This is shot from the driveway, through the open garage door. All of my tools are on wheels. I yard whichever one I need into the center of the garage, or, in good weather, out into the driveway.

Our tour will begin on what is your right, go down that side of the shop, then across the back and then return to the door up the left side.

Note that in lower right corner you can just see a piece of a tall plank, which is one of many stored in the small alcove behind the edge of the garage door. My ceiling is low and I'm very limited in ability to store tall board. I can get 6 footers into this space. However, every time I access it, I knock the electronic eye of the garage door opener off. One of the nuisances of tight space.

To help keep you oriented, the door in the back wall goes to the furnace room, which is now also my bow room (shown elsewhere on this site). The screen door on the left wall goes to my wife's shop. She does interior decorating and refurbishing for yachts and her shop is much bigger than mine!

It should also be pointed out that when the back door into the bow room is opened, it exposes a target, and I can shoot 10 and 15 yards from the driveway. Since I have a back yard range as well, I don't very often, but it's handy for quick bow tests.

 

Really important stuff here. Above, of course, you have the absolutel vital storage for nails, screws, hardware and miscellaneous "stuff". Below the shelves is the parking place for my bow oven and behind it is my tiller board. When not in use, the 6 x 80 Grizzly belt sander and the Grizzly overhead drum sander are parked in front of the oven.

 

This is my bow oven. In order to give it stability, the wheels are on outriggers. The outriggers have lips and provide storage for bow forms. You're looking at two of my aluminum faced bow forms here.

 

Behind the oven you can see that there is room for a couple more bow forms and, against the wall, my tillering board. In the corner, on the floor beneath the end of my work bench is a Grizzly 10" planer.

 

This is the true center of my shop, my woodworker's bench. We're going to take a pause in the tour here so I can show what a useful tool a true woodworker's bench is. It provides for nearly endless clamping and working possibilities. I made this one about 25 years ago from a section of salvaged bowling alley. It has served me through the building of numerous muzzle loading rifles, a great many hand carved ventriloquist figures, a entire cabin full of furniture, a couple of carousel horses, wall size relief carvings and a totem pole! Now it is the center of my bow building shop. Like all of my tools, it is on wheels, so I can pull it out from the wall and work all around it.

 

 

 

 

Here I have bench dogged a small Record vise to the top to hacksaw out pieces I needed.

 

For small, quick jobs I can clamp the small vise in one of the larger Record vises. I also have a large machine vise and an anvil that I can handle the same way.

 

 

Here I've dogged a grinder down. All of my smaller portable tools are on wood bases I can do this with.

Note the little gray book behind the grinder. That is becoming one of my most valued possessions! In it are the layup formulas and outcomes of every bow I've built. I study it for hours, calculating exactly what formula to use for the next bow and trying to predict the result. I'm getting pretty fair at it.

 

 

Here a large plank of spalted sycamore (I knew you'd ask what the wood was) is clamped on top. This is how I clamped large relief carvings.

 

 

The Record vise (with large maple wood block faces) on the end of the bench pressures one end of the plank. Since the plank was nearly narrower than the peg hole spacing, I used an intermediate block.

Note that the end of the wood block face of the vise extends beyond the table edge.

 

 

Pegs inserted in the hole system on the bench top brace the other end.

 

Here a plank of walnut has been vertically clamped, held on one end by the extended vise block and at the other by a peg in one the benche's front holes.

 

 

Here I've dropped the screw base of a gunsmith's vise through one of the benchtop holes and snugged it down with a lever screw from below. As I said, this bench is an incredibly useful tool.

 

 

Resuming our tour, we move past the bench and encounter a large mechanic's tool cabinet, containing all the usual mechanic's tools. Above it, in front of the window is clamp storage... not all of my clamps by any means... On the back wall are two cabinets containing finishing materials, with the floor cabinet providing storage surface for grinders and polishers I sometims use in making knives. (Been awhile... I need to do some of that again!) The top of the wall cabinet provides storage for plastics, which I use in making quilting templates, which I run batches of and sell from time to time. Between the mechanic's cabinet and the wood cabinet are a Grizzly sawdust collector and a collection horn, needed when the 6x80 belt sander is going.

