast.
Helical cutter head, so much room to work.
And yeah, it's expensive,
but when you do this every day
and you're trying to crank
out content and projects
having a 12 inch jointer is
a really, really nice treat.
Now the last two big
power tools are the planer
and the drum sander.
So I have these clustered together,
because they kind of do
the same thing in a way
in terms of how you process
material through them.
As a two-man shop we
can get pretty efficient
as we send the material
through, Jay pops it up on top,
then I can make an adjustment,
send it back through again.
And same thing with the drum sander.
Drum sanders aren't
absolutely a necessity,
but they really are nice to have.
They save you a lot of time
in processing the material
after it's been milled.
You'd save on sanding
and you actually get surfaces
that tend to be a little bit cleaner
than the machine marks you
might get from planers.
Though this has a helical head in it,
so it's pretty darn clean to begin with.
But if you can afford it
and you've got the space
drum sanders are pretty nice to have.
When it comes to portable power tools
I've kind of got a mix of things.
I've got some Festool over here,
I've got a couple Ryobi,
there's a Milwaukee tool,
whatever happens to be on sale.
When it comes to battery powered tools
I tend to favor Milwaukee.
I just think it's a strong brand
and ultimately I don't want a bunch
of different battery brands around.
Let me go show you my charging station.
Even though this is just my drills,
I've got tons of tools
that actually rely on these batteries.
So I have two chargers ready to go
and all of these batteries
can be used on all of those tools.
I don't have any other
brand batteries in the shop.
And for a drill press I've
got a nice Powermatic model,
it's got a variable speed,
you've got some nice little
features like lights,
laser crosshairs and stuff,
which actually I forgot that
those were even on there.
We should probably use
those once in a while.
But it's a really nice model.
Over the past year or so
I've been kind of conducting
a little experiment with myself here.
I have an INCRA 5000 sled.
Even though I'm a big proponent
of building your own crosscut sled,
it's one of the easiest,
simplest things that you could do
that can make a really big
difference in your shop,
I wanted to see what a
manufactured premade sled could do.
And over the last year
I have fallen in love
with this thing.
Its ability to hit angles
and then go back to 90
absolutely dependably,
to hold its settings.
I always had to readjust my
crosscut sleds over time.
It's really a great crosscut sled.
So much so that I don't
have my old sleds anymore.
I use this exclusively
as my crosscut sled now.
Now here's another tool I
get a lot of questions about,
because I seem quite indecisive
when it comes to miter saws.
I've had a Festool Kapex
and then went to a Bosch Glide, sold that,
and now I have really
one of the simplest saws
you can get out there,
it's not even a slider,
it's just a simple compound miter saw.
The reason I have this
is because I have a lot of other tools,
especially with that
INCRA table saw set up,
I have a lot of ways to cut various angles
and get nice, straight square
cuts over at the table saw
and other tools as well.
So the chop saw I don't really
need that much capacity,
what I do need is to make
sure it is at 90 at all times
and finds its setting and holds it.
The more adjustments you have on a tool
the more likely it is to go out of whack
and need calibration.
So I have not had to recalibrate
this thing since buying it
about a year and 1/2 ago.
And I've taken it on job sites,
I've taken it downstairs for
a basement remodel we did,
and this thing is just rock solid.
It does have limitations,
because you don't have
as much cutting depth,
so sometimes we'll have
to make a two part cut,
cut once, flip it, and then cut again.
But it's a small price to pay
for the dependability that we have here.
Dust collection is not great,
it does something, but it's not perfect.
That is one aspect that I really miss
about the Festool Kapex.
But given the price of this thing
it's probably worth the compromise.
Behind me here is my workbench.
It's a split top roubo.
We've built this project in the Guide
and you can get access
to the plans right now
if you want to.
A fantastic workbench.
It's really a workhorse
and you can pretty much add
anything onto it that you want.
I've got bench crafted hardware on there,
both the leg vice and
the tail vice over here.
