Hello everyone! Experienced DIY’er just getting into building cabinets/etc., in my garage/workshop.
Have full assortment of hand tools, and hand power tools, as well as a small table saw. My question for the forum is, what additional power tools would you recommend, and in what order. Budget doesn’t allow simply buying all at one time. Would like suggestions on how to be able to work on projects, while at the same time building a nice inventory of tools. Also, due to space considerations, need to lean towards “portables.”
Do any of you all have suggestions? Thanks in advance for your help.
Replies
If you're just making cabinets you can probably get away with what you have for the time being.
Basically my shop has: Table Saw, Jointer, Planer, Drill Press, and Bandsaw. I bought them in this order. But remember there are always multiple ways to do things, so you may not need all these tools.
I would start with a jointer, as big as you can afford, and a planer, any of the "lunch box planners". The reason is that without these two--and they are used as a combination--it is very difficult to use solid wood instead of plywood. And, it allows you to use rough lumber, which is a valuable money saver.
Boards need to be edge jointed to be glued together well. (People will say they can glue up panels from boards ripped on the table saw. You can get boards which will stay together that way, but not progress to where the glue line totally dissapears with the only clue being that some grain lines seem to stop suddenly. )
Boards need to be flattened and dressed to a smooth surface on their faces. You can buy already surfaced lumber but it is almost never truely flat and ready to use. You first joint the face of the board --on the jointer--and then make the other side parallel to the first--with the planer, which should more properly be called a thicknesser.
Thus, this combination of tools opens up a whole new world of effectively using hardwoods. From there let your project determine what you buy.
I gotta disagree on this one. In my humble shop, there is absolutely no room for a jointer. For ten years I have been able to joint boards off the table saw. One straight edge is the key ingredient, which the sawmill gives me for 10 cents a bd/ft. That said, I use small blades with many teeth to do the ripping, and I go very slow. I will admit that possibly 1 out of 12 do not make the cut. But does anybody's jointer have a much better ratio than that? My favorite blade for this is Piranah, 8" X 40 tooth. No longer available I think. but I own enough that they will be included in my will. So all of you know, I consider myself a novice WW, by no means a master craftsman. I have perfected the art of creating sawdust!
F EI'm sorry, I thought you wanted it done the right way.
True.
My lumber shop will joint and plane a board to the thickness I want free of charge.
I do love my bandsaw...
Hi FastEddie1 - It's true that you can edge joint with a TS or a router, but when the time comes to flatten the face of an uneven board, the TS will fail miserably and the router will require a whole new set of tricks and take alot more time. You can also face joint with a hand plane, but that'll take some practice, a well tuned hand plane and some elbow grease. Even the S4S wood I've bought usually has enough undulations on the face that I run it through the jointer face down, then again on edge to give me two flat straight adjacent reference surfaces that are 90d to each other, then I move to the planer for final thickness, then to the TS for final width. This is pretty much the method Norm uses and is widely used....although I'll admit it's not the only way to skin a cat!
You might want to do a search on old posts. There must be a thousand posts just like yours over the past few years. Seems like there is one a month at least. You might dig some good suggestions out of those old posts.
The way I'm setting up my shop (notice I use present tense, because the process will never and should never end) is to make a small example cabinet for the cabinets I will make for my kitchen. I started from the beginning and made the face frame. So for that I decided I wanted a jointer and planer to surface rough lumber and a table saw to rip lumber. I also bought a pocket hole jig to join the face frames.
Then I started on the raised panel doors. So on top of the jointer/planer/table saw/etc, I needed a good router table and a powerful router to make the raised panels. Do you get the idea? Pick a project that you want to accomplish and buy the tools you need during the course of that project.
Good luck!
Tim
Alot depends on what you'll build. If I was very limited at what I could start with, it would be a decent TS, then a medium sized versatile router and a shop built router table (~ $250 total plus bits), followed closely by a planer and jointer (~ $700). A BS and DP can be handy too depending on what you do, but I made do without for a couple of years. Eventually you'll want a DC too.
Gotta get some basic clamps too. HF puts their Pittsburg bar clamps on sale frequently for cheap, and they're not bad clamps. Get a few 6", couple of 12", couple of 18", and a couple of 24" to get rolling. (~ $20)
The good news is that bargains do come along, and some used or refurbed equipment is a viable choice. Good tools are cheaper in the long run...they'll serve you well, last longer and maintain resale value. Patience and research my friend!
Jointer, gotta have straight, flat stock to start with.
Are you working almost exclusively with sheet goods? If yes, you don't even need a jointer or planer yet, and might be better off getting a "not-small" table saw. Is that "small" table saw a benchtop saw? I'd go for a contractor saw for the sheet goods.
Ignore the above if the "etc." you stated includes furniture, then the jointer and planer are at the top of the list.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
For me, it depends on the goal.
