A photo of your workshop?

A place to share your experience with our Mule Team knives.
User avatar
Bolster
Member
Posts: 5574
Joined: Sat Mar 03, 2007 1:27 pm
Location: CalyFRNia

A photo of your workshop?

#1

Post by Bolster »

If you have a photo of your workshop, care to share? And please list the power tools you use.
User avatar
standy99
Member
Posts: 2205
Joined: Sat Jul 22, 2017 11:07 am
Location: Between Broome and Cairns somewhere

Re: A photo of your workshop?

#2

Post by standy99 »

All I got is a bench. Dream of a workshop nightly ;)
Image

Image

Have a disk sander, drill press and a Dremell and plenty of tools probably too many tools but no workshop. I live tropical and a workshop would need air con to even start to be comfortable.

But boy have I made some stuff on the bench over the years. Profiled the whole balcony rail by rail and coated in oil instead of ugly brown paint to release the beautiful wood grain. Took nearly a year.
Im a vegetarian as technically cows are made of grass and water.
User avatar
RustyIron
Member
Posts: 2376
Joined: Mon Mar 18, 2019 9:01 pm
Location: La Habra, CA
Contact:

Re: A photo of your workshop?

#3

Post by RustyIron »

Here are a couple shots from inside the garage, showing the bigger power tools. The lathe is an Acra-Turn made at Namseon, 17" swing, 55" between centers. The mill is an 11" x 51" table. Both are five horse, and are powered by a 10 horse rotary phase converter.
IMG_1389.jpeg
IMG_1390 2.jpeg
User avatar
Tucson Tom
Member
Posts: 1629
Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2017 10:19 pm
Location: Somewhere in Arizona

Re: A photo of your workshop?

#4

Post by Tucson Tom »

standy99 wrote:
Fri Apr 23, 2021 9:47 am
All I got is a bench. Dream of a workshop nightly ;)

Have a disk sander, drill press and a Dremell and plenty of tools probably too many tools but no workshop. I live tropical and a workshop would need air con to even start to be comfortable.

But boy have I made some stuff on the bench over the years. Profiled the whole balcony rail by rail and coated in oil instead of ugly brown paint to release the beautiful wood grain. Took nearly a year.
I find this inspiring. It is all about the craftsman. This is an interesting thread.

I would like to see some knives that have been made in each workshop alongside the pictures of the
workshops!!
TomAiello
Member
Posts: 6655
Joined: Tue Jun 11, 2013 10:34 pm
Location: Twin Falls, ID

Re: A photo of your workshop?

#5

Post by TomAiello »

My most often used tools are a 2" belt sander (I have a 2x42 and am lusting after a real 2x72, which will be my next knife making purchase), and an oscillating spindle sander.

I think the 2" belt sander is expected, but I'm surprised at how much I use the spindle sander for the edges of handles and especially for the 3d contours.

My workshop is currently packed into a (large) storage closet, because I am in the process of relocating it from the ground floor of my office building into the basement (so that hopefully I can leave it there permanently).
User avatar
Bolster
Member
Posts: 5574
Joined: Sat Mar 03, 2007 1:27 pm
Location: CalyFRNia

Re: A photo of your workshop?

#6

Post by Bolster »

standy99 wrote:
Fri Apr 23, 2021 9:47 am
All I got is a bench.

Sweet bench, though. Better than mine! Bench = the most essential tool!
User avatar
Bolster
Member
Posts: 5574
Joined: Sat Mar 03, 2007 1:27 pm
Location: CalyFRNia

Re: A photo of your workshop?

#7

Post by Bolster »

RustyIron wrote:
Fri Apr 23, 2021 10:54 am
Here are a couple shots from inside the garage...

Rusty, can I come live with you...?
User avatar
Bolster
Member
Posts: 5574
Joined: Sat Mar 03, 2007 1:27 pm
Location: CalyFRNia

Re: A photo of your workshop?

#8

Post by Bolster »

Image

I need a lathe...! But where to put it? The other half of the garage belongs to SWMBO. She wastes it on a...get this...a car. A car, in a garage? Pfff. That's not what garages are for!
User avatar
RustyIron
Member
Posts: 2376
Joined: Mon Mar 18, 2019 9:01 pm
Location: La Habra, CA
Contact:

Re: A photo of your workshop?

