 Hey Jonathan, I see you there. How are you? Good. How are you today? Excellent? Excellent. So excited to see your workshop. I think I saw some clips of it on the small woodworking workshop community and I was impressed so I got a hold of you to see if we could do a little tour and Looking forward to that. So tell me a little bit about your workshop. How big is it? It's about 12 feet by 19 feet. So that would translate to how many square feet? 228. So I think I know that a hundred square feet since we have a lot of international viewers as well, so a hundred square feet is about nine square meters. So that must be about 20 square meters. Right. Somewhere in there. All right. So when did you start setting up your workshop? How long have you had this house or this workshop? Well, this particular house we've had for three years. So it was one of the reasons we bought this house is for the attached single-car garage so that I could actually build a have a standalone wood shop that wouldn't get dust all over the cars. But I've been doing woodworking in my last three houses. I've just never had a I've always had to share it with with the cars. Yeah, so this is a non-car sharing workshop. Did you have any parents or grandparents that got you into this hobby? No. The story around our house was my dad wasn't allowed to use any tools with more moving parts than a hammer. Okay, that was his wife, your mother's rule. Right. But it's funny because both my older brother and I both got into woodworking separately at about the same time in our lives. All right. And you got a dog. You got a shop dog? Got a shop dog. Half wolf, half husky. All right. My schnauzer refuses to be in my workshop. The minute I turn on a tool, he's scratching at the door to get the heck out of there. Does your dog spend any time in the shop? He can't fit in the shop while I'm working, but he sits right outside the shop. It keeps me company. Okay. You're generally able to work with your garage door up or down? Yeah. I'm here in Colorado and I probably shouldn't say this on video because it'll get out. But we have such good weather in the metro area that even during the winter, I often can work with the door open. And you don't have neighborhood complaints? The good thing about my shop is the way it's set up as well. My, this bay for my garage is pointed in a direction that's not towards any of the other houses. So it really holds in the noise. Oh, cool. All right. Well, let's do this. Let's have you switch to your back camera. I'm waiting a little bit for the screen to catch up. And there it is. All right. Excellent. Oh, good. I saw the dog here. Yep. Oh, so cool. Do you like chilling right there? I am a dog fan. Give me the 30,000 foot level overview. So I only have the garage door. I don't have a man door on it, which really helps with saving for space. And I've got all the windows in here are very high. So I've got all the wall space I can possibly imagine. All right. So just walking in, I'm trying to use as much space as possible for storage. I have my trash and I set up most of my tools so they're multi-purpose. I've got my sander along with my chop saw. And below it I store my planer. That looks like one of those articulating arm chop saws. Yep. This is a Bosch. And I tell you, it is a room saver. It's a 12 inch, so I get a lot of span on it there. But it takes up hardly any room on my wall. So it really works well for me. I'm about ready to buy one of those finally. I had one sliding one Ryobi. It was a piece of crap. It wouldn't cut straight. I got tired of the bars behind it, so I got rid of that. And I got into a, I think it's a DeWalt fixed one that doesn't slide. And so now I'm finding myself one or two inches short of everything I want to cut. So I'm about ready to bite the seven or eight hundred dollar bullet and get one of those that you have. I tell you, it was money well spent. Looks like you've attempted to do some dust collection on it. Yep. And this model itself is not known for dust being very good with dust collection. But I read it, got online and saw some things. And if you just kind of extend the chute down here, that really changes things. I get a little dust around, but not too bad at all. And then I just have some more storage. One thing I do is task lighting. These articulating lights are really helpful. I can get them throughout the shop so I can get light almost anywhere. All right. That's pretty cool. I haven't really thought about doing that. Yeah, especially if I work at night. That's real helpful for me. And like having it here for the saw, I put it to where it goes straight down. Oh, on the blade so I can see real well what I'm cutting and where the lines are. Does that does that might or so have a laser? It does not. I wouldn't mind if it did, but for how much it can cut, lengthwise and all the things it can do and how much power it has, I was fine to go without the laser. What can you cut about 13 inches or so? Yeah, just about. Here we can measure it real quick. So from the, it's actually real close to 13 and a half. Wow. I'm getting one. Is that your own insert plate you've done there? Yep. Yep. Just