Tools every woodworker needs | Start Building for under $1000

in this video I’m going to walk you through all of the basic tools that you need to know about if you want to start making furniture one of the most common questions I get asked all the time is I’m just getting started what tools do I need to know about well this video is for you I’m gonna walk you through cutting shaping milling joining sanding measuring all the tools that you need to know about and better yet at the end of this video I’m gonna pair all that down to the bare minimum starter package to get you set up and started making furniture and guess what I can get you set up for under $1000 that’s right I’m gonna put a whole list of tools together that you need to know about it’s going to be in the video description with all the links so you can get set up and you can build some furniture so let’s do this [Music] cutting it’s a good place to start because it’s probably the broadest category when it comes to woodworking tools there are more saws than there are stars in the sky that’s probably an exaggeration there’s a lot of different kinds of saws so I’m gonna show you some of the the basic saws that you would use you know when you’re first starting out so you have your jig saw this is a Festool jig saw works really well there are much cheaper jig saws and Festool so if you’re just starting out don’t go blowing all your money on a Festool you probably don’t need it Milwaukee is another great jig saw they make a really good product so that’s another good option then you have a circular saw or some people call them skill saws named after the skill brand which is what this one is skill saws are great for ripping down sheets you can do a ton of different stuff with skill saws and then if you want to get a little fancier you can get a track saw which is basically a skill saw with a track that guides it along so you can cut perfectly straight cuts a lot of people say hey if you have a track saw you know you can save money get a track saw you don’t need a table saw or anything like that but if you look into the prices of most track saws you can actually get a jobsite table saw for cheaper then you can get a track saw and you can do a lot more you know unique cutting things on a table saw then you can on the track saw it’s a lot more versatile when you start putting dado stacks in there and you can get fancier so if you’re gonna buy one or the other I would forego the tracks off for now and just get yourself a jobsite table saw because it’s kind of your bread and butter in the shop and then I always like to have a few of these Japanese pole saws laying around they come in super handy for getting in tight corners cutting flush cut dowels I mean you name it I use these for probably things you shouldn’t use them for but they’re fun so those are the basic smaller saws now I’m gonna show you some of the bigger saws and really the saws that you actually have to have to get started alright here are some of the bigger saw options and now as much fun as the smaller saws are and as handy as those can be in certain situations when you’re just starting out woodworking I really don’t think you need to bother with the small saws yet those are always something you can add on later the two saws that I would say you have to have in order to really get the job done is a chop saw and a table saw between these two sods you can pretty much do anything you want to do chop saws don’t blow the bank you can get a Festool capex and spend you know two thousand dollars but you don’t need to there’s a ton of great jobsite chop saws on stands on Amazon you get the freestanding chop saw build it into your own bench I have linked a very good quality Hitachi chop saw in the links below that’s a great starting out point I think it’s like 160 dollars or something so it’s really not that expensive to get a pretty decent chop saw the other thing you’re gonna want is a table saw now again you could spend $6,000 getting a really nice table saw but you don’t have to if you’re starting out a jobsite table saw will do everything a big table saw will do you can even put a dado stack in these things so you can do you know dado grooves for shelving or different kinds of joinery I’ve also linked a jobsite table saw in the description below so there’s one of those and these two items are going to be in my pared down list of things that you have to have and you can get these two things and still get everything you need for under $1000 so table saw chop saw good things to have that pretty much sums up cutting let’s go on to the next category [Music] let’s talk about drilling all right now drilling is almost like sawing there’s a million different tools you can get that involve drilling but when it comes to starting out you can keep it pretty stinking basic you don’t need to run out and buy a big industrial sized drill press because in most applications you’re not going to need it sure would it be nice yes would it make things easier absolutely but remember we’re talking about just what will get you by so I would just run out and get a simple combo kit of an impact driver and a drill some people have asked me like if I just have to get one or the other what should I get just get both they’re not that expensive you can get a combo kit you get the makita combo kit I love Makita their batteries last forever they have good Drive I’ve never had any issues with them I think you can get this combo kit of the drill and driver for like a hundred and sixty dollars and you can do a ton of stuff with this the impact driver is definitely way better at you