Friday 31 August 2012

Pre-remodel shop tour.

I have done a short film showing the untidy, tired shop as it stands late August 2012 before any building work starts.
One of the guard kittens was having a sleep in the shop at the time and she is called Anna.

Apologies for the cheesy jazz music but it was a decent piece of royalty free muzak I found on the tinter.
Yes I know this is really absolutely boring, much too long, even for fellow woodworkers, but you never know somebody might be interested. The whole idea about it was to give me a record about how it looked before. Hopefully the new shop (and its corresponding tour) will be a little more interesting.

Friday 10 August 2012

Setting up shop

There was an interesting question posted on Woodtalk online recently. It was along the lines of "If you had $5000 to spend on equipping a shop what would you spend it on?"

I have to emphasise that whatever tools you buy you really do need decent cutters/blades or you will become very frustrated.

As I live in the UK I guess you could say "how much would you spend £5000 on?" It's slightly more in real terms than the US or Canadian equivalent but for our purposes it would do.
I know that £5000 is a lot of money but in real terms the purchase of 1 or 2 high end tools could seriously erode that budget.

If you look at it this way you have to decide what sort of woodworking do you do?
If somebody makes items exclusively using hand tools, euphemistically called the Neanderthals (Woodtalk  online "speak" - not me!), you may be able to buy the best hand tools that money can buy like a kid in a sweetshop (not sure what the North American equivalent is).
However if you are like me, a hybrid wood worker, about 2/3rds of the budget would be spent on power tools and the other on hand tools and you may well come up with a list like mine below: