FranWood
Established Member
Good afternoon all.
I've been browsing the forum for a little while now and I thought I should introduce myself. My name (if you couldn't tell!) is Fran. I'm 38 and currently live near Aylesbury and I work as a CAD/CAM Applications Engineer. I originally grew up in Lincoln and I was there for the first 36 or so years before relocating down here for a new job two years ago.
I had a single garage at our old house and I had a bit of a workshop set up in there which mainly consisted of a Triton MOF001 router that spent 95% of its time mounted in a table, a miter saw, a pillar drill and a table saw which to be honest I probably used twice due to the work I was doing. Speaking of which, most of the work I did in there was working with plastics and mainly acrylic as I used to make a lot of parts for Japanese arcade machines of all things. I did make the odd other thing here and there in MDF but certainly nothing to get excited about. The garage was a fair size for a single but as always, it was never big enough. I hated it being freezing and damp for 4+ months a year and I would have insulated it and put a side door in but I knew we wasn't going to be there forever and so I didn't want to invest the time, effort and expense in something I would only get the use out of for a couple of years and would still be too small, even more so once insulated.
When I got my new job down here a couple of years ago I moved into a small rental place whilst we sold our Lincoln house and found a property down here. I only planned to be in this rental for a year but due to a few factors it's taken a couple of years to sell our Lincoln place and secure a new place. This rental does have a single garage but as this place is smaller than our old house it's packed to the brim with house stuff. All this means that I've not had a workshop for about two years and it's absolutely killed me not have somewhere to tinker about in. I did very recently buy a 3D printer which has been great to play about with and it's taken the edge off slightly. I certainly can't wait to have a proper workshop again though! I've been watching a 'lot' of woodworking videos during the last year or so and I really want to get working with some wood.
A big deciding factor when house hunting is that Iwanted needed a double garage to have as a workshop. We discounted a ton of otherwise ideal houses that didn't have a double garage, much to the Mrs's delight! It took ages to find somewhere suitable but I'm really happy to say we found a great place near Bicester last year. Touch wood we should be exchanging in the next week or so and completing mid Feb all being well. The property has a 5.4m x 5.8m (internal dims) double garage which doesn't seem like a bad size judging by some of the ones we've seen whilst hunting. It's got a fairly big garden which is 106'x52' for the main part but it's L shaped and the last 20ft opens out to 70ft which leaves a nice ~20'x20' space tucked away at the end of the garden which I'm earmarking for a second workshop at some point.
I've got a ton of work to do on the house but I'm going to try and get the garage sorted out at the same time. I'm going to need somewhere to work on things for the house, at least that will be my excuse anyway. It's definitely going to want insulating before next winter. I need to get in there and start measuring up properly but I don't think I have too much more large equipment I would like to get in there. I would like a decent table saw but I'm going to start out with the one I have. I think building a sled or two and some jigs for it will improve it massively. I've never built any cabinets before and so I'm going to get plenty of practice fitting the garage out. I'm also going to need a decent workbench/assembly table etc. I've seen so many cool projects on youtube etc over the last year or so that I'm going to be like a kid in a sweet shop! I'm going to try and not get too carried away though and not start too many projects at once which I've been guilty of once or twice...... I imagine I'm not the only one either! I have got a lot of other tool lust but I'm going to try and not just go out any buy everything on day dot and instead wait, use what I have so far and then buy what I need rather than what I think I need at the outset.
I do mainly have power tools and I would like to improve my hand tool skills. I don't even have a plane for Christ's sake.... I definitely need to pick up some planes, chisels, Japanese pull saws and the like. At the other end of the scale I've always wanted a CNC router. I didn't want to have one in my old uninsulated garage/workshop as I didn't really have the space and I certainly didn't want to keep something like that in a cold and damp garage. I would like something fairly large format and so this might be something for workshop #2 later down the line. I think I'll build one from scratch as I've not really seen anything 'off the shelf' to suit my needs. I have access to a range of metal cutting 5 axis CNC mills at work so I can make a fair few components for it there. I would also like a large format CNC laser but I think that may be further down the line too.
