Well the time has come for a quick tour round my little workshop.
It is situated in an out building (the one on the right) which is intended as staff accommodation – in Francophone Africa it is known as a ‘Boyerie’ where your ‘boy’ lives. ‘Un boy’ is the official term used for a house-help, and they often, even now, have accommodation next to the house of their patron. Usually they live on there own although on occasions they will have some family members living with them. Anyway I digress. As our Boyerie doesn’t have a boy in residence one of the rooms – about 3m x 3m has been turned into my workshop.
Going clockwise from the doorway we start with the Fox F36-524 table saw (kity 419 clone). Due to the size constraints of the workshop I decided to put the saw on wheels which involved chopping off the legs of the stand. It seems to be quite stable although the concrete floor is not all that level so it is necessary to move it around a little to get all four wheels in contact with the ground. Now the assembly and calibration of the saw have been done – with quite a lot of head scratching it seems to be working well. I do need to change the blade for something less agricultural than the one it came with and at the moment get by using one that I have for my Makita CS which is a bit small but has more teeth and gives a very smooth cut. In the corner is lurking an EB chip extractor / dust creator, found on e-bay and which works well in its dual role. I’d like eventually to put it outside but for the time being it chugs away in the corner.
Next we come on to the recently completed workbench which I made from Iroko. Sitting on it is my engineers vise mounted on a board / batten which is held by the wood working vise below - thanks to the suggestion found elsewhere on this forum. The bench has a ‘temporary’ 18mm ply panel behind it with some tools hanging in easy reach. The reason why I say temporary is that at the moment it is free standing behind the bench as I’m not finally decided on the layout and so don’t want to make any more holes in the walls than is necessary. Once I have decided on the final layout I will fix it properly - or not as the case may be. :roll:
In the corner is my old tool box which I bought when I was an apprentice and which has been filled up over the years. Pride of place are a couple of 3/8” Snap-On ratchets that cost me the earth when I bought them from the Snap-on man with my meagre apprentices wage. For the uninitiated Snap-on are the mechanics equivalent of Festool / Lie Nielsen – very nice and so they should be at that price! Below can be seen cases for a brace of Ryobi 18v cordless drills – by far the most used tools that I have and well worth getting two of them, IMHO as you end up with 4 batteries and for example can set one up for drilling and one for screwing. Next we come to the P/T an MHS 260– another e-bay bargain in as new condition and was amazingly being stored in the same storage unit where I was renting a room to assemble all our stuff before putting it in a shipping container to bring it here! A right result! As with the table saw, the P/T is on wheels and is parked against the wall for the time being. When I need it I can drag it out into the centre of the floor area and connect it up to the chip extractor.
Finally is some shelving where various power tools live - as well as screws and other consumables. The final wall – not shown – has a window and a couple of trunks which need to find a more permanent home.
Well there it is. It is only small but I’m well pleased with it as it is more than I have ever had before and at the moment has exclusive use as a workshop.
All for now – I’m off tomorrow to Guinea Bissau (FYI, a small country on the West Coast of Africa – very poor and the only thing they export are cashew nuts) so things will go quiet for a couple of weeks (hooray I hear you say!)
Cheers,
Steve
It is situated in an out building (the one on the right) which is intended as staff accommodation – in Francophone Africa it is known as a ‘Boyerie’ where your ‘boy’ lives. ‘Un boy’ is the official term used for a house-help, and they often, even now, have accommodation next to the house of their patron. Usually they live on there own although on occasions they will have some family members living with them. Anyway I digress. As our Boyerie doesn’t have a boy in residence one of the rooms – about 3m x 3m has been turned into my workshop.
Going clockwise from the doorway we start with the Fox F36-524 table saw (kity 419 clone). Due to the size constraints of the workshop I decided to put the saw on wheels which involved chopping off the legs of the stand. It seems to be quite stable although the concrete floor is not all that level so it is necessary to move it around a little to get all four wheels in contact with the ground. Now the assembly and calibration of the saw have been done – with quite a lot of head scratching it seems to be working well. I do need to change the blade for something less agricultural than the one it came with and at the moment get by using one that I have for my Makita CS which is a bit small but has more teeth and gives a very smooth cut. In the corner is lurking an EB chip extractor / dust creator, found on e-bay and which works well in its dual role. I’d like eventually to put it outside but for the time being it chugs away in the corner.
Next we come on to the recently completed workbench which I made from Iroko. Sitting on it is my engineers vise mounted on a board / batten which is held by the wood working vise below - thanks to the suggestion found elsewhere on this forum. The bench has a ‘temporary’ 18mm ply panel behind it with some tools hanging in easy reach. The reason why I say temporary is that at the moment it is free standing behind the bench as I’m not finally decided on the layout and so don’t want to make any more holes in the walls than is necessary. Once I have decided on the final layout I will fix it properly - or not as the case may be. :roll:
In the corner is my old tool box which I bought when I was an apprentice and which has been filled up over the years. Pride of place are a couple of 3/8” Snap-On ratchets that cost me the earth when I bought them from the Snap-on man with my meagre apprentices wage. For the uninitiated Snap-on are the mechanics equivalent of Festool / Lie Nielsen – very nice and so they should be at that price! Below can be seen cases for a brace of Ryobi 18v cordless drills – by far the most used tools that I have and well worth getting two of them, IMHO as you end up with 4 batteries and for example can set one up for drilling and one for screwing. Next we come to the P/T an MHS 260– another e-bay bargain in as new condition and was amazingly being stored in the same storage unit where I was renting a room to assemble all our stuff before putting it in a shipping container to bring it here! A right result! As with the table saw, the P/T is on wheels and is parked against the wall for the time being. When I need it I can drag it out into the centre of the floor area and connect it up to the chip extractor.
Finally is some shelving where various power tools live - as well as screws and other consumables. The final wall – not shown – has a window and a couple of trunks which need to find a more permanent home.
Well there it is. It is only small but I’m well pleased with it as it is more than I have ever had before and at the moment has exclusive use as a workshop.
All for now – I’m off tomorrow to Guinea Bissau (FYI, a small country on the West Coast of Africa – very poor and the only thing they export are cashew nuts) so things will go quiet for a couple of weeks (hooray I hear you say!)
Cheers,
Steve
