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Darren Wright

Darren Wright

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Springfield, Missouri
Well, my contractor pinged me on Friday and had the quote for my new shop ready. :) We've decided to move forward with this as we still have two storage units up in KC and are paying a good chunk of coin for them each month, probably more than the items are worth in them for the most part, but that is an argument for another day and my shop is within grasp. ;)
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I spent part of yesterday, laying out the location and shooting the grade to get an idea of how much fill we'll need. It's looking like we need 75 to 100 yards of fill due to the slope on the back side. Though the farm is 126 acres, we don't have a lot of good spots to build surprisingly due to the creek and flooding. I could start moving dirt from other places, but my tractor can only move about 3/4 yard per bucket, so I'd be looking at about 180 trips from a good distance where the fill soil isn't mostly sand. Time wise I think we're looking at using plant waste from the quarry, which goes for $35 per 20 tons (not including delivery).
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The location puts it right off the driveway, about 25' between it and the garage to allow a well rig truck to get in to service the well, if need be.
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The contractor will be bringing by a color sheet for the metal this week. My wife is wanting a red/white/blue theme on the farm, so red would complete the look she was going for, with the house being white and the guest cabin blue. I was planning office space in the back corner, which is where most of the windows are, but may change them up before we get to the framing. I need to sit down and do some layout of tools and such, I want at least one or two windows in the shop area.
 
This is going to be great. With the recent shop builds and shop tours on here you will have a cornucopia of ideas, lessons learned and "wish-I-woulda-dunna's" to reference.
 
I don't know what equipment my contractor has in mind to use. Other than spotting the layout, I was leaving it up to him to get it ready. He typically doesn't do pole in ground, so I know he'll be pretty picky about how the base is prepared. Finding a foundation guy has been pretty difficult for him this season.
 
steve ramsey said:
I would highly recommend a vibratory roller of some type and regulating the thickness of your lifts by the size of your roller. Looks like you'll be in the neighborhood of 110 - 150 ton of fill, 5 -8 truckloads.
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+1 on this. Also, you'll want the fill material to be moist...not saturated wet, but also not bone dry. If you've got a good contractor, he'll know what to do. :thumb:
 
So I’ve been looking at layouts and it’s proving to be a semi difficult task. I seem to always throw tools against the wall as that is what I’ve always had, a room full of tools that get pulled out when I need them.

I’m trying to think through things from a workflow perspective and what I’m really wanting to do in the space. Ideally I want some segmented spaces for woodworking, gun smithing, welding, and a cleaner environment for the 3d printing and laser work. The idea of building a few interior walls sounds appealing, but I’m also terrified of committing to the smaller spaces.

My last shop had a small office, which quickly became standing room only with all the projects I do besides woodworking, leaving me wishing it was bigger. It also was the only climate controlled space, but I’ll be spray foaming the interior of the new shop to make it usable year round. So the new office/clean space can be more for the things that need to be worked on in there, vs working on everything because it’s warm in there.

My wife has also been asking for a craft space as well, so it’s likely she’ll be sharing some of the space, which I am encouraging. She really lacks having a creative outlet and could use one after a day of work. I’d like to get her into using the laser and doing some projects of her own.
 
Ryan Mooney said:
So what I hear you saying is that:

Dampen and tamp'n is better than old dozer tramp'n....
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LOL, yep. The vibration/impact plays a big part in getting the particles of fill material arranged and locked together. The moisture acts as a lubricant for those particles. Quarry waste/crusher fines react particularly well to moisture during compaction.
 
Darren Wright said:
I’d like to get her into using the laser and doing some projects of her own.
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I would separate that from the office space personally just from a noise and fumes perspective (ditto the printers) but I'm also fairly sensitive to such things.

In my ideal world I'd have (kind of from one end of the building to the other):
  • A metalshop space (metal shavings in wood, and wood shavings around metal are a poor mix) adjacent to the woodshop. It's not unusual for me to go back and forth between the two pretty frequently on a project. I'm thinking something like (back->front):
    • An adjacent covered but otherwise outdoor (dirt/clay floor) smithy. Probably out the rear of the metalshop
    • Some space for working on vehicles/farm equipment (the "rough" metal shop), probably at the front of the metal shop (with sufficiently sized roll up door to the outside. This would also be where the welder(s) and plasma cutter(s) and similar rough work would also generally live (ideally with room to reach into the next area easily).
    • Middle space has the finer tool machinest area (unclear in my head if this is actually closed off from the "vehicle shop", maybe by a large sliding door with a side man door or something similar? Keeping car dust from the milling machine/lathes/etc.. seems .. potentially a good idea.
    • A side door from the machinest shop into the wood shop.
    • Air compressor either outside covered area adjacent to the two spaces or on the common wall
  • Woodshop space, probably with power and hand tool areas very slightly delineated (power front/metal shop side, hand tools rear/clean space side, assembly area in the middle). Dust collector in an outside enclosure for noise (and clean out), could share enclosure with the compressor (with divider ofc). Large barn door of some sort that also-seals well to the front outside for loading/unloading bulk material. Front or rear (probably rear adjacent to the covered blacksmith area) patio covered with either clay floor or rough wood block floor for outside woodworking (shave horse, spoon mule, pole lathe, and similar live here).
  • A "clean space" hobby area for leather working, gun smithing, jewelry bench, possibly dye studio, etc... I *could* see sharing this w/ a laser/3D printer depending on usage frequency and venting setup. I could also see the laser being in the main woodshop but adjacent to this space. Probably a sliding door and man door between this space & the woodshop.
  • A facility... Cause .. yeah. A shower would be nice to have there as well. A basin sink outside the facility room (probably in the "clean space") would also be super handy for some things (a smaller sink into the woodshop space would also be really handy in the hand tool area).
  • Possibly an office attached to the clean space, although more likely it would just be a desk or two in that space as well.
  • Over the clean space, facility and probably the machinist room I think I'd try to leave open from some area (woodshop->clean space, rough metal shop open->machinest area).
 
The contractor stopped by and looked at the site, and like @steve ramsey mentioned above he said it will take about twice the amount of quarry fill due to how it compacts. He'll be bringing the dozer over next weeks to have it here when he can start getting loads brought in. He said the metal and trusses were the only thing that may hold them up, but he's trying to get that order in asap to get them sourced. He's got his main barn framer that will be doing it and said he'll probably have it up in about a week, once materials are here. He might have a new concrete guy, so maybe will have a slab sooner, rather than later.
 
Well, still thinking this through, and I'm not certain about the taller wall down the last bay, it may not get built. Since we'll be spray foaming the underside of the roof, the trusses will be open anyway I am planning for ceilings in over the two rooms on the back and with the open trusses and wider spacing of those, there should be quite a bit of storage space up there. I also talked to the contractor about maybe an additional door or a pad outside on the end by the office for a room, for dust collection and the air compressor to live in.
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I'm still trying to figure out this online version of sketchup. Seems they've done away with getting 3d warehouse models for older versions via the Collada file, so re-using a lot of components I had in my old shop drawings.
 
Lets see if the sketchup plugin still works to share the drawing...

SketchUp

Draw, orbit, push-pull: make anything you can imagine in SketchUp, anytime you imagine it.
app.sketchup.com app.sketchup.com

Edit: Apparently not, but can click the link to view it.
 
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I showed SWMBO my plans so far and we both agree that we should take out the taller wall and just do the two rooms for now, the office & craft/finishing room. I'll most likely park my truck in that last bay when I'm not needing the space since it won't fit in the garage. Overall we're both excited to have this project going.
 
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