So, I can see me being busy for the foreseeable... just to throw another spanner in the works we have a five week old baby girl who is our first born and I think she'll continue to be a time sponge.....not that I would have it any other way!
I've been browsing the forum for a little while now and I thought I should introduce myself. My name (if you couldn't tell!) is Fran. I'm 38 and currently live near Aylesbury and I work as a CAD/CAM Applications Engineer. I originally grew up in Lincoln and I was there for the first 36 or so years before relocating down here for a new job two years ago.
I had a single garage at our old house and I had a bit of a workshop set up in there which mainly consisted of a Triton MOF001 router that spent 95% of its time mounted in a table, a miter saw, a pillar drill and a table saw which to be honest I probably used twice due to the work I was doing. Speaking of which, most of the work I did in there was working with plastics and mainly acrylic as I used to make a lot of parts for Japanese arcade machines of all things. I did make the odd other thing here and there in MDF but certainly nothing to get excited about. The garage was a fair size for a single but as always, it was never big enough. I hated it being freezing and damp for 4+ months a year and I would have insulated it and put a side door in but I knew we wasn't going to be there forever and so I didn't want to invest the time, effort and expense in something I would only get the use out of for a couple of years and would still be too small, even more so once insulated.
When I got my new job down here a couple of years ago I moved into a small rental place whilst we sold our Lincoln house and found a property down here. I only planned to be in this rental for a year but due to a few factors it's taken a couple of years to sell our Lincoln place and secure a new place. This rental does have a single garage but as this place is smaller than our old house it's packed to the brim with house stuff. All this means that I've not had a workshop for about two years and it's absolutely killed me not have somewhere to tinker about in. I did very recently buy a 3D printer which has been great to play about with and it's taken the edge off slightly. I certainly can't wait to have a proper workshop again though! I've been watching a 'lot' of woodworking videos during the last year or so and I really want to get working with some wood.
A big deciding factor when house hunting is that I
I've got a ton of work to do on the house but I'm going to try and get the garage sorted out at the same time. I'm going to need somewhere to work on things for the house, at least that will be my excuse anyway. It's definitely going to want insulating before next winter. I need to get in there and start measuring up properly but I don't think I have too much more large equipment I would like to get in there. I would like a decent table saw but I'm going to start out with the one I have. I think building a sled or two and some jigs for it will improve it massively. I've never built any cabinets before and so I'm going to get plenty of practice fitting the garage out. I'm also going to need a decent workbench/assembly table etc. I've seen so many cool projects on youtube etc over the last year or so that I'm going to be like a kid in a sweet shop! I'm going to try and not get too carried away though and not start too many projects at once which I've been guilty of once or twice...... I imagine I'm not the only one either! I have got a lot of other tool lust but I'm going to try and not just go out any buy everything on day dot and instead wait, use what I have so far and then buy what I need rather than what I think I need at the outset.
I do mainly have power tools and I would like to improve my hand tool skills. I don't even have a plane for Christ's sake.... I definitely need to pick up some planes, chisels, Japanese pull saws and the like. At the other end of the scale I've always wanted a CNC router. I didn't want to have one in my old uninsulated garage/workshop as I didn't really have the space and I certainly didn't want to keep something like that in a cold and damp garage. I would like something fairly large format and so this might be something for workshop #2 later down the line. I think I'll build one from scratch as I've not really seen anything 'off the shelf' to suit my needs. I have access to a range of metal cutting 5 axis CNC mills at work so I can make a fair few components for it there. I would also like a large format CNC laser but I think that may be further down the line too.
So, I can see me being busy for the foreseeable... just to throw another spanner in the works we have a five week old baby girl who is our first born and I think she'll continue to be a time sponge.....not that I would have it any other way!