If you truly want to develop your skills, start by buying (and working) lots of wood... Read books, watch videos and take classes. You'll naturally develop a direction and with that, a need for specific tools... You'll also come to appreciate the merits (and demierits) of various tools.
The turners use a completely different array of tools than sheet-goods cabinet makers..who use different tools than carvers, period furniture makers, etc..ad nauseum. Learn more about your direction or you'll waste your $$
If your goal is to buy tools (Like many of us who just like tools), purchase away...decide whether you prefer hand tools or machines and go at it!
Like many of us have learned, a good tool doesn't make a good woodworker..learn to use the tools that you have, remember that you get what you pay for (to some degree..there's always the point of diminishing returns), and have fun!
lp
Thanks so much to everyone that responded. It is true that I have started mainly on cabinets, but plan to expand to other more "ambitious" projects.
I am working mainly with sheet goods right now, but one of the next projects are new cabinets for the wife's kitchen, and those will require fancier doors than just plywood, so looks like a planer is moving to the top of the list.
I have also been using the table saw like a jointer, and it does usually work ok, you just have to be super slow, and extra cautious in your setup.
Thanks again for all your help, and I know I will be bothering everyone again, with more silly questions.
"A JOINTER!" is the usual response to this question. That was one of my first tools too, BUT . . .
I haven't taken the cover off mine in years. I have a decent contractor's saw and use Forrest blades. With the fence adjusted (a weekly chore on my junker saw), these blades have pretty much made my jointer obsolete. Only rarely do I need to touch up an edge if I'm careful ripping it, and then I do it with a hand plane. So, if you are having OK results using your table saw as a "jointer", why change now? The power tool I use most after my table saw is my thickness planer. Now that opens up a whole new playground, since you can get your wood rough sawn. Usually cheaper and more varieties available and you're not limited to stock thicknesses (which, IMHO, make a piece scream "AMATEUR PROJECT"). And thickness planing without one, though certainly possible with hand tools or to some extent, with the jointer, is a royal pain. If I had to start from scratch, I'd spend my big power tool money in this order: 1) a good table saw (with a good fence); 2) a thickness planer; 3) a router/ router table / fence setup; 4) long-bed jointer; etc. forever (there's always another tool to buy, right?).
That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it. But I'm wierd. ;-)
Mike Hennessy
I think most people recommend a jointer so that the face of the board can be flattened, not the edge. Hence the 6"+ width. I can not think of any other quick and easy way to do this in the shop.
That said if you are buying dressed lumber, or if your lumber yard will do this fo your cheaply you can probably leave this until the end. I always view the jointer and planer as a combo.
"I think most people recommend a jointer so that the face of the board can be flattened, not the edge. Hence the 6"+ width. I can not think of any other quick and easy way to do this in the shop."
True enough. But even so, if I'm careful in selecting my stock (which I am), I find it's almost always flat enough to run through the planer without jointing first. I buy almost all my wood rough and wider than 6", so I long ago decided that running everything through the jointer first just wasn't practical. If I have a board that I really want to use that is twisted, I'll either do a quick tru-up with a scrub plane and winding sticks, or use guide rails screwed to the edges of the board and run it through the planer to flatten the first side. I've also asked the guy at the mill to flatten one side of wide pieces before I leave the yard, but his plane has to be all of 16" wide and has a power feeder. Man, if I had that in my basement, I'd use it all the time too! ;-)
I'm not really arguing that a jointer is not useful -- it is. I just think there are more ways to work around not having a jointer than there are to work around not having a planer or a good table saw.
It sounds like you have been cruising along, and now want to spread your wwing wings -- but you don't say which direction you intend to fly. Casework (i.e plywood cabinets) is one thing, furniture (e.g. chairs, tables, etc) is something else again -- at least in terms of the collection of tools you need.
As a general rule, if your TS is adequate for the time being, I would suggest you first buy a portable planer ($3-400), and then save your nickles for a jointer (smallish jointers can be had for about $5-600). After you have acquired these two items, I guess it would be time to assess your TS, and whether you need a bigger, fancier model.
Assuming you have a router, you ought to be thinking about some simple way of rigging it on a router table, if you haven't done so already.
If you are heading toward furniture, then you will need a bandsaw, drill press, and accessories for your TS (like a tenon jig).
Does that help?
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"It is what we learn after we think we know it all, that counts."
John Wooden 1910-
You are absolutely correct in that I am thinking about branching out. At least for now, casework will be the main projects, at least until the wife's kitchen is totally redone, but then I would like to branch out into furniture, etc.
THat is why I posted this thread. I want to start gathering tools as I can afford them. Also, I want to get the "most useful" first, and then the "luxury" items as time allows. Thanks for your input, and when I do that first furniture piece, I will post a pic so you can all have a good laugh.