I'll soon be building
some storage underneath it
for chisels, rasps, whatever
I want to have handy.
Now behind the workbench is
where all the hand tools are.
So I generally consider myself
to be something of a hybrid woodworker.
I actually wrote a book
called "Hybrid Woodworking"
that talks about the methodology
that I and a lot of other woodworkers use.
That means that I actually use power tools
for the grunt work
and then I do a lot of the
fine stuff using my hand tools.
So my tool collection
kind of reflects that.
I don't have as well-rounded
of a hand tool setup,
because I have very
targeted things that I do.
So finessing joinery is
really important to me,
so I've got things like
a nice router plane here,
I've got some shoulder
planes on this side.
I've got a basic selection of saws,
but most of the time I'm
not cutting my joinery
using hand saws.
But sometimes I need to
and I've got them for that.
My basic set of planes here.
I've got a smoother,
a nice low angle jack,
a jointer plane, I
don't use it very often.
I find the jack plane does
most of the jointing operations
I need to do.
And of course, I've got a big jointer,
so I don't use it that often.
Block planes are fantastic
and this is my favorite little guy.
He's so tiny, but
sometimes you just gotta,
when you need a little edge
treatment or something,
this little plane is fantastic.
So what I did here was put
a T1-11 siding on the wall.
This allows me to put a
screw anywhere I need to.
All these little tool hangers and stuff,
it's very easy to attach it.
And it kind of just gives it
more of a woodworking shop look.
My past shop in Arizona
was accused of being cold
and almost clinical the way
it was just the tan
floors and the tan walls.
This shop is, in my opinion, anything but.
It's a little warmer,
little more welcoming,
and this T1-11 stuff
really helps with that.
So now that I've shown you
some of the most expensive
tools in my shop,
let me show you what
I'm doing for security
thanks to our friends at SimpliSafe.
I like the sound of that.
I grew up in kind of a rough
neighborhood in New Jersey
and my house was broken
into two or three times
when I was a kid
and that really left a
lasting impression on me
as to securing my home.
And I knew one day when I got older
and could afford it I would
have a security system.
So Nicole and I have had a
number of security systems
on our homes over the years,
including the ones from the big companies,
as well as DIY solutions.
And I haven't ever been really
completely happy with everything.
The most secure professional
ones cost too much
and then a DIY solutions
just kind of have a
toy-like quality to them
and I don't really feel like
it's doing a whole lot for me.
So enter SimpliSafe,
this is a company I'm really
happy to be working with,
because I needed a solution to
help secure not only my home,
but my shop.
Of all the smart home and
security solutions I've used
the SimpliSafe system is the
most straightforward to set up.
Simply plug in the base station.
- [Automated Voice] Welcome to SimpliSafe.
- [Instructor] And
begin adding components.
There's no complicated
integration process here,
just remove the battery tab,
press the button on the
component, and give it a name.
- [Automated Voice] Now choose a name.
- SimpliSafe has a nice variety of sensors
to accommodate any home or shop,
including window and door sensors,
glass break sensors, motion sensors,
and even freeze and water
sensors, just to name a few.
The sensors install easily using screws
or the included adhesive strips.
An incredibly thoughtful feature
is the inclusion of tabs
that allow you to later
remove the components
without damaging the wall or the woodwork.
To bump up the security in the shop
I added sensors to the door and window,
as well as a camera and motion sensors.
The camera is crystal clear
and provides a nice view of the shop.
It makes it easy to identify any jerk
that thinks about running
away with my favorite tools.
I have a new woodshed that
I'll show you later on,
but I was able to install a door sensor,
as well as a smoke alarm in that location.
Now the 24/7 professional monitoring
gives me a peace of mind
and unlike other solutions,
it doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
It's about $.50 a day with no contracts.
And the system continues to
work if there's a loss of power,
a loss of Wi-Fi signal,
or even if the system is
attacked during an intrusion.
Whether you have a standalone shop
or one that's attached to your home,
SimpliSafe will protect
your tools and home,
so you never have to worry.
