As long as I'm doing all this metal work, I figured it was finally time to build a workshop.


Here's the starting place for my metal workshop, with a bunch of lumber sitting there. The welding table is on the left, and the forge is there on the right. Until this picture, the welding table was on my covered deck, but I felt that the fire hazard right up next to my house wasn't a very good idea.


Here you can see that the work space is right there next to my chicken coop. Hope they don't mind the noise.


Next day, got some framing done. The main walls are 6-feet tall, and the taller sections are 8-feet tall. I have a taller section in there because I know that an overhead swing of my hammer will require a taller-than-6-feet ceiling.

... I noticed that it was awfully tall next to that fence. I asked my neighbor if it was going to be an eyesore, and he said he wouldn't mind. But then he said that he wasn't sure what his wife was going to think, so I decided to prevent a neighborly marriage crisis and move the frame. A dolly and a wife sure come in handy.


Here's the frame with some 4-foot walls next to my garden shed. I'm actually going to take over the garden shed (where else am I going to store my coal/charcoal?) and connect the walls somehow.


Here's the new welding spot. It's a little close to the doors on the shed (they swing out to open), but once the exterior walls are done, I'm not sure I'm even going to have doors on the shed. We'll see.


And here's the forge. Woo hoo.


Trusses up on the short-side of the workshop. Roof should go up in the next few days. And then I'm going to put up some aluminum screen over all the openings to keep cinders/ash from getting out. As for the interior, I'm probably going to use some thin sheet metal and cover all the exposed wood so there's little chance of everything going up in flames.


And now the entire roof is up, and much of the outside is painted. I haven't gotten all the windows screened up yet, and I still need to line the interior with sheet metal to keep it from burning down if any rogue sparks get away from my work.


Here's a shot of my welding area, viewed from the entrance of the smithy. At the moment of this writing, I actually haven't done any forging yet. I've been doing a lot of welding, so getting the welding area set up was my priority. As you can see, my welding "table" is actually three chunks of 4" square tubing that are pressed against each other (I'll weld the tubes together eventually) on top of some cinder blocks.


Here's a shot of the welding work space from behind my welding chair. I plan to do some reconfiguring of the space eventually, but everything seems to work well at the moment. All of my tools are within reach, and I'm protected against the elements. It's a fine workspace.