New forum category?


MikeMc

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I was looking over the topics of the forum and was wondering if tool shop design might be a good category.

Being in the process of setting up my own shop it would be interesting to see a section similar to the critique room but for shops instead of projects.

What does everyone think?

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I think you can steal good ideas from shop pics, but honestly my shop space constraints and requirements are completely different from everybody elses (and vice versa). Further, while I too have a hand-tool side (a block plane) and power-tool side (a table saw :P), most Neanderthals would loathe my shop and likely some power-tool dudes, too (which only leaves my beer-drinking neighbors happy and the little blonde who likes the popcorn machine).

So, a "shop design" category seems incorrect to me. At best, a "shop tour" category where the premise is to post pics of your shop and maybe explain something you think is cool about it for others to lift ideas from. Maybe a better way would be a tag in the galleries. Dunno.

You're on to something, but I'm not sure the best way to add it to the forum is. We don't want a forum with a thousand subforums. I'm on two of those and hate posting new threads there.

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I think you can steal good ideas from shop pics, but honestly my shop space constraints and requirements are completely different from everybody elses (and vice versa). Further, while I too have a hand-tool side (a block plane) and power-tool side (a table saw :P), most Neanderthals would loathe my shop and likely some power-tool dudes, too (which only leaves my beer-drinking neighbors happy and the little blonde who likes the popcorn machine).

So, a "shop design" category seems incorrect to me. At best, a "shop tour" category where the premise is to post pics of your shop and maybe explain something you think is cool about it for others to lift ideas from. Maybe a better way would be a tag in the galleries. Dunno.

You're on to something, but I'm not sure the best way to add it to the forum is. We don't want a forum with a thousand subforums. I'm on two of those and hate posting new threads there.

That is why I posted it here, so we could get alot of differing opinions. I do like the shop tour category definition as well.

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...At best, a "shop tour" category where the premise is to post pics of your shop and maybe explain something you think is cool about it for others to lift ideas from. Maybe a better way would be a tag in the galleries. Dunno.

I think on this note, we can still go to The Wood Whisperer free site and see individuals shops there. There's a tab at the top of the page called "Shop Tours". Under that are three categories for Basement, Garage and Standalone shops. The recent "Tom's Santa Barbara Shop" was posted there after it was posted on the TWW blog. As far as I know Marc is posting these as he is sent information and pictures from individual woodworkers.

I guess the idea would be to put "Shop Tours" on the Community side and allow community members to post pictures and information about their shops without having to go through Marc. It would also be nice to have people that post their shop to explain what they would have done differently and what design challenges they had. And, as Paul said, they could detail out one or two features that may be of interest to woodworkers.

I was looking over the topics of the forum and was wondering if tool shop design might be a good category.

Being in the process of setting up my own shop it would be interesting to see a section similar to the critique room but for shops instead of projects.

What does everyone think?

As far as Mike’s request, I can only add that we have had a number of woodworkers on the previous community forum, post questions on how to go about building and setting up their proposed shops, or shop changes. A lot of information was culled from those posts and the replies to them. However, as far as I'm aware these posts are no longer available.

I have no sense on how useful a Shop Design forum would be, but maybe Marc could add it and we could see if it flies. Based on what I said in the first paragraph though, I would say that we didn’t get very many posts from woodworkers building new shops or adding to their existing shops whether it was in a basement, garage or a standalone. So, it will be interesting to see what additional thoughts people post here.

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I like that too.... Maybe something like *Shop Solutions* where people could post specific things about their shop rather than the tours on video.

I like that angle. Brian's recent "SawStop Overarm Dust Collection" thread actually got pretty long and branched off explaining another bench that was in the background. Those were solutions though never a shop tour. If someone wants to post a shop tour there, though, it would be welcome (we are all pretty adept at looking at the background of pictures to steal gems found).

Like Onboard pointed out, we never had full-on shop tours posted though we had a lot of "here's my future shop design; what am I missing?" That can go there, but I'm betting the solutions section would get a fair amount of traffic, both posts and readership.

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Marc said: “The description could be "Shop tours, shop setup, and shop solutions."”

I wonder what the contribution ratio would be between these three categories? I see a great deal of shop jigs and shop tips being posted. Not a bad thing.

I imagine, given the nature of these three categories, that the posts could become quite lengthy. Thankfully pictures will be in thumbnail form.

Just some simple minded thoughts.

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