Informal Poll - Size of your Shop and how many Shopsmiths?

[twistsol]

I have a dedicated 2 car garage so I guess I fall into the large shop category at 624 square feet 24*26. It doesn't feel like it though.

I have two Shopsmith Mark V 520's, Bandsaw, Jointer x 2.

Added an image of my shop layout. The Kubota gets parked outside when working and one of the Shopsmiths gets moved into its place. Everything in the shop is mobile except the RAS and the sheet goods storage. The layout changes frequently

The orange, green and blue lines are 8", 6", and 4" spiral steel dust colletion ducting.

twistsol_shop.jpg (268.61 KiB) Viewed 16230 times

[BuckeyeDennis]

My basement shop is 360 square feet. The problem is, I have about 600 square feet worth of equipment crammed into it! Much of which is not yet in service.

Major Shopsmith stuff includes a 520 with jointer and speed reducer, a bandsaw on a Power Station, a stand-alone overarm pin router, a Pro Planer, and a jigsaw on a power stand. All of that is in service. A 10E, a 10ER, and a strip sander are awaiting rebuild - the 10E will be a dedicated drill press.

Also currently in service are a 2HP cannister dust collector, an overhead air filtration unit, and a 10/20” drum sander, all from Jet.

Machines awaiting commissioning include a new Powermatic PM2000 cabinet saw, a new Jet 14” bandsaw, and a 1970’s vintage 3 hp DeWalt 3516 14” industrial radial arm saw. At about a third of list price, the deals on the new machines were just too good to pass up, even though I wasn’t really ready for them yet.

Also awaiting rebuild are two 1950’s vintage Dewalt MBF 9” radial arm saws, a 1940’s vintage DeWalt MMB 8” RAS, and a 1930’s vintage 6” x 60” long-bed jointer. In mid-rebuild is a very pretty early-40’s Craftsman 10” x 52” lathe, manufactured by Atlas Press. As you can probably tell, I really like “old arn”.

Plus the usual assortment of hand power tools, and a growing collection of vintage handplanes and such.

I have a computer layout that says all this stuff will actually fit in my shop, along with a couple workbenches, a 400 board-foot lumber rack, and even some room to work. But the current reality is that much of it isn’t where it needs to be, so it can be pretty hard to find enough room to work.

[badtheba]

I guess following your criteria I have a medium shop, but it's small to me. <320 square ft., and currently no Shopsmiths in the shop as I'm having concrete poured in it come spring. My rebuilt 10er is in the basement being used, my second project ER is in the garage, and my newly acquired third ER is being stored at my workplace to prevent rust until I have the shop ready.

My shop is our enlarged garden shed that's built like a pole barn but had no floor. We doubled the size a few years ago. Found a 12 by 12 shed for free last year, so all the garden stuff got moved there to give me a larger place for tools.

Sent from my Moto Z3 Play using Tapatalk

[cooch366]

325 +- In basement shared with laundry, furnace, sink.

(1) Power Pro
(1) Reversable 510 (Mounted Planer)
(1) 510 Shorty (Dedicated Sanding Station)
(1) 510 Head Only Mounted as Drill Press
(Base With casters used for router table)

[beeg]

I have ONE SS50 in a 100 square ft shop.

[robinson46176]

I have ONE SS50 in a 100 square ft shop.

And you probably have about as much open floor space as I do... Nothing will ruin your organizational skills like a little extra space. Open space draws "stuff" like a giant magnet.


.

[reubenjames]

I would technically qualify as a medium, I think, but it's too cold to go out and measure my oversized one stall detached garage. <400 sq ft, to be sure, but shared with all the normal garage stuff so it's not dedicated space. No cars parked in there though. One Shopsmith and two Shop Deputies in there. Most add-ons hang on the wall shelf built from the old workshop on a wall article from SS.

Have a big oak and iron cider press in there, which is probably my biggest stationary tool. And that needs to be rebuilt!

Mostly my shop time involves buying, rearranging, reorganizing, decluttering, throwing things away, and repeating.

[everettdavis]

Sorry my response is a bit late for your findings, and I am somewhat of a hybrid of your survey.

