I decided my workshop needed a bit of streamlining.
You see, my workshop is very small. It's built in a garage. I'm in the UK, where the cars a quite small (well, they used to be...), and therefore the garages are also quite small. Today, most people use their garages for other things. Storage, a gym or in my case, a workshop.
So, trying to build a workshop in a UK garage can be a bit of a challenge. In a small workshop, it's a good idea to put things on castors. In that way, you can wheel the tool you want to use into the middle of the shop, and when you've finished with it, simply wheel it back out of the way.
I did try this out. Here's a previous attempt:
There are two things at work here: the fact that the trolley is on wheels, and also there are two tools on this trolley. That's a mitre saw up top, and hanging underneath is a thicknesser/planer. That whole section can rotate around so that the planer sits on top and the mitre saw hangs underneath:
Two tools in one. Unfortunately this setup didn't work for me. It took up way too much space, and I couldn't even use it for storage. Whilst there's a huge cavernous space underneath, you couldn't use it for storage as it had to be kept clear so that the two tools could rotate around. Also, the wheels (that's those orange feet things you see at the bottom) stuck out too far, and I kept catching my ankles on them.
But the worst thing about this thing was the floor. Being a garage, the concrete floor isn't that smooth; it's only designed to hold a car. So wheeling this thing around was a real pain. Being heavy, it was hard to move it about, and it would jitter and shudder as I tried to pull it across the floor, and at times I thought I was going to give myself a hernia.
So I got rid of it. I didn't really need a thicknesser, and the mitre saw now takes pride of place on its own workbench.
Sometime later, I bought this:
As you can probably see, it's on the floor. It has a stand with it, and my idea was to lift it up and put it on the stand when I want to use it. It's not that heavy, but not all that lightweight either. Unfortunately, since it lived under a table it was not that easy to get out, and I usually found myself trying cut things on my bandsaw instead.
So, I thought, maybe I should make a trolley for it, then I can just wheel it out when I want to use it. But that brings me back to the first problem. The floor's too rough and uneven. This brings the whole problem into clarity: I need a better floor.
So here it is:
Ignore the text on it. I guess I'm going to have to paint it. 🙄
Anyway, the upshot of that is, I can now put my table saw on a trolley, and wheel it around the workshop with ease.
And here's the table saw, complete with trolley:
I'd call that a win.
