Home Workshop Sourcebook: For Everyone Who Loves Being in Their Home Workshop

by Julian Edgar

Love being in your home workshop? You'll love this book then.

Inside you'll find a detailed, step-by-step description of building a large home workshop - from levelling the ground and constructing the building to placing the machine tools in the finished workshop... and everything in between.

Lighting, storage, layout and power - it's all covered in a practical, down-to-earth style.

Have space for only a more modest workshop? That's included as well.

Building workbenches that are solid, cheap and long-lasting - that's in this book too.

There's also a multitude of material on tools and techniques - from using hand files to multimeters, from wiring electrical relays to using taps and dies to make threads, from welding techniques to sharpening drill bits.

Always wondered about using jigs, guides and templates? Or what you should look for when selecting a sheet metal folder? It's all in here.

You'll also find a host of interesting single-page snippets - building a turbo exhaust manifold for a Toyota Prius, cheap but effective DIY electronics, how to form lips on steel tube - and many others.

With over 250 photos and diagrams - most in full colour - this is an easy to understand and fascinating read.

140 pages, Paperback

First published March 28, 2013

About the author

Julian Edgar, 56, started his working life freelancing for photography magazines. He then worked as a secondary school teacher for eight years before leaving teaching and becoming a full-time technical writer.

He edited a national Australian automotive print magazine before becoming editor of an online car magazine. Along the way he wrote extensively for electronics hobbyist magazines while also contributing articles to publications in Australia, the UK and the US.

He has also worked at Executive Level in the Australian Public Service. Formal qualifications include a Diploma in Teaching (Secondary), Bachelor of Education and Graduate Diploma in Journalism.

In the automotive field he has owned cars with two, three, four, five, six and eight cylinder engines; diesel, petrol and hybrid petrol/electric drivelines; front-wheel drive, rear-wheel drive and all-wheel drive configurations; and cars with single turbos, twin turbos and superchargers.

He has been electronically modifying his cars for about 30 years. Over that time he has modified engine management systems, engine cooling systems, turbo boost controls, electric power steering systems, auto transmission controls, all-wheel drive torque split controls, stability controls, hybrid car regenerative braking controls, and lighting and sound systems.

He also enjoys aerodynamic modification of cars. He was the first automotive journalist to extensively wool tuft cars and write about the results (starting in 1989), and use Magnehelic gauges to directly measure aerodynamic pressures (in 2000) - both approaches now widely used by amateurs. In 2018 he developed a technique allowing amateurs to measure car aerodynamic panel pressures on the road.

Julian has supercharged - and then turbocharged - a Toyota Prius. He has also turbocharged a Honda Insight and fitted it with programmable engine management, doing the engine mapping from scratch. The Insight also has electronically-controlled, custom air suspension that Julian developed and fitted.

He has an extensive home workshop that is equipped with a chassis dyno; lathe; mill; MIG, TIG and oxy welding gear; metal folder and other tools.

Julian lives in a hamlet 80 kilometres north of Canberra, Australia. He is married to Georgina and they have a son, Alexander, who is 16 years old. Also in the family are Victor the sheep and Ar-Chee the cat!