My family are moving into town and my available shop space has dramatically decreased. My wife also wants the garage to not be overwhelmed with my current set up: Jet contractors saw, penn state dust collector, grizzly 6 inch jointer, woodpeckers router table. I plan to mainly do DIY projects build some built ins for the house a breakfast nook that kind of stuff. Is it reasonable to think I could sell what I have and get the smaller more portable versions of the bigger tools like table saw and jointer and just use a shop vac and do reasonable quality work. All of my tools are 10-15 years old and work well. Part of me doesn’t want to lose the power of the bigger machines but buying new stuff that is small sounds cool and if momma aint happy aint nobody happy in our house.
Dilema in mo.
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downsizing
I had a similar problem years ago - no space for a workshop other than half of a garage that had to also keep a car each night (guess whose car).
I purchased a Shopsmith and have never looked back. I have the bandsaw and jointer on the bsck wall and the Shopsmith rolls up against them and the car fits each night. I used to have the planer, but its weight and my age didn't get along well so I sold it and got a Dewalt 735 on wheels and managed to fit it into the Shopsmith space as well.
It is not the best woodworking solution, but I do quite well with it - Highland Woodworking on-line magazine has 'published' three of my pieces.
If you are interested, Shopsmiths show up all the time on craigslist. I suggest that you join the Shopsmith forum where you will find lots of good advice on buying and refurbing a used model - they can be had cheap quite often. It is at url http://www.shopsmith.com/ss_forum/index.php
Forrest
BTW don't be putoff by the jointer only being 4 inches. I use a method that has successfully flattened an 8 inch wide piece of cherry. The forum shows the Mathias Wandell method I used.
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