Am I a redneck or what? My workbench is a trashcan with a piece of plywood over it.
Johnnny_reb Once a word is spoken it can not be unspoken!
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Well, at least you have a workbench, all I have is a pool table with a delicate cloth on top...
Svein wrote: Well, at least you have a workbench, all I have is a pool table with a delicate cloth on top...
Workbench? Wassdat? My pool table is off limits to me. I have a square table, a round table, my wife's sewing maching table and two counters to work on when I assemble the few kits I have. No place really to paint anything yet. A pair of saw horses and a 2'x4' 3/4" plywood out in the garage I guess. Unlike at where I lived before where I did some gluing at the kitchen table and my wife went and opened all the windows in the house, turned on every fan we owned and then went for a walk! I'm sure there's somebody on here that wishes he had a trash can to spare. A real redneck would be using the backside of an old broken dresser out on his front porch!
My first workbench was an old metal kitchen cabinet with a piece of plywood fastened to the top. Funny thing is, now that I have what I can call a shop for building models, I still stay in that same 12x18 inch space as everything else around it is completely crowded with 'stuff' that 'I'll use someday'...
rolleiman wrote: My first workbench was an old metal kitchen cabinet with a piece of plywood fastened to the top. Funny thing is, now that I have what I can call a shop for building models, I still stay in that same 12x18 inch space as everything else around it is completely crowded with 'stuff' that 'I'll use someday'...
I wonder when someday will get here? My layout is on hold until the day after someday. I'll be cleaning out the laundry room on someday.
Modeling the N&W freelanced at the height of their steam era in HO.
Daniel G.
Well at least it's easy to dump your mistakes.
Enjoy
Paul
My workbench is a sheet of 1/4 inch Masonite laid over temporarily-placed steel stud joists (held by spring clamps to the L-girders) on the 4+ x 8+ foot benchwork frame that will eventually become the Harukawa area of my layout.
It's amazing how quickly 32 square feet of flat surface can fill up with junk!
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Does your house have chrome wheels on it too?
I was at the city dump a couple weeks ago. Someone pulled up with a REAL nice solid wood 7 drawer desk they were throwing away....I now have a VERY nice new work bench!
Johnnny_reb wrote: Am I a redneck or what? My workbench is a trashcan with a piece of plywood over it.
And you even have a spitoon in the lower right of your pic!! That means you're a high class redneck - otherwise, instead of the brown & tan pot it would be an old coffee can!!
HEdward wrote: rolleiman wrote: My first workbench was an old metal kitchen cabinet with a piece of plywood fastened to the top. Funny thing is, now that I have what I can call a shop for building models, I still stay in that same 12x18 inch space as everything else around it is completely crowded with 'stuff' that 'I'll use someday'... I wonder when someday will get here? My layout is on hold until the day after someday. I'll be cleaning out the laundry room on someday.
After about 30 years, 'someday' still hasn't arrived. I just keep collecting more junk. Once in awhile, I just take a big stick and push it all off into the base of Reb's bench. Usually when I have a complex kit or project that I don't want to become part of the someday pile. Then the someday pile begins to grow again. Some Times, I envy the people who have seen their someDay come and go and are looking forward to the next one.
I decided to build the model railroad in the garage since I lease my vehicle every 2 years. My wife insisted before I laid one piece of track that I remove all the tools off the walls and section off one quarter of the garage for a workshop. She could not see me generating dust that would eventually fall on the scenery.
After the usual period of objections to any idea coming from a wife, I built 2 walls enclosing a section in the front of the garage. I added windows and trim and doors and it now looks like a switch tower. It keeps all shop work and tools in one place and cuts down on the dust that is created especially when using foam board.
It is one of the best ideas I EVER HAD.
Doc
LOL! I just read what you guys wrote and am about to bust a gut!
The spittoon as it was called is just an old crock-pot I use to hold my soldering iron while it cools. BTW a hot soldering iron makes nice fast ugly holes in a GP 50. Learned that one 10 years ago.
My new Work Bench Plan.
I'm planning to build the work bench under the Devinville yard as the module is 18" wide by 96" long. The height can not go below 41" at the underside of the top most frame as I have a large "Craftsman" roll around tool box that well be stored under module #2.
This thread is well titled. Investment in work areas is always well justified.
Doc, how about pictures? Pics of work areas are one of favorites.
I decided that a combination shop and layout room would be ideal for me. Regrets? Only that I wish the layout was 6 inches lower while it needs to be 4 higher.
joe-daddy,
Nice layout and work area. I wish I was that neat.
Will take a few photos and send them a long.
Thanks Doc, but as you probably know, neatness is a cyclic thing. I work and it gets messy. I stop, clean and THEN take the pictures and start back to work.
Lookin forward to your layout and shop!
Joe
Johnnny_reb wrote:Am I a redneck or what? My workbench is a trashcan with a piece of plywood over it.
Don't sweat it. I have a great woodworker's bench, with vises, storage underneath, etc.. So when I moved and no longer had a garage for my second layout, my work bench became the support structure for that layout.
Ever since, I have used a scrap piece of plywood--much like yours, and sit on the floor with it when I build, paint, repair, and such.
