Workshop build little way from home.

[sometimewoodworker]

I will be retiring soon and have the chance to have a reasonable size workshop as part of our house build.
As this is a build a little way from my home in Watford (about 6,000 miles) I will leave it to the members to decide if you want me to continue or if it is so far away that nobody's interested

 

[RobinBHM]

We like all WIP threads, one abroad would mek an interesting read.

Is it in Japan or Thailand?

 

[DTR]

Was I the only person who looked at the floor plan and thought: "Main workshop, machine room, finishing room, wood storage room...."?

Or are you going to ruin it by domesticating it? (hammer)

 

[sometimewoodworker]

We like all WIP threads, one abroad would mek an interesting read.

Is it in Japan or Thailand?

It is in the north east of Thailand about half way between Udon Thani and Khon Kaen or about 100km to the Laos border. Although I am currently working in Japan while my wife has to take charge in Thailand.

I had better wait a few days before proceeding and take a look at the vote in case you are a lone voice.

But I'm happy to give a little background information anyway.

I left the UK in about 1990 and came to Japan because it is close to Thailand about 15 years later I met my wife to be in Thailand.

My wife decided we should build a house and I agreed but with the proviso that I would get a workshop.

We started planning in about 2006 with an intention to start in 2008~2009, now there was a bit of a problem then, that "nobody's Darling" forced my bank into receivership. So my savings were potential wiped out. This caused an understandable delay. Progressing onto mid 2015 we finally had enough to start and possibly finish before I had to retire, maybe sooner.

 

[sometimewoodworker]

Was I the only person who looked at the floor plan and thought: "Main workshop, machine room, finishing room, wood storage room...."?

Or are you going to ruin it by domesticating it? (hammer)

Hi Dave

There should be enough room for both, I hope. :deer
Workshop on the left. Finishing room to be added outside and behind.
SWMBO insisted that we have a bedroom and kitchen/living room. #-o

I get about 45% inside SWMBO gets 55% I get a paint room outside, she gets another kitchen outside in the banana jungle.

 

[Glynne]

Keep posting please!

At the risk of slightly derailing this thread I'm planning a holiday to Japan next Autumn (2017) and would love to see some traditional woodworking whilst I'm there. We (the boss & I) will be touring around so fairly flexible as to locations so if you've got any suggestions / recommendations that would be brilliant.

 

[sometimewoodworker]

Keep posting please!

At the risk of slightly derailing this thread I'm planning a holiday to Japan next Autumn (2017) and would love to see some traditional woodworking whilst I'm there. We (the boss & I) will be touring around so fairly flexible as to locations so if you've got any suggestions / recommendations that would be brilliant.

Hi Glynne

To my regret I have to confess that I know almost nothing about where you can see the work in progress. I have spent my time here working to get enough money to travel outside Japan. If you are interested in seeing examples of traditional work I can help with that. As my wife dragged me to Kyoto and Nara the two main concentrations of temples and shrines.

If you want to buy tools most of them are about half the price you see in the UK and I can point you in the direction of places you can get consumer grade tools (that is the majority of the tools available in the UK) and a good selection as well, if you follow the link in my signature there is a section of pictures taken in some stores. I don't know where to buy the tools like planes and chisels that are upwards of £500 each that would be made by the most famous smiths.

 

[sometimewoodworker]

So far at 95% to 5% to continue I will for now. The pole runs until the middle of October and you can change you vote if you want, so you are welcome to change your mind.

One caveat is that I will be putting in some gratuitous information or pictures, here is one.



A bit of a flashback, the sketchup models in the first post are made by our architect from his CAD file.

This was my first run at a model, my sketchup skills are modest to poor so the 1st floor was separated or easy viewing. Originally the house ceiling hight was more normal, but the workshop always was going to have enough room to move a full 2440mm X 1220mm piece of sheet material without hitting anything up high.




Second iteration; SWMBO said she didn't want space we were not going to use for ourselves that she would have to clean for not much benefit (we can't reproduce) so she decided the house would be one floor. To make life easier she also said the ceiling heights should be the same. This will give us between 3.6m and about 5.7m in the living room. More importantly it gives me a minimum of 4m in the workshop.

The workshop is designed so that we can put a car or pickup inside for security if we want to go away for some time. It is also designed to have a loading dock/parking area. This will allow easy off loading of plywood or machines but probably more often packs of water and the monthly shopping, we are over an hour from the nearest large supermarket so 100L of mineral water at a time is common, I probably drink 3~5 litres a day.

