for older members:

[Ken S]

I have noticed that many of us on the forum are either senior citizens or fast approaching it.  We may also have some younger members who are beyond their years in eyesight or arthritis.

Sooner or later, we must all face the fact that the time will come when we are no longer able to enjoy using the Tormek or do woodworking.  I believe our best defense against this time is sharing the ways we have devised of dealing with declining eyesight, diminished strength and arthritis.  We have a wealth or experience in this area, and sharing it can only help all of us.  Even those of us who do not yet qualify for senior citizen discounts (I'm thinking of you, Jeff) may have experience coaching older Tormek users.

I'll start the ball rolling with a couple thoughts, and hope others will chime in.

My "shop" in my former house was an unheated garage with terrible lighting.  Setting up my Tormek outside improved the light greatly, both in quantity and quality. 

My present basement shop has a finished ceiling and lots of fluorescent lights installed by the former owner.  The lighting looks fine at first glance.  The quantity of the light is fine; the shop is nice and bright.  The quality of the light is not so good.  There is no directional task lighting. It is difficult to see fine details.

Eventually I will probably have more task lighting installed.  For the present, I have several old Smith Victor lights left over from my photo side business days.  They are designed for 500 watt bulbs, but work remarkably well with ordinary 100 watt bulbs.  Placed on their light stands, they are  quite flexible.  They make seeing the angle master much easier.

I will pass the ball off to the next poster.

Ken

[Rob]

Viagra does it for me :-)

[mike40]

Good idea Ken. There are many seniors out there and  making woodworking less strenuous for them means they can keep at it longer.

I am 73 with an extremely bad back, arthritis and bum knees. I still do everything (ok, not everything) that I did when young. Being retired means you can work anytime you want, but the important thing is to take a lot of short rest breaks while working. I don't really takes breaks while in the shop, but I work sitting down when it's practical. I built my relatively small shop (228 sq.ft.) myself about 12 years ago. Here is a list of the things I've done to make life easier.

1.   The whole shop is insulated including the floor, ceilings and walls. The loft above is also insulated in a similar manner. I am mostly in the shop in fall, winter, and early spring. It is very warm and
      comfortable.
2.   I have fluorescent lighting covering the entire shop. It is light and bright. The walls and ceiling are painted white. All this makes it pretty easy for me to see layout marks, and for setting up machines.
3.   I have five 4 point outlets near all the work areas throughout the shop, This facilitates the use of electric hand tools and extra work lights.
4.   I have 3 round top wood stools placed around so I can sit and work easily without having to move one stool around. They are light with round seats so you can sit on them from any direction and get
      up from any direction easily.
5.   The floor is tongue and groove chipboard with 2-1/2"styrofoam insulation underneath, and painted with enamel paint. Easy on the feet/legs, easy to clean and it doesn't ruin dropped tools.
6.   All of my big machines are on wheels. This makes it easy for cleaning the floor and rearranging when necessary for different projects.
7.   I have my floor model drill press positioned to act as an out feed table for my bandsaw, I built my router table at the height of my Combi machine and it doubles as an out feed table for that
       machine. I made a tool stand for small power  tools with shelves for the tools and drawers in the middle for tool accessories. It also serves as extra support for long boards being cut by my sliding
       miter saw.
8.   I use a lighted magnifying glass when doing fine work on my scroll saw. I couldn't do marquetry work without it.
9.   I bought a Tormek to make sharpening more fun and easier too.
10. Small can be good. Many of us complain about having shops that we consider too small, but a larger shop requires a lot more walking and more expense to heat, light or cool.

[Ken S]

Good post, Mike.  Lots of useful ideas.

Ken

[Rob]

Pictures please Mike...your shop sounds very cosy.  Mine's a bit big and dispersed

[Mike Fairleigh]

I finished out my basement shop when I was about 32 or 33.  I covered the walls with 1/2" plywood, installed four, 8-foot, 2-tube, high output fluorescent fixtures, and painted the concrete floor with an off-white epoxy paint.  The lights happened to be the last thing I installed and when I turned them on for the first time I thought, "Uh-oh.  I'm going to have to wear sunglasses to work in here."  It was truly bordering on too bright.

Now I'm 51 and every time I flip that switch I'm thankful that I did it the way I did.  If I could do things over I would probably cover the walls with something other than plain plywood but as far as lighting goes, it's terrific, still.

I too have sore knees (and sometimes hips), and bulged disks at L4 and L5.  Concrete floors are not good in that area, but I've invested in some good foam rubber floor mats that really help in addition to paying attention to the shoes & socks I wear.

[mike40]

I will post some proper photos later Rob. Right now I am in the middle of reconfiguring my shop to facilitate my marquetry work. I built a veneer press which takes up more room in an already cramped shop. BTW, the veneer press also works real well to glue up segmented turnings. I am also building a long table near my scroll saw to hold my light table and for assembling marquetry works (lots of itty bitty pieces to keep track of). I've already moved my machines into position and I love the set-up now. I am transferring many of my hand tools to the wall behind my bench from the cabinet which used to hang over it. I've relocated the cabinet.  I'm currently making a hand plane till for the same place.

My shop is not a showplace like some, but I like to think of it as practical, fairly well organized and fun to work in. Right now it looks pretty messy though. I did forget to mention in my last post that besides my machines, I have just about everything else mounted on wheels too. Makes life a lot easier. I hope to be finished with it in August if it rains a lot. If not, then mid-September. Meanwhile here are some teasers. Remember Fats Domino's song 'What's behind the Green Door'? Well, it's my shop of course! It used to be a carport. The sketch up pics show the old layout. That is a sliding beam bench in the back which has since been removed.

