My shop is definitely what you would call 'compact'. At 1.7m x 3.8m, its not much more than a walk in wardrobe! I would say it is best described as like a galley kitchen... without any food. 

I walk in, and basically from a standing position, I can reach pretty much everything I need at any time. And although it is a bit tight, I have learned that I don't really need a huge amount of space. The scale of the work I am doing is quite small, so I rarely have a problem. When I do, I just take it out to the 'outside' area, and work there. There's barely a spare inch of wall or shelf space, but in truth I want for nothing. Everything except the band saw fits inside too, which keeps it out of our humid tropical climate.

To make such a small space work, I've had to become very efficient at storing things. A big part of that was the initial choice of work benches, which is what I want to show you today.

Before I set it up, I had a very clear picture in my mind that the shop had to be a comfortable place to spend a lot of time. I figured I would be spending a fair bit of time in it, so it might as well be pleasant. A big part of what I had in mind was a big, solid wooden bench; something really heavy, unique and long lasting.

I scoured the web for ideas, and found plenty of designs that were basically box structures, with lap joints, screwed and glued, and then some sort of basic wood board top. Pretty basic, and easy enough to put together over a weekend. However most of the designs had the weight being borne as a shear load by the screws. Probably ok for light duty, but I had in mind a milling machine that weighs 370lbs/170kg. I wasn't sure that these simple benches would cut it for something that heavy. Besides, they didn't really look that... enticing.

So already doubts were creeping in about these simple designs. I also wanted something with character. Something that would sit like a rock, handle being dug into with a screwdriver, hit with a hammer, chipped and knocked about. Not made from that cheap pine you see everywhere these days, but from a decent hardwood. I wanted something that would develop character as it aged over the years, and hopefully something that would last for decades.

And definitely no screws. All wood.

So I played around with some sketches, and did some research on how to do a good solid join without metal fasteners, and this is what I came up with:

I guess you could call the horizontal platforms "trusses". They're made from spotted gum, and the truss joins are fastened with oak dowels, tapped in and glued with PVA. They were then cut off and sanded back. The corners joins are all mitered, and I used a router to mill a pencil round on all of the exposed edges to make the corners safer. I also milled ornamental grooves into the legs to pretty it up a little.

The truss ends sit in milled recesses on the legs, so that all of the load is put onto the legs in compression, rather than as a shear force on the fasteners. I think this should be very strong. In fact It's probably over engineered a bit, but it's nice to know I can up-size my mill later, and not have to think about the bench. Besides, nothing too strong ever broke.

As you can see, it was assembled in position in the shop, so it's there for the duration.  The top is also spotted gum and the finish is linseed oil, which makes the shop smell kind of nice too.

This bench ended up being dedicated to the mill, so I made another two. One running down the side of the shop, as a general workbench, and one for the outside 'dirty' area, that also has a simple woodworkers vise attached.

So it's now a few years later, and of course the floor space remains the same. But the tiny little shop has well and truly flourished. What was a little flicker of an idea, has now grown into something that fills up most of my spare time, and brings me a lot of enjoyment. These benches were the very first things I made for my shop, and I couldn't have got started without them.

Thanks for stopping by,
Chris.

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*...Big Things Grow. Paul Kelly.

One of the constants of my small home machine shop, is the need to match up disparate equipment so that they can cooperate together, to "do good work*". Not an easy task, but yet another great excuse for more tool building. (did I mention how I like to build tools...?)

A great example of this, is how I connected the newest acquisition to the shop, the Divisionmaster CNC indexer, to my two Chinese lathes.

One component I had to make to fit the indexer, was this mandrel to fit the rear of the lathe bore:

As I mentioned last week, the tools from China are great for getting the shop up and running, but the QA can be a bit patchy. But would it surprise you to learn that the run-out of the rear of the lathe bore was 30 Thou? I can understand 4 or 5, but 30?! Was he boring it with his eyes closed? No space program for you my friend...
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Simply clamping the rotary table to the mandrel without addressing this runout was not an option. The eccentricity would pull the table off the axis of the lathe, and result in rotational error that would quite literally be printed on my clock wheels as a variation in tooth space. We don't want that, no sir.