While my old security system was nice,
it was easily foiled by meat
products or squishy toys.
All right.
Check out simplisafe.com/woodwhisperer
to put together your
custom security solution.
So let's talk a little bit about storage.
Lots of things to cover here.
First of all, as I move
this out of the way,
this is just a little Rubbermaid cart,
highly recommend them for small parts
as you're working on project.
It's nice to kind of keep
everything organized,
but also have it mobile,
so you can move it around.
So let's start with lumber storage.
In this shop I didn't have
a whole lot of options.
I needed a place to
store some sheet goods,
and then, of course, some solid stock.
So here we have a high section
that's reserved for at least
four by eight sheet goods.
We can't go much higher than that,
but you can see most of the
stuff we have will fit here.
Over here I have these brackets.
Now these are ones that I purchased,
you can see them it's ClosetMaid brand,
but they have another
grade that's for garages.
And I believe it's at
a higher weight rating,
so it can support more weight.
Each of those vertical pieces are screwed
into the studs in the wall
and then the very top
there's an additional support
that's added that's screwed
up into that top plate
in the wall structure
where it meets the ceiling.
You do have to be concerned
here with safety though.
You wanna make sure that
anything on that shelf
is far enough away from that rail
that when the door comes up
it is not going to knock a board down.
Ask me how I know.
This is what happens
when an 8/4 walnut board
falls off of that shelf.
So I will need to fix this at some point.
But this storage issue
is one of the reasons
why we built a lumber shed.
So this is our new eight by 10 shed.
It's not just a lumber shed,
I've got lawn mowers and
all kinds of lawn care items
and snow shovels and things
that have to be stored in here,
but for me primarily it
was intended to be a place
to store extra wood.
So I didn't need to have as
much storage in the shop.
Now we do live in an HOA area,
so we're kind of restricted
on what we can do,
but ultimately this is going to give us
a lot of extra space.
Inside here I've got some floor mats
that will allow the floor to breathe
just in case there's any
water penetration in there.
It also keeps the wood up off the floor.
It's not directly on the concrete.
For the wood storage I
went with vertical storage.
There's no reason you can't store
good quality dried hardwood vertically,
especially when it's on a steep angle
there's hardly any weight on it
and it works just fine.
So these racks I picked up at Grainger.
I think they're actually intended
for storing things like
pipes and pipe stock,
but it worked just fine for wood.
Keeps us nice and organized.
And of course, all of my lawn care stuff
is along the other wall.
One of the most significant
storage upgrades in my shop
was this miter station.
It's not just a miter station,
it's cabinets with banks of
drawers and lots of storage,
but it also serves as support
for anything that we cut at the miter saw.
Now you'll notice mine
does not have a fence.
There was this whole thing that we did
when we released this project,
it turned into kind of like
a hashtag campaign of sorts
about getting rid of your fence.
I'm a believer in the fact
that you don't need a
fence on a miter saw.
It just gets in the way.
So without a fence here
I have all this useful space.
I don't have a vertical piece of material
that's in my way, it works great
and I haven't had any
issues with it at all.
So let's take a look at the
storage we've included here.
So inside the doors I've got
a series of pullout shelves.
I like the idea of a shallow shelf,
because it makes it easy
to get to these tools.
And these are on full extension,
might even be over-extension slides,
making it very easy to get to the back.
But I have doors on here
to keep the dust out.
Other thing you'll notice is
I don't have any toolboxes.
When you're a static woodworker
in the sense that you
don't go on job sites,
toolboxes make no sense at all.
They just take up a ton of space.
So all my tools are
here, easily accessible,
and I don't have to worry
about taking up extra space
with big blow mold plastic boxes.
(dog panting)
On my right side I've
got a bank of 10 drawers
and sometimes you just need
full-on drawer storage.
Duggee, you're not helping.
So in each one of these
I've kind of had it
sort of dedicated to a
certain type of tool,
which is a nice luxury if you
have the storage space for it.