Like some of others who have downsized, I am in the middle of downsizing and remodeling / repurposing. I had a 480 sq. ft. garage, an open 450 sq. ft. patio (15 x 30) under the roofline, a remote 12 x 12 Building (144 sq. ft.) and an adjacent 10 x 20 with dual lofts building (200 sq. ft.) that housed numerous Shopsmiths…

Presently 10-Mark V series, 4-10ER’s, 1-10E, 1-Pro Planer, 1-Mark Mounted Planer (new old stock), 6-Bandsaws, 6-Jointers, 1-Strip Sander, 1-Belt Sander, 1-Jig Saw, 2 Air Compressors, filing cabinets full of new and serviceable parts, and some 510 and 520 upgrade table kits, plus all my documentation. Most are being gifted to my two sons, and five daughter’s families.

My wife became handicapped following a stroke 5 years ago. She was hospitalized 11 months before she came home. This necessitated some accessibility remodeling throttled by my wallet and some rethinking long term goals for the home.

The rehabilitation review team surveying my home told me it was impossible to put a 32” door in the main bathroom which had a 24” door. After they came back, to inspect it, they found a 36” door there with no issues whatever. That bath room was adapted for her recovery which continues to this day.

I am currently in the process of repurposing space and my shop space is transitioning and downsizing in stages. The 480 sq. ft. garage is the first to go as we are building two bedrooms, and framed for a future handicapped bathroom with roll in shower. We finished running rough-in electrical last week and setting recessed lighting.

One bedroom is her craft ‘grandma’s space, and the other will be an audio / photo / video recording studio, as well as my office. Once I get rough-in electrical inspection and have permission to cover, we will install the Homasote 440 SoundBarrier, and drywall over it.

I also needed to move my 220V Air Compressor and Welding equipment, and get the low voltage underground alarm, cable and data circuits run to the other buildings as well as upgrade the entire electrical service to the property.

We had to run a 2nd underground lateral electrical line and upgrade the meter base and pedestal from the electric company to 320 Amp meter base as shown in the attached photos. My oldest son was helping the electrical contractor in the photo by feeding in the lateral line to the electrician via fish tape. They had just finished pulling it.

Old Meter Socket and Pedistal - Upgraded Meter Socket and Pedistal - New Lateral Line.jpg (500.45 KiB) Viewed 16110 times

I know that some would suggest adding a 2nd meter just for the shop, but economics of paying two monthly minimum electric bills (one for each meter) opposed to what we actually use through one meter, made break-even / payback around 18 months.

I will be rolling equipment to and from that patio area and enjoying the outdoors for a while longer, but that too will be relinquished as the 15 x 30 under roof patio will convert to an air conditioned full sun-room in a year or so. By then my gifted Shopsmith’s will be fully restored and in their new homes.

The bare section in the photo is a 20’ x 50’ space where I hope someday to build a more robust shop if mom doesn’t expand her green-thumb into that area first.

That shop would be a concrete block structure with steel beams and soundproofing to help keep my neighbors from being disturbed. That is more a pipe dream at this point. I think there is a porcelain flooring project for the entire house, with new raised panel doors for the kitchen and granite counter tops bubbling up my to-do list… but I digress.

I guess the real value of a Shopsmith is that is functional, mobile, and takes up less space than more powerful or dedicated tools do, and such adaptations are possible.

Planning ahead, if mom must have that raised bed garden, if I can make them out of concrete block, I can repurpose those for my shop if she loses interest in working a garden…. Win …. Win either way.

Life happens and we adapt.

Everett

[RFGuy]

First, I want to say thank you to everyone for their feedback. When I started this thread my only motivation was to answer a curiosity that I had, i.e. what size shop are most people using with their Shopsmith(s)? However, with the excellent responses here, I now have a better understanding of how the greater Shopsmith community utilizes their workspace. In some cases, you have been generous enough to share how your workspace has changed, or will soon change with your families and life changes. It is appreciated.

Now, let's get to some of the data (compiled through posts on this thread before this one). There are now 32 people that have helped me with data for this, so as you can see in the histogram chart below the distribution is filling in nicely. It has a long tail, which I guess is more of what I would expect this distribution to look like, i.e. a Bell shaped curve to represent the bulk of Shopsmith owners with a long tail to signify the "large" shops. In theory, there is no upper limit to how large a "large" shop could be, so it makes sense to have this long tail in the distribution.

