ShopTalk Friday: A Home Power Tool Shopping List

There will be a “quickie” post later on – when the job numbers roll this morning. But with the stock market closed – and tension building to the “Which Way Chicane” come Monday, I think it’s a dandy time to wander into dreamland.

The place where we all go to make magic.  The shop.

Because – a new book I’m writing, which will be serialized shortly on the Peoplenomics side of the house, will be “Jack of All Fabs” which is a domain-based overview of how humans spot problems, define solutions, and then set about building things.  In metal, wood, plastic, castables, and so forth.  That will be a very neat book.

But for now?  Close your eyes – as any wizard would – and imagine the alchemy of Making.

Tools that Make Magic

This is a three day weekend for a few lucky financial types. But, whether you get the whole day off, or just have some time on your hands, it’s always a dandy time to go through home shop dreams and a “nice to have” list.

Back when I was young (3/4’s of a century back) Mom would get everyone “Easter Presents.”  Pappy would roll into the Montgomery Ward tool catalog.  You can still find classic Monkey-Wards tools on eBay in used tools.

As it turned out, a crisp new white shirt worn for 120 minutes (and even then under protest) was nowhere near as useful as Pappy’s purchases.  I spent hours scheming how to get my hands on them.

Fast forward to present times? Here’s an Easter Weekend shopping list to get you started on the road to tool slut poverty:

For all shops, begin with “the basics.” A good set of wrenches (and deep sockets) along with an assortment of hammer styles.  And the world’s most useful of all home tools: the stationary drill press.

If your credit card isn’t broken by this, and you still have room to put anything, let’s go shopping!

General Shop Tooling

1. Outlets and lighting.  You will want power at arm’s reach everywhere. And it helps to see what you are reaching for.  LED shop lights don’t flicker like the old fluorescents and they are inexpensive to operate.
2. Dust collector or dust extractor — big shop vac in a pinch.  No, not sexy, but wood dust is a respiratory hazard and can also create fire/explosion risk; OSHA says engineering controls like local exhaust are the preferred approach. If you get a long hose, you can actually keep the shop floor clean, too.
3. Cordless drill and matching 1/4″ Impact driver — impact driver has more torque than a comparable cordless drill, which is handy for long screws, bench builds, and hardware-heavy work. Warning: the choice you make here may drive a lot of future cordless power tools.  So. think it through: Dewalt, Metabo, Craftsman, Black and Decker, or Skil.  Be planning for future tools when you pick this one.
4. Small air compressor — worth it if you want pneumatic nailers or light spray/air-tool capability; combo kits can be a good value. It depends, though, on what your walk-through of the home turns up as projects.  For painting, an electric spray paint rig is great. Use paint cup liners to reduce clean-up.  If you like making furniture and such, then a more powerful actual compressor is the route to go. 18-gauge brad nailer — very handy for jigs, shop fixtures, small trim, and hard-to-clamp glue-ups.  Top compressors will cost money because they will blow 90 PSI at 5 CFM or better.  Until you’re in the $500 class, most manufacturers attended Pinocchio Marketing School.

The Big Drill Press

Unless you live in an apartment, a serious drill press is in order.  The shopping specifications are:

• Motor Size.  There are 745 watts in one horsepower. Therefore, a drill press with 350 watts, or less, quickly moves toward useless.  Unless you are building dollhouses.  Exceptions to everything.
• Size (in inches):  This is the size of the drill press from the vertical column out (toward the operator) to where the drill makes contact with material.  A starter drill press is typically 8 inches.  10″ is better, 12″ is great.
• Quill (or Throw):  When you pull the handle down, what is the maximum depth from drill up to bottom of drill down?  At least 3-inches and longer is better. (OK, more pricey, but you’re made of money, right?)

The Wood Shop Power List

For a general home woodshop doing furniture, cabinets, repairs, and the occasional jig, my top 20 power tools by usefulness would be:

1. Table saw — still the most versatile shop machine for ripping, crosscutting, miters, dadoes, and grooves. My go-to is a foldup Evolution 10 inch table saw.  It cuts metal, not just wood. The backup is a factory fresh 8″ Craftsman which sees dado duty.  (Dadoes are grooves shelving goes into, for the kids.)
2. Router — especially valuable with a small router table; it handles edge profiles, grooves, rabbets, raised panels, and lots of joinery. Except, I hate router tables because sawdust gees up the brushes.  Instead, an old wood shaper is the right tool, but hard to find in perfect shape. I got lucky, but it’s like fishing on eBay and Craigslist.  Patience pays off.
3. Cordless drill/driver — see comments above under general tools.
4. Random-orbit sander — the best all-around finish-prep sander for most woodshops. Wen has always done me well on these.
5. Circular saw — also called the “skill saw” after Skil which pioneered the genre. (Like Lincoln did with arc welders.) Great for rough dimensioning and breaking down plywood or long stock before it goes to a bench, miter, or table saw.
6. Track saw — especially strong if you work with sheet goods or don’t have a lot of infeed/outfeed room; it makes straight, furniture-quality cuts and easier plunge cutouts. Honestly, I wouldn’t have one, though.  Not enough tool time for the set-up time.  A simple 4-1/2 inch battery powered circ saw will cut down most sheet goods in the pickup bed.  Down to where you can man-handle them at the table saw. And those small circ saws are great.
7. Thickness planer — lets you mill lumber to exact thickness and turn rough stock into surfaced boards.  This is a tool you get after you have discovered that a central vac (or a Dust Deputy add-on for the shop vac) is a necessity.
8. Jointer — gives you a flat face and straight edge so your stock is actually square and cooperative. Start fishing Craigslist in advance – a 6″ long-bed is ideal.  Short bed jointers sound good until you start doing glue-ups out of 8 foot material.
9. Bandsaw — excellent for curves, tapers, and resawing; Fine Woodworking specifically calls a 14-inch bandsaw the one power tool even hand-tool woodworkers should have. Bigger is better on bandsaws.  With a stout one and a high fence, you can begin doing re-saw work.  Imagine being able to cut 3/4″ dimensional lumber in half, running it through the planer, and having cheap wood for small cabinets, boxes, and such.
10. Miter saw — fast, repeatable, accurate crosscuts, especially on home-center lumber and trim stock.  A 12″ Harbor Fright has served us well for years. Get the big roll-around stand to make moving it practical.
11. Jigsaw — still the cheap, useful answer for curves and cutouts. Get one with a laser and this is why you think through battery and manufacturer choices we talked about earlier.
12. Biscuit joiner — not mandatory, but great for fast alignment and reinforcing panel, face-frame, and carcass joints.  Honestly, I have one and several tubs of stale biscuits – they don’t get used that much unless you are doing furniture work. Glue ups benefit, but lots of TiteBond III does a great job on its own.
13. Oscillating spindle sander — a big upgrade if you make chairs, templates, or anything with lots of curves. A handheld belt sander is cheaper, though less accurate.
14. Scroll saw — ideal for fretwork, puzzles, delicate curves, and small-detail cutting. If you like dollhouses and models, this is your tool.  Mine is seldom used, but when you need it (like the big drill press) there are no substitutes.
15. Lathe — only this low in our rankings because it is specialty work, but if you want bowls, spindles, knobs, or pens, nothing replaces it.  Except the Japanese roller ball pen department on Amazon. Which is why my small wood lathe has cobwebs.

Not broke yet? Keep reading; we’re here to help.

The Metal Shop Power Tool List

For a general home metal shop doing repairs, brackets, gates, trailer work, small fabrication, and the occasional “I can build that cheaper” project, the basics are a little different than wood.

Metal is less forgiving. It’s heavier, hotter, louder, and in a real hurry to remove fingertips, eyesight, and optimism. So begin with the practical stuff: a stout bench, a serious vise, real lighting, fire-safe floor space, and enough outlets that you aren’t running the whole operation through one orange extension cord from 1987.

General Metal Shop Tooling

Bench vise — If the drill press is king of the general shop, the vise is mayor, sheriff, and tax collector. Get a real one. Not decorative import iron that breaks if you glare at it. A 5-inch vise is workable. A 6-inch vise is better.

Drill press — Just as in wood, one of the most useful shop tools ever made. But in metal, it really earns its keep. A good drill press with slow speeds, decent quill travel, and a proper machinist vise will save endless grief. Cheap presses with too little power are fine for balsa wood and political promises.  OK, balsa, then. Get cutting oil and a good set of colbalt bits.

Cordless drill and impact driver — Still basic shop gear. The drill is for holes. The impact driver is for running fasteners, self-tappers, and assembly work. Same warning as before: your battery platform choice now may govern your future cordless life.

Air compressor — More useful in metal than people realize. Air blow-off, die grinders, paint, plasma support in some cases, tire work, and general shop utility. Small is acceptable to start. Quiet is worth paying for.

Angle grinder — This is the circular saw of metalworking. If you own only one metalworking power tool at the start, this may be it. Cutoff wheels, flap discs, grinding wheels, wire cups — one tool, endless bad decisions and occasional brilliance. A 4-1/2 inch grinder is the place to start. Two is better, because swapping wheels gets old fast.