know putting fasteners and things like that and then the drill obviously drill bits drilling holes in wood you’re gonna want to use that as well so just go get a combo kit that pretty much covers drilling you don’t get a get fancy it’s not that big a deal done when it comes to milling you basically have two machines that you’re gonna use in unison you’re gonna have the jointer which is behind me over here and you’re gonna have a planer now joiners and planers traditionally are very expensive tools especially huge ones like these which I’m not recommending you get if you first are starting out they do make little lunchbox planers that aren’t super expensive I think you can get a Dewalt which is a really good planer I used to have that one before this one it’s around 270 $300 and then you can get a benchtop jointer as well for you know somewhere in the same ballpark but let me let you in on a little secret if you’re just starting out and you don’t want to drop a ton of cash don’t get a planer and don’t get a jointer S for ss4 S stands for surfaced on four sides you can go into a lumber shop you can order S 4’s lumber that is already planed it is already joined and it is pretty much ready to go it’s a little bit more expensive to do it that way but if you go that route you cannot have a planer and not have a jointer for a very long time and still start making furniture and that’s what I’m trying to do for you guys in this video is get you building as soon as possible so I’m not even gonna include these tools in my thousand dollar shop set up at the end of this video they’re not even in there cuz you don’t have to have them just get s4s boom [Music] sanding a whole lordy lordy you could spend a lot of money on sanding believe me I have unfortunately all I have to show you guys is Festool Sanders because that’s all I have in my shop because I have a Festool addiction but like everything else if you’re starting out you don’t need the Festool stuff it’s just fancy and I’d like to pretend that I’m fancy this is my basic sanding setup so I have this big Rotex which is kind of my finished sander some people think I’m crazy for doing my finished sanding of the Rotex but it works great for me and then I have a small ETS 125 this is actually a pretty good starting sander it’s not that expensive as far as Festool goes I think this is like a hundred and fifty dollars it’s just a good all-around sander for you know hitting everything I wouldn’t want to do an entire huge tabletop with this although you can if you’re just starting out and then I have the DTS 400 the thing I like about this is it’s got the pointy nose on it so you can get in a lot of nooks and crannies but forget about that stuff just go out and buy a simple random orbit sander to start out with and that’s all I had to begin with and I rock that thing for years I had a Dewalt which I thought worked great I’ve also heard rigids another good brand I’ve linked some in the description below so you can pick one up for forty seven dollars and it’s a great sander so don’t worry about the expensive stuff right now the other thing I would recommend is for the little round sanding discs you can get one of these on Amazon for $9 it’s a little velcro sticky pad and the sanding discs velcro’s right on there I use this thing all the flippin time nine dollars you can get in all the little nooks and crannies I usually go over all my pieces with this after the RAM but random orbit sander just because sometimes it leaves little swirl marks and everything so nine bucks definitely get yourself a sanding pad that pretty much covers sanding right okay [Music] alright let’s talk about shaping I don’t even know if that’s the right title for this category but when it comes to shaping your wood I’m talking about if you want to put round overs or you know ornate edge detail on your furniture pieces get yourself this little Dewalt trim router get this exact router and I’ll tell you why I’ve had this thing for probably five years and I beat the crap out of it and it’s still going strong I have a really nice big Festool router but I use this thing probably way more than that because you can do anything with this you can do round overs you can do all your little edge detail you can put this in jigs to cut out circular tabletops you can do you know grooves across to make dado slots to put shelves in this thing is super Universal as you continue on in your woodworking you know goals you might want to upgrade to something bigger because it kind of speeds things up but I still use this constantly it is a very good tool to have link in the description below they also make a plunge base for that so it’s crazy versatile awesome tool can’t say enough I mean I’ve been sponsored by the wall the other thing you’re gonna want to get is people are obsessed with hand planes if you’re just starting out you don’t need a bunch of hand planes you’re not gonna be doing all this hand planing stuff you’re just gonna screw stuff up and get tear out because you probably just don’t know what you’re doing but what you do want to get is a little block plane comes in super handy when you’re putting drawers together and you need to flush everything up you just need to take a little bit off the edge of a door or something like that block planes are good for adding a little chamfer around the edge on things so get yourself a block plane this is Ally Neilson it’s a very good block plate and I love this can’t say enough good things about it but it’s also very expensive get on Amazon Stanly make some decent block planes if you just start now Grizzly’s just came out