out of some scrap wood. Got tired of having small pieces fall down in there and then try to fish them out, huh? Well, I found that the edges were a little rougher when I cut than if I had the zero clearance. Right. And the one it came with, unlike my old DeWalt, was pretty wide. So I got rid of that pretty quick. And it got a nice miter station there, and yet you're able to put like your oscillating sander back behind where your boards would go. So that doesn't have to move. And you got dust collection on there. Yep. Very cool. And then as we continue, I have a mobile router station, and I've got dust collection set up for that as well as my bandsaw. Let's shop that size. Obviously, everything that's going to need any kind of a clearance has got to be on wheels and be able to roll it out in the open area. Right. In this shop, the only two things I have on wheels are the router station and the bandsaw. And my old shop, when I shared it with my motorcycles and cars, that one, everything was on wheels. And so this, there is no setup time in this one, which gives me more opportunity to make sawdust. And you can even find a way to work on barn doors in a garage this size? I am currently working on a barn door right there. And I only moved it out for this session. The way I have this set up, I can put that on the bench, still have room barely to walk around it to sand and to stain, but it has room in here. Yeah, and you've got a lathe in there. I haven't figured out, unless I figure out how to do a mezzanine level, I can't figure out how to put a lathe in my shop. That was one of the requirements for me. When I was in junior high school and got into woodworking in school, the lathe really fascinated me. And so once I got the standalone workshop here, it was one of the main goals was to be able to find a spot for a lathe. And I started with this 12 inch jet. And about a month ago, my brother, he retired to be a full time woodworker. And he does not do any turning. So he got a project that needed some turning, but my lathe wasn't big enough. So I actually got him to finance my extension. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, the amount of money we save on furniture and stuff is what pays for our toys. So right. How many of those articulating lights do you have around the shop? Two. Okay. The one over here over the miter saw and then the one over the lathe. And both of those come out far enough to where they can give me extra light on the wood on the workbench. And are those something available on Amazon? Yeah, I got those through globalindustries.com. Yeah, I've heard of them. Okay. Yeah. And so that's what you know, the bad thing about doing these virtual tours is every time I finish one, I end up spending more money. Yeah. Drill press, bandsaw. Yeah, I've got a little storage. Come over here and I've got a benchtop drill press. I had a full size drill press and I found that I just didn't need that size. And it took up a lot of room. So I went back to the benchtop. Yeah, I've got a benchtop. So far, I haven't found anything I need to do for my kind of woodworking that I need one. Tell me about the pictures on your wall. Who are those characters? Well, of course, we've got Norm Abram, who kind of probably got all of us started. And then Ben Napier from Hometown TV Show, Home Improvement TV Show. Yeah. But the one that really matters is over here. This is Mr. Larsh. This is my eighth and ninth grade shop teacher. Oh, cool. How many hobbyist woodworkers have a picture of their shop teacher that just tells you how meaningful woodworking has been for you to carve out room on your valuable wall for your teacher. It's so cool. Too bad we pay our teachers like slaves. And it's too bad we've taken so many of the shop type curricula out of school, which is just a shame. Yeah. So what's your Dutch collection? So I've got a shop fox. And it's just a single cycle, but it really moves a ton of air. And for a shop my size, it was the only non-industrial size vacuum that I could actually permanently plumb. Do you know the horsepower? It's a 2 horse, 1.5. That's pretty good. Yeah. Actually, it's a 2. It is a 2. So it's a workhorse. And as you can see, I've got the entire shop plumb and it really does help with keeping this clean. Yeah. And healthy. I also go with an air filter up top. I got one of those. I haven't taken the effort yet to do the dust collection plumbing, you know, with the hard stuff. So I have a shop fox as well, but kind of an underpowered, one horsepower one. But it only lives with my table saw. And then I throw on a flexible tube when I need to hook it up to my thickness planer or my jointer. So you built that workbench? Yep. The workbench was one of my first pieces that I built in my last house where I had a third car garage where I could make some room for woodworking. And it started off originally without the drawers. It was an open design. And when I moved to this space, I went ahead and put the drawers in, which helped a lot. And added also paper heads on that side. On this side, a buddy of mine, his grandfather had a whole bunch of antique tools. So I got an antique vice that I added. And