The solution: Turn an eccentric mandrel, and then mount it so as to to cancel out the error.

Easier said than done. I made a nice little collection of near misses, before I came up with one that acceptably balanced the error, and then of course I had to find the correct rotational alignment to cancel the error.

The result was a residual run-out at the back end, of about a thousandth of an inch. Which is where the bellows coupling comes in. It flexes enough to accommodate that small error, and the rotary table now sits as solid as a rock on the lathe center line, as it rotates through 360 degrees. So the superb rotational accuracy of the CNC driver and the rotary table is translated to my clock wheels, and now everybody is happy. Well I'm happy.

There's another example of a witness mark on the rotary table fitting too, to account for a very slight run-out in the Sherline tables' central hole. (Yes that surprised me too...)

The spigot fitting I made to fit onto the table, was milled in place, and this dot was marked at the zero degree position while it was still on the mill. Provided it goes back into the same place every time, I have a perfectly concentric spigot. 

By the way, here are some other bits and pieces of the lathe indexing set-up.

There is a stand-off rod, that attaches to the change gear banjo, as well as a plate that fixes onto the back of the rotary table, and a hand wheel to fix the whole thing together. I got a bit fancy with the shaping on that one... I figured if I'm going to be using this thing for the next few decades, it had to look better than a hacked off piece of scrap aluminum.

Be sure to check out this system in use in the Wheel Cutting video.

Thanks for stopping by,
Chris.

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* Yes, I'm a confirmed NASA tragic, the quote is from Gus Grissom.

I was recently asked what sort of equipment I have in my shop.

Most of the gear that is available to me for purchase, inevitably comes from China*. I have dreams of Hardinge, Schaublin and Myford, but the truth is I've never actually seen any examples of them with my own two eyes. In my part of the world (Australia), they rarely if ever turn up for sale, and importing them new (or even s/h) is prohibitive. So, like you I suspect, I'm stuck with the stuff from China.

But is that such a bad thing?

For one thing, your dollar goes further. A lot further. You can get a whole home shop started, with the money you might have dropped on a s/h restored Myford (assuming you could find one). Yes its substandard equipment, in almost every respect, but it will get you well and truly started on machining. As opposed to having a sweet little Myford on the bench, with nothing left over in the wallet, to buy anything else.

With the money left over, you can splash out on the better cutting tools, put them in the cheapo machine, and start making beautiful chips. Believe me, it makes a difference.

Secondly, it forces you to learn. All of the little defects, provide the perfect motivation to learn the craft of machining, and every defect made in China has a solution; it just depends on how creative you want to be with your efforts. Suddenly you're searching out mini-lathe.com and lurking around yahoo groups looking for the best ideas; maybe even coming up with your own. Before you know it, you're pushing engineering drawings in front of your wife, showing "your latest solution to the tail-stock runout problem". All very good practice, and also very good fun.

And finally it leads you inevitably to that important engineering fact: There is no such thing as perfect accuracy, just tolerances.

You are now well inside the abilities of your cheap little mini-lathe or mill, and you know what it can and can't do. You have a few little cheats and work-arounds for when it really counts, and you now have a good appreciation of when to relax and just accept +/- "whatever". And all of this was provided to you for a fraction of the price of the good stuff.

Of course, you can also crash the carriage, drop chucks on the bed and generally make all the stupidest, dumb a**, cringe-worthy mistakes a rookie can make, and know that all you've done is scar a cheap little disposable tool. But then I wouldn't know anything about that...

The dreams of course, never stop.

As always, thanks for stopping by,
Chris.

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* For the record: I have a Sieg SC4 Lathe, a Sieg SX3 Mill drill, and a CQ6125 9 x 20 lathe, all from "Over the pond" as Tubalcain says. My small Band Saw claims to be Taiwanese, but I think I detect a Chinese accent...

My USA made gear is top quality, and includes an outstanding (and much used) Delta 1" Belt Sander, a Bench Filing Machine made from Andy Lofquist's castings, and a fine little Sherline lathe.