The construction of the new workshop took place in 2008 when the house renovation was finished. It was sorely needed as you can see here in a couple of pictures from a couple of years earlier when we had a small flood due to a broken water main in the street.

The house is from 1936, the old garage was 50 to 60 years old and was always cold and damp anyway, bad news for a classic car. So we cleared some of the back end of the garden and dug out some footings to pour a concrete base, The following slideshow gives an idea of the construction.

It seemed like an enormous space when first finished but once I started installing the machine tools I’d always wanted it started to seem a lot smaller. I’ve thought about annexing the rest of the garden but I don’t think the wife would be too happy :-). Here are a few examples.

This is my lathe. Nothing special, just a Chinese clone 250mm x 400mm marketed in the Netherlands by HBM Machines in Moordrecht. The small Chinese machines are not bad these days, if it’s just for hobby use, but they’re not always well assembled. So I completely dismantled it when I first got it and then assembled, adjusted and lubricated it as it should have been done in the first place. There is loads of information about this out there on the internet. The cupboard/table underneath I built myself from bits and pieces I’d saved for recycling.

This is one of the Chinese clone Mini Mills, also marketed by HBM. I’ve done the belt drive conversion on this one as the gearbox is a weak point and after a second plastic gear shattered on me I decided enough was enough at €30 a throw. The plans for the conversion are also widely known.

Here are the machines in a row along one wall although I’ve changed things around of late. You can see a slightly older floor standing drill press which I bought after regularly finding that the table model wouldn’t give me enough clearance. Between that and the Milling Machine is a MIG welder which I’ve had for at least 20 years and in between the Milling Machine and the Lathe is a sawing machine which I built after dismantling an old washing machine and re-using other stuff I had lying around. Here is a close up.

Maybe I should do a write up about this someday. There are a few variations on the theme to be found on the net, this is just my take on it. If I need to saw through larger pieces I just set it up, switch it on and get on with something else until it’s finished. It has a safety switch that switches it off when the arm drops low enough.