I keep telling myself I am going to make a small table to allow me to raise the "bench" from the floor so that as I sit cross-legged, it will be over my legs. I could build it in an afternoon. Alas, typical woodworker: I keep looking for the right wood, over designing it in my mind, coming up with ways to make it a show-piece. It'll never happen!
cregil wrote: Johnnny_reb wrote: Am I a redneck or what? My workbench is a trashcan with a piece of plywood over it.Don't sweat it. I have a great woodworker's bench, with vises, storage underneath, etc.. So when I moved and no longer had a garage for my second layout, my work bench became the support structure for that layout.Ever since, I have used a scrap piece of plywood--much like yours, and sit on the floor with it when I build, paint, repair, and such. I keep telling myself I am going to make a small table to allow me to raise the "bench" from the floor so that as I sit cross-legged, it will be over my legs. I could build it in an afternoon. Alas, typical woodworker: I keep looking for the right wood, over designing it in my mind, coming up with ways to make it a show-piece. It'll never happen!Crews
This is a photo of the outside of my workshop. The short tapered roofs will be added during the Fall as well as the window and door trim to match a PRR tower.
It measures 10' x 14' and contains a table saw, radial-arm saw, grinder, drill press, scroll saw, router, belt/disk sander, compressor, and chest of tools. I added two doors so I could cut extra long pieces of lumber with either the radial or table saw. This came in handy when building the layout table.
I also plan to add a paint-spraying box, which will exit to a window in the garage door. Keeping the doors closed when sawing or carving foam board is a must to keep the dust off the layout.
One technique I use when working on the layout is to put all the hand tools I will be using on a small cardboard tray. This helps eliminate constant running back and forth to the shop to get a tool. When the job is finished everything goes back on the tray and is returned to the workshop for storage. I have separate trays for tools, paint, scenery, track, sanding, etc.
The layout follows the PRR theme with a time stamp of 1967. It contains 4 high speed passenger lines, one freight line and one commuter line. It is approximately 50% completed and I hope to finish up in the fall.
Been there, done that!--well, sort of... I always used a table, never even thought of using a trash can, but the plywood was a fixture for more than 25 years. When I moved out of my parents' place to Go West, Young Man (to see railroads other than Midwest, in their natural habitat), I packed almost my entire workshop into the toybox my Uncle Bill had made for me during WWII. Lately, I've wondered where he found the nice big clear panels of wood he used, but at the time it was a very sturdy box in which to pack tools, parts cabinet, and Dremel #2 Moto-Tool in their drill stand, my only power tool until the late '90s. The hinged lid had disappeared decades ago, so I bought a piece of 3/4" playwood to fit and fastened it on with hinges and hasp and eye for a padlock.
Camped out in a guest cottage in the Colorado Rockies, I brought the toybox inside, detached the lid, fastened the Colbert Panavise to the left front corner, clamped the arm lamp to the kitchen table, and went to work on my original four Ken Kidder/KTM Porter Moguls. When I returned to Wisconsin, I moved into my folks' summer cottage outside Rhinelander, WI, where I spent the next 17 years. They sent up the ancient oak kneehole desk that had been in my sports-car racing shop, then their basement, I unpacked the toybox--and used that piece of plywood as the workbench surface for the next 20-odd years, until I moved to my present "upholstered cliff swallow's nest."
This place is so small that, as Bob Hope once quipped, "(My hotel room was so small) the rats were hunchbacked!"--except no self-respecting rat would live in a place this small. No room for that huge old desk (the six drawers were long enough to hold 20" stripwood and sheetwood) and I dispaired of having room for a workbench at all, but there's a pantry closet across from the kitchen sink (about eight feet!), 3x5' in area, with shelves up the left end wall. I bought a pair of Steel City prefab workbench legs, a 24x48" slab of 1" plywood, some 1x2 and 1x3 for framing and bracing, and have found it adequate for my needs. The only workshop item that's not in there is my Taig Model 4600 Micro Lathe II, which sits on an antique sewing machine table under a "bridge" shelf in the living room, nine feet away.
I made a momentous discovery years ago: the old kneehole desk had two pullout writing shelves, and I found the left one the perfect solution to the cluttered workbench surface. I could get at three sides of things, use the perfect 90 degree sides and end to help me lay out on sheet metal or styrene, and it gave me a lot of freedom of movement. When I built the new workbench, I made a pocket under the workbench near the left front leg, and installed a 12x24" commercial shelf board as a pullout work surface. I still lost tools in the clutter of the main surface, but after more than 40 years of modeling, I got disgusted with myself for this sloppiness, bought a 3-tiered tool caddy--and trained myself to return tools to the caddy between uses. Moral: there's always someplace to set up shop, even if you have to pack it all into a suitcase between uses and shove it under the bed!
I used to pine for the wonderful, cozy workshop next to my model railroad in my folks' basement when I was a kid, or the photos of large workshops in the magazines, but a couple of years ago I realized my Cozy Nook is extremely efficient--once I got things organized--and is actually handier than having a large space where you have to get up and move to another area for some steps of the project.
I hope you can find a Cozy Nook of your own, even if it's just a Cozy Corner in the garage. Happy modeling!
Dean-58