Now even though my router table
is all the way over there,
I really needed more storage for bits.
So I found these foam inserts
that you can cut to size
and put inside drawers that
have holes for 1/2 inch bits
and 1/4 inch bits and
even metric, I guess,
what is it, eight millimeter?
These work so good and they're
not really expensive at all,
highly recommend them.
And look how nice and
organized you could be.
Now something that's been
an old standby of storage
in any shop for years has been pegboard.
And it's fairly inexpensive,
easy to make little frames,
but the pegboard material
itself can kind of wear out.
So it's been interesting
to see how companies
have come around recently
that improved pegboard.
So this is some Wall Control pegboard.
They've got a very unique system
of how everything slots
in and it's very secure,
but what I love about their system
is they have lots of add-ons and shelves,
specifically for things like paint cans,
screwdrivers, stuff like that.
So really interesting system.
So that's Wall Control.
Let me show you another one.
And this one is System X Storage.
This is basically the
Cadillac of pegboard.
It's stainless steel,
the weight capacity on
this stuff is insane,
and it's kind of workshop bling in a way.
But you can see I'm using
it to hold my saw blades,
some hammers, things like that.
But if you've got the budget
this is a really cool system.
So, as you can see, I've
got a pretty good collection
of clamps and storing
those is always an issue.
This isn't something
that's really changed much
for me over time.
I've had Jet clamps and
basically the same amount
and variety for a long time.
I've got a nice little clamp rack.
We have an article on how
to make that on the website.
Down here I've made use of
some of Rockler's racks.
They actually make these really nice
right angle slotted racks
that are just very quick and easy
and I needed a way to hang these
and that really fit the bill nicely.
Now over here I've got my F-style clamps
and all kinds of doodads,
doohickeys, dinglehoppers.
And I've got another wall hanging rack.
This one's very simple,
just these vertical pieces
with notches that hold pipes in place.
And then everything
just hangs on the pipes.
It's actually pretty versatile.
Got a nice little shelf
up here for squaring aids,
things for cabinets that
help keep the cabinets
nice and square while
you're either applying glue
or applying clamping pressure.
And then again I've got another
one of those Rockler racks.
I think if you're looking
for a quick solution
and you don't feel like building one
I think they work really great.
Low profile and you can fit
a lot of different clamps.
And, of course, even though I have a lot
of nice cabinet clamps
and parallel clamps,
I find that the pipe clamps are great
when you need really long clamps
and you don't wanna spend
a lot of money on them.
So I like to have those around as well.
This is one of my favorite
storage units in the shop,
primarily because what used to be here
was really non-functional,
big open storage
with big towers here that just
didn't really work for me.
Now it's become a real center of activity.
I've got a TV over here if
we wanna watch some football
or Seinfeld shows,
I've got my drill bit storage,
and of course, all the drill accessories,
and essentially a glue station over here
where I keep all my epoxy,
my Titebond glues, and tapes.
Now in the cabinets themselves
I have a lot of different
things stored here.
This side is kind of
like the other storage
in the miter station
with the pull-out trays
for sandpaper, we've got some
measuring tools over here.
And actually a lot of
this, I should mention,
these are projects on our free site.
So we did this one on the free site,
the drill storage cabinet
is on the free site,
and the charging station as well.
So let's take a look in these drawers,
'cause I got some pretty
cool organization there.
In the left bank of
drawers here at the bottom
I've got my domino storage.
It's pretty much every size
that I might need for
the Domino 500 or 700,
each his own little compartment,
and my beautiful little labels here
courtesy of my label baby junior.
And this grid work is
really just 1/2 inch MDF
hot glued together.
Next up I've just got
various types of hardware
and threaded inserts and
figure-eight fasteners,
things like that.
I find these little red
bins to be really handy,
because I could find the hardware I need,
take these out, take it to the workbench,
and then put everything back.
Same thing with my screws.
