New Shop

[Alan Bienlein]

Hey Jeb how happy are you with the size of the drawers on that work bench? I'm getting ready to do mine and was wondering if you had any regrets with what you built?

[Jeb Taylor]

Hey Jeb how happy are you with the size of the drawers on that work bench? I'm getting ready to do mine and was wondering if you had any regrets with what you built?

I like it, but I've got some changes in mind. The current bench is 8' wide, the drawers are about 29" wide x 22" deep, and the usable heights in the drawers are 4", 8", and 12". They all have 100 lb slides and I don't have much trouble opening/closing them. If you had any lighter slides, I'd go with narrower drawers or I don't think they'd open well.

As far as the height of the drawers, the 12" and 4" drawers are great, the 8" high drawer isn't any more useful than the 4". I'll at some point split the 8" drawer into two drawers. I still plan to add either 2' or 4' to the side of this bench and put a lot of shallow drawers with dividers for hand tools and measuring tools, and probably a file cabinet drawer in the bottom of one for manuals and drawings.


Larry: it's actually a solid walnut workbench. You'll understand when you look at it close up, but most of the wood really wasn't fit to be used for anything else. I bought several hundred bd ft of walnut for $800, but most of it was in bad condition. I got a few really nice pieces of walnut, some stuff that wasn't fit for much but a bench, and a lot of firewood out of it.

[Jim C Bradley]

Another dust collector question if anyone reads this. I can't think of any reason for a 1 man shop to have different size main and branch lines. All the air should be coming from any 1 machine at one time, and you don't want to velocity to slow down half way to the DC.

I understand if it is a comercial shop that could be using 2 branches at once, you would want a bigger main line with small branches. It just doesn't make sense that I can think of for 1 person.

So am I missing something here? All the manufacturers diagrams I look at drop down in size from the main line to the branches.

I am totally happy with six-inch all of the way with part of the drops being 4-inch. I do have two two and a half-inch pick-ups right where the chips come off of the wood lathe. Do use two 45 degree els coupled together to make all of your ninty-degree turns. My blast gates are all commercial (really did not like the plastic gates) and are in the 4-inch part of the line, right at the machine.

Need any questions answered or need pics; give me a PM.

Enjoy that wonderful new shop feel.

JimB