Expanding The Shop: Part 1

well a years gone by and I guess it's time to clean this shop out again actually it's more than that I need to reclaim some of the space I've got to store some things for a period of time and and I finally just fed up with having a big chunk of my shop space not available to me because of the things I thought I would use that I've never used so it's time to clean it out it's time to reclaim space it's time to pour some concrete it's time to reconfigure part of my shop and so as I go through the drill of easing my tractor in and out of this building and setting up some scaffold to move this stuff up higher and hanging some of the artifacts from the rafters and and digging in and reclaiming and making functional what for a long period of time has been just sort of a landfill it makes me think about why I love my dirty old shop now the value of my shop is something that as I'm working along here thinking about it is sort of not as obvious as maybe I thought it was first of all this building provides protection for tools and for materials and for supplies and for creative effort it's sort of a refuge if I've got to come out and experiment and practice and figure out how to do something whether it's a different Damascus pattern or or you know a fabrication project for a client or a piece of woodwork for a Christmas gift it there's a little research and development and I don't want people looking over my shoulder when I do that so a shop provides sort of a laboratory environment doesn't it it certainly is storage for materials and supplies and gear and it's it's a creative and production space and provides capacity and I have lifting equipment in here so I can do heavy work my shop is very comfortable with disorder I hesitate to call it chaos but for a lot of you guys with a little more OCD than I am which is almost everybody on the planet you're asking yourself how in the world can you do anything and that's it's it's it's dangerously disorganized and yes I guess it probably is but I can tell you I've been in shops that are more cluttered than mine and that's part of what I'm doing here isn't that is trying to impose some order on some chaos [Music] you now I didn't always have a shop when we were first married any work I had to do was done you know I don't off the back of my Toyota pickup or maybe on a job site if I got permission from a boss to stay after work and work on a project or you know I jack up the front of the car and slide under there and try to change the oil right out in the rain if I had to and so when I finally got a carport it was a big step up and then after a while it was a two-car garage but it was full of bicycles and camping supplies and there was really no room to do much of anything so I would push a table saw back into the corner and pull it out once in a while and so when the situation changed and I had access to this building moved back to Oregon bought in with dad logging and we we staged our logging equipment out of this old building which previously had just been a stock barn it felt like an incredible luxury to me and you know it's never stopped feeling like an incredible luxury I'm thankful for it so the people that built this whole thing we're building it to house and shelter and feed livestock and they apparently had some pressure-treated telephone poles available that they used for the pole portion of a pole barn the purlins and the Gertz that is the ceiling roof joists and the wall Gertz are stretching sort of the accepted limits of what you might put into a pole barn nowadays they're adequate they might even be code compliant but they are barely adequate and barely code compliant but Hecate's stood here for I think probably 60 years so apparently it's functioning perfectly and so this building has had long metamorphosis I pride myself or perhaps I flatter myself in thinking that as a blacksmith shop and a woodworking shop and a basis for a small general contractor to work out of not to mention as a You Tube studio maybe this whole building has finally arrived at what a realtor would term its highest and best use now I've given a tour of this place in a previous video and if you watch that you'll have a pretty good idea of the layout and types of stations that are set up in here for the work and hobbies and storage that I need and that I do my shop is used for my contracting business it's used for repairing and storing tools and equipment fabrication blacksmithing and most of my hobbies happen here also I spend a lot of time with my friends and family in this old building visiting and solving problems and talking about current events and probably 80% of my interaction with friends and mentors and students happens in and because of this shop or somebody else's shop a shop is a as a sort of a social place in the best sense I think and a shops not a studio it's not a warehouse it's not a factory it's not a mancave I say it's not a mancave because the shops not about consumption it's about production it's about friendship it's about creating and educating and at this stage of my life it's about grandkids [Music] if you're watching me clean out the back portion of my shop the portion that was used for material storage for plywood and various tools that seldom were moved onto a job but seemed to me to be indispensable you'll notice that it has a gravel floor that's all it ever needed when this building was first built it was used as a barn and the whole floor wasn't even gravel it was just sort of the shale base that had been put down to receive the structure and the accumulation of straw and other byproducts of raising livestock that you know are flammable and fragrant and dusty and we've got that pretty well covered up now with gravel and concrete or wood but when they put this up they didn't have a lot of extra money to spend on things like fancy doors or wiring or hoists or even