#9

Post by RustyIron »

Bolster wrote:
Mon Apr 26, 2021 10:40 am

I need a lathe...! But where to put it? The other half of the garage belongs to SWMBO.
Nice looking shop. I agree, you need a lathe, but two would be better. Don't give up on the wife just yet... I mean... like... who's going to bring you sandwiches when you're working in the garage?
User avatar
Xplorer
Member
Posts: 1344
Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2015 11:41 pm

Re: A photo of your workshop?

#10

Post by Xplorer »

I need a lathe too! Currently saving for a precision tool room lathe, and plan to be saving for a while still.
Image
Here's some pics of my little shop. I live in a townhouse and I have to squeeze everything into half of my 2-car garage. At one time I had nothing but wood working tools in my garage. Then I started racing stock cars and transformed my garage into a race shop where I built and repaired my car. And now I've transformed it once again. With the small amount of space I have I need to keep everything in my work area reduced to knife related tools only. I set up "work stations" for the various processes I do.
Here's a little walk-through..a friend of mine accurately described the look of my shop as 20 lbs of stuff in a 10lb sack, but he didn't say "stuff". ;)
Image

Every new knife starts at the band saw. I just have a cheapo H.F. metal cutting band saw and I made a new table for it to that it had the rigidity and stability it needed.
Image

Grinding station - This is the "King" of my shop.
Image

Buffing
Image

Wire wheel - I love old tools and this one is from the '20s. It still works and I use it to put orange peel finish on Ti parts. The badge on the front of the grinder says "Alternating Current Model" rather than just "A/C" :p that's right..that new elephant killing A/C electricity in this bad boy!
Image

Drill press for basic drilling operations and an old hot stamping press that I use for pressing eyelets as well as hot branding and other press-related stuff.
Image

Kiln for heat treating. Also an old cabinet maker's bench vise converted into my plate quenching vise.
Image

Tub of quenching oil (for the occasional oil quench) and a liquid nitrogen dewar sit under the bench.
Image

Acid and alkaline solutions for etching in the black tubes.. and yes that dust pan is 100% authentic 1970s era :cool: .
Image

The table slides out and becomes my sharpening station.
Image

This is my leather working station. I also use this area to work on kydex so I guess it's my "sheath station". The 2 little drill presses are just for leather work. All of my leather tools, supplies and chemicals stay in one area. The trunk of last year's Christmas tree is holding my rags (Rangna-tree).
Image

Mini mill. For precision drilling and small milling operations.
Image

Hand-work station. Here I have have a surfacing stone, hand tools, a work mat that helps to keep me from losing screws, and a bunch of folder parts and hardware easily within reach. Also a bunch of metallurgy reference data, heat treat recipes and a few design drawings on the wall.
Image

One of my favorite tools in my hand-work station is the blade finishing fixture I made for doing hand rubbed finishes.
Image

Another favorite tool is my hardness tester. I was lucky to get this one from an aerospace company that I helped with some machine problems they were having. They had it calibrated and certified and the following week they bought a new technology for hardness testing and decided this one was useless to them. After I solved their machine problem and trained their operators they gave me this tester as a gift. What a luck day that was!!
Image

Of course I have a regular tool box full of tools and here you can also see a few drilling and milling templates I made for a couple of my folders and there's a few profiled blades hanging up waiting to be brought to life.
Image

With the last little bit of space I had left (going to be used for a lathe one of these days) I set up a little station for my daughter to do her stained glass, mosaic glass and wire/bead jewelry work that she likes to do.
Image

And then there's my new puppy Loki. He's got a little space where he can't get into all the dangerous stuff. Thanks to this little guy, I have a ceiling mounted industrial air filtration unit and a new high power dust vac system arriving Friday.
Image

That's pretty much everything other than the Ti anodizing station...(forgot to take pics of it) and the kydex press (which I've shown in other posts previously).

My shop is a constant work in progress and my biggest on-going project. It's not even close to complete but it's finally reaching a point where it's good enough to be able to do most of what I want to do, most of the time.
Last edited by Xplorer on Wed Apr 28, 2021 11:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
:spyder: Spyderco fan and collector since 1991. :spyder:
Father of 2, nature explorer, custom knife maker.
@ckc_knifemaker on Instagram.
User avatar
Bolster
Member
Posts: 5574
Joined: Sat Mar 03, 2007 1:27 pm
Location: CalyFRNia

Re: A photo of your workshop?

