I only got into woodworking recently, when I learned that a friend of mine from work was actively involved. He has done lots of work in the US, but on moving here had decided to use only hand tools. As he had sold or stored all of his power tools in the US, and it was fairly useless to bring them with him, this made a lot of sense. Getting into woodworking myself, I have to say that this did NOT make a lot of sense to me. One of the first things I bought was a router.
I have come around. There are still some tools that I very much want but given that MWF, the boy, the dog, and I will eventually (probably) move back to the US, I just don't think that it makes a lot of sense to invest thousands of Euro in tools that I can't take back. And it's not that I can't take them back, but the killer is the frequency conversion. 230V to 120V is doable, but 50Hz to 60Hz just isn't. So, hand tools for me, which is a good thing anyway (in most regards, but I will get to that).
Back to when my friend was still here in Dresden, he rented out extra space in the basement of his building to set up his own shop. It was a pretty sweet deal for him, since he just had to ride the elevator down and BAM!, to work. When he left I took over the shop space and thus am now the proud renter of 18 square meters across the river from where I live.
Here is my shop:
Okay, I exaggerate a bit. Please note the bottom left of the building:
My shop, being in the basement, lies under the rooms connected to that ground floor balcony. Going in, and down, this is my domain:
The jointer/planer is on loan from a friend who bought it, but never used it. I only just recently got it set up and working, and will give it back to my friend. There are just too many issues with it. The other power tools you can see in the picture are mine, and I am quite pleased with them. The chop saw was a gift from many friends on my birthday a couple of years ago and has been good to me. For a project that I currently have going which uses an insane amount of bridal joints, MWF was nice enough to agree to let me buy the drill press, to clear out most of the waste. Other than that, not in the picture are the aforementioned router, a small circular saw, and a random orbital sander.
Stacked neatly under the workbench is a project that has been on hold for quite a while. The short story is that I need some fairly large plates for a shoe chest, and I have been struggling quite a bit to get stuff that doesn't cup and warp on me. Until I get that figured out, the project is on hiatus. Incidentally, this is what I hoped the jointer would help with, to get some nice boards to glue up into what I need. That has now been scrapped and the project will go on with all hand tools, but more on that later.
Of some importance to the ambience is this little setup:
The most important "tool" in the shop is because of this:
That's the blade from a #4 Stanley Handyman set up for reference. The walls of the building are very, very think sandstone. The good thing about that is the good insulation properties of the room. Not too hot in the summer, and not too cold in the winter (German houses are not too keen on central heating, and there is no radiator in the room). Overall good, but sandstone is quite porous and as the room sits underground, the damp is a major, major problem. Thus, the most important thing in the shop is this little guy:
The dehumidifier runs all the time, and gets emptied about once a week.
Welcome to my shop. Maybe next time I'll actually show you some of my work, but I'll need to get over some of the embarassment.
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