Spacious Engineer's Eden
After setting up six home workshops at previous residences, Dennis Wilson knew what he wanted in his new shop after moving to central Ohio. As a retired mechanical engineer, he designed a shop with a spacious floor plan and a unique blend of tools, including machine- and production-shop tools repurposed for his woodworking hobby.
At first, Dennis used the size of his most recent shop as a basis for his new layout. He made a scale drawing of the floor plan and cut out paper templates representing tools, benches, cabinets, and storage racks to help him determine a good workflow for maneuvering full sheets of plywood and 8' lengths of lumber. But he soon realized his proposed floor plan was too small. His solution was to expand it to the final 30×46' structure.
His new shop features a concrete floor with integrated radiant heating for comfort and has 10' ceilings. A half bath offers convenience, while a dedicated room displays completed pieces and souvenirs from his world travels. Bookcases in this room house Dennis's extensive library of books and magazines, below.
A dedicated 200-amp electric panel supplies ample power for the shop full of tools. Dennis created four specific lighting zones to supplement the general shop lighting. All lighting is supplied using LED fixtures.
Dennis installed the ductwork for the Oneida 3-hp cyclone dust collector and outfitted it with three remote switches to turn the unit on or off. Three of his five shop vacuums are dedicated to machines, which helps with shop cleanup.
Dennis's shop space houses a few tools that might look out of place in a hobbyist woodworking shop, including a 1948 Bridgeport vertical milling machine, a full-sized South Bend metalworking lathe, and an Ekstrom Carlson overarm pin router, above. Typically found in industrial manufacturing or machine shops, these now serve as woodworking tools. Dennis uses standard router bits and mills in the pin router, and creates bespoke profiles using custom-ground cutters. He uses the vertical mill for making small parts and accurately machining keyhole slots.
To take his engineer's passion for precision a step further, Dennis owns two large granite plates. Machine shops use these as flat reference surfaces. Dennis uses them for project assembly to aid in squaring or straightening glue-ups.
A trio of workbenches has followed Dennis from shop to shop over the years, but not without periodic modifications to improve their functionality. These include an original 2×8' bench and a rolling workbench he built for use in the apartment he occupied when he started his career. A versatile, traditional-style 36×82" workbench sports a top made from 2"-thick pieces of laminated oak flooring salvaged from railroad cars. This bench also features a traditional face vise and a twin-screw tail vise.
Dennis has accumulated a stockpile of exotic and domestic lumber, including boards from Indiana and Arkansas where he had lived. He says, "I still continue to buy wood occasionally for specific projects but I don't think I can ever use up all the wood I have in my lifetime." But he will, no doubt, enjoy trying to do just that in the latest and, to him, greatest of the many shops he's had.
