Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: The Question about the Shop

[Stuart Staniford-Chen (stanifor]

Calvin Smith writes:

>I would like to ask for readers of this list who are interested to outline 
> for me and my committee their experiences in developing a workshop, and the 
> general layout of the shop itself, and how it worked out after it was set 
> up and in use.

I developed and run our woodshop at N St Cohousing which we have had for
about five years.  It's a 13'x21' space devoted entirely to woodwork.  We
have a table saw,band saw, chop saw, jointer, thickness planer, as well
as a nice workbench and a pretty good complement of hand and power tools.
Just about all the tools and furniture are on wheels and that is necessary
in our smallish space.

If I count the days on which someone is in the shop for a significant length
of time (more than 15 minutes say), it's probably

Me:             50-100 days/year
Everyone else:  10-30 days/year

The important issue is this -- count the number of people who are *really*
passionate about the activity in question;  those are the folks who will
put most of the miles on the shop.

Our shop does get used a lot for people cutting a shelf to length, or
cutting a piece of trim for their house, etc.  One of our members is now
contemplating building a new set of kitchen cabinets in there which would
create a lot more use of the shop.  (I suppose this is less likely in
a new development though).

As to workshop layout - I'm not sure there is too much that I can say
which is specific to a cohousing workshop.  The classic book on the
subject for woodshops is Scott Landis, "The Workshop Book"  (his 
"The Workbench Book" is also very good).

As to combining functions like auto repair and woodworking - I'd say you
need dividers in the shop.  Even with a dust collection system, power
woodworking tends to coat the place in sawdust - no fun on your partially
disassembled carburretor.  Use of power tools also makes it tough for
two people to work in the same space because of noise issues.

Stuart


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Stuart Staniford-Chen                   | Dept of Computer Science
stanifor [at] cs.ucdavis.edu                    |   UC Davis, CA 95616
h:(916) 756-8697; w:(916) 754-8742      |          and
http://seclab.cs.ucdavis.edu/~stanifor/ | N St Cohousing Community
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