Urban Knifemaking

Joined
Oct 31, 2004
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As my profile says, I live in Chicago. My work space for the past three years has been a 2-car garage in a nearby suburb that I rent with a guy who builds motorcycles. We are getting kicked out at the end of this month because the landlord is renting the garage to one of his apartment tenants.
I know I'm not the only knifemaker who lives in a dense urban area, and I'm curious what other people do for work space when you don't have your own garage/basement/shed. Maybe this will give me ideas for my next workshop, but I'm also just interested in what other city people do.

Thanks,
Chris
 
Well, depending how messy you get, there's always indoors. Aside from that, if your're not the only knife maker in the area, you could team up with someone and rent a small work area (shed, storeroom, mobile building, etc.).
 
My experience from a few years back is that knifemaking doesn't automatically scare away a lot of potential landlords but forging does. I did a quick search for 500-1000 sq ft space on Chicago CL and found 4 or 5 potential candidates. The major problems in a big city like that are cost and how far away from you the property is. Availability may be an issue in an old city like Chicago because it seems that you see a lot more listings in that size range on CL in Dallas, Atlanta and Miami.
 
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One way to deal with it is to separate your equipment into two groups - Grinding/HT/dirty stuff, and finishing/filing/etc./clean stuff
The cleaner work can be done in a spare room and on the patio/balcony ( put an old carpet down to cover the good one the landlord has).
The messy, noisy, dirty, and hot work can be put at a friend place or another knifemakers shop in a suburb. It may mean an hours drive on a Saturday or Sunday to do the rough work and HT, but during the week you can hand sand, do filework, and shape handles.
 
The couple times i forged i did it at a "primitive campground" in a state park an hour away. No one uses that camoground hardly. I live in a suburb and don't want to piss off the neighbors or wife.
 
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