Reality Don’t Give A Shed about Silversmithing Workshops…

Two months have passed…

1) We painted our house!
2) We moved in our appliances!
3) The 10X16 double-decker shed got built!
4) We remodeled our house!
5) We moved all our craft from private storage!

It is item number 5) that required major modifications to my floor plan.

Some goals simply were not practical:

- The people who built our shed placed the windows a few inches higher than in the demo shed on the loft. Instead of standing in the loft therefore, one could only crawl in it… and at best sit in a chair. That ruled out installing the CNC facility in the loft.

With typical female cleverness regarding the art of redecorating, Yavanna helped me dodge this bullet. She suggested that I move my large wooden desk to the center of the shed. That way, I could move the CNC equipment downstairs, placing the computer console near the desk. The drawers of my desk are now reserved for my Miniflam torch, its supplies, and various small tools and raw materials for silversmithing.

- She left it as an exercise for the student (me!) to figure out a way to arrange the milling machine and motor control box along the walls.

The solution was not to: instead I bought a 4X4 inch beam and anchored it to the floor and loft, for the purpose of anchoring the milling machine Z-axis column. This freed up additional wall space, making for a comfortable area between computer-aided metal shaping and manual metal shaping activites.

- Also impractical was doing any electronics or ham radio on the lower deck, and of course using the drill press on the upper deck.

My wife also had more boxes of quilts and holiday decorations than originally estimated, and I had promised her ready access to water-tight storage

The solution there was to swap the two activities. I didn’t need as much room in the loft for just electronics and radio. I then placed the drill press and bandsaw in niches next to the bench, otherwise, thier swarf would be with me… always!

- Insufficient power for the kiln. And no electrical panel as had been shown in the demo shed. Sigh.

The Mistress of Plants and Animals (and Scrapbooking), therefore decreed I would simply have to wait until the snow melted in the spring to rework the electrical supply. She suggested that I keep the kiln waiting on top of my spectrum analyser, just to save room, and banish all thought of using them for now. Oh well, I still have my old 30 ounce Kerr Electro-Melt if I still wanted to try tufa-casting over the winter!

- Windows had to be on the sides of the shed. A back window was not possible.

The solution here was to place the dust producing tools under one side window. Hence polishing, power sanding, and sawing went to one window. Since my wife no longer wanted the door to her 3rd bedroom closet (HER crafting area was the entire 3rd bedroom!), I appropriated that door, flipped it horizontal, and anchored one edge it against the wall as a polishing table! For stability I supported the other edge on a railroad tie cut it half.

- The used sink I obtained from Freecycle was simply too large for the back bench.

Solution: I would have to make do with a fish tank instead for wet carving, etc.

While this was happening, I cut a 6X6 inch treated beam into 3 foot pieces to create a support for a 10X5 inch rail anvil. I also appropriated a child’s metal school desk to store my casting supplies as well as provide a table for casting. Finally, I found a pair of space heaters for cheap so that temperatures in winter would not dip down into the range one would normally find in the Helacarxe mountains… a chill that would make summertime on the Martian equator feel downright warm in comparison!

Also not shown are long shelves in the CNC area for storing my aluminum stock, shelves below the polishing area for polishing supplies, and shelves above the bench for lapidary supplies.

Revised floor plan after reality sets in!

Two month’s worth of changes to my plans. But not bad for coping, eh?