then to help with some of my storage, on the backside, I have a peg board where I hold some of my more used tools. So I don't have to go into drawers or anything for them. Yeah, pretty cool. And it'd be working on a workbench and just be able to reach down and grab what you need instead of playing hide and go seek. I had so many darn drawers throughout my garage underneath different things. I finally built a 16 drawer cabinet and moved everything to one cabinet. So at least when I'm doing my look and my hide and seek, at least I'm just can stand in one place and do it. Right. Makes it a little easier. And then I do have a little bit of storage underneath there, which is kind of nice for things that I don't need a lot, but I can just reach and grab. What brand do you like? Oh, I use the Rockler. I find these, these are really light. So I'm able to use them one-handed pretty well. And then various types of quick clamps, everything from, I guess most of them are quick clamps, some of them are DeWalt. Yeah. But, you know, you never have enough clamps, obviously. Yeah. What's the length of those four, I guess, Rockler ones? Um, the small ones are two feet and then the larger ones are four feet. Yeah. But then I've got extensions over here, right there that added another four feet on it, which come in handy on projects like this barn door that I'm building. Yeah. One thing I have found that I would do differently is I have a number of maybe five or six Bessie 24 inch clamps and I find a lot of times they're not long enough. And again, obviously I've had the longer 55 inches as well. But for beginning woodworkers, I would sort of suggest that if you're going to build any chest of drawers and cabinets and stuff that you go with 32 inches instead of 24 inches, it's just going to fit so many more things and not be that much more cumbersome to work with. Anyway, that's my experience. And I agree. And I started with the longer ones and then I got the shorter ones as I was doing some small stuff with the lathe. The smaller ones came in handy, but all around the longer ones are the way to go. Yeah. And the thing I found with my 55 inch here is in my small workshop that by the time I put something on my workbench and then threw on a 55 inch clamp, it went all the way across my aisle. Right. And now I have no place to walk, you know. True. So they're fine for when I throw stuff out in the carport and I got a lot of room. But again, I like the 32 inch size seems to meet my needs, you know, 80% of the time. And my mistake was saying, oh, I'll buy a whole bunch of 55 inchers. I must have eight of them. And it's like, okay, I just doesn't work in a small workshop. So take that into consideration. What would you say your favorite power tool is? Right now I'd have to say the lathe. So versatile, so many different things I can produce on that. And I can always have projects going on the lathe at the same time I have actually building projects going. But outside of that, I would say that the chop saw and station probably gets the most use. Am I right or wrong that I don't see a table saw? We just have not gotten to it yet. The table saw is an extension off of the workbench and it flows out into my driveway. As I said here in Colorado, our weather is so good most of the time here in the Denver area, we get 300 sunny days a year. Of course, we're getting one of our 65 cloudy days today. But I'm able to open the garage door up and then extend my work off the table right out into the driveway. Your wife is going to be upset with you and of course, I'll edit it out when she sees that you had her on video leaning over with her butt up near. Right. Her gardening. Does she need help up there? She looks like you've been bent over for a long time. She needs the exercise. All right. So you push your boards out into the open area rather than having them start in the open area outside of your garage door and push them in. Right. And I've noticed on your site and several other sites that I've looked at that most people have it the other direction. I don't know if there's an advantage or disadvantage because you certainly got plenty of room for your infeed. Right. And I'm able to use my bench as a feed table and so it has just worked really well for me. So here's a tip for beginning woodworkers who are thinking about building their shop cabinets and stuff is maybe take a look if you've got your permanent table saw at its height and then build all of your things that you might move around or use in combination at exactly the same height or maybe a half an inch shorter. Same heights probably better. Sometimes if you're using warped boards and you're trying to use a work table for the outfeed table or something if it's not right next to your saw the warp board can go down and catch before it slides up. But anyway he's got his workbench at the same height as his table saw so then he can use it for his infeed support and obviously I saw he's got an outfeed table that's connected to his saw so that's the same size and he's cut his mitre strips in there so he's set up perfectly for long boards. And now you got a different dust collection on