Well, Tim and Tracy cleaned the shop! And it was a rather large new “baby” that motivated the cleanup. Check it out:

Tim is the proud new parent of an AEM wide-belt sander … he and Doug Kralicek, of Kralicek Millworks, drove over to Pinesdale, Montana to pick it up a week ago. Huge thing!

I (Maureen) had no idea how big it was until the day I dropped by to shoot some photos of the beast — it was still in Doug’s trailer and Tim, his electrician, Jim White and one of Doug’s employees were scratching their heads over how to get the danged thing out of the trailer and into the shop.

In the process of making room for the new overhead sander (and moving the older, smaller one out) Tim got all jazzed up about cleaning and organizing the shop. It was dusty. Yep. His shop was also pretty crammed with lumber, sheet goods, cabinet boxes in the midst of assembly, stuff stuff and more stuff — and oh, did I mention the sawdust? So, Tracy and Tim spent the entire last week (Tim did the weekend too) cleaning, organizing, tossing, taking stuff to our local salvaged-building-materials store — ReStore — as well as to the dump.

All these years, Tim’s had to store all of this supplies and materials for woodworking right in the shop. Some of that stuff he brought with him from Pocatello and hasn’t looked at since the day he moved into the shop. Would ya say he might not need it anymore? The folks down at ReStore were happy to have all of his give-aways and I bet now a few days later, that stuff has found new homes all over Helena.

Well, one thing led to another. Or I should say, one good idea led to an even better idea. The brainstorm was to get a container to store most of the shop’s wood. That cleared a huge space. And the huge space turned into even more working room in the shop.

A few days later, I was truly amazed. Tim took me over to the shop last night to show me the changes. Whoah! I hardly recognized the place! He had re-opened a double-wide doorway between the two sides of the shop, making the work flow much more efficient and comfortable.

Now an entire wall is available for hanging the large collection of jigs, templates and patterns within easy reach. They divided the shop more clearly into two rooms, and both rooms are much better connected with two large doors and a large window to allow light to penetrate from the assembly room, below, into the machine room.

The assembly room (in both photos above) holds their workbenches, chop saw, spray booth, assembly benches, hardware storage and a cabinet for finishes.

The machine room now has more room to manuever large pieces of lumber around all of the machines.

On Sunday, Tim assembled all of his chair prototypes (which had until then been mostly piles of parts.) He hung the prototypes from the ceiling. What a good idea — plus they look cool hanging up there like wallflowers at a highschool prom.

It’s going to be a much more enjoyable place to work for both guys.