For the past ten years, I've promised myself a dedicated workshop for my various wrenching projects. Originally it was planned for motorcycle work. In the past five years, full time bicycle mechanics have taken over, and while there's still some motorcycle specific tools and stands, it's now the bicycle shop that I've always wanted since the days of A.R. Adams Cycle.

The shop itself is a 12x22' garage drop-in shed. I couldn't go any deeper since my property line is 22.5' feet from the driveway edge at that point:



However, I've managed to set it up efficiently with everything reasonably at-hand, and enough room for two bikes to be worked on simultaneously. Of course it's fully insulated, and there's a kerosene heater hidden behind the tool boxes.



What really made it is my inheriting my late father-in-law's workshop. Frank Hochmuth was both a steam engineer with a number of patents to his credit, and an extremely good machinist. As I am totally untutored in the use of a lathe, I advised him to sell his (which he did), but the rest was left for me to pick through. Which gave me stuff like drill press corner



Of course, there's a well organized parts department (haven't had a chance to label the trays - that's in process)



Various tool boxes (black is American tools, motorcycle specific, and miscellaneous; red is metric and bicycle specific, wood is taps & dies). The low bench behind it is my motorcycle workstand. I fold up the bicycle stand, pull it out and tack on the ramp.



I'm running two work stands, both Spin Doctor - their good one which gets most of the use, and their bottom line cheapie (folded out of sight) which I'll pull out for a second bike, or if I'm going to be doing some heavy wrenching on the bottom bracket. I'm am seriously considering a heavy duty, bolt-to-the-floor, shop stand sometime in the future.



The biggest help, though, is the old Craftsman work bench which replaced my home made one (it's outside of the back door - I'll be building a small porch off it this fall, and using the outside bench for stuff I'd rather not risk inside).



And the woodworking saws have been temporarily (yeah, right) moved into the wife's garden shed, which is also storage for any bikes in line for being worked on. Well, I've only got a finite amount of space. Damn that property line - I would have really liked to have gone the full 40' deep, which was the maximum the company I bought the shed from could supply.



Finally, there's the other owners of the shop - Manson's Family, the family of stray cats that moved underneath back in July. They're still feral, and the little black one, named Squeak, is the only really people friendly one of the bunch (he's spends his evenings sitting or laying next to me when I work), However, we all get along well, and there hasn't been any mouse problems in the garage or sheds since they arrived.



One final picture, totally non-bicycle related: Just to give you an idea of what kind of guy my wife's father was, I kept the last hobby project he was working on at the time of his death. It's a small two cylinder, two-stroke engine that he was building from scratch until his failing health stopped work on it. He was in the process of designing the intake system when work was stopped. This motor is 7" long from flywheel to end of the main shaft, and 7" high. That's a quick release to the right and behind it, for size comparison.



Yeah, I got some inspiration there, as well of a sense that I'd better do a good job on all my mechanic work.