Thanks again!
Well, for casework you will need to handle your sheet goods well. In my case, and I gather in most other peoples experience, it is very hard to make your first cuts on anything smaller than a cabinet saw with a 50" fence and good outfeed table. The sheets are just too big and unwieldy! This doesn't seem like your budget, so I'll tell you what I did: I bought a good contractors saw with a 30" fence, added an outfeed table, and use a circ saw with a guide to do the initial cut-up of the sheet (I use the Eurekazone EZ Smartguide, and would buy it again). If necessary I finish the piece on the TS, making sure I get a square piece using a panel sled (shopmade).Once you get into making sawdust you need a dust collector. You can get by with using your shopvac for a little while but once you do a lot you'll need to get something with more capacity (I personally feel like anything short of a cyclone is just an overgrown shopvac, but some may consider that view extreme :-)Next, these are not big items but are essential to me for casework: I got separate cordless drill and impact driver. Do a kitchen worth of cases and you will kiss your impact driver because it made it so much easier than using a drill, and also you can drill countersunk holes then sink the screw without changing bits. All the wasted motion adds up after a while.Once I started going beyond casework a router table, jointer, and planer became essential. You can do face frames without any of these (assuming you go that way, I prefer frameless myself) by getting S4S lumber, but I don't think you could do the cab doors without all three. Even then, some cabinet shops don't use the jointer and planer but rely on S4S. They must have better sources than I do for that stuff! You can make the router table yourself, and a beefy router like the Hitachi MV12 (I refer to it as Routerzilla) can be had for around $160.The other tool I use a lot is my Kreg pocket hole jig and a 4000RPM Hitachi corded drill - $220 for the lot.RogerI'd rather be making cabinets and friends....
I'm going to echo another poster, suggesting that you add dust collection early rather than late. It's amazing how much different the whole process is, with all the machines, with so much of the sawdust out of the way.
Pocket hole jig would be pretty high on my priority list if I were building cabinets.
The one thing that I found invaluable for making cabinets is a compressor and nail gun. You can buy a bundle kit for a couple of hundred. When doing casework instead of spending time clamping you just run a bead of glue and tack the case together with some brads. I think you will find that this speeds up the process with good results.
It's not a power tool in that you plug it in to the wall, put the power tool I till people to invest time and money in is simple. Make / buy the best quality wood working bench you can. You will use it with every project. A good front vice and tail vice and well placed dog holes.
Power or hand tools, a good bench is what I would look to invest money.
Can't argue with that...a functional bench is an excellent tool!
As has been pointed out... this is an all too familiar question.... but it's kinda fun to see the direction the answers take... Like anyone else answering, I've my own slant..
Personally I'd put a jointer and thicknesser to the bottom of the list.. you can get by quite well without them if time isn't a major consideration... I haven't looked at mine in over 2 years and really begrudge the cash they swallowed.. Tailoring capability to budget and space available, I'd recommend hand planes for stock prep; they don't need a huge dust collector, they don't have capacity limitations, they don't need rocket science to master and when you're done with them you can store them in a cabinet or suitable drawer...
I faced a similar prob with my table saw... When I bought it I needed cheap capacity... getting on for 5 years down the road, my compromise still works fairly well.. I dropped a bench-top saw into a custom cabinet to give greater rip capacity and better out-feed support... There's no reason why you couldn't do exactly the same... build 2-3 rolling shop cabinets that can be inter-connected around a cabinet for your saw to give a huge modular work-surface that can be large or small as needs require, then wheeled away when you're done...
It seems to me that you'd benefit greatly if you had a good hand held circular saw. Hooked up to your shop vac and ran in conjunction with a good long straight edge, these things are worth their weight in gold... they can give that first straight edge on a waney edged board, cut sheet goods down to more manageable sized pieces and a host more besides.... Definitely worth the cost of a decent one...
How's your router coverage...??? Ideally you'd want 2-3; hand held routers that can cover 1/4" and 1/2" shank sizes with "adequate" power, soft start, variable speed and bullet proof depth adjustment... plunge is an added bonus... In addition to those, invest in the biggest, meanest sucker you can afford and drop it into a router table... Like the hand helds, discount anything that doesn't have soft start and variable speed. In addition, look for one with built in height adjustment (above the table access is an added bonus).
Last point (before this post resembles a book); how about a good sliding cross-cut mitre saw?? Even the best of them are limited with their in / out-feed support, but like the table saw, there's no reason why you can't build a mobile cabinet to keep it on. Fold down wings can be added to support your stock properly, greatly enhancing the capacity of the saw... I built mine based on the pics attached...
I hasten to add that it's nae me in the pictures... ;)
Mike Wallace
Stay safe....Have fun
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