My shop is currently half of the basement of a townhouse. Maybe someday when we move away from the city! Until then it At least sounds like you’re living my future life. A nice machine shop with welding equipment and a wood shop. One day.
My first shop with a lathe was a 16x16' outbuilding behind my last house - crowded with the lathe, table saw, radial arm saw, bandsaw, router table, little welder, wood, and far more.
Could barely move in it.
When we moved here, my shop was 1/2 of a 2-car garage with all the same equipment + more tools I accumulated such as a mini lathe and a second bandsaw.
Could barely move in it. (When I had a turning friend over, when we wanted to swap places at the lathe one had to go outside first.)
HEY, if you have some extra ground space maybe you could build something like I did!!
One day I started clearing some overgrown brush near my barn and realized it was the last nearly flat spot outside the fences and near the barn. I had planned to build a shop near the house but having it down the hill near the barn was so much better - I can keep an eye on the animals for care and feeding, threaten trespassers with the evil eye, AND, keep equipment maintenance tools, big air compressor, and a 300 gal tank of off-road diesel handy.
So I made a plan, cleared the space, leveled and compacted the dirt, dug up one big tree kinda in the way, put down gravel, rebar and concrete forms, posts and beams for the building, then dug a trench and laid undergound power and ethernet in conduit for broad band and wifi. I did hire out two things: a guy to pour and surface the concrete and another with a crane to set the trusses and the roofing (so I wouldn't fall off and die), but I did everything else myself - it took a few years working every day but so worth it. (Well, my son helped me set the posts in the ground - 6x6 and HEAVY!)
It was good fun and a good education. And building something yourself is a *LOT* cheaper that paying someone to do it!
I tell visitors I built the shop with my bare hands but I lie, I used tools!
Besides the turning and flat wood working, tiny machine shop and welding room, I have a crowded office with computer, video editing, big incubators and brooders for peacocks and guineas, 6 big tool boxes, 12 tall wire shelving units, and
WAY too much turning wood drying and stored. Just added an electric piano for break times.
I did include a cyclone dust collector and a big air compressor in a sound-insulated closet. Air is piped all around and to outside reels to work on vehicles and machines. Life is good! And walking up the hill to the house a bunch of times a day is good exercise for this old guy!
The building is 24x62 with heat and air, I thought more space than I could possibly need. Man was I wrong.
Now it's so full
I can barely move in it! (I'm beginning to suspect a theme here
)
JKJ
I never made a ring keeper. I think it will be a fun project to try. My better half needs something like that,
My Lovely Bride keeps one at the kitchen sink and one by her jewelry/makeup station.
When I put a variety of turnings in a Christmas box and let the daughters-in-law etc, pick what they like, the ring keepers are the first to go, followed by hand mirrors and salt/pepper grinders. The mirrors are fun to make - these are from wormy American chestnut.
I made the Olive ring keeper for a teen girl named Olivia who helped with my kindergarten SS class for a couple of years. One day I asked if she had anything made from Olivewood, that the name Olivia came from. She'd never heard of it! So I made the Olive ring keeper in the other picture for her. She was shocked, got a little weepy-eyed. Told me later that was the nicest present she had ever received in her entire life!
Good clean fun!
JKJ
