Tiny Woodshop Is Packed With Space-Saving Hacks

Fair warning: once you’ve watched [Stephen]’s tiny workshop tour, you will officially be out of excuses for why you need to expand your workshop. And, once you see his storage and organization hacks, you’ll be shamed into replicating some in whatever space you call home.

[Stephen]’s woodshop is a cozy 6′ x 8′ (1.8 m x 2.4 m) garden shed. The front wall is almost entirely occupied by the door and a window, reducing the amount of wall space available but providing ample natural light and keeping the small space from inducing claustrophobia. Absolutely every square inch of the remaining space is optimized and organized. [Stephen] wisely eschews bulky cabinets in favor of hanging tool racks, all mounted flexibly to the wall on French cleats. Everything has a place, and since every hand tool is literally within arm’s reach, it stays stored until it’s needed and goes right back when it’s done. The shop boasts way more than hand tools, though; a lathe, drill press, thickness planer, sander, air compressor, scroll saw, band saw, and even a table saw all fit in there. There’s even dust collection courtesy of “The Beast”, [Stephen]’s DIY dust extractor.

No matter whether you work in wood, metal, or silicon, we could all learn some lessons from [Stephen]’s shop. It’s a model of efficiency and organization, and while he’s not likely to build a full-size [Queen Anne] dresser in there, it’s clear from his blog that he gets a lot done with it. Too bad we missed this one the last time we did a roundup of tiny shops.

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Spice Up Your Shop With A VW Pickup Wall Decoration

Seeing a half car is always a disconcerting experience. Especially when that half car is about 14 feet up in the air. [PanasonicModelRC6015] — We’ll call him [RC6015] for short — has gone and mounted 1/2 (actually more like 1/4) of a VW Rabbit Caddy pickup MK1 up on his shop wall.

The caddy started life as a regular 1983 VW pickup. Unfortunately, the years had not been kind to it. The body panels were in good shape, but there were serious rust problems in the floors, strut towers, rockers, and control arm mounts. According to [RC6015], this is beyond “weld on few replacement panels”, though he’s been heavily questioned on it in his Reddit thread.

Cutting the truck down was easy – a reciprocating saw did most of the work. The VW has a unibody design, so there was still some frame there to hold things together. A 2×12 board then was then bolted from the front of the truck to the rear. This made everything stable and provided a solid mounting point. A second 2×12 was lag bolted to several studs on the wall. Then it was just a matter of lifting the truck into position and bolting the two boards together. We’re guessing the [RC6015]’s wall has solid wood studs. Don’t try hanging a 500 lb truck from the wall if you’ve only got thin metal studs behind your sheetrock.

Just in case you’re wondering, the Panasonic Model RC-6015 is a vintage flip display alarm clock, the same one Marty used in Back to the Future.

If a truck on the wall is a bit much for your shop, check out this wall mounted weather display.