My Shops | Hamilton's Woodcraft

Our garage and our front room.

In 2021 I cleaned out our garage, traded my 2012 370 Z Roadster convertible for a 2014 Dodge Ram 1500 Truck. I built a bench, that failed me a year later due to sagging in the middle, so I designed another bench to be stronger longer, then purchased a ton of tools and soon got a OneFinity CNC machine. I needed a place for the CNC machine so I talked to my wife about utilizing the front room of our house as a second shop, she liked my work so much that she agreed to it instantly. The garage isn't heated and I have a lot of temperature sensitive equipment and supplies, so now I have 2 shops. I also utilize the inside shop to dry wood and it's working very well. For example, I took a piece of white oak with an MC of 28% and after 6 months it reached 8%. I joint and planed the boards then applied wood glue heavily to the ends of the boards to keep them from checking. Any how I can go on and on and on about my shops which seem to be a continuous work in progress. So I decided to share my experiences with you and anyone else that might be interested in what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. So here it goes.

Front room shop December 29, 2023

Working on several projects at the moment. Become a member and share your shops and experiences.

I have 3 locations for wood this is one of them

So I just got done cutting a lot of wood hence all the saw dust. We're looking at mostly pine, then there's some oak maple and hickory in the mix.

My bench

I made this bench mostly from pine Construction pressure treated white, Douglas Fur, Hickory, MDX and Maple Ply 7 layers.

Hickory and MDF

I used Hickory to surround the the top of the bench and MDF for the top as you can see. I bolted the 3/4 inch MDF board to a 3/4 inch sheet of plywood that was screwed to 2 x 6 studs. I then covered the MDX in many coats of polyurethane as well as the Hickory.

2 x 6 studs frame

I used 2 x 6 studs to frame underneath the bench for support and strength, weight and rigidity. Also during constructing this bench I paid close attention to flatness. which was a challenge, but this is by far the flattest wood bench ever that is not planed solid wood. While the 2 x 6 boards do cause some movemenet, I've only measured about 1/32 of an inch of movement. I figure since the boards were already kiln dried I would see less movement.