Greetings,

How big is big enough? 40'x40'? Assumer for a lathe, milling machine, press and some others.

Any input wanted.

I have a graduate engineering student will design the foundation and the rest of the building
for that matter if I can give him an idea of dimensions and the mass of the machinery.

I am looking forward into the future by around 3-4 years.

Thanks.

Roger,

I have about 600 square feet of actual shop space. Since I employ only myself, this is plenty of room for my operation. In this space, I have a 13x40 gear head lathe, a floor model knee milling machine, a Miller TIG welder, A large verticle 60 gal compressor, a band saw, a solvent cleaning station, A dirt room with bench grinder, disc sander, chop saw and an area to test fire weapons, a welding table an electronic microscope, Reamer/tool cabinet, a 20 piece gun rack, 1 work bench, 3 storage benches and a portable tool cart.

I have another seperate area for the computer, additional gun storage for 100 long guns, and supplies.

The space is well thought out and everything is placed to allow simple, methodical and efficient access. There is not enough room for anyone to hang around (by design)so there is no distractions. I am the only one here so I don't need any more space than this. Any more space than this would give more area for springs and gun parts to fly... I don't need that.


Malm

Roger,
My hot work area is 22x14 (more than 1/2 of a 2 car garage) and my cold work (aka, heated, a/ced, and clean) is 12x10, upstairs.
But, remember, I am just an overly serious hobbist

hot work has mill/lathe/drillpress/grinders/sanders/sandblaster/welder/compressor/bandsaws and then wood working tools and leather dyeing

Cold work is reloading, leatherwork, powder, dies, bullets, primers (10feet away from powders), reading, full bathroom. My wife has the other half of the studio above the shop, for her stuff. about 22x12 or so.

jeffe

Roger

I hesitate to reply on this thread as I'm a living example of the old axiom, no matter how big the shop you will fill it up.

The entire shop is 1625 sq ft.

I have a dirty room that contains a bead blast cabinet, parts washer, jet sander with 6X48 belt and 12 inch disc, sears sander with 6X48 belt and 9 inch disc, 3ea 3/4 hp baldor buffers, one 1/3 hp baldor buffer, a 3/4 hp debur machine, 1X42 belt sander, 21/2X60 horizontal sander, 14" Milwaukee band saw, 21" Powermatic band saw, 12" table saw, 6" joiner, a chop saw, Porter Cable 15" disc sander and a Don Allen stock duplicator.

My clean room contains 3 glass show cases around the front door to partition customers off from the rest of the shop. Behind that are work benches, gun racks and storage lockers. Then follows machine shop equipment. 5900 12X48 Clausing varible speed lathe, 9X42 2J Bridgeport mill with a shaper attacthment on the back, 12X36 Atlas lathe, No. 8 Bardons-Oliver turret lathe (for sale), Elite AR5 tool grinder, Miller tig welder, Lincoln stick welder, oxy/acet rig, Tempco furnace, #2 Kerney Trecker horizontal mill, #2L Brown and Sharpe surface grinder, 12 ton hydraulic press, two arbor presses, 71/2 hp 2 stage air compressor, Sheldon horizontal bench mill, Benchmaster 6X18 vertical knee mill, Walker Turner floor drill press, Rockwell bench drill press and several bench grinders.

Attached to the back of the building there is a little 10X12 ft bluing shed with a gravel floor.

I heat and cool the clean room only.

Also in my garage I have a 14" band saw and an Atlas 6" lathe for sale.

G.Malmborg: In regard to keeping customers visits to a minimum, do you have any advice? My biggest problem is having to wait on customers who are justs kicking tires and my work time is reduced. Right now I sell a few firearms too so by law I can not be open by appointment only.

Also do you have any plans for a good bullet trap for test firing? Right now I'm using a heavy metal pipe with a sand trap. I would like to build an inertia design.

Craftsman,

The people who come to my shop either present an unloaded, action open, or cased weapon, or a claim check. If they have neither, I answer their questions and get them on their way as fast as I can. I am not ignorant with them, but courteous and to the point. I don't sell firearms to the public so I don't have the usual browsers...

Other than parking your vehicles out of sight and placing a closed sign on your door, I don't know what to tell you... Sorry, can't help you there.

As far a bullet trap goes, I have a heavy metal box that I place discarded phone books into and shoot in to these. I fire everything from full autos to shotguns into it and when the phone books are properly pulverized, I simple replace them...

I would prefer a water trap if I were able to afford it. Something maybe 12 feet deep, 50 feet in length, heated with a diving board at one end. I wonder if I could write something like that off?


Malm

P.S. I have learned a couple of things over the years such as, if you have a comfortable place with enough room for people to stand and mill around in, they will. If you have an area with a lot of space you will fill it. If you lose your wife in a large department store, strike up a conversation with a good looking big breasted woman, you're wife will appear from out of no where...