I pretty much just keep them in bins,
nicely labeled for the most
common sizes and lengths.
Now this is another project
we did on the website,
how to increase your
drawer storage essentially.
It's about double the capacity here.
By putting these little trays,
so you have a bunch of room down here.
I've got all my French
curves, drawing implements,
and then pencils and apparently
a lifetime supply of lead.
Now I showed you some
of my hand tools before,
but what I didn't show
you was all the details
for how all these things
are attached to the wall
with these custom little holders
and they're really not that sophisticated.
Now most of these are really
just spur of the moment
creations using scrap wood
just to get something on the wall
and make it nice and handy.
These chisels here are some
of my favorite chisels,
they're quite expensive,
so I did treat these a little nicer.
This is just a layup of a
couple pieces of plywood
with a gap in the middle
and spacers to prevent the
chisels from hitting each other
and just to keep them nice and vertical.
Works really well.
It's a big improvement compared
to my previous chisel rack,
which was just an open slot
that allows the pieces to
kind of knock back and forth
and it also has all of the
blades accessible down here,
which is a bit of a hazard,
especially now with kids in the shop.
Now each plane kind of has its own shelf
as far as the large planes go.
I've got a little ramp here
for various block planes,
which is kind of cool.
And a neat feature is on
the shelves themselves
there is a little gap
and this way I can keep my blade exposed
in a functional position
when I put it on the shelf
and I don't have to worry
about the blade constantly
sitting on wood.
Honestly I'm not too worried
about that dulling the blade,
but it is something that
people do think about.
My router plane just sits
in this little pocket here,
nice and custom fit.
And I've got a bunch of card scrapers,
they're just on their own little shelf.
My hand saws have these
little custom cutouts
to match the inner shape of the handle,
holds them there very nicely.
If you wanna secure them even further
you just make 'em thicker
and then have an extra
piece of material here
that can kind of swing out of the way.
And a lot of my Woodpecker stuff
and some fancy squares here,
they're on these custom little holders.
And I really enjoy the challenge
of coming up with solutions
for holding these things on the wall.
Inexpensive scrap wood,
but once you figure out how to hold them
and just looking at the shape,
what would allow it to sit nice
and comfortably and securely on the wall,
it's a lot of fun to design these things.
And of course, sometimes
you just can't beat a screw.
Whoa.
Behind the lathe I've got a bunch
of lathe tools on the wall.
I've got some easy wood tools here,
some more traditional turning tools,
but just a very simple rack that I built.
I've got some Forstner holes
here made with a Forstner bit
and then some just little teeth.
It's all just plywood scraps
and I just kind of lined them up,
so it's a two part rack with a top support
and the lower support.
Works pretty well.
Now all of my finishes are
stored in a metal cabinet.
It's not really like a fireproof cabinet
or a flammables cabinet,
but I figure if I'm gonna put finishes
and flammable materials in something
I'd rather it be in metal than wood.
So this works pretty nice.
It's just a Uline cabinet.
And it's pretty well stuffed.
I've got dyes, wood fillers.
Most of what I'm using these days
is a little bit safer anyway,
I'm using a lot of low
and no VOC finishes,
but I do have some solvents
in here in the bottom.
But this is, it's pretty well packed,
but it's about all I
need for finish storage.
The two things that can
be pretty tricky to store,
tracks for a track saw,
and ladders, right?
So you always need a ladder
in your shop at some point.
So we have the tracks
on very simple racks.
There's a hole at the end of the track,
we just have those on a dowel
and that dowel goes into a piece of wood
that's screwed into the wall.
So all the tracks, all of the guides,
the clamping tool guides are here.
And then the ladder itself is just on a,
it's like a ladder hook thing
that I bought from Home Depot.
That guy goes into a stud
and the ladder just gets put up there.
It's kind of a pain in the butt,
but at least it's out of the way.
Now let's talk a little bit about tech.
It's one of my favorite topics
and even in a wood shop
I have lots of tech
that helps me get the job done here.
