Selecting the lighting fixtures and layout of the lights in the woodworking shop is a task that requires a significant amount of time and planning. It is necessary to determine where all of the stationary tools, work bench(s), mobile tools will be positioned to determine how much and where the lights need to be placed. It is never desirable to place a light such that you are casting a shadow when using a power tool.
The most common home woodworking shop light fixture is the tube fluorescent lighting. They are energy efficient, low cost and easy to install. (more…)

There are several lighting options to light the wood shop, fluorescent, incandescent, or compact fluorescent. Which is the right one for my wood shop? Each light option has its strengths and limitations.

Incandescent light bulbs have been the main stay for lighting just about any space in the home. They are cheap and easy to use. However, they give off a huge amount of heat. A typical 60 watt incandescent light bulb will give off 10% light and 90% heat! So, out of the 60 watts of electricity 54 watts are turned into heat. Hmmm. Do you recall what the heat source for an Easy Bake oven is?

Strip fluorescent lamps are the most common lamps. They come in a variety of lengths from ten inches to eight feet long. The smaller units have an electrical plug where as the longer units are designed to be hard wired. Fluorescent light bulbs’ light is, depending on your visual taste, a harsh white light. My wife’s parents do not light tube fluorescent lighting for this reason. However, I have come across replacement fluorescent light bulbs that give off a more natural colored light.

Another draw back of the fluorescent lighting is cold temperatures. When the air temperature drops to the 40’s or lower, the lights need time to warm up. When they are first turned on they flicker and give off an annoyingly loud hum. After several minutes the flickering stops and the hum subsides.

Compact fluorescent light bulbs are becoming more affordable and accepted by the home owner. The early models took a while to ‘warm up’ before they reached their full illumination. It is a pain when you turn on the light switch and the light comes on at a very dim level and it slowly over a minute or two comes up to the full brightness. It looks like the compact fluorescent manufactures have been listening to the consumers, now a days, most all of the compact fluorescent light bulbs in my house turn on at nearly full illumination with the flip of the switch.

The nice thing about compact fluorescents is that they are compact enough to replace an incandescent light bulb in a light fixture that was designed to use incandescent light bulbs. Compact fluorescent light bulbs give off very little heat so most all of the electricity is used to produce light instead of heat.

Compact fluorescent light bulbs are more expensive than their incandescent counter parts. The only other negative I have is that depending on how well the compact fluorescent light bulb was manufactured it could literally burn out and burn up. About two months ago my kids where in the living room with a table lamp on that has a 27 watt (equivalent to 100 watt incandescent) compact fluorescent light bulb in it. The table lamp was on and I was outside working in the wood shop. My kids came running out to get me to come inside. When I came inside I saw smoke coming out of the table lamp’s light bulb. After the compact fluorescent light bulb cooled down I inspected it and noticed that the joint between the tube and the base was blackened and some kind of black gooey stuff had oozed out. Fortunately no damage was done, other than the bulb had died.

How do you determine when a compact fluorescent light bulb is at the end of its life? I don’t know. The only other compact fluorescent bulb that burned out just stopped working, without trying to catch fire. If you have any suggestions, leave a comment.

I have read about wood worker’s who use clip on reflector lights with either incandescent or compact fluorescent light bulbs. It works great for low ceilings, such as a basement, where hanging a hardwired fixture are going to get in the way. Another advantage is that the light is right where you need it.

In my wood shop I went with four foot strip fluorescent lamps. I installed two of them. They model I used came with a four foot power cord. When I was wiring up the shed, I installed an electric outlet half way in between the lights. The lights are controlled by a light switch at the door.

When wiring the shed, I added a separate circuit just for the lights. Yeah, it may seem like over kill to put in a 15 amp circuit just for two four foot fluorescent light fixtures, but do you really want to be standing in the dark when you trip the circuit breaker? The cost of installing the additional circuit was… like $10.  My father thought I was foolish for doing so, until I was ripping a long board, the binded the table saw blade and tripped the circuit. If that same circuit also powered the lights I would have been standing in the dark trying to find get back to the circuit panel to reset the breaker. The separate circuit was worth it in my opinion.

No, I am not talking about new power tools for the shop.  Instead, I am talking about making Christmas gifts for your kids, friends, or family.  In my case, I am working on a design for an art easel for my six year old godson.  His mom is thrilled about the gift!  It will be an interesting race against time to get it done.  In a future post I will post the project design and cut list.

My wife has wrangled me into this project!  She was talking to our godson’s mom and she said that her son is into painting and drawing.  My wife then turns to me and asks how hard it would be to build an easel for him.  My response was that it is not that hard, it is a question of time.  Do I have the enough time to design and build it before Christmas?  I for warned my godson’s mom that it might turn into a new year’s gift.

