Escaping The Chaos:​​​​​​​ How To Design Your Ideal Workshop

John McMahon shows how it’s possible to design your ideal workshop for less than the price of a takeaway meal (depending on how you look at it!)

- John McMahon

There are some woodworkers who can do great work sitting at the kitchen table, using a sharp spoon and a pair of mole-grips. While I admire such craftsmen, I am not one of them. I need the right tools around me and a well-arranged workspace or I soon find myself descending into chaos.

I am not alone: I have taught a couple of hundred students over the years and by week three every man-jack of them has worked out that they can’t do good work on a wobbly bench in the corner of a messy garage. Perhaps you would agree, and if so keep reading…

Spending money wisely

My idea here is that we build a really good workshop that’s within the reach of a keen but not yet fully equipped woodworker. I imagine a project like this would take around three years and I’ve made a few basic assumptions: this is aimed at someone who is pretty serious about woodwork, who has a basic toolkit, and some time and space to devote to the project.

Now we need to talk about money. I have based this build on a weekly spend of £34 over three years. That makes a total of £5,304. Can you afford it? Of course you can. The average UK family spends £68 a week on recreation and culture – surely half of that could go into a worthwhile project like this without rocking the family boat too much. (Maybe ‘less than the price of a takeaway’ is stretching things a bit but it makes for a snappy title… it depends on where you get your takeaway from, I suppose!) OK, so let’s work through this one year at a time…

Year 1: the basic hand tool workshop Clean-up & lighting