Designing a Small Woodworking Shop for your Home

Improving the design of your woodwork shop is an ongoing obsession, with many woodworkers. Others may need to expand their shop as new projects and equipment arrive. When designing and setting up your shop it is important to make it the most efficient space possible.

Setting up your Ultimate Woodworking Shop

Setting up a woodworking shop can be easy. To get started, ask your woodworking friends for help or join a local woodworking club. Making the shop perfect will take years. Designing your ultimate woodworking shop layout depends on the type of woodworking you like to do. For example, wood turners might change their shop design to put the wood lathe in the shop's central work area with the best light. With different woodworking styles in mind - here are some general tips I've learned over the years that I hope will help you to get the most pleasure out of your woodworking shop., no two dream shops are exactly alike.


Building a New Woodworking Shop

Once I had arrived at what I thought was a stable design, I looked at and got quotes for several different construction methods, traditional stick built, pole barn, SIP (Structural Insulated Panels), and CIF (foam concrete forms). My preference was for CIF but the cost of a pole barn was more compelling so I selected this method instead. For me, the pole building had the following advantages over CIF's.


Shop Designer

On-line software to help layout a wood shop. Every shop is unique, therefore faces it's own unique challenges. You workshop may be in a garage, a basement or it own building. Regardless you must make the best use of the space, to make your workshop layout as efficient as possible.


Grizzly Workshop Planner

Start planning your workshop now. The Grizzly Workshop Planner is a fun, interactive way to plan your shop.


How To Set Up a Home Wood Shop

There are many things to consider when setting up a wood shop at home. The task can be somewhat intimidating, and even professionals find decision making to be difficult.This is easy to understand when you consider, for a professional, his livelihood depends on production. The faster he / she is able to move the project out the door, the faster he gets paid.


Tips for Setting up Your First Woodwork Shop

A workshop is a woodworker's castle before we delve into the details, it is worth reflecting on the philosophy of your shop. We will be covering best practice and you should expect your workshop to evolve over time as you take on new projects, expand your horizons and utilize new tools and techniques.


First Planned Shop

Need help planning a new workshop? Or maybe you've got the urge to reorganize the one you have now. Either way, you've come to the right place. In idea shop one you'll discover how we took a 14x28' bare-bones room and remodeled and outfitted it into the sensational, featured filled woodworking center shown here. Use any of the ideas you like -- after all, we built this shop just for you.


Shop Layout

The shop you see in the layout is my current setup and has evolved over many years to accommodate most importantly the acquisition of newer equipment but also better work flow. It is a free standing 2 story barn with office and storage space on the second level. Lumber and supplies are moved in and out of the shop through the front overhead door. To the left of the door are the lumber and plywood storage racks. Across from the lumber rack and to the right of the overhead door is the radial arm saw, miter saw and mortise utilizing a single fence system for all operations.