# Turning my old dirty garage into a workshop



## stereo.pete

Hey Folks,

I'm going to update this thread as I get closer and closer to finishing my knife making workshop. So far, I have gone from having 0 work benches in the garage to building 3, which I just finished the last one today. Next up on my list is having my electrician come out Saturday to install a separate fuse box in the garage along with a couple of 220 lines, and standard 110/115 lines and finally some much needed lighting.

Tools awaiting to be installed
Band Saw
9" Variable Speed / Reversible disc sander
2x72 Esteem Belt Grinder with 8" contact wheel and Flat Platen
Drill Press
Vise


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## Customfan

Nice! An inspiration to us all... Good luck and show us some pics when you have them please... :biggrin:


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## Zwiefel

I was going to say that it's easy to run those electrical lines once the new breakerbox is installed...but then I noticed you're in Chi-town 

Looking good! Hope we get to see some new toys coming out of there soon.


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## stereo.pete

Ok, power has been installed, I went from 4 outlets and 1 small light bulb to a total of 20 outlets not including the 220 and 24 feet of high output fluorescent light. 






Next up is a question for you shop veterans. Should I leave the tops of the workbenches as they are, exposed plywood or cover them with a material? To help with the answering of my question, these benches will be used for my band saw, 2x27 belt grinder and my 9" disc grinder. What do you recommend?

Cheers,

Pete


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## Burl Source

While the plywood will be fine, you might consider a plastic laminate. Kind of a generic formica.
Easy to apply with contact cement and cleans up real nicely. Spills wipe up instead of soak in.
Work pieces will also be easier to move around without scuffing. 
Like I should talk, my work surfaces are all raw wood.


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## HHH Knives

Pete. The shop is really coming together!! Thanks for sharing some images. 

As far as the bench tops. As Mark said. a surface of some sort might be nice. But IMO its not necessary. My bench for the grinders and my main prep and assembly work area is 2 layers of 3/4 plywood board glued and screwed. 

I am currently setting up my new shop. I have no intentions of changing or upgrading the benchtops. I am however changing a few other things that I found more important. Like lighting and clean air.. So I would suggest adding some ventilation and air purification.. As well as adding more lights in your work areas. B4 spending the time and money on benchtops. 

For a cheap and easy way to clean the air you can use a 20" box fan with a furnace filter taped to the backside of the fan is rudimentary at best. Yet works surprisingly well in a small area to help remove the fine dust from the air.


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## The Edge

I'm extremely jealous Pete! That's awesome! I still have a house to refinish before I can even think about a shop (though I do have some tools coming :O). Seeing your collection over the years, I am going to anxiously await to see what you come up with.


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## stereo.pete

Thanks for the comments guys! Randy, I don't have any windows in the shop, would you recommend the box fan with filter attached set at the opening of my garage to blow the air out?


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## HHH Knives

Pete. Yes. I would say make 2 of these. and use them to both move air to help with cooling or heating as well as to help clean the air. You will be surprised how much dust and stuff these fan set ups collect and or remove from the air! 

I hang one high in the back half of the shop. and another closer to the bay door. lower like on a chair or set on the floor etc.


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## 29palms

Looking good Pete.

Best practice is to draw air down and out away from your face rather than up past your face. An upper filtering fan will clean up the really light airborne stuff.


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## stereo.pete

Unpacking the first of a few new toys!


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## stereo.pete

disc grinder set up and ready to rock!





2x72 requires some assembly


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## Lefty

Looks great, Pete!


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## icanhaschzbrgr

Have you planned any system for collecting dust?


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## stereo.pete

icanhaschzbrgr said:


> Have you planned any system for collecting dust?



That's the last piece to the puzzle, since I won't be doing an intense amount of grinding (at least at the moment) I will be using a funnel into a bucket of water. This will be a temporary solution, but I will be adding dust collection in the future.


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## JBroida

there are shopvac attachments that work decently


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## stereo.pete

Good idea Jon! I will take a look at them.


