I finished building my new workshop a few weeks ago – something I decided to start building to get me out of my super-cramped garage as soon as the Covid-19 lockdown was announced back in March.
I went for a simple wooden framed design on a concrete base with a flat roof to give me as much headroom as possible whilst staying within the 2.5m permitted development limits on height. Plenty of rockwool insulation in the walls and ceiling and a few inches of celotex on the floor should keep things toastie in winter as well as keeping the machine tool noise inside. I clad it in Siberian larch feather-board for a good and long lasting look.
I now finally have room to swing a cat while making musical instruments (or anything else) although there is still quite a lot of stuff still left in the garage! Here are some pictures of the finished workshop:
In kitting out my workshop with guitar luthier tools, I really wanted to get one of these but they seem only to be available in the USA and the postage is as much as the vice so I decided to build my own.
Here are some very loose plans I sketched for the vice I built from oak firewood!:
Here you can see the wedge used to hold it firmly against the bench
Here is the finished vice:
View of the rotating jaws
Extremely useful when carving the cello necks too.