Gunsmiths, share with me your shop lay-out?

[Alaskan Ironworker]

So this year I’ll be adding a 24’x24’ great room addition to my house, under which will be a 24x24 daylight basement room which I get to have as a man cave. I will be pouring steel embeds into the concrete floor for which to weld pedestals on which I will mount tools such as a bench grinder, vice pedestal, checkering cradle, belt sander, etc. at some point in the next few years I will get a metal lathe. Im just curious, if it were you, where would you put which tools and why? Is there anything you wish you would have done differently in your gunsmithing shop? Is there any advantage to having the lathe in the middle of your floor as opposed to up against the wall? What other details should I focus on? Anyone wanna draw me a sketch of how your shop is layed out and why would be greatly appreciated. More detailed the better, where are your outlets, where is 220 power, where is ventilation, how many lights and where, where do you wish you had more light? Cabinets? Workbench? Shelving?Help?!!

 

[BWS]

Your only hope is,going vertical. Have owned a professional cabinet/furniture shop for 40+ years. We have a heckuva nice machine shop,along with all process welding to keep things moving.

If there's a horizontal surface,in a shop environment...... well,good luck keeping it organized. Gestapo'ish tactics will do it,but that gets tiresome. Going vertical,floor to ceiling.... is the most efficient use of space in a typical shop.

1st thing in any shop,is ventilation. Because it requires space that's uber hard to "get back" once the equipment starts rolling in. Look at,open front spray booths. Not sayin you need a booth..... sayin,think and start plotting how you can have a vent system yet,not use up real estate. An open fr booth,you can have a cpl/few big roll around boxes in there. Need to finish a stock? Roll'm out.

It can also be a grinding "cell". Controlling airflow is priority #1..... how you do it,is open to only your imagination and resources. Good luck with your project.

 

[Blue68f100]

A lathe normally needs about 3' of space behind it for service and cleanup. Knee bend end mills you can put into a corner if you want but you have to be careful to allow enough room for service. Mine has access to the coolant system in back, drain and pump. This may also limit how long of a part you can put in the bed.

You will also need to make sure you have a way to get the heavy equipment in. Knee bend end mills weights start around 2400 lbs depending on size. Lathes start around 1200 lbs.

 

[earlthegoat2]

Your about to see how hard it is to have metalworking and wood working in the same shop. I would suggest separate benches for metal and wood. Separate vises too.

I like the machines away from the benches as well to keep metal shavings and grinding dust away from finer bench work.

 

[MachIVshooter]

It's not perfectly to scale, but a good representation of the layout. I am, of course, more manufacturer than just 'smith, so a lot more big machines than a gunsmith would typically need, and much of the open space is planned to be occupied by a VMC and probably another CNC lathe or small millturn.

The machines are nearly all 3 phase and hard wired off the converter, but I put red arrows to indicate where I located 240V 50A single phase outlets

The building dimensions are 50'D x 56'W, it's a stepped roof structure





Photos to give a better idea of the actual work space available. I try to pack things in pretty tight, but still leave enough space to work around machines without contorting and getting hurt

 

[Alaskan Ironworker]

Any heavy duty grinding and welding will be in the garage, lathe work and minor shaping of small parts is all that will be done in the new room. The plan is to keep anything that produces mass amounts of dust out of there, though I like the idea of the small grinding/welding booth. So it sounds like the consensus is, put the lathe out in the middle of the room somewhere, have adequate ventilation, segregate wood and metal projects, and utilize full height shelving. Also seems like a good idea to use conventional kitchen style cabinets against the walls to keep mess from collecting underneath. Hmmm..... so much to think about.

 

[MachIVshooter]

segregate wood and metal projects

Definitely. Sawdust & Laquer//Varnish/etc on the metal working machines is as bad as metal chips scratching or becoming embedded in your woodwork. The two crafts simply do not play nice together. We do our woodworking projects in the attached garage at the house.

 

[beag_nut]

Although vertical space is desirable for storage shelves, etc., the really metalworking machines need space at their ends and at the operator spaces. One exception (important) is that the vertical mill have enough space to fully pull the vertical drawbar. That's when not having a drywall ceiling becomes an advantage. The proposed 24 x 24 room should be OK for metalworking. But NOT for woodworking, as I know from my 18 x 24 woodworking shop, when I was making furniture to sell wholesale. (Now retired, but still with the shop)

 

[SGW Gunsmith]

"MachIVshooter" depicts a "superb", well thought through, shop layout for utilizing the area satisfying his needs. My lathe and mill are up against walls, so is my main work bench. Only thing in the middle of the space between my lathe and "knee-mill" on opposite walls, is a separate utility bench served for the mill and lathe as needed from either side.
I don't think there's one universal layout that everyone can or maybe wants to live with. Twenty-six years ago, when we moved home and shop 360 miles northwest, I had a Cleary Building 24 X 36 put up for my shop. As "beag_nut" excellently suggests, if you are planning on doing work on wood stocks, or any other woodworking, it's a very good idea to contain the dust involved however you can. I use a dust collector for my gunstock and grip making area at the opposite end of the metal working area with two assembly (work) benches in between that are accessible all around with a vise or two, on each bench. Sometimes I have several jobs going at the same time.

I have a whole bunch of wall cupboards that hold tooling above my lathe and mill, and my main bench to hold fixtures and tooling for both machines, so every available wall space has a cupboard serving a specific need for milling collets, milling table vises along with parallels, angle plates and indexing fixtures, like this fixture I made for working on Ruger 10/22 receivers:

Same cupboard set-up above and behind my lathe, which contains drills, face-plates and drill chucks and centers for the tail stock along with various cutting tools for the cross-slide.
And don't forget to provide as many "lumens" of light that you can above both of those machines. Seems when I open my shop and turn on the lights the needle on my electricity meter does "orgasmic" spinning, so when not in immediate use, it's good to be able to shut lights off individually.
All in all, you've gotten several good ideas here, but still, I'd recommend that before you start, doodle with pencil and paper as to how you can make your chosen area as convenient as you can for your needs. After the first draft, put it down and look at it tomorrow to see if any changes are necessary, at least until you feel, "That's it, this layout makes me smile"

 

[Keith E.]

So this year I’ll be adding a 24’x24’ great room addition to my house, under which will be a 24x24 daylight basement room which I get to have as a man cave. I will be pouring steel embeds into the concrete floor for which to weld pedestals on which I will mount tools such as a bench grinder, vice pedestal, checkering cradle, belt sander, etc. at some point in the next few years I will get a metal lathe. Im just curious, if it were you, where would you put which tools and why? Is there anything you wish you would have done differently in your gunsmithing shop? Is there any advantage to having the lathe in the middle of your floor as opposed to up against the wall? What other details should I focus on? Anyone wanna draw me a sketch of how your shop is layed out and why would be greatly appreciated. More detailed the better, where are your outlets, where is 220 power, where is ventilation, how many lights and where, where do you wish you had more light? Cabinets? Workbench? Shelving?Help?!!

Talk your better half into a bigger Great Room which will, of course, require a bigger basement.

Keith