I used to have a dedicated shop computer.
These days anything I
need computer access for
I'm either gonna use my phone,
iPad, or I've got a laptop.
And this is what I use for live streaming,
works really well.
Internet, really important
and the shop is kind of a little
bit removed from the house,
so the Wi-Fi doesn't
quite make it out here.
So I do have a mesh network system.
There is a hard line of Cat 6 I believe
that came all the way to the shop,
that goes into another router
and that gives us plenty of
Wi-Fi throughout the shop.
It also gives me direct access,
because I do a lot of live streaming.
We do Friday live, we do Guide meetings,
and I wanna make sure
that that has no
interruptions if possible,
so I do a direct connection for that.
Music is very important to us
and we have a couple
of in-ceiling speakers,
I have a Sonos system
that powers those speakers
and connects to the Sonos
that we have in the rest of the house,
which is fantastic.
We also have a big giant
subwoofer down in the corner here,
because I'm all about that base.
Now over here, of course,
we gotta power things
and charge a lot of batteries,
so I've got a nice power strip.
I have a outlet in the wall,
which has USB ports in it,
that makes it easy to charge our phones.
And on the TV I've got a Fire TV,
we have lots of Fire TVs in this house,
so it allows me to get
broadcast television
and anything I have through apps.
I could watch woodworking shows
and barbecue shows and again, Seinfeld.
Another upgrade I was
able to do this past year
was my garage door opener.
The old one actually failed, broke on me,
so I went with this
Chamberlain Wi-Fi model,
which is fantastic,
because now I have complete app control
and it integrates
nicely, it's super quiet.
Listen to this.
(machine whirring)
So the belt they use on that
it's no longer the loud
sort of opening process.
We've had this happen
while we did a live show
and you could barely
hear it on the live show.
It works really nicely.
Another thing we added
soon after we moved in
was a set of heaters.
They're electric heaters,
which is really expensive to run,
but unfortunately, I
wasn't able to do gas,
and this made the most sense.
I was able to hook up a Wi-Fi thermostat,
which again, gives me
control from my phone,
makes it easy for me to
control the temperature
even when I'm not here
or set routines and things like that
to turn it on when I need it to go on.
Now another thing I get
a lot of questions about
is stuff related to the production side,
the content production side of what we do.
So we run two Canon 80d camera,
DSLR cameras, they work really well.
I have a Sony lavaliere mic
that connects to one of those cameras.
This one is just the room mic.
And I have lights,
so we have LED lights throughout the shop,
so I don't have tripods
everywhere that I'm tripping over.
And what I did was actually repurposed
some of the garage door hardware,
the brackets that hung from the ceiling,
repurposed those to hold lights.
And actually they just happened to be
in just the right spot,
so it worked out pretty well.
Now while it's not a
technical item per se,
it is something that allows us
to do what we do in this shop,
and that's the acoustic
treatments on the ceiling.
There's a lot of vibrations
in a space like this,
so having foam and a
couple different styles
of insulated material on the ceiling
actually helps cut down on echos
and it makes it a lot more
pleasant of an environment
to have a conversation and
to film a woodworking show.
Now the final thing I wanna
cover with the shop tour
is safety.
Safety is a very important thing to me,
especially now with someone in the shop
with me at all times.
We're in here a lot.
We work minimally eight,
maybe sometimes 10 hour days,
and I even work on the weekends sometimes,
so that's a lot of time
to be exposed to dust,
fumes, flying debris
potentially on spinning tools,
so safety is huge.
Now for me it all starts right here
with good dust collection.
This is an Oneida Dust Gorilla
and it is, of course,
piped through the shop
to all of the major tools,
because the best dust collection
is the dust collection
that happens at the source.
If you collect the dust
before it has a chance
to get in the air you're
way ahead of the game.
And this filter stack works really well,
we blow it out periodically.
And we just collect all the
dust in the bin at the bottom.
But definitely a nice powerful unit
that is more than adequate
for all the tools that I have.