The Metal Shop Power List

1. Abrasive chop saw or dry-cut metal saw — Fast way to cut tubing, angle, flat stock, and pipe. Abrasive saws are cheaper and filthy. Dry-cut saws cost more but are cleaner, faster, and far more civilized.  See my Evolution table saw for the higher priced, more precise answer.
2. Horizontal/vertical metal-cutting bandsaw — One of the smartest upgrades in any home fab shop. Clamp the stock, pull the trigger, and let the saw do the work while you think lofty thoughts. The ability to make straight repeat cuts without showering sparks everywhere is a beautiful thing. Rehab an old one from Craigslist and buy good blades – that’s one trick to alignment.
3. MIG welder — For most home metal shops, this is the first welder to buy. It is fast, forgiving, and practical for mild steel repairs and fabrication. A 120V unit will get you started. A 240V machine is where life begins to get serious. I’ve been very happy more than a decade with a Lincoln SP-135T.  Even happier when I finally started using shielding gas.
4. Stick welder — Ugly, simple, rugged, and still one of the best deals in shop power. Great for outdoor work, thicker steel, rusty farm-grade repairs, and projects where appearance is less important than “did it hold?” If money is tight, this is still one of the cheapest entries into actual metal joining. The Chinese gun-type machines that handle 1/8th inch rods have become the go-to fixer of metal out here.  No set-up time and we’re not welding wafer fab gear.
5. TIG welder — Not a beginner necessity, but when you want precision, stainless, aluminum, or clean pretty work, TIG is the dress uniform of welding. Slower, fussier, and more demanding. Also deeply satisfying when it goes right. You will need a foot pedal if one doesn’t come with your kit.
6. Plasma cutter — One of those tools you think is a luxury until you use one. Then suddenly every jagged torch-cut or grinder-hacked shape in your past feels like a personal failure. Wonderful for brackets, plate work, templates, and getting weird ideas out of steel in a hurry. Load up on consumables, heavy magnets and disposable straight-edges.
7. Oxy-acetylene rig — Old school, but still useful. Heating, bending, cutting, brazing, loosening stuck hardware, persuading steel to reconsider its life choices — a torch set remains one of the handiest things in a serious shop. Plan on new hoses every five years, they tend to be crap material.
8. Bench grinder — For sharpening, deburring, cleanup, and general edge taming. Not glamorous, but always useful. Put wire wheels and buffing wheels into the accessory budget eventually. Have a place to hang a face safety shield right at the machine. More on this in a sec.
9. Die grinder — Pneumatic or electric, this gets into places the angle grinder can’t. Excellent for weld cleanup, inside corners, carbide burr work, and making small corrections after large mistakes. A good Dremel or its 1 HP hanging overgrown cousin, is just the ticket for gun cleaning work.
10. Metal lathe — Once you have one, the world changes. Bushings, spacers, shafts, threads, cleanup passes, precision work — suddenly you stop looking for odd parts and begin making them. Even a modest bench lathe can open up an entirely new class of projects. Geared head.  I have a small Taig but it’s more crafty than anything. The big 19″ Jet? Oh yeah, baby!
11. Vertical mill — Not a starter tool for most people, but if you are doing serious metal work, slotting, drilling patterns, facing, surfacing, and actual precision fabrication, this is one of the greatest force multipliers ever devised. The Harbor Fright vertical mills have a cult following. And if I didn’t admit to visiting LittleMachineshop.com I’d be lying.
12. Portaband / portable bandsaw — Great for field cuts, awkward stock, and jobs where dragging material to the big saw is more trouble than the cut itself. Or, you take the old farm approach: load up on metal cutting blades for your recip saw and get (whatever) into the shop for proper work.
13. Sheet metal brake — If you make boxes, covers, panels, brackets, trays, or enclosures, a brake becomes surprisingly useful. Not mandatory for all shops, but very handy. They eat space and handle 12 gauge metal tops.  Otherwise, outside to the rail/anvil and wheel out the oxy rig for heating before smashing.
14. Sheet metal shear or throatless shear — Saves a lot of misery when working thin material. Cleaner than cutoff wheels, faster than aviation snips, and easier on the hands. Neat tool, but not enough use for payback until you make commercial quantities.
15. Mag drill — Specialty tool, but for heavy steel drilling it is a game changer. If you ever need clean holes in big stock without manhandling everything onto the drill press, this starts making sense. Even more if you are a certified welder and planning your own shop.

Safety Gear Is Not Optional

Woodworking gives you dust and kickback. Metalworking adds sparks, UV flash, hot chips, razor edges, fumes, and the occasional glowing souvenir dropped directly into a shoe. So the actual basics include auto-darkening welding helmet, face shield, hearing protection, leather gloves, decent sleeves or jacket, safety glasses everywhere, and real ventilation. A fire extinguisher should not be three rooms away beside the Christmas decorations.

Face shields everywhere. And I put on stainless steel chainmail gloves before working anything with the word “sheet” in it, if metal.  Care to guess why?  Backstop all metal drilling with clamps, not fingers!

If Starting From Scratch

For a home metal shop, I’d buy in roughly this order: bench vise, drill press, angle grinder, chop saw or metal bandsaw, MIG welder, air compressor. After that, go toward the kind of work you really do. If you are into repair and farm-grade work, lean stick welder and torch. If you are into cleaner fabrication, lean toward MIG/TIG and bandsaw. If you are heading toward machining, begin stalking lathes and mills before someone else on Craigslist sobers up.

Oh, and if you don’t know what 6013 is versus 7018, get a book.

Out of Money?

Yeah, me too, once.  That’s how the “Lunch Money Trading Account” came into being.

You don’t need to buy tools, though.  There are all kinds of Youtube videos. Do a search for Shop Made Tools.

There’s a whole underground cult of home-made tool builders waiting to be discovered.

OK, with markets closed, off to the…care to guess?

Write when you get rich,

George@Ure.net