Ryan-071

I'm going to be looking around locally and see how much lumber I can scrounge up for cheap/free. That will help determine when I can start building.

A sod roof sounds interesting. I was thinking that at some point I might be able to install some solar panels on the south side of the roof. Might help offset the electric bill a bit for running lights and equipment in the shop.

Thanks for your input Charles! I was planning on building on the south side of our backyard, with the door facing towards the north, which would allow for the easiest access from the house. Our house faces East. Also, we have a very new 6' privacy fence going all the way around our backyard. I'll definitely be looking at the insulated options now for sure. If I build the roof on the 4 corner poles now, will I be able to add walls to it later? I also have an old woodburning stove hood and chimney at my disposal. I'll have to measure it and see how large the pipe is. I'm hoping for at least 10" but preferably 12". How difficult is it to run a chimney through an insulated roof? What type of precautions will I need to take to make sure I don't burn the roof down? Again guys, thank you for all of your help. This is some truly fantastic information for me.

Thanks Thomas! I did forget to mention height. I was planning on at LEAST 10' because I can easily reach an 8' ceiling even without a hammer. I haven't heard of pro-panel. I might need to look into that (even if it isn't free for me). Also, I said coal forge, but I'm really using whatever I can get my hands on. If I can get some real charcoal from the local blacksmithing group I will. Unfortunately none of them really have any interest in armor. I've been looking around on the armour archive as well, and they have some great info for actually working the metal for armor, just not much info at all about constructing the shop. I figured it would be better to ask about that here :)

Hey guys! I've been doing a lot of reading through the forums lately, trying to find out as much about what everyone else is doing/has done to help me in designing and building my own shop. I am coming at this from more of an armoring perspective, so there won't be much large stock, at least not 20' long bars to be swinging around. I'll be dealing with mostly sheet steel. Anyways, I've kind of got a general plan setup, 2 actually, and I was wondering if I could get some advice. In my area, anything under 200 square feet doesn't need a permit in residential areas, so I'm thinking something like a 12'x15' or 10'x18' would be pretty nice. I'm pretty friendly with most of my neighbors, and I don't plan to be hammering at 2 AM. However I would like to keep noise and smoke in mind when building. I'll be using a coal forge that I'll be building inside the new shop. I'll be building in my own backyard. My first plan is the quick and cheap. I would really like to get at least some form of a roof up so that I can at least hammer in the shade, and my equipment won't get rained on. So I was thinking about building a quick frame and putting up some currogated metal roofing. Then putting up some simple walls when funds allowed. I would also like to have a gravel floor, so that when it rains, it doesn't turn into a mud trap. I could pour a concrete floor, but I think there is some restriction on that with the city. So I'd have to look into that first. This option would get me going sooner, but there wouldn't be walls to block some of the noise for a while. My second plan would be to build it like a small house. Insulate everything, put a nice shingled roof on it. Still stick with the gravel floor. It would "look" nicer to the wife and the neighbors, but it would take me much longer to get built. I like the idea of insulating everything, because here in Kansas it can go from 120 degrees in the summer, down to -20 in the winter. Worse with wind chill. If I go the simpler route, with the currogated metal roof, I'll be in the shade, but how much of the heat will I actually be blocking? I know Pugman built a REALLY fantastic looking shop using currogated metal. I just don't know enough about building materials myself to make informed decisions at this point. Do I need everything to be insulated in the summer? Or is it better to have more of an "open" shop? Thanks for any input you guys can give me! I really want to make some good building decisions with this. ~Ryan