A common question I get
is how does this compare
to the Clear Vue Cyclone
that I ran for years back in Arizona?
And the most fair answer I can give to it
is they are both adequate dust collectors.
I don't have measuring tools
or a way to actually give you numbers
with something like this,
but all I can tell you
is the Clear Vue worked perfectly fine,
collected the dust adequately,
as does the Oneida unit.
The big difference between them
is this one has metal construction,
a few other details,
like a solid plastic single
piece housing at the top,
versus the Clear Vue,
which is a little more plastic and MDF.
That said, I believe Clear
Vue now has a metal unit
that's worth your consideration.
Both are great dust collectors.
Now related to the dust collection,
and we actually did a video
about this not too long ago,
we have automated blast gates from iVac.
So everything that's
connected to a dust collector
has a blast gate that
once the tool is turned on
the blast gate opens and
the dust collector turns on.
These things have worked great,
I can't say they've been flawless,
we've had a few that have malfunctioned
and had to be replaced
and I believe there was a firmware upgrade
that made them work perfectly.
And so far, so good with the replacements,
they've been fine.
But since I did the initial
video I have had a few problems,
but they were very quick to fix those.
I really like to be
comfortable in my shop.
I've got rubber flooring
and I've had this since the Arizona shop.
This stuff is really durable,
it's made from recycled tires.
And when you spend all day in here
it's nice to be able to walk on this
and not walk on concrete.
So I just wear regular
sneakers these days.
I don't do anything special with footwear,
because this gives you just enough cushion
that it absorbs all the shock
and doesn't wind up
translating to sore feet,
sore heels, or even a sore
back after a long workday.
Oh god, getting old.
Now this is a bit of a three-in-one here.
I've got three different safety items
that I highly recommend.
The first is an air quality meter.
This is something that
detects how many small
and large particles are
circulating in the air.
And this is what lets me
know if the shop air quality
is good enough for me to
take off my respirator.
Just the good peace of mind.
This, of course, is a fire extinguisher.
I recommend having
multiple fire extinguishers
throughout the shop.
Not all in the same location,
different sides of the shop,
'cause you never know if a fire breaks out
you gotta be near one of these things.
So these are absolutely essential.
And down here I've got a first aid kit.
Inside there I just got a bunch of stuff.
Band-Aids, antiseptic, tweezers,
the sticky tape, ACE bandages,
there's even a tourniquet
in there, god forbid.
Now while we try to collect
as much dust at the source as possible,
some of it still gets in the air,
it's just the way a wood shop works.
So I have some of these
air cleaners in there.
This is the Powermatic PM1250.
This thing is insane, it's so nice.
It's got an electrostatic filter inside,
so instead of buying those pleated filters
and replacing them on a monthly basis
you have this electrostatic filter
and all you need to do
is vacuum off the dust.
And I can't remember the exact number,
it's got like 30,000 hours of life to it.
It's a fantastic product.
Definitely not the
cheapest thing out there,
but I think it's a good investment
in your shop safety and health.
I've had a number of shop
setups throughout the years
and one thing that holds true
is that everything always changes.
The shop is a constant evolution.
Whether it's bringing in new tools,
learning new techniques,
or just personal preferences that change,
you're gonna move things around.
So if you're starting up a new shop
and you're kind of stressing
about the setup, don't.
It's something that will come with time.
Do the best you can, get the
setup so that it's functional,
and then improve it over time.
And as long as I've been doing this
even this year I've had to
second guess some things,
because I added a new variable
with another person in the shop.
And sometimes things
that made sense before
they don't make sense anymore,
so we have to make changes.
Just wanna thank everybody
for watching this
and thank everyone for
watching throughout the years.
You've always been a great support
of our endeavors here and
we really appreciate it.
And of course, thanks to SimpliSafe
for being one of the special
sponsors of this show
and helping secure my shop and my house.
Thanks for watching,
we'll catch you next time.
(upbeat music)
