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I have, occasionally, purchased cheap tools, and often I've ended up having to buy better tools. Sometimes when you're in the hardware store looking for tools it's hard to tell which are the ones worth buying. This is a place to drop notes on tools:

  • Saw the Festool products in action, bought a whole bunch of them.
  • My dad mentioned Laguna Tools.
  • and Rockler.
  • he also suggested "ryoba" saws for detail work.

Which tools do I need?

Notes on various tools that are traditional in larger shops, but that may or may not be necessary for our uses.

Band Saw

Used for re-sawing thicker lumber and stock.

Jointer

For putting a flat edge on one face.

Planer

For putting a parallel side or decreasing thickness. We've purchased a DeWalt 735 benchtop planer.

=== Table Saw === We do "projects". We don't want to tie up the expense or space of a shop, and we like to be able to do varying sorts of projects in the same room. Our woodworking projects have also been limited to the non-rainy season, because even when we've had a space that could handle sawdust, we like to be in a heated area.

Over the years I've gotten along fairly well with the standard hand tools, a basic circular saw, a basic jigsaw, a too-cheap router. I did manage to spend some dollars on drills along the line, one of which has gone missing, and while I've turned out the usual set of shelves and even a rather nice workbench (suitable for the living room), I've never had the accuracy that I've wanted to do really nice work.

Recently we came up against a project where we really wanted a table saw. Three things stood in the way of that:

# Table saws require a lot of space.

# My dad lost some finger length due to a tablesaw accident, and as a result I was unwilling to consider anything but the SawStop, which is expensive (although easily justifiable if you really need a tablesaw, it's a really nice premium tool even without the safety features, and the safety features are ''cheap'' insurance), and is big for a tablesaw.

# Even when you add a good dust collector (and one that can deal well with a table saw starts being in the "build a separate shop building" and pumps this whole operation up into the "really really expensive" category), there are still dust issues.

For this project I tried building a mini-tablesaw with my rotary cutter tool and some plywood, but I quickly realized that I was just staving off the inevitable: If we were going to continue being who we were, we were going to have to break down and find out what it took to do real woodworking.

Cabinet Saws vs Sled Saws

???

Router Table

There are some really nice router tables out there. Really nice. But I'm a cheapskate and built my own. We've got a Porter Cable 7518 router with a Jessem Mast-R-Lift lift.

Notes on building a Router table

Festool

Notes here have been moved to their own Festool page.

===== == Random notes

I have, occasionally, purchased cheap tools, and often I've ended up having to buy better tools. Sometimes when you're in the hardware store looking for tools it's hard to tell which are the ones worth buying. This is a place to drop notes on tools:

Which tools do I need?

Notes on various tools that are traditional in larger shops, but that may or may not be necessary for our uses.

Band Saw

Used for re-sawing thicker lumber and stock. We picked up a Jet 14" bandsaw with the riser, giving us a throat height of 12" and a blade length of 105".

Jointer

For putting a flat edge on one face.

Planer

For putting a parallel side or decreasing thickness. We've purchased a DeWalt 735 benchtop planer.

Table Saw

We do "projects". We don't want to tie up the expense or space of a shop, and we like to be able to do varying sorts of projects in the same room. Our woodworking projects have also been limited to the non-rainy season, because even when we've had a space that could handle sawdust, we like to be in a heated area.

Over the years I've gotten along fairly well with the standard hand tools, a basic circular saw, a basic jigsaw, a too-cheap router. I did manage to spend some dollars on drills along the line, one of which has gone missing, and while I've turned out the usual set of shelves and even a rather nice workbench (suitable for the living room), I've never had the accuracy that I've wanted to do really nice work.

Recently we came up against a project where we really wanted a table saw. Three things stood in the way of that:

  • Table saws require a lot of space.
  • My dad lost some finger length due to a tablesaw accident, and as a result I was unwilling to consider anything but the SawStop, which is expensive (although easily justifiable if you really need a tablesaw, it's a really nice premium tool even without the safety features, and the safety features are ''cheap'' insurance), and is big for a tablesaw.
    • Even when you add a good dust collector (and one that can deal well with a table saw starts being in the "build a separate shop building" and pumps this whole operation up into the "really really expensive" category), there are still dust issues.

    For this project I tried building a mini-tablesaw with my rotary cutter tool and some plywood, but I quickly realized that I was just staving off the inevitable: If we were going to continue being who we were, we were going to have to break down and find out what it took to do real woodworking.

    Cabinet Saws vs Sled Saws

    ???

    Router Table

    There are some really nice router tables out there. Really nice. But I'm a cheapskate and built my own. We've got a Porter Cable 7518 router with a Jessem Mast-R-Lift lift.

    Notes on building a Router table

    Festool

    Notes here have been moved to their own Festool page.

    Category: Woodworking

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