The Model Shop

The walls of the shop being assembled.

About half of the shop walls are up. You can see the entry way to the basement in the right.

The floor has 2 X 4's laid on their side and nailed to the concrete floor with rigid foam insulation on top of plastic sheeting, plus a couple of coils of radiant floor heating to keep the tootsies warm in winter.

That's 3/4" sheeting on the floor to be followed by 1/4" luan. The walls are 1/2" plywood. That makes it easy to screw things to the wall were you want to. You aren't limited to 16" centers.

That's cheap paneling on the walls. A bit of liquid nails and a few brads to hold the paneling in place. It's just to make it look nice.

The drop ceiling and lights have been installed. This gives a 6 foot 8 inch hight. So if your over that height you'll have to stoop a bit.

The luan has been glued and nailed to the floor and installation of the tiles is next. These were left over from a project when we lived in a mobile home.

Two pieces of furniture have found their way into the room already. The cabinet in back held a majority of my model railroad items and the desk my Dad built for me many years ago. That is were a lot of model were built on and many more to come.

A much better view of the cabinet. That's a Grizzly 9" X 19" bench lathe model G4000. It needs a lot of tweaking before it'll be a good lathe. Plus I have some additions I'd like to make to it. In the back against the wall is the Sherline lathe that I bought at an action. It also came with a milling attachment, plus some other tools.

A second bench holds the new base for the Sherline lathe,note that the milling attchment has been put on the Sherline, plus the Grizzly mini mill model number G8689. A very nice little mill. I'm dissatisfied with the dials and lead screws on the machine and will change them some time in the future. Also on the bench is a 6" beanch grinder for keeping those tools sharp.

More of a front view of the mill and grinder.

The computer table I built from solid cherry, MDF, and birch plywood. It has a nice big area for the screen and keyboard, plus a lot of room underneath for storage and those electrical lines.

The computer is being installed. The HP plotter and HP scanner are already in their places. The large HP plotter is going about were I'm standing taking the picture. And to supervise all that is going on is Miss Boots the New York ,Vermont and Northern Railway mascot.

After about 10 years the shop has collected a lot of junk. I have no work bench to work on any projects. So I decided it was time to renovate the shop. First a few pictures of what it grew into.

A side by side comparison of what it looked like 10 years ago and now, plus a few others.

First order of business was to clean out the large cabinet so I could move it out of the room.

Next I had to move the small machine tables to make room for the cabinet to be slide out.

Had to move the tables around a bit so I could get the cabinet out.

A friend of mine built a nice work surface using counter tops. I decided that would be the way to go. So I got one part of it up to check for the correct height that would be comfortable for me to work at.

The first part of the workbench is taking shape.

The second half is up.

And finally the workbench top.

During the night the Horizontal Storage Elves showed up and moved everything from the desk to the new workbench. But little did they know I was going to do that anyway.

The rest of the bench work is up.

The counter top has been put on.

Here's the true test to see if your walls are square. No bad considering the long side is 10ft. long.

Here's a way of making the joint fit better. I read about this in a woodworking magazine. I does work. A bit tiring though. Using a manual saw you just keep cutting in the joint.

Each time you close the gap a bit further. It takes several tries. It all depends on how far the joint is out of alignment.

I've used two of the tie bars to pull the joint even closer together. This is good enough for shop use. Now it's on to cleaning up the two workbenches that the lathe and mill sit on.