My workshop. This was built in 2004 from scratch by myself and my father. We laid armoured cable from the utility room in the house to the workshop location and laid a concrete base. The shed was then constructed from some rather rudimentary drawings my father made. Although originally designed as a garden shed, we had the foresight to wire it up with plenty  of sockets - as I always intended to use it as a work shop eventually. Of course it has its own distribution board with RCDs fitted as per the IEEE 16th edition wiring regulations :-)

Internal dimensions are approx 6"2" x 10' (or 1.90m x 3.2m for you metric types). This doesn't provide an awful lot of room, but I have managed to cram quite a lot into it, and still have a comfortable amount of area to move around in - as you will see from the photographs further down the page.

It manages to house :

1. A Boxford AUD lathe
2. A Gate Mini Jig Borer (or milling machine)
3. 2 benches - one fitted with a vice
4. A rolling tool cabinet and chest of drawers
5. Some Shelving (quite a lot in fact)
6. A selection of  board mounted hand tools

My Mini Jig Borer in its natural habitat ! This is a great little machine, more details of which can be found on http://www.lathes.co.uk/elliott mini jig/index.html. I believe the machines were made by Elliott Machine Tools, but were also sold badged "Downham" and "Gate" mine is badged "Gate".

This particular machine was manufactured in 1968 and used for many years in the toolroom of a large UK automotive parts company, before it was made redundant a few years ago. It was then in the posession  of an ex-employee of that company for a few years where it had only light use.

As you might expect for a machine of this gae, there are a few quirks and dings - but it is still an extremely accurate machine and an absolute pleaseure to use.

My Boxford AUD lathe - sorry for the strange angle of the photo, but the workshop is small and this is the best I can do.

There is a page here which has more detail about my lathe. Generic information on the Boxford lathes is also available at http://www.lathes.co.uk/boxford/index.html.

A general view of the workshop - all nice and tidy - my CNC machine can be seen on the bench on the left - which is run by the flat screen computer hounted on the wall - which in turn is connected to my wireless network via a netger wireless adapter.

The shelving in the ceiling space can also be seen clearly - when we biult the shed we made sure the eaves were at leat 6"6' (or 2m for those who prefer metric) so I would have plenty of headroom and space for these shelves.

My second(smaller) bench with yet more shelves (you can never have too much storage). You can see the beginnings of a Martin Evans designed 3.5" guage "Rob Roy" locomotive on the top of the bench. It was purchased part built with all the necessary castings for £125 ! The biuld quality is excellent (at least until I start messing with it) as it was being contructed by a tool maker This is a future project.

Another general view with the small bench, Jig Borer and hand tool mounting board clearly shown. I placed the Jig borer in this positio so that when standing (or sitting) at it, I am in the "L" shaped "walking" area of the workshop - dual use of space is a good thing.