Upgrading your Workshop

Buying a new tool for the shop is always a fun time, especially if you’ve had your eye on something for a while. It’s funny how unboxing a new saw, assembling a spare workbench or even installing a fresh blade can get you excited to be back in the shop. Once you’ve started building projects for customers, new shop gear offer an extra benefit – it can make you a faster woodworker.

Increase your rate by investing in the right tools, fixtures and shop layout

I discovered this in my first workshop. Since I didn’t have many tools, I was investing all the funds from my project sales back into shop gear and supplies. At first, I was just buying whatever caught my eye at the home center. Then I realized if I looked closely at my building process before I went shopping, I could make an inexpensive tool/fixture purchases that would boost my production speed and hourly rate.

For example, as my bar clamp collection grew, I was able to progress from one-off builds to multiple builds and significantly increased my speed for projects that required multiple glue-up stages.

Investing in your production speed can pay big dividends
As you begin to build projects for customers, it pays to sit down and spend some time thinking how to invest in the equipment that can make you more efficient when you’re in the shop. This may be a simple as rearranging your workspace to suit the stages of your most-popular project builds.

You may also discover, like I did, that a few new light fixtures, some fresh saw blades or a couple rolling tool trays can speed up your production time.

To determine where you can increase your production speed, grab a pen and paper and write out the major build stages of a favorite projects. You’ll probably see a lot of opportunities to streamline your build process. And a few small improvements can add up over the course of project build.

Even the way you buy and store your materials is worth investigating for potential time savings. For example, I was making frequent lumber pickups at the local mill. My lumber supplier offers free delivery, so I started trusting them to select and deliver my stock and saved a couple hours each month that could go back into more productive time in the shop.

An easy way to reduce errors and waste
Selecting the right tools and fixtures can also help you cut down on expenses due to waste. Working in a well-lit, organized shop with sharp tools helps improve your accuracy as well as your speed.

You’ll be less likely to mark your stock incorrectly or make a bad cut and ruin a component when you’re not tripping over junk or straining to see what you’re working on.

Once you have a few customer sales under your belt, I recommend approaching each one of your workshop purchases with an eye on boosting production speed.

I plan on discussing this topic further and sharing my favorite tools, fixtures and layouts for increasing production speed in upcoming posts.