Thanks for the warm welcome. I have always been a model railroader and have moved from scale to scale through the years. I still model in O scale but my shop is setup for the bigger 1/8th scale stuff for the live steam hobby. I live in rural southern Oregon in a very small town called Chiloquin. Located here is a world class live steam park called Train Mountain. TM is listed in the Guiness Book as the worlds biggest outdoor hobby railroad. We currently have over 36 actual miles of track. There are several members that build model structures to add to the model scene.
http://www.trainmountain.org
When I retired and moved from the San Fran area up to rural Oregon I built my life long dream shop. Its 40x50 with very high ceilings. I have a 48x96 ShopBot with a 4hp spindle as my main toy. I also have a couple of bnad saws with the largest being a 19in. I have a miter saw, table saw, Hawk scroll saw, and all of the supporting kinds of stuff. The DC system is the 4500cfm system from WoodMasters.
I don;t do woodwork for hire just as a hobby. Having said that I make enogh side money to pay for my shop expenses for the shop. I do lots of little jobs like simple bookcases, and lots and lots of signs!
I will try and do a documented build sometime in the next month or two, but I warn ya' i'm not that organized to do as great job as the super builds I've seen here. My buildings are really pretty simple builds. I start with a base that is 2x4 PT covered by a sheet of 1/2 ply. This gets several coats of Kilz as a primer coat. I cut out the building sides and ends. All of the wood gets several coats of the Kilz as primer. These are then screwed together with 2x2 braces in the four corners. I also line the bottom four edges with 2x2 braces and screw that to the base and the sides and ends. Lastly I cut a long piece of 2x4 that has been shaped to match the roof line of the structure. This also gets screwed in. At this point I do the first couple of color coats of finish paint. I also cut out lots of strips of wood for all of the trim and detail pieces. During the routing of the sides and ends I design in a little recess for the trim pieces. That way when I add a little bit of trim there is a place for it to go and a little trim really makes the routing jump out detail wise. I am fortunate that these buildings are not part of a diarama where folks are standing right next to the structure to view it. We have a saying around here that we use the 7-20 rule. That is we are going to view the structure from 20 feet away and at 7 mph!
Thanks again for the warm welcome, I appreciate it. Russ
Grain elevator located in Chiloquin
My model of the grain elevator, 4ft x 4ft x 8ft high
Located in the woods
My dream shop
A rare pix of the shop actually clean!