with a whole line of block planes and hand planes so a little block plane you use it all the time the other thing is some card scrapers this is more of a finishing item I just threw it in here because they sit next to my block plane card scrapers are awesome some people finish entire table tops with these things I personally don’t because I don’t like my thumbs catching on fire from the friction but I do use these in seams where there’s glue squeeze-out these are perfect thing to clean up in little corners when you get glue squeeze-out so a couple card scrapers you can make your own they’re just a hunk of metal that you put a nice little you know edge on there or you can buy them a selma amazon if you can get one for like four dollars super cheap that’s all i’m really gonna say about kind of shaping stuff is basically just get a little trim router you can use it in a million different ways next category i’m glad you could join me because now we’re going to talk about joining i did there all right joining there’s a zillion different ways you can join obviously the cheapest way you could do it is just to use one of your saws that I talked about earlier a little pull saw and do hand-cut mortise and Tenon’s but if you’re just starting out I’m guessing you’re probably not quite to that level yet so you’re looking for an easier more efficient way of joining stuff and I got a couple options for you the hands down number one thing I would suggest if you’re just starting out and you don’t want to spend a ton of money is the doweling jig now these are super easy to use they’re basically just little clamps that guide your drill into a piece of wood so that you can insert a dhow that can connect two pieces of wood together you can pick this one up for I think it’s a Rockler product I think it’s forty seven dollars so not very expensive and you already got your combo kit with the drill that’s all you need is the drill the doweling jig you can join wood together they make two different options though they have the smaller one which is good for most things but if you’re going to do bigger pieces of furniture they also make a widemouth doweling jig that I think can go up to about six inches so if you’re gonna do like big beefy table legs with a connected skirt you might want to spend a little bit of extra money and get the wide mouth one I think this one’s about sixty-five dollars versus forty seven so still not very expensive but this is my preferred you know recommended thing if you’re just starting out for joinery it’s a great joint you do a ton of different stuff of the doweling jig I built furniture for years just using Dowling jigs but then I wanted to get a little faster so I started to upgrade another good thing to have especially if you’re doing cabinet or you know casework a Kreg jig now pocket holes they get a bad rap in the woodworking industry mostly because people are trying to use this to do joints that it wasn’t intended for you’re not going to want to use pocket holes to put furniture together in a structural way because it’s just not as strong as let’s say a dowel together piece of furniture but this does work great for hooking plywood boxes together if you’re doing cabinetry so if you’re going to go more towards the cabinet side of things get yourself a Kreg jig it works great and most of the time you can hide all those pocket holes internally inside the cabinet where you’re not going to see it I think to get the simple Kreg jig set up this one with the clamp and everything it’s $99 they do have an option that’s a little bit cheaper which is basically just this plate that you can clamp on to stuff so that’s another option too this is just so much easier to use I’d spend the extra money get this one ninety-nine bucks then if you really want to step your game up you could get the domino jointer by Festool this is definitely revolutionized the joining game when it comes to furniture making but let me let you in on a little secret this is just a $1500 doweling jig that’s all it is Festool is going to jump out and shoot me or something but seriously if you want to spend $1,500 get a doweling jig the only advantage to this is it does it so stinking fast and precise so in my shop because I’m a full time furniture maker it makes total sense for me to drop the money on the domino jointer because speed is money if I can build something quicker obviously I’m going to make more money so I wanted to you know accuracy in the speed so I got the Domino jointer when it comes to the domino jointer there’s two options there’s the XL and there’s the I don’t know noisy cricket version the smaller one both of them are great a lot of questions I get is okay I want to spend the money on a domino jointer which one should I get I know it’s more expensive but if you’re just going to buy one I get the bigger one and the reason is it will do everything you want it to do where you are a little bit limited with the smaller one the only thing the big one doesn’t do the best but it can do is three-quarter inch material it gets a little trickier you got to kind of make a little plate it’s whole thing I don’t have time to explain it now but you can make it work for 3/4 I had the excel alone for a really long time but I was doing so much 3/4 material I got the little one just to make my life easier but if you’re just gonna get one I get the bigger one it’s more expensive it works great for furniture because you can use bigger Tenon’s and everything to hook it together so when it comes to joining that’s all I got to say bottom line if you’re looking to save money just go buy a doweling