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## Twistington

You had me at "old dirty garage".


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## Dave Martell

Dang Pete, you're not playing around! :thumbsup:


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## stereo.pete

She'll be 100% tomorrow after a quick trip to buy some mounting hardware so I can mount her to the bench.


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## Twistington

I'm having a bad case of tool-envy right now... :sad0:


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## stereo.pete




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## Dave Martell

OK Pete, this is getting serious, you're making my shop have equipment envy.


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## stereo.pete

Well, the shop is setup with my tools and at the end of the day they mean nothing without someone having the skill to use them. I bought a few bars of mild steel and will begin practicing my grinding before using my good stuff. I cannot tell you how amazing it is to be able to cut a bar of steel, profile it and complete the rough grinds in 15 minutes versus several hours before using only hand tools.


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## jai

Geeze id like that bandsaw haha what are they worth.


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## daveb

Sounds like I could screw up a lot of stuff really quickly with your setup.


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## JMJones

Very nice shop! You have got everything needed to make top quality blades.


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## stereo.pete




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## DSChief

stereo.pete said:


> That's the last piece to the puzzle, since I won't be doing an intense amount of grinding (at least at the moment) I will be using a funnel into a bucket of water. This will be a temporary solution, but I will be adding dust collection in the future.



Shop Fox has a decent model, runs on 110. available through Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001R23SS6/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20



I have the same one , it's on casters & scoots around the garage fairly easily.


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## Dave Martell

One thing I'd like to mention is that you've got to be careful when using dust collectors on both wood and metal grinding together on the same machines. Handle shaping with metal tangs and spacers aren't really an issue, it's when you use the same grinder (and dust collector system) to grind blades after you've got a build up of wood dust. Also, the build up of belt fuzz can be something to worry about as well - an example is what comes off of the orange Norton Blaze belts - highly flammable stuff. I've personally had two fires inside my dust collector system and that was within the lines but I've had about a 1/2 dozen mini-burns that resulted in holes in plastic pickups and hoses. Currently I'm setting up my shop with a 100% metal dust collector system (well expect for dust hood/pickups on wood only machines) that exhausts outside into a controlled burn free area. I expect to have no troubles from the new set up BUT I'm buying two new fire extinguishers just in case. The thing that worries me is the smoldering that happens when no one is around to use the extinguishers. You've been warned!


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## Geo87

Great shop pete! I can't begin to describe how jealous I am...


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## Burl Source

You have gotten me motivated.
We just moved into a new place with a separate shop.
It is about 25' x 25' with built in work benches on 2 walls and the landlord beefed up the electrical for me just in case.
Looks like soon I will be bringing my work home with me.


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## Keith Sinclair

Nice going Pete


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## stereo.pete

Thanks guys!


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## PierreRodrigue

Hi Pete, look into something like this for dust collecting...
http://www.clearvuecyclones.com/9-cv1800-series


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## stereo.pete

PierreRodrigue said:


> Hi Pete, look into something like this for dust collecting...
> http://www.clearvuecyclones.com/9-cv1800-series



Thanks for the recommendation Pierre!


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## Loosvelt

Dave Martell said:


> One thing I'd like to mention is that you've got to be careful when using dust collectors on both wood and metal grinding together on the same machines. Handle shaping with metal tangs and spacers aren't really an issue, it's when you use the same grinder (and dust collector system) to grind blades after you've got a build up of wood dust. Also, the build up of belt fuzz can be something to worry about as well - an example is what comes off of the orange Norton Blaze belts - highly flammable stuff. I've personally had two fires inside my dust collector system and that was within the lines but I've had about a 1/2 dozen mini-burns that resulted in holes in plastic pickups and hoses. Currently I'm setting up my shop with a 100% metal dust collector system (well expect for dust hood/pickups on wood only machines) that exhausts outside into a controlled burn free area. I expect to have no troubles from the new set up BUT I'm buying two new fire extinguishers just in case. The thing that worries me is the smoldering that happens when no one is around to use the extinguishers. You've been warned!