electricity so these things the amenities have been added over time and that introduces a topic about what you might think about if you're thinking about about building a shop a pole barn is one of the most affordable structures you can build in addition to being affordable it's very easy to improve the structure later on you can easily add wood or concrete floors extend roof lines for more space dig and trench utilities inside your shop all of it it's all the cards are all still in play and for all of us budget is a very serious and essentially the first and limiting thing but here's something you should think about as you're as you're evaluating your budget and counting the pieces and the widgets and the things you have to hire to get an idea of what it is that you can actually build if you're actually ready to build a shop think about building as large a structure as much dry sheltered space as you possibly can and add the amenities later instead of settling for a smaller building with a fully developed electrical system and running water and toilets and and you know a concrete floor everywhere and all of the whistles and bells that you might want when the job is fully mature consider adding square square feet consider adding space and consider cubic feet it's nice to have height in a shop building even though height is expensive because nothing will compensate for a shop that's too small and there is much more to be restricted by and your range of options grows with the size of the work space that's available for the projects that you need to take on now my shop has received lots of upgrades since I began turn it into a shop as I've been able to afford to turn it into a shop as my dad needs for a space to work on logging equipment manifested in as he and I became partners in a logging venture things just had to change and they have changed we have some concrete floors we have the crane we have pretty darn good electrical service we put in a wood stove there's all kinds of things of all the things that this shop needs and has needed it is never needed to be larger until today and today I'm making it larger by popping out into the lean-to that we put on the side of this thing ten years ago putting a floor in there roughing in some plumbing and some electrical gonna put some walls around the perimeter of the roof that already exists and enlarge my workshop [Music] so as you begin to build your shop unless you're retired and late in life and and opportunity costs are beginning to loom and be part of your calculation don't think that your shop has to be your dream shop in its first iteration because part of the satisfaction and part of the process of making a shop that is perfectly suited for you and your needs is letting the shop mature as your interests mature allowing the flexibility in your shop structure to expand and to be specialized as you branch into and begin to master new areas of craftsmanship new areas of interest that require different tool tooling and require the space to be used differently cut yourself a little slack because you're going to be a different guy ten years from now than you are today now as you're watching me grade and form this floor you're probably saying to yourself wow that concrete work is rough and you're right the allowable tolerances on the floor I'm putting in here are wider than almost any work that I've done in the last 20 years because it is my shop and it is my shop and I don't have much time this work has to be done like yesterday and the criteria on this concrete floor are pretty simple it must remain flat it must remain dry and it's got to be sweepable [Music] [Music] the first real shop that I had access to and that was presided over by a man who held me in high regard was Sam ball shop Sam was my wife's granddad had might at the time it was my girlfriend's granddad and he had a little blacksmith shop and he had a little woodworking shop and he carved totem poles and he was just he was he was like nobody else and he liked having me around and he liked showing me how to do the things that he knew how to do and he liked letting me use his tools and and it was good for me to be with Sam in that space and the next one I was in my early 20s and the fellow named Fred Whitmore kind of a shirttail relative who made it possible for Kelly and I have moved to Wyoming fairly painlessly let me use his word woodworking shop nice tools and Fred knew how to use them and he shared that information with me as I look back I think I didn't maybe take quite good enough care of his stuff but he was generous and then most recently over the last 10 or 15 years sighs Swan Shaw that is there's no place on earth like sighs Swan shop and that's because there's nobody on earth like sighs Swan and when you enter sighs sighs shop you know you got to be careful you know you could get hurt and you know that it's presided over by a guy who knows his stuff and is able to teach you something if you're able to learn it so anyway my shops bigger now and it has instantly filled up with some items that have to be stored hopefully I'll be able to move those out before long and dedicate the space to the to the productive uses that I have in mind for it while I'm building it and I think I will but in any event if you've got a shop use it and use it wisely if you don't have a shop yet just keep it in mind keep working towards it make sure you're preparing to use it for the good not only of you and your interest but for the well-being and education of the people that are most important to you and get out there and make something nice [Music]

Channel: Essential Craftsman

Views: 163,128

Rating: 4.9697599 out of 5

Keywords: shop pole, barn, concrete, floor, build, diy, craftsman, how, to, advise, advice, recommendation, tip, shop space

Id: sT6dnBGgXSY

Length: 15min 6sec (906 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 19 2018