Thread: New Lathe Bench & Shop Tour.

I dont know about the rest of you but I always like viewing other peoples workshops.
How they set them up and use them. I have gained a good deal of ideas and tips from the forums over the years, so now its my turn.

As its a three day weekend here in NZ (National Holiday ) I decided to clean out the clutter and revamp my old workbench which has been doing duty as my lathe bench. It was a bit of an adhoc affair and I was getting annoyed with the bench as it wasn't fit for purpose. Too many critters hiding in the nooks and crannies, too much sawdust ending up where it wasn't wanted, and too much time cleaning up.

DSC02364.JPGAs you can see from this old photo of the bench it was made with 35 X 150 pine planks tongue and grooved to form the top. I have since added a piece of 18mm mdf on the top to give a much better work surface. It was fitted with a small 150 mm woodvice and has been my utility bench for some time in that configuration, including working as a lathe bench.

Time for an upgrade.
I decided to make it an enclosed bench with two doors. One door to hold the tool rack on the exterior and one to hold the pen bushing rack on the inside. The shroud is designed to allow air across the lathe from the fan to keep me cool and move the dust away from the work-piece as well as have somewhere to mount the paper towel holder and other bits and pieces.. (A dust extraction unit will be made at a later date.)

The old 18mm mdf top was sanded back and two coats of glass poly was applied. I prefer the hard wearing attributes of poly and the gloss surface makes it very easy to blow off dust and shavings. Plus its waterproof

The internal storage houses items I want to keep dust free and have easy access to as well as storage for wood turning supplies. As you can see from the photos the shop was pretty messy during this process so it was necessary to have a thorough cleanup. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of space I was able to gain back after everything was done.

If you ever wondered what the holes in a cabinetry workbench are for, well for mine at least its somewhere to mount the second cooling fan

As I'm six-foot two I have the lathe set quite high, its 1200 mm to the center of the lathe center, which is a perfect working height for me. I never have any back problems with this set up.

So all that took the best part of two days with stops in the afternoons because the temperature in the tin-shed gets too hot to work in comfortably. ( Paint was drying in 10-15 mins at 1.00pm today ). All in all I'm quite pleased with this setup. I haven't bothered to fill all the existing knot holes and screw-holes, although that may be something to do over winter. Next workshop to do is cupboard doors on the bench along the wall and a major rubbish clean out.

I've shown you mine, now we want to see yours