I have the space problem, also in SoCal. I really need two shops, one for metal working (where sparks are acceptable) and another for woodworking (where no sparks are allowed). Plus I could use a nice clean area where I could do finishing and leather work.
I am mostly self-taught. It used to be books, now it is youtube. One way or another I can figure out most processes. I blame my grandfather for putting me on this path. He was a depression era farm boy who joined the Navy and became an electrician. He fixed cars on the side for some extra income and rebuilt old clocks for pleasure. If he couldn't find the parts he needed then he would make them. Necessity is the mother of invention. He taught me to keep at it, and if necessary, back up and try it from another angle.
Over the years I have become less and less satisfied with the quality of work I get when I pay someone else to do something, so I pretty much do everything myself. I would rather buy a tool than pay someone to disappoint me.
I sort of blended my metal working skills with my woodworking when I bought a new tablesaw. I wasn't happy with the mobile base that came with the new saw, so I decided to build my own mobile base, and decided I would rather have cast iron than a laminated wood extension table, so I worked the old tablesaw into the new one, and added a cast iron router wing at the end. Here is the frame, ready for paint:
And here is the not finished, but at least functional assembly.
And the router end:
It still isn't finished. It spends most of its time as a horizontal storage space. Just one of the many reasons I need more shop space.
I do handtool work too. This box is my first (and thus far only) run at hand-cut dovetails, and my second and third run at inlay (yes, this is where my avatar comes from):
And:
I do some machining as well. When my grandparents died I inherited $1,000. Not a lot of money, but enough to buy something that would honor their memory. I bought an old Logan lathe. That has opened up some options I would not otherwise have.
When I started having trouble with a window in my dually it turned out to be nothing more than a broken roller. Problem is, you can't buy just the roller by itself. You are supposed to spend about $100 to replace the entire regulator assembly. I don't want to replace the whole assembly. That is an unnecessary pain in the rear. So I bought a piece of Delrin off ebay and ground a cutter so I could cut the inside ball socket. If my time is worth anything then it would have been cheaper to just buy the whole stupid assembly and replace it, but my bride will tell you that I have just a wee bit of a stubborn streak. (That is the broken one in the back, held together with a piece of wire so that I knew what I needed to reproduce.)
And I have even managed to figure out a bit of threading. This is the base of my support system for my rotating mast for ham radio transmitter hunting. It threads into a stainless thru-hull fitting in the roof of my XJ. If you look closely you will see the evidence of my repair from crashing the thread cutting tooling into the workpiece on the last pass. At least I didn't damage my tooling, and the part still works. I keep learning. The hard way.
I don't have any pictures of my leather working. I haven't done any of that since digital cameras became a thing. I do have some campaign stools on my to-do list though. Once I get to those I will have to break out the leather tools.
If I had the resources I would love to get one of those old Flxible buses and rebuild the entire thing, inside and out, turning it into a classy travel rig. From the drivetrain to the interior finishing I have all the skills to build a rolling work of art, but it would take me years, and by then The Varmints would be grown up and gone and there would be little point to it. So I settle for building my Jeep and Suburban and traveling in those. It is the getting out and doing things that matter more than the vehicle.
