"jtaylor" wrote in message
...
At this point I am moving 4 little pieces of paper around on top of
another
sheet of paper with squares drawn on it.

The floor is about 12'x22'. Footprints for the four things a

Car 13'x6'
Lathe 3 1/2' x 5 1/2'
Mill 3' x 4'
Drill 2'x2'

What sort of space should there be between the various tools so I can do
work without having to remember exactly where I am all the time?

Are there any real advantages to having access to all sides of the lathe -
this asked because right now the bench is by itself in the middle of a
floor
and it's kind of nice to be able to walk around it.

Ahh... A problem unfortunately near to my heart. I have a one car garage
with a floor 11' wide and 17' long into which I need to fit a lathe, mill,
welder, tools, etc.. and a small project car. The foundation leans back a
bit so I have a bit more width and length about 2' up from the floor. I
went through the same exercise with the paper cut outs. Your larger lathe
and mill operating envelope may offer constraints that I didn't face, but
this is what I did.

I have the lathe (a SB 11" which isn't as deep as yours) running along the
left side of the garage with the tailstock in the left rear corner. I
haven't missed not being able to get to all sides of the lathe. I have the
mill (small Gorton 8D) on a 18" pedestal backed in to the right rear corner.
I can't get to the back of the mill but this hasn't been a problem.

I have a bench in between the mill and the lathe. I used to have this bench
set up to fold up against the wall so that I could fit a full size car in
the garage, but no longer. I'm going to install a folding bench on one side
of the garage. I have a small benchtop DP which is stored on a shelf, but
if I get a bigger one, it'll go in the right front corner. Welding stuff on
the right wall, grinding and sanding stuff in the left front. I've built
shelves to hold as much as a I can. Getting stuff off the floor is a big
help when one doesn't have much floor to work with - my compressor is up
high, as are the small welders.

I apologize if this is more info than you wanted. I'm fairly amazed at the
amount of stuff I've been able to cram into the garage and I guess this was
an opportunity to talk about it. We're remodeling our kitchen in a month
and then I'm taking out the garage shelves and replacing them with the
kitchen cabinets. Oh boy!

Peter