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Dave Macfee's New Shop
Here is our new little factory which consists of 4 buildings.
The 2 major buildings were built in the 1930's.
The large pitched roof structure was originally a lumber company.
It is a massive wood frame structure with a steel skin
and was built to house mega-tons of lumber.
There is 15,000 sf in this building and we are using about 6000 sf for shop.
You can see my booth stack coming out of the roof. The rest is warehouse
space for rent, plus some of it is rented as mini storage. Where you see the
orange doors are is another building which is all mini storage. There are two
buildings like this one but one is outside the picture. The building in the
middle with the awning is about 5500 sf and is all shop and showroom.
All total we occupy a little under 10,000 sf for our shop and showroom.
Another 1800 sf wood shop area belongs to my partner in the
property purchase who is a cabinetmaker/furniture builder.
For several years we have been doing all his finish work,
so this was a great fit.
The interior spaces were hopelessly outdated or inadequate,
so we determined it was best to gut the interior and start over.
We started renovations in mid January and began moving in late April.
We installed all new wiring, new ADA plumbing,
2 new rooftop units supply heat and AC to most of the shop,
2 makeup air units (one for the booth, the other for stripping).
Tons of new sheetrock and insulation and 100 gallons of paint.
We jacked out yards of concrete,
including 600 sf for a new floor in the stripping area.
Just inside the front door.
Here is what we hope will someday be our well developed showroom.
For now we just have a few finished pieces out for display,
but most of this furniture is work recently dropped off
and waiting for my inspection.
Double doors at the rear lead into my Assembly and Storage area.
Just inside the front door, looking the other direction.
There is a 400 sf office raised office area
partially showing behind the counter
This is the shop area before we started remodeling.
This space was remodeled into:
Assembly, Wood Prep, and Repair areas.
Assembly and Storage area.
We also stock this area for touchup work.
All hardware and other parts not to be refinished are removed
from furniture in progress is bagged and filed in this area.
I am big on no loose hardware or other parts
floating around with the piece as it moves through.
Unless it is being worked on - it goes here, and only here.
If you need to take the parts to another area for any reason,
bag and return them to the Assembly file when you are done.
Never, ever, leave hardware parts loose on a bench
except when they are being worked on.
Out of the picture to the left is another 10 ft of storage
area.
On the right are my 2-level carts on wheels
and most everything that comes in for work
will either go on one of these or on a platform cart.
In the next picture at the back there is a better view of my 2 level cart.
I designed them originally to hold a set of 6 chairs
(and sometimes an 8 set will squeeze in ...)
Once we built a few, we found they could hold all sorts of smaller items
and even some dressers, buffets, cedar chests and so on.
The double doors at the rear lead to our wood prep area.
Wood prep: Nothing fancy here.
This view shows about 40% of the work space.
At center is a makeshift sanding bench we built
from an air handling unit we picked used.
We still use all electric sanders.
PC speed bloc and PC 505 sanders.
At some point we will try an air sander
now that we have enough air-power.
Note the tall carts in the rear right of the photo.
We have a number of these which we use
mainly for table top surfaces in progress.
At this point we have just walked through the doors
from Assembly and this photo is looking to the left.
If we turn and look straight ahead,
we will see another set of double doors
leading to my repair area (next photo).
If we look to the right we have a small storage area along the wall
and then another set of double doors to our stripping room.
Repair area:
We have just walked through the doors from Prep.
Out of the picture left is a 10' tool bench, band saw,
drill press and stationary belt/disc sander.
We store solid woods on the wall rear-left using
some simple angle iron brackets we had welded up.
Underneath the lumber racks is a 12" DeWalt Mitre saw.
At left is the main work bench.
At center is our Powermatic table saw.
Behind that is sheet good storage and our lathe.
Looking straight ahead out of picture is
storage area for work needing repair.
Immediately to our left is our Oneida 3hp
dust collector shown in the next picture.
We have never had dust collection before.
So far, this system seems very impressive.
A nice advantage to the Oneida system
is that it does not have to be vented to the outside.
Air is filtered through the pleated columns and returned to the room.
Supposedly it filters our 99+% of the dust it sucks up.
Something you definitely want is a remote control device to turn it on.
To the left of our dust collector we have another set
of double doors leading to my partner's wood shop
(next photo).
This is just inside the doors of my partner's wood shop.
What a pleasure and an asset to be located
next to someone with so much capability.
I love this assembly bench in the foreground that he just built.
He built a torsion box of lightweight mdf and the top is melamine.
It is perfectly flat, which as I'm sure everyone knows
when you need a truly flat surface for leveling
a cabinet, chair, table, etc, this can be a big problem.
It is also low to the ground which puts casework
at a more comfortable working height.
In the next photo, we take a couple steps forward
and look ahead to the right in his shop.
View #2 of my partner's shop.
He used the same lumber racks for solids.
He also has a new Oneida dust collector,
but his is larger (7hp-3ph).
Advantage: I think this thing would
suck an 8' wall stud through it if it would bend.
Disadvantage: this sucker is LOUD.
But I guess it is not louder than any of his other machines.
Ear protection is an absolute here.
Out of picture to the right is his sheet good storage and
another small room for veneers, laminates and other misc.