The award for smallest shop goes to beeg. At 100 square feet, this was the smallest shop. This title might be shared with amboyna, but since I didn't get an actual square foot number I am just going off of the photo posted.

The award for largest shop goes to robinson46176 at 1500 sq. ft.

The data that I have is not 100% accurate since I am piecing together information from all of the posts. I only originally asked for small, medium, or large shop size, but was forunate to get more data from many of you. Based on the data that was shared, the average square footage per Shopsmith (Mark V, 10E, 10ER, etc.) works out to 214 sq. ft. The min is 33.333 sq. ft. per Shopsmith and this honor goes to JPG. I don't know how he does it, but my hat is off to him.

We are all unique and hence each of our shops will be unique. However, there will be some commonalities between us. What I learned is even though I thought I had a small and cramped shop, many of you have even less space to work with. Many of you are fortunate enough to have a much larger workspace, but it may not feel like it because you have many dedicated workstations and/or you are actively restoring Shopsmiths as well. The average size shop is probably around 325-350ish sq. ft. There was a good mix of garage shops like mine, as well as basement shops and some dedicated standalone shops. I think even 1 or 2 of you are using bedrooms inside of your home. I welcome any other insights anyone has here. This was just a fun exercise for me. As you watch online videos, or read online posts and see pictures posted, invariably one will compare their own workspace to others, consciously or sub-consciously. It can be very helpful for tweaking your own shop layout or drooling over the next greatest, newest tool. Besides the obvious shop size data in this thread, I learned alot about how the community here uses their shops and how they equip them. In reading through it all, it better helps me to understand when a tip is shared or a suggestion is offered on other threads where each of you are coming from with your posts. By seeing other perspectives and differing workflows for each of us in our unique shops, it hopefully will help me to grow and develop in my own shop. Thanks again for sharing and I hope this was useful to others in this community.

P.S. Number of counted PowerPro's stayed right around 40% of respondents. 40.6% to be precise (only counting # PowerPro's per owner - keep in mind many of you have multiple Mark V headstocks). If this % were to hold across a larger sample size of owners, I suspect that Shopsmith could increase their take up rate of PowerPro's sold by LOWERING the price. Just my 2 cents...In other words, if only 40% of Shopsmith owners have ONE PowerPro what does Shopsmith need to do to get that number to greater than 80%?

ShopsmithShopSize_2.jpg (97.07 KiB) Viewed 16090 times

[RFGuy]

Sorry my response is a bit late for your findings, and I am somewhat of a hybrid of your survey.

Like some of others who have downsized, I am in the middle of downsizing and remodeling / repurposing. I had a 480 sq. ft. garage, an open 450 sq. ft. patio (15 x 30) under the roofline, a remote 12 x 12 Building (144 sq. ft.) and an adjacent 10 x 20 with dual lofts building (200 sq. ft.) that housed numerous Shopsmiths…

Everett,

Thanks for your post and I am sorry to hear about your wife's stroke.

I am intrigued by the idea of woodworking outdoors. You mention that you use an outdoor patio. I have a small one car garage sized workshop, but I have access to the outdoors behind this space where I could possibly expand but it would be open to the elements. Here in the desert of AZ, it is dry, in theory, but in practicality we have brief moments of torrential rains. The particular spot where I live routinely sees 2x the posted rainfall for the rest of this desert valley, so we are talking about 1"-2" of rainfall potential for a 24 hour period. During these brief episodes, I guess I am paranoid that if I permanently store and use tools outside that rust will be hard to keep at bay. I mean, I know I can maintain them and try to keep them drenched in wax, but inevitably rust will set in. Do you have any advice or tips for outdoors Shopsmith equipment? The area that I have is exposed, but I contemplate building some type of roof structure to shield and keep the direct rain off of the equipment, but of course wind blown rain and humidity will still be there during storms. The weather is "nice" here for a good portion of the year, so if I could perhaps pickup a 10ER to make a dedicated outdoor drill press, add an outdoor Mark V then I could reduce the number of changeovers that I have to do in my small indoor shop. This would make my life easier and add another dynamic to my woodworking, i.e. woodworking outdoors. Another element we have to contend with here are massive dust storms, so I would need to semi-cover any outdoor equipment, or I might come out to a Shopmsith coated in wax with a thick layer of dust.