[Rob]

One thing I really envy you Mike is the roof/loft space above the garage.  That's something I would really like in my shop for general storage (wood mostly).  But its obvious you're well organised having gone to the trouble of planning it in sketchup first.  What a fabulous tool that is considering its free.

My shop has evolved rather than been purpose built.  I built the house I now occupy 6 years ago and I'm lucky enough to have a 3 car garage which has grown into my workshop.  Advantages are of course space and remote control doors which is fabulous for quick access to both natural light and dust opening.  Disadvantages are that I still house my Harley in one of the garages as do my wife and kids store cycles...so really its only a double garage. 

Because my previous house was a 400 year old cottage with limited space, I only had a workbench and hand tools.  This space has allowed me to develop my machine tools and in the last 5 years Ive added table, bandsaw, router table, planar/thicknesser and lathe. Ive also built a new workbench and a few cupboard storage spaces.  But its still got a regular concrete floor and a lot of junk.  I could do with just stopping....getting everything out.....dealing with the floor and painting etc and then redesigning the round walls benching around the tools.  Also dx is poor, relying on standalone vac type equipment at each major dust producer.  As I say, its evolved rather than been purpose built and the large space has allowed me to be inefficient with the space. Very cold in winter too...I don't really use it much, though this year I did because of the lathe purchase last year....I was turning at 4 degrees C with numerous clothes on and a dalek style gas fire next to me.

I agree with Ken and you on lighting. I have 6 strip lights, 2 per garage and its not enough.  I need specific moveable task lighting on the bench or at least spots above the bench.

[Rob]

Forgot to mention, I turned 50 this year and I also get sore feet etc and find that rubber matting useful, especially for lathe work.  I also have an old swivel kitchen stool and use it as much as I can.

[mike40]

It sounds nice except for the winter temperatures Rob. When I built my shop it started as a carport with gravel and a 2m wide utility/shop across the back of the garage and carport. I poured a cement floor and built foundations. I didn't want to work on a cement floor so I installed what we call a 'floating floor' here. The cement wasn't perfectly flat, so I leveled it with dry clean sand, the kind used to make mortar with. Then I laid down 5cm thick styrofoam panels (40X60cm I think), it was then covered with a layer of plastic sheeting, and finally the MDF flooring panels which I painted with enamel (great stuff). This type of floor can support a huge amount of weight, but it still is nice to walk on. The walls are just the regular studs with 10cm insulation and also a layer of plastic sheeting on the inside of the wall  and then fiberboard panels over that. The only work I couldn't do was the electric installation. The building costs were about Kr. 14,000 or about 1,400 pounds plus electric of about  kr.6,000 or 600 pounds. I guess the cost would be about double that now. I can't work in my shop in the summer much, so it was essential for me to have the insulation. I use only one very small electric radiator for heat. The loft floor is also heavily insulated and I have an insulated door to the loft at the top of the stairs that I keep closed, so I just heat the shop itself. I do have some wood storage up there, but we store a lot of other stuff we don't want or need there. I have a platter storage rack downstairs to the left of the entry door and some lumber racks on the wall at the back of the 'L'. The shop is pretty small and it can be maddening at times, especial with larger projects, but it serves me well.  I have to admit that I did the sketchup drawings after the shop was completed. I'm not sure if Sketchup even existed 12 years ago.

[Rob]

Your floor and insulation ideas are well taken Mike.......very nice.  My garages have 9" masonry (brick and block) walls with a 1" cavity that has insulation inside it.  But the problem is the electric doors which are of course a massive source of heat loss. They're just reinforced glass fibre with a wooden frame, with a wood type finish.  Pretty, thin, light and totally bloody useless at keeping heat in!  Further the gaps above and below allow a small tornado to whistle through my shop when the north wind blows.  My dream is to have a wood burning stove in there which swallows all the sawdust as well as regular wood.  But that's a whole lot of chimney design and build hassle. I need to do some things which take it further towards purpose built though, that's for sure.

[MakerUnknown]

Mike,
Do you use a chevalet in your marquetry or a scroll saw?
Paul

[mike40]

Ron, you would have to construct an inner wall to eliminate your garage door problem, but maybe you could do that and have some large insulated sliding doors so you could open them and the garage door for access. For anyone with even a hint of a heart problem, it is not a good idea to work in the cold and on cold cement in the winter in spite of warm clothes. I'm not a doctor, but my wife is a nurse and knows about these things.

Paul, I use a scroll saw. the chevalet is an admirable machine for dedicated marquetrians , but I just don't have room for one. Besides that, I love my scroll saw with which I can do pretty detailed work using a 2/0 blade. A chevalier can do  smaller details, and while I greatly  admire the fantastic work done by many who use them, I feel that marquetry is essentially about the use of wood grains and colors  and the way the subject  is presented to make an interesting and dynamic graphic. I think that a scroll saw can do that in spite of it's limitations. Whether I can do that with my scroll saw is an entirely different question. I can't judge my own work, as I am rarely satisfied with anything I do. I am in it mainly for the fun of doing the work.[/sizeI

[Ken S]

Nice responses, guys. Mike (Kansas), I agree about the importance of a softer, warmer floor.  It's essential.

Mike (40), nice sketchup work and photos.  You have obviously put a lot of planning in your shop

Rob, the bodgers worked outside!

Ken

[mike40]

Thanks Ken, but I did the sketchup drawings based on my actual shop at the time. There were no plans as it was a no brainer, just foundations, floor and walls. the Ceiling was already in place as to was a carport.