your table saw? No it's the same system it goes in and it has a single line that goes straight over to the. All right I thought I saw a shop vac but maybe that's just for floor cleaning up and stuff. I use the shop vac mainly for my planer and my joiner. Because you know you get so much wood out of those that I find that it's easier to use the shop vac so you don't have to empty the big one as often and then I use it also to clean up around on the benches and on the floor. Yeah the big one that you have doesn't really have the separating going on with the big chips going down into a big barrel and correct and the small stuff so then yeah that makes sense. When you've got a thickness planer or a jointer you need an easy way because you again if you're a beginner you'd be amazed how much wood comes off of those. I've got a I think it's a 35 gallon maybe it's a 55 gallon. I can do some thickness planing and that thing will fill up and no time flat and that's a big one and so it's cumbersome to empty it so. Yeah just on this barn door alone I did two full vacuums so 24 gallons of shavings getting them down just to three-quarter inch. What's your table saw model? That is also a shop fox. Uh-huh. An 1837. I got this I looked online to find what a decent hybrid table saw was and the reviews of this one were really good. When I first got it the um the arm here was bent and so it wouldn't it wouldn't give me good measurements but got hold of shop fox they sent me a new one no questions asked and ever since then it's uh it's worked real well for me it has a lot of power and uh it sits nice and strong here in the in the shop. Yeah we won't get into the old saw stop versus other brands uh civil war argument that never seemed to end but uh. Well if I had the money I'd go out with the saw stop but um I just I I just can't afford it at this point in time. Yeah so you want to do one of two things you want to have the money to afford it or you want to have really good insurance. Right. Right. Well anything else uh how do you handle wood storage? That's a good question I cheat um so while I'm in process of a project I use this space right here where I I kind of put what I'm getting ready to cut or what I've just cut but what I do is I come over into my actual garage and I have a large storage piece right there so as you can see I've got getting right here a large project right there. All right so another word you're encroaching upon another area. Right. Pretty soon you'll take that over and then you'll have to park your car in the driveway. You know my wife's funny that way she uh she thinks that her car ought to be in the garage for some reason. Well happy wife happy life so. Right. All right. Oh wait a minute you even got more stuff in there you got that's my other hobby right there. Okay. So that's what I'm doing when I'm not woodworking. All right how many of those have you restored? This is the first after my motorcycle crash I got rid of all my motorcycles which filled up this entire bay and with that money and the insurance money I was able to purchase this project. Very cool. Tell me about it what is it? It's a 59 Chevy Apache, a long bed fleet side. It's right now it's all original and I'm getting ready to make it a daily driver. Wow and it'll haul your sheet goods. It will and that was one of the big reasons I'm getting a truck and then I figured if I'm gonna spend money on a truck I might as well have one I can tinker with like I used to on the motorcycles so that's why I went to the retro. Yeah so it is running or it's close to being running? It is running but it is running with all original parts so it doesn't run very fast. All right well a man of several hobbies I like it. Yeah keeps me off the streets at night and of course wife kind of likes it too. Oh look at that bed that's cool. Gotta have a wood bed. Oh yeah yeah a lot of people call those really old antiques but some of us not you but me that was kind of the 57 Chevy's what I drove as a young kid and it was a brand new car. Right yeah I grew up with the early 60s uh internationals driving out on the on the ranches that I'd work. Well Jonathan that is a pleasurable beautiful functional and obviously very clean workshop. I appreciate your moving stuff out so you could show us what it looks like between projects. I'm very very impressed that's a nice looking setup and I bet you're going to have a lot of fun time in there. Well you know this is my all place when I open the door and step in my whole energy changes the stress from whatever I'm dealing with at work or in personal life just goes away because I have to concentrate in here and I've set it up to where it's pleasing for me to look at so being in here is just that makes me feel good. Yep yep I like it. All right I'm gonna switch now to my closing stuff and uh let's see so that'll appreciate the tour very much. Absolutely. We'll see you in that Facebook group small workshop woodworking community. For the viewers out there I just want to ask you to give us if you like these workshop tours then give us a like a comment and a subscription and stay safe in your workshops and thank you for watching.