#11

Post by Bolster »

Xplorer wrote:
Tue Apr 27, 2021 4:58 pm
Here's some pics of my little shop...

So...completely...awesome. My desire is split about evenly among: your amazing belt grinder, your 1920s electrified whirling machine, and Loki, that thorn in the side of the gods. Thanks for the photos!
User avatar
Xplorer
Member
Posts: 1344
Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2015 11:41 pm

Re: A photo of your workshop?

#12

Post by Xplorer »

Bolster wrote:
Tue Apr 27, 2021 8:35 pm
.. and Loki, that thorn in the side of the gods. Thanks for the photos!
He's the official head of the mischief department here at CKC ;)
:spyder: Spyderco fan and collector since 1991. :spyder:
Father of 2, nature explorer, custom knife maker.
@ckc_knifemaker on Instagram.
TomAiello
Member
Posts: 6655
Joined: Tue Jun 11, 2013 10:34 pm
Location: Twin Falls, ID

Re: A photo of your workshop?

#13

Post by TomAiello »

Wow. Amazing shop. I'm super impressed and envious. That looks like the product of years of constant effort and accumulation. I'd love to get there one day.
User avatar
RustyIron
Member
Posts: 2376
Joined: Mon Mar 18, 2019 9:01 pm
Location: La Habra, CA
Contact:

Re: A photo of your workshop?

#14

Post by RustyIron »

Xplorer wrote:
Tue Apr 27, 2021 4:58 pm

And then there's my new puppy Loki.

Cute little puppy. My two have the same toy. It's one of their favorites.
User avatar
Xplorer
Member
Posts: 1344
Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2015 11:41 pm

Re: A photo of your workshop?

#15

Post by Xplorer »

TomAiello wrote:
Wed Apr 28, 2021 7:01 am
Wow. Amazing shop. I'm super impressed and envious. That looks like the product of years of constant effort and accumulation. I'd love to get there one day.
Thanks Tom. It's the shop I have now but it's definitely not the shop I intend to have in the future. This is 6 years of slowly morphing into what I need for making knives. Raising kids and having a full time job has ensured progress has been frustratingly slow :D . Now that I've bought or made nearly all of the "cheap" tools progress is getting even slower. At this point every tool I need is over $3000 which brings the pace of progress down to glacially slow :( . For example, I'm hoping to add a proper surface grinder this year and a high quality hand-engraving set-up...a tool-room lathe next year...a pantograph engraving machine the following year...a larger triple-zone 36" kiln for machetes and short swords the following year, etc.. It's a long road :rolleyes: .
As someone who likes to make all sorts of things, one of the greatest things about building up a "knife making shop" is that once it's complete you can fabricate just about anything imaginable. :)
RustyIron wrote: Cute little puppy. My two have the same toy. It's one of their favorites.

Thank you! Dogs are awesome! :D
:spyder: Spyderco fan and collector since 1991. :spyder:
Father of 2, nature explorer, custom knife maker.
@ckc_knifemaker on Instagram.
User avatar
RustyIron
Member
Posts: 2376
Joined: Mon Mar 18, 2019 9:01 pm
Location: La Habra, CA
Contact:

Re: A photo of your workshop?

#16

Post by RustyIron »

Xplorer wrote:
Wed Apr 28, 2021 1:08 pm

As someone who likes to make all sorts of things, one of the greatest things about building up a "knife making shop" is that once it's complete you can fabricate just about anything imaginable. :)
In reality, all you really need is a hammer, a chisel, and a file :-) The more complicated tools are just to save time.

Not too long ago, I was evaluating the sensibility of keeping my larger machine tools. I live in Suburbia and space is limited. Sometimes the machines go unused for months at a time. If I reclaimed their space, I could get a really nice race car. One or the other... which brings more pleasure? Ahdunno.

Since February, I've been working non-stop on an engine restoration that REALLY required the machine tools. Without them, I couldn't have completed the engine (picture below). Tonight I finished it, just in time for a show this weekend. In addition to complex projects, the fully-equipped shop allows more mundane puttering. Last week, my French Press broke. I could buy a new one for thirty-five bucks... or I could go down to the garage and put the tools to work. Woohoo! Saved enough money to buy a round of drinks at dinner. Tomorrow I'll work on turning some buttons for my wife's antique Coke machine. Parts are NOT available. Without a lathe, she'd be dead in the water. Incidentally, after the buttons are turned out of nylon rods, we'll utilize the techniques learned here to use Rit Dye to get the correct color.

