Go for drawer units for all the lower units where you show one drawer and an open cupboard and door below. The depth of the lower units front to back ensures that stuff pushed to the rear on the shelves in such units requires you to get on your knees to retrieve it. Or it simply becomes lost and forgotten. With drawers you open and lift out and when you're getting one thing you see the others and that reminds you of what is stored where. It's just simply far easier and more effective to organize and access our junk in drawers than on a deep shelf that sits low to the floor.
For my uppers on the other side of this area where I have walls I went with a slightly different setup. Because the width of the uppers doesn't match the stud spacing I went with a support strap of 3/4 plywood that the uppers sit onto. The strap takes the lion's share of the load and a 4 inch wide 5/8's inch stiffener inletted between the sides and top serves to provide some additional load support and a way to secure the cabinets initially. Because they are a little more flexy than a full backed cabinet I started out setting and securing the first one to the stud with a screw in the upper stiffener. Then I squared it up and drove a locking screw through the bottom and into the lower load bearing strap. With this one set square I just set and secured the rest using the first to set the squareness. After they were mounted I added an external top strap of 3/4 x 4 which is double screwed to each stud. To connect the cabinets to this upper strap I used two L brackets to lock the cabinet top to the upper strap. This proved to be both simple and relatively economical to do compared to full backs. And even full backs does not ensure that you can support every cabinet on more than one stud With a load bearing lower strap I feel that the sides of the cabinets are far better supported.
And the lower strap doubles as a place to secure hooks for hanging up frequently used items such as a dial vernier gauge, bench brush, wrenchs specific to a given press, reading glasses, etc.
In your design since you have a corner cabinet you'd want to start from there and work out to either side of course.
Ivo raises a good point about solvents and the like. I do my major gun cleaning out in the garage where I have a sink and laminate counter. I chose to separate this function to keep the odors out of the house. And because my reloading and maintenance area is primarily "dry" I get by with a solvent and oil resistant mat over the flooring I'm using as my work surface covering.
Ivo suggests the idea of three layers of 3/4 ply. I would suggest that this is a bit of overkill for anything where you won't be using a hammer and major tooling. Even with the T track cutting into the top layer there's going to be more than enough support from two layers if the top is secured well to the lower units. With the kitchen like lowers secured to the wall and then the top secured to the lowers I'm getting by just fine with a layer of 3/4 MDF as a flat and stable first layer and then just the flooring over top of that. The results are solid as granite thanks to all the spots where the cabinets are secured to the studs both at the top and bottom and correctly leveled on the floor. But then again if you opt for the T tracks then I would suggest that two layers of 3/4 is not a bad idea at all due to cutting more than half way through the top layer for the tracking.
I did go with two layers of 3/4 on my metal working bench area. I then tested it with a large ball peen hammer and a plate of 1/2" steel to see if there was enough flex to make the plate jump like it was on a trampoline. Over the support provided by the vertical sides of the cabinets there was no jump at all. When in the middle as far as I could get from the vertical support from the sides the double layer still was stiff enough that there was only very little spring induced jumping. And that was when hit by a full over the shoulder swing. If it had jumped more than 1/2 inch I was prepared to add a third layer. The jump was less than 1/4 inch.
The layers in this last case were two layers of 3/4 good quality fir plywood. Not cheap but SO much better than the usual spruce or hemlock plywood. The layers were bonded to each other by a 6" by 6" grid of 1 1/4 dry wall screws. I opted for "sewing" the layers together this way instead of gluing so that I could take it apart at some point in the future if required.
I would definitely include at least one foot well at a couple of places. But oddly enough I found that I don't need a foot well for working at the press. I found that the handles come out far enough in their swing that I need to sit far enough away to have a comfortable swing that my knees are not under any risk. And this is despite having only the typical 1 to 1 1/2" overhang. YMMV of course so I'd suggest you mock up something and try loading for an hour and see how much or how little space you need for your knees. Better to take an evening now to prove your setup than to mess up the final product.
Your drawing also shows some open shelving. For the upper cabinets I would put doors on all of them. The idea is that this is the be all and end all setup that you'll live with forever after. Do you really want to look at the clutter on those open shelves when the rest is hiding behind doors? I suspect not. If the price of the doors is holding you back then make your own. It's a shop area after all. So a door made from 5/8 or 3/4 ply without any fancy decoration is just fine. Just edge band them and folks will think it was a design choice instead of being an economy move...
if you can put a sink in one corner. It's surprising how often having water available comes in handy.
Don't skimp on electrical outlets. If you're framing and drywalling then I'd suggest a box at 6 foot intervals along all the counter area. I'd also run a couple of switched outlet boxes up just below the upper cabinets so it's easy to install under cabinet lighting.
Someone pointed out the need for extra clearance to the uppers. I've found that with my own setup that this hasn't been an issue. The loading area shown above has no uppers but the area adjacent to it has uppers at the same spacing as used in kitchens. I've yet to find that they are in the way. So if you stick to the typical kitchen sizing for everything you should be just ducky.
For my under cabinet lighting I went with the self adhesive LED ribbon that I picked up off Ebay at $15 for 15feet. I went with the "bright white" vs "cool white" which is too blueish. I had a ribbon of "warm white" and it's too orange'y. The inbetween stuff is just more what we're all used to seeing for indoor lighting. The LED strip worked out so well that I put it into the kitchen. And if you find like I did in one area, that one strip isn't enough just put on and hook up a second strip about 3 inches away and it brightens things up enough that you'll darn near need sunglasses
That's about it from me. I got my own similar areas finished up and began using them about a year ago. And I'm just putting the last touches on the metal working area. The info above reflects what I've found works for me.