The door you can see partially at the right is a single door
entering my spray booth area.
My stripping room:
We have just walked in from wood prep and are looking to
the right.
Closest to us; a 3x8 heated soak tank with Kwick Kleen 125 in it.
Next to that, a 5x10 flow tray and on further is our water rinsing station.
We use the air powered diaphragm chemical pumps and have one
at the soak tank as well as the flow over. Our stripper of choice
for the flowover is Kwick Kleen 2005.
Past the Rinse station out of this view is our
Water Treatment Equipment,
also purchased from Kwick Kleen. (1991).
Now for the big stuff.
Overall this room is 20' x 60'.
The first thing we had to do was remove a section of concrete
about 40'x15' so we could pour a new floor and slope it.
We built an exhaust wall behind all this equipment which is about 40' long.
In height, it starts about a foot from the floor and goes to the ceiling (apx
9').
It is apx a foot deep, but enlarges toward the top. The face of it
is heavy steel (24 gauge maybe?) panels that are screwed together.
There are some 10,000 holes punched in this exhaust wall.
On the roof is a 9000 cfm exhaust fan.
Directly opposite the 40' exhaust wall and coming in from above
is the makeup air for the exhaust rated also to 9000 cfm.
So? ... Looks mighty impressive but how does it work?
Well in some respects it is excellent but in other aspects,
it is not living up to expectations.
The great part is we have a completely sealed and isolated room
for stripping where we are getting about one air change every minute.
During operations, in almost every spot in this room
it is like a spring day and you can smell no chemical.
Unfortunately, this is not so at the all important flowover work station.
I can see a few design issues I suspect may be to blame
and currently we are trying to work through this with our contractor.
There's more to this story but I will leave it there.
In the meantime, I have decided I am thoroughly fed up with
trying to manage these stripping fumes, so I ordered and
installed a Martech supplied air breathing system for my operator.
It is a positive pressure full face mask that runs off compressed air.
It is a very nice system and I would highly recommend it to anyone.
It is very comfortable and was easy to get used to.
Exposure now is zero, all the time and guaranteed ...
No more of this "hold your breath" stuff either.
When you need to reach inside a cabinet now, no problem.
Eye protection? no problem.
Little spec of stripper hitting you on the cheek? no problem.
Sweat running into your eyes? no problem, the air is cool coming in.
Questions, comments welcome.
View of the rinsing station.
Below the rinse tank is a 300 gallon concrete pit in the floor
where water is collected to be sumped into the water treatment system
Part 1 of Kwick Kleen's water treatment system.
Water is treated with a flocking agent which collects all particulates
and separates them from liquid. Chemicals are added to adjust the
ph of the water back to acceptable levels. All the flock rises to the top
and then the water can be drained to the next treatment step.
Flock then drains out and is dried.
Part 2 of the water treatment system.
Here the water cycles up to the top of this column
which has a fan blowing air up through it.
The column is full of little plastic honeycomb things, making the water
disperse so the air coming up through the column will more efficiently
evaporate the solvent in the water. Run the water for a specified period
through this cycle and solvent is removed from the water.
Another view showing the relation of the makeup air
coming in (right) with the exhaust wall opposite.
Martech compressed air breathing system on the wall.
We rigged a simple swinging arm system
to attach the hose to so it is not dragging on the floor.
Martech system in use
Just another view
This is my finishing area:
It is immediately adjacent to the stripping room and is 20'x70'.
At the end of the room is our new JBI booth
which is 14'wide and 10'high x 10' deep.
I struggled deciding between 8 and 10' height
but am very glad now to have the 10'.
Another option we added was a variable frequency drive
on the exhaust fan. What this does is adjust the fan speed
as the filters load so that air velocity is maintained
at a desired rate for the life of the filters.
I am very happy I added this.
We are moving 14,000 cfm of air.
The makeup air for the booth is coming in
right above where I am standing as I shot this photo,
and is shown in another view.
Closer view of the booth.
Black grand piano in progress.
Don't be too impressed, I am no Kevin Hancock.
This is a recoat job and I am not rubbing out.
Spray booth: Sealed lighting fixtures.
Spray Booth.
Dry powder fire suppression system
(the 4 little black heads you see).
In the event of fire, a soft link melts, causing the powder to drop.
Booth automatically shuts down.
Spray booth control panel
View looking out from the booth.
Air makeup entry is shown.
Single door at the end goes into my partner's shop.
Double doors next to that go into stripping.
Control panel showing variable air flow controller gauge.
I can set the 2 red indicators to any range on the scale
and exhaust will set itself in that range.
Fire suppression system dry powder canisters.
View above the booth of the fan and stack.
What its all about :
Hope you all enjoyed the tour.
Again, I'd welcome any comments or questions.
I look forward to seeing everyone else's shops.
I think if we know more about each other, we will be
better able to access and appreciate each other's advice.
Maybe this page could be expanded even to list information about
the specific processes and materials we use in our shops.
For instance, wouldn't it be nice if you were looking at a new tool or material
to purchase, if you could go to a groop reference and see who is using it?
There is also a story about Dave and his shop
in The Topeka Capital-Journal, as shown at:
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