This was the sketchup model we gave to the architect.













Preparing for posting in Japan at 9:53 a.m. Tuesday, 27 September 2016

 

[sunnybob]

Location is immaterial.
I wanted to move to Thailand about a dozen years ago, but the laws then meant a foriegner couldnt buy property outright and had to have a native in part ownership.
So i moved to cyprus instead.

Not too sure about flower pictures though, I think thats stretching the envelope.

 

[rafezetter]

Keep em coming - and I wonder which grumpy sod voted no?

 

[sunnybob]

I expect it was the threat of flowers that decided the no vote. A little too far off topic.

 

[Lons]

I for one find it interesting so keep 'em coming please.
Bob

 

[sometimewoodworker]

I expect it was the threat of flowers that decided the no vote. A little too far off topic.

In defense of the lone no vote it did in fact come before the Flowers.

However in defence of the flowers, they are in my garden in front of my Waterhouse, the main house is in the picture behind, this means that they a far less of a diversion than some of the other things that I will be posting. Although I will be keeping the off-topic posts and Pictures down to a small percentage

This picture is how the house is currently but it will take quite some time before I get to this stage in my posting

Posting will take a little time as I'm having to find a reasonable subset of the 3,000 plus pictures and then reduce them in size for UKW

 

[sometimewoodworker]

The design of the workshop / house was influenced by the Sala/Waterhouse we built in one of our pools, the Waterhouse has a little Japanese flavour to it though the second level of roof is designed so that we can fit water tanks in, it isn't supposed to be just decorative.





The architect followed our design with some suggested modifications. The most important was to have some floor to ceiling wall space between the windows in the workshop. My modification was to change his over slung crane to an under slung design.

Maybe you didn't notice that there is a crane in the workshop It's there because SWMBO doesn't like being asked to help and a full 20mm MDF or Thai plywood sheet is too heave to move without some kind of help. I also would like a BIGWOOD BIGWOOD_MJ_344B 16“ or MJ-345 20” bandsaw and the crane will make moving tools quite easy.



These are some of the drawings



Before starting we needed to follow the local traditions so there was a ceremony at the local Buddha statue asking the Buddha for good luck, the lottery number just after the ceremony was 11 and that's the scheduled official start day, so maybe it worked. It included a pigs head that in true frugal Thai style was then eaten by SWMBO and friends.



Then there was a small ceremony on the building area asking the land god to move and let us build.



We then did a soil bearing test to establish the sizes needed for the footings.




As you may appreciate this procedure is a little more simple than getting planning permission, it isn't needed in our village as we are so far from town.

 

[sometimewoodworker]

Sorry for the slow pace, the new semester is a busy time. Any way on with the story.

We got in a small digger to help with the foundations



As you can see some of them are quite big




They are preparing them quite well compacting the base



Very unusual for Thailand is the wire coil for helical stirrups


A thin concrete base befor the pad is poured




Quite a few of the labourers are women




Preparing for the first post ceremony





Preparing for posting at 11:52 a.m. Thursday, 13 October 2016

 

[sometimewoodworker]

More from November

Adding money to the foundations for luck


Neighbors helping putting up one of the first posts


Neighbors helping putting up the other of the first posts

Thin concrete base

Correct, but uncommon, spacers under the rebar

Irrelevant banana plants just beside the house


Again a common sight in the UK a concrete bucket, but less common in Thailand


We are going to use a UFER ground but our architect decided to add a ground spike as well





An unusual, for Thailand, spiral stirrup.





Preparing for posting at 3:47 p.m. Thursday, 13 October 2016 (my class is busy now)

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Bananas? Common in Thailand, less common in GB. I've just been told to cut back the one on my allotment as it is too big and they don't allow trees. I don't think they liked it when I told them bananas aren't trees.

 

[sometimewoodworker]

Bananas? Common in Thailand, less common in GB. I've just been told to cut back the one on my allotment as it is too big and they don't allow trees. I don't think they liked it when I told them bananas aren't trees.

Of course you are completely correct it is a grass as is bamboo and papaya. So the jobsworths should have banned very large/tall plants :lol: because they would probably allow a box tree.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I have read that technically it is a herb. Whatever - it's a monocotyledon.

 

[sunnybob]

Theres lots of banana plants / trees /herbs/ whatever, around here. You cant believe the space a single plant takes up. Incredible amount of green material for a few fruits/ vegetables/ whatever, and I dont even like them.