 

 

Okay... Now for the other side of the shop... This is the back corner "parking lot" for many of the mobile tools. What you are looking at here is, up front and left to right, a Grizzly jointer planer and a Grizzly pneumatic drum sander with a Grizzly oscillating spindle sander stored below it. Behind them, again left to right, are a Delta wood lathe, then a Grizzly 6x48 belt sander, then a Delta benchtop drill press. My hand truck lives with its floor lip tucked under the drill press cabinet.

The drill press is my biggest tool "weakness". I'd really like to have a big floor mounted one again. However, mobility needs make this arrangement worth some occasional inconvenience. When I'm making a bow form, I can yard the press out into the middle of the shop and provide outboard support on both sides.

You'll note that many of my tools are mounted on mechanic's tool cabinets. I took the provided large wheels off and installed lower ones to minimize the working height. These cabinets then provide good mobile bases and wonderful sorted storage... lathe tools under the lathe, sandpaper under the sander, drills under the drill press, etc.

 

 

Moving toward the garage door again, past the screen door to my wife's space, you have a DeWalt contractor saw, then another pair of work benches. The front bench is on wheels and is lower than my main workbench. It's very handy to wheel out into the driveway and work on larger projects, and also provides a base for some heavier "portable" (if you have the strength) tools like a chop saw, a Grizzly 10" planer, and a large Grizzly jig saw. The gray bench behind it serves as a general catch all surface (gotta have one of those) and is also where I do my actual gluing up when I'm laying up a bow. Under this cabinet is a Grizzly air fine particulate air filtration unit, which I don't use as much as I should.

Note on the wall above is an oak three bin cabinet, holding all my hand/power tools... routers, hand jigsaw, sanders and such. On top of the cabinet is a little bit of long board wood storage, the only place I can get 8', presently holding a supply of hicklory and red oak, plus the aluminum strips that will be backing on bow forms and a pvc tube with all of my glass lams in it.

 

Moving past the two benches, you find a matched pair of Grizzly 555 bandsaws. One is set up for resawing to make laminations and one is set up for shape sawing, to cut bows out of the layup that comes off of the forms. Behind the saws is an alcove into which I built shelves. These store some of the heavier portable tools, with lumber storage underneath. If I need to used one of the heavier tools, I can yard out the bandsaws, wheel the mobile work table up the the shelves and pull out the tool I need. In front of the saws is a plastic bin on wheels, into which I throw all of those scrap wood blocks that you just know are going to come in handy some day.

 

 

 

OK, you've seen the shop. That's where the work gets done, but it's not the whole story. Behind every "factory", there is a management office, where the planning takes place. Here's mine...

This is my den, planning, sewing and smoking room. Where Captain Dick is, there is usually a pipe. Thank goodness, my wife is not allergic to pipe smoke, though she is to cigarette smoke. She allows me to smoke all I want back in this room, usually with the door shut. I spend many hours in that chair, studying the gray book and doing internet work, such as the page I'm building right now. The cabinet next to the chair is a very rare model of Singer treadle sewing machine. The drafting table is used for any drafting or drawing projects, but mostly for designing quilts. My other activity is restoring antique sewing machines and I am an avid quilter. Note the tv, which has a bunch of dvd's scattered on the table in front of it. I've been reviewing bow building dvd's and researching 3 piece take down bows, which is a project I want to undertake this winter.

I'm an avid reader and researcher, as these shelves can attest. Most of our house is filled with books. This is mostly research stuff on quilts, sewing machines and archery. There are seven more sewing machines on the shelves. (I've cut back, really I have. I used to have 175!)