I am building a new dust collection system soon. Was the fire caused because you were mixing handle material and steel in the same network of ducts or did the fire occur from just the steel dust piling up in the ducts alone?


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## Dave Martell

Dave Martell said:


> One thing I'd like to mention is that you've got to be careful when using dust collectors on both wood and metal grinding together on the same machines. Handle shaping with metal tangs and spacers aren't really an issue, it's when you use the same grinder (and dust collector system) to grind blades after you've got a build up of wood dust. Also, the build up of belt fuzz can be something to worry about as well - an example is what comes off of the orange Norton Blaze belts - highly flammable stuff. I've personally had two fires inside my dust collector system and that was within the lines but I've had about a 1/2 dozen mini-burns that resulted in holes in plastic pickups and hoses. Currently I'm setting up my shop with a 100% metal dust collector system (well expect for dust hood/pickups on wood only machines) that exhausts outside into a controlled burn free area. I expect to have no troubles from the new set up BUT I'm buying two new fire extinguishers just in case. The thing that worries me is the smoldering that happens when no one is around to use the extinguishers. You've been warned!





Loosvelt said:


> I am building a new dust collection system soon. Was the fire caused because you were mixing handle material and steel in the same network of ducts or did the fire occur from just the steel dust piling up in the ducts alone?




Both

I have only one belt grinder that gets used for woodworking and knife grinding. In the curves of the dust collector lines there will be small pockets of build up of wood dust and belt fuzz (some belts make more fuzz than others) and this tends to ignite easily when a hot spark lands on it and is fueled by the massive air movement through the line. 

Using steel duct work doesn't prevent fires from happening but in my experience they extinguish before they become a problem. 

Mixing steel grinding and wood dust is bad business but the belt fuzz is a problem even if you're just grinding steel. Most knifemakers simply blow their dust into a water bucket that sits directly below the platen (or wheel) and that seems to work very effectively on putting out sparks.  

Why don't I do that? I run my grinder horizontally with the bad stuff blowing away from me which sends it more towards the wall than to the floor.


PS - Welcome to KKF :cool2:


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## Bill13

Pete,

Your shop is looking great. I'm looking forward to seeing some WIP pictures of some knives.


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## Loosvelt

Dave Martell said:


> Both
> 
> I have only one belt grinder that gets used for woodworking and knife grinding. In the curves of the dust collector lines there will be small pockets of build up of wood dust and belt fuzz (some belts make more fuzz than others) and this tends to ignite easily when a hot spark lands on it and is fueled by the massive air movement through the line.
> 
> Using steel duct work doesn't prevent fires from happening but in my experience they extinguish before they become a problem.
> 
> Mixing steel grinding and wood dust is bad business but the belt fuzz is a problem even if you're just grinding steel. Most knifemakers simply blow their dust into a water bucket that sits directly below the platen (or wheel) and that seems to work very effectively on putting out sparks.
> 
> Why don't I do that? I run my grinder horizontally with the bad stuff blowing away from me which sends it more towards the wall than to the floor.
> 
> 
> PS - Welcome to KKF :cool2:




Thanks for the welcome! 

I plan to suck the steel dust into my dust deputy which will several inches of water as spark trap. Going to try to grind my first kitchen knives soon. 

On a side note you'll be hearing from me soon sir, as I want to buy my first waterstones and learn to handsharpen. I think there is too much risk by using the belt grinder. Works good, but that heat is always lurking. Too much speed, pressure, or time and the temper at the edge could be affected.


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## stereo.pete

I finally built a storage solution for my belts.


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## stereo.pete

I just added this knife vise, which has made shaping handles much more ergonomic and effective. It allows me to safely clamp the blade and rotates 360 degrees as well as vertically 180 degrees.


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## Geo87

My god... I need one of those. That looks 1000x better than a regular vice


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## Sabaki

Geo87 said:


> My god... I need one of those. That looks 1000x better than a regular vice



Indeed... where to find it?


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