HEY'
One of my smiths,resolved the problem of to many phone calls and tire kickers.For all intense and purpose,his shop is closed on Monday and Tuesday.He is actually working on those days.Does not pick up the phones,until Wedsday.It's amazing how much work,his shop gets done,on those two days.
1geejay
www.shooting-hunting.com

Thanks for the replies. I have been thinking about foundations (very difficult building on the tundra) machines and anything else I can.
Since I am here at the university I can get a lot of design work done for free. I have an engineering student working on a foundation design, complete with materials list, weight and cost as his senior project. The engineering professors here are absolutely top notch and Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks is THE premier engineering school for arctic design. If the foundation gets signed of by the prof. it will be buildable as-is. If not it will get sent back for more work.

This is fun and I have more than enough time to oggle machinery and such. I have ordered some books on die-making and machinery. One is already on the way, Southbends lathe book. I need some more. I can't break the bank yet though, Christmas coming up.

GeeJay: I have an approach similar to your gunsmiths, I am working at the shop by 8:00 AM but I am open to the public from 1:00 to 6:00 PM. That helps some. An instructor once told me you have to make like a donut shop, bake all night and sell all day.

Malm: Jack Belk has a water bullet trap like you described.

When I stated my shop in this present house I was only doing stockwork. I have heard Gary Goudy say that any stock maker can do his trade in a 6X6 foot space. Hell I have more garbage in my shop than that. My area is approximately 20 X 12 and should do nicely. That is until I got the metalworking bug.

A belt drive Jet lathe was added. I now have a Bridgeport Mill, a KO Lee surface grinder, and a sand blaster sitting in storage waiting for me to get it installed somewhere. The somewhere was supposed to be a sideways addition of 20' X 36' that would have served me nicely. Only the county building department said it was not sideways, it was backwards as in my back yard and I can not build that way...... unless I have a 5 foot separation between the garage and the addition (not really an addition but a separate structure). I asked if there was supposed to be reason involved in this and was told no, but I can not do what I did want to do. I then decided that I could go forward with the garage but when wifey found it it blocked her kitchen window she had a fit. I am looking now at occupying one half the garage and extending to the back(really the side) for an additonal 15 feet). I will put a separate rust bluing room in the back(side) addition as well as a dust room (sanding, grinding etc), as well as a finishing room. The mill and lathe and my welder will be in he other half of the garage. I will continue to do stockwork in the room in the basement, then again maybe not.

So as of now I have 240 square feet and eventually I will have 245 square feet at a cost of thousands. No actually it comes to more like 840 total.

Roger,

Are you looking solely for a gunsmithing shop, or will you work on other projects as well? If you might be working on 4 wheelers, boats, etc, then you might want some open space as opposed to wall to wall tools.

I've been doing some design work for a house, and also sketched up some ideas for a dedicated shop. I figured if I build the basement in the house to provide a shop, I'll have a shop much sooner then if I built the house, and then the shop. The layout I have for the house is a bottom floor that is 36X36, and a 12X36 shaped L, 12 ft wide as the shop area, a 24X24 for the 2 car garage, and the rest of the space for stairs, laundry et al.

If I was building a dedicated shop, I planned on a 30X40 building, a 12X40 section would be for metal working, and the 18X40 would be general shop area, ie dirty stuff.

One thing to consider is segregating the shop into at least two areas. The lathe, mill et all should be a clean area, where abrasives and fumes from the dirty area won't get to the tools.

A shop is only too big if you've spent so much money on it that you can't afford to fill it with tools. I've worked in cramped shops, and spaceous shops, and much prefer a spacious shop.

Figure out how you'll be moving tools and material through the shop. A gantry crane on the ceiling is great for moving tools, stock, and projects.

A gantry crane? What kind of gunwork are we talking about?

Gentlmen
I have just started doing the interior work on my new shop and from what I can tell I could have made it twice as big...eventhough my new shop is about four times as big as the one I'm in right now.
Ever seen the "Gunsmiths utopia" in Gunsmith kinks IV??...I started drawaing and building my new shop long before I saw that , but thats about what I am getting ready to move into.And it seams to small.
I guess what's wrong is that in my 25m2(280 sq.feet) old shop there is guntools in every corner...even some on top of each other...in my new shop 200m2(2200 sq.feet) I'm making a spot for everything... a room for woodworking, one room for welding and beadblasting etc.
I hope things will look diffrent when I start moving my mill and lathe into the new shop, hopefully I have more space then I think. I think I might be in trouble if I cant make my shop fit in a 200m2 shop.(I have made arangements so that I can expand my shop area into my new garage....)
S

IMO, Keep is as small as you can. Things tend to spread out if you have too much room. This is especially true if you have other people in your shop.

A 4-6" floating slab with 3/8 or 1/2" rebar should be more than enough unless you plan on doing a lot of power punch press or power shear work. We don't have tundra here in Montana but that is how my slab is set up to deal with the frost / thaw conditions we get. I have a 12" slab due to the equipment we run but in 10 years haven't had one crack or chip.

FWIW, John