Here’s a photo of our workbench #2, where we have the power tools. The drill press is on the left, the scroll saw on the right. The small lathe (on lower right shelf) can be placed in the space in between. It’s on a piece of MDF, so the whole thing moves quite easily. I’m also going to mount the press on MDF to give it more support (and noise dampening, though it is very quiet).

Power Tools Workbench

To the left on the floor is a rolling shop vac, which is always ready to go. Lower shelves hold drill bits, measuring tools, small power tools, etc. Forgive the darkness in the photos. I should have opened the garage door for more light.

Here is a close up of the new drill press. Pretty inexpensive ($180) but includes some nice features like easy speed settings, LED speed display, rotating table, etc.

Our New Drillpress

Old t-shirt not included. It’s a pretty heavy beast, around 95 pounds. Be sure to place it on a strong bench!

Finally, here is a very boring piece of equipment that every garage shop needs, a cord reel:

Cord Reel

The above is from Northern Tool (part #162443) and holds 30 feet of 16/3 cord with three outlets. Mount it on a wall or ceiling. Extremely useful. They also sell better gauges, if you need to handle more amps. For our little shop, the lightweight 16 gauge was enough (and cheaper–$45). We have the shop vac always tied into it, and it’s also handy for shop lights. Reels like this are very handy if you have an older garage shop that doesn’t have much in the way of outlets.

(If you do get that cord reel note that it does NOT come with mounting bolts. You need to get some jumbo lag bolts to attach it to a joist [we are lucky to have a double-width 2x8 right above the bench area]. It’s a bit of a hassle to install, probably a two person job, but well worth it. Again, make sure you secure it down with BIG lag bolts.)