I just started a shop furniture project.  I am replacing a couple of tables with a fixed wall to wall work bench and a set of shelves that will be mounted either side of the window.  So, now I need to complete this project before I begin the easel!

There are several different materials available to consider, black pipe, copper, PVC, rubber hose, etc. Each material has its strengths and weaknesses.

Black pipe typically comes in 20’, 10’ and nipple lengths. Consider purchasing from a local plumbing supply house. They typically they carry a better quality of pipe than the local home supply store.

A draw back of black pipe is water and rust. Really, there is only some much that one can do to dry the air. Unfortunately a percentage water does travel in the air stream and will be deposited on the inside of the line. Over time the inside of the line will rust. The question is how long it will take until the rust weakness the wall. Usually a compressor tank will rust out sooner than the air piping.

Tip: Install a tee on the pipe before it transitions to a horizontal run. Have the leg of the tee pointing down. Cap off the end or put a full flow ball valve on the end of the nipple. It will serve a couple of purposes. First, it will help trap debris in the line before it jams your air tool. Second, it will act as a water drain.

Black pipe takes some time and effort to install. It will be necessary to cut and thread the pipe. This will require either having determined before hand, and having the material cut and threaded at the store. Or, rent a pipe threader, manual or powered. Side note, growing up I have cut threads on black and galvanized pipe that was being run for the natural gas lines in a new home (teenage summer job). Cutting threads with a manual tool is not that hard to do; however, power threaders are nice.

Copper is a nice material to use for air distribution system. It is easier to install than black pipe. It does not rust. It will handle the pressure a home air compressor puts out. If the copper tubing fails it will fatigue and bulge out instead of bursting with shrapnel.

Type L and K copper pipe is acceptable for compressed air applications. Type M is NOT. Type M is usually used in residential homes for the fresh water supply lines. The pressure that a copper pipe can handle is dependant on the temperature and the size of the pipe - for more information, see Table 6, Publication 28E, of the CCBDA. The joints are usually rated for less pressure than the pipe.

PVC pipe is very attractive for the home wood worker. It is low cost, easy to install and does not rust. Here is the big problem with it. If / when the pipe ruptures it will send sharp shards of plastic flying and can injure a person. The last thing that you want to have happen is the pipe to fail when your child is in the wood shop with dad. Check out this OSHA bulletin for more information.

I have seen home wood shops that string rubber air hoses along the walls of the shop. The draw back to this solution is that cutting the air hose is not an option since special tools are needed to crimp a fitting on the end. So, what to do? Well just coil up the excess tubing and all is well. Well…. Not really, for each bend in the air line adds turbulence and increases the static air pressure in the line. Thus there will be a significant drop in air pressure at the tool end of the hose compared to the setting on the air compressor’s regulator.

My wood shop is a home built 16’ by 12’ shed with a barn style roof in the back yard.  A nice size building; however, over time I wish I had a larger space.  I just completed building my eldest daughter’s dresser bed (storage bed) and it was a fun dance to move parts around the shed, out of the shed and back during assembly time.  Who wouldn’t want a larger wood shop with more tools?!

The shed has a 3’ x 4’ horizontal sliding window on the south wall and a set of double doors on the north wall.  I build the door opening wide enough so that I could rip a 4×8 sheet of plywood on the table saw.  The table saw is positioned so that I am standing outside with the sheet of plywood and the cuts end up in the shed on the roller stands.

Electricity.  I have been told that I over energized wood shop.  I have a 60 amp feed coming into to a sub breaker box.  Yes, that is a bit much, but I had the breaker and the spare amperage in the main breaker box, so why not make it available?  I have four circuits in the shop with the following layout:

            20 amp for the left wall outlets

            15 amp for the over head lights

            15 amp for the right wall outlets

            15 amp for the window outlets

My father asked me why do you have a separate circuit lights?  That is over kill.  My response, was how would you feel if you are in the process of ripping a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood and the breaker trips and the lights and the table saw lose power?  Oh by the way it is eight o’clock at night in the winter!  Not a good feeling.

The other comment my father had was I had too many outlets.  Let see I have three on the left wall, three on the right wall and one on either side of the window for a grand total of eight.  I told him you can never have enough outlets.  There are still times when I have to get the extension cord because the tool’s power cord will not reach an outlet!

With the barn style roof I was able to incorporate some ‘attic’ storage space.  On the left and right hand walls runs a two foot wide shelf the length of the wall at 76” from the floor.  On the southern wall is a four foot wide shelf.  Currently the ‘attic’ is filled with a collection of things, such as metal folding chairs, shop smith components, old 1×4 cedar fence pickets, blow up swimming pool, and some other stuff.

The shop needs thorough cleaning, reorganization and purging of stuff.  But that is for another post.