A pencil pusher might look at the cost outlay to equip a shop, and ask if it could ever be recovered by making a few knives or fixing toasters. The answer is probably not. But on the other hand, some of us derive a great deal of satisfaction by creating useful stuff out of raw materials. On that, you can't put a price.
IMG_1418.jpeg
User avatar
Bolster
Member
Posts: 5574
Joined: Sat Mar 03, 2007 1:27 pm
Location: CalyFRNia

Re: A photo of your workshop?

#17

Post by Bolster »

RustyIron wrote:
Wed Apr 28, 2021 10:32 pm
A pencil pusher might look at the cost outlay to equip a shop, and ask if it could ever be recovered by making a few knives or fixing toasters.

Pshaw! I've saved HUNDREDS of dollars making and repairing things. Was able to accomplish this simply by investing thousands of dollars in tools.

Extremely cool engine, Rusty. Beautiful.
User avatar
Xplorer
Member
Posts: 1344
Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2015 11:41 pm

Re: A photo of your workshop?

#18

Post by Xplorer »

Sometimes a tool is added to the shop and it makes a bigger impact than expected. Yesterday, I hung my new particulate filter in the shop and I am amazed at how well it works. Moreover, now that I have it I'm asking myself why I didn't get one of these years ago.
Image

This little unit uses 2 stage (5 micron and a 1 micron) filters, 3 speeds, a timer shut-off mode for additional cleanup after I've left the shop and a remote control.
Image

On high it will filter all of the air in my garage 7.5 times per hour! I turned it on low just to check it out and I could see little dust particles floating in the air if I looked directly under the lights. After about 10 minutes there was nothing that could be seen in the air whatsoever.
In an independent test this unit took the air particulate PPM count down dramatically in 90 minutes.
Here's the numbers...
10 micron particulate count went from 4291 PPM to 17 PPM
2.5 micron particulate count went from 155 PPM to 3 PPM
1 micron particulate count went from 21 PPM to 2 PPM

For only $140 I have to suggest to anyone that likes to kick up some dust in the shop that this is a health saving (possibly life saving) tool that is worth every penny!
:spyder: Spyderco fan and collector since 1991. :spyder:
Father of 2, nature explorer, custom knife maker.
@ckc_knifemaker on Instagram.
User avatar
Bolster
Member
Posts: 5574
Joined: Sat Mar 03, 2007 1:27 pm
Location: CalyFRNia

Re: A photo of your workshop?

#19

Post by Bolster »

Nice. What's the story with ^ filter maintenance?

Currently, in my half-garage shop, I use N95s and open the roll-up door on one end and the man door on the other. Saws are on wheels and get rolled outside for heavy use. But a filter would be nice.
User avatar
Xplorer
Member
Posts: 1344
Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2015 11:41 pm

Re: A photo of your workshop?

#20

Post by Xplorer »

I use a full face respirator with the good filters on it when I'm actually grinding handle materials and sending micarta, G10, CF, antler or whatever dust into the air. Like this one..
https://www.homedepot.com/p/3M-Professi ... /206408987

When trying to keep small air-born particles out of your nose and lungs you have to wear a mask that seals on your face and forces all of the air to come in through the filters. An N95 mask contains the vapors that leave your mouth but won't stop the particles from coming in when you inhale. As you inhale, the air and particles draw in from all sides of an N95, not through the paper itself. If you're grinding handle materials please protect yourself properly with a respirator style filter mask. These materials are very dangerous to breathe and no knife handle is worth your health. :)

I also ventilate and use a vacuum to capture as much as I can. But the air inevitably is full of nasty tiny particles that shouldn't be inhaled.

It's when I finish the nasty part of grinding that I want to take off my respirator. This is when the particulate filter is most helpful. With it running on high while I grind and after, it has the air back to clean and healthy within about 15 minutes.

The filters take about 30 seconds to replace and they're $22 for set of 2. I don't know yet how often I might want to replace them.
Last edited by Xplorer on Sat May 01, 2021 2:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
:spyder: Spyderco fan and collector since 1991. :spyder:
Father of 2, nature explorer, custom knife maker.
@ckc_knifemaker on Instagram.
Post Reply