With a nice clean shop, and everything in good working condition, there still is a chance of a potential fire. To make sure no fire that might get started gets out of control you need the right fire extinguishers on hand. If you do not have fire extinguishers, you should invest in them as soon as possible. The best fire extinguishers for a wood shop are ones with a rating of 2A10B-C.

Wood Clamps – These are very helpful when you need that third hand and you just don’t have one. They are most commonly used when you are glueing pieces together and you need a tight joint.

You’ll want to start by buying or building a workbench. Most people prefer a workbench or table that is up high enough to work at while standing or sitting on a stool. This will give you storage room underneath, too. You can install a shop vacuum above your workbench if you’d like. It may come in handy for cleaning up sawdust. You’ll also need some shelves and cabinets for storing your tools. Covers for saws and drills are great to have so that your equipment can stay clean while you work on other projects.

Remember to post a couple of no smoking signs around the shop to remind friends who stop by not to smoke in the shop. A hot ash in the saw dust could mean new equipment and maybe new friends.

At the same time, metal lathes can be used for turning wood. This requires some refitting but the parts can be made by hobby metal workers. Larger metal lathes may have Morse taper #3 head stocks and tail stocks while #1 and #2 are more common for wood lathes. This means that either adaptors have to be made and commercial spur and tail centres used or spur and tail centres will need to be made to fit the lathe. Actually, this is not needed for the tail centre as live tail centres are readily available for metal lathes and are generally more robust than those for wood lathes because of the heavier weights usually turned.

Rasps: a coarse and fine cabinetmaker’s style. These are used to shape wood especially table legs.

On the other hand, this really means that the shop and in particular the lathe must be kept clean. This is a good idea at all times for workshop safety and the use of a metal lathe for metalworking and woodturning merely encourages the discipline. In any case it allows for a new dimension and direction for the craftsman turner.

Sawdust flies through the air then settles down in hard to find places that do not get cleaned up and creates a fire hazard. Your first investment should be a dust collection system connected to your table saw, miter saw, and anything else that creates sawdust. The dust collection system should be grounded with a copper wire running through the inside of the plastic tube to your saw. Sawdust traveling through the tube causes static electricity, which can start a fire in the tube.

Now the next step is how do you apply your veneer to your sub straight. Most times people will apply it with a J roller. Also some older shops have huge screw presses. Both of these processes disperse pressure unevenly. With a Vacuum Press you can apply up to 1800 pounds of pressure per square foot evenly and uniformly. Also with a Vacuum Press you are evacuating the air from your sub straight and veneer which means you get a better bond. You are pulling the glue deep into the pores of the wood. Which brings us to our next topic, glue.

All that is now needed is to remember that wood and metal are two different materials with different needs and affect the workshop in different ways. Oil is used in turning metal. Oil, unless it is the oil used in finishing a particular turning, can stain and ruin a nice turning. Similarly some metals react with some woods to introduce a discolouration. Thus it is necessary to be scrupulous in cleaning up all the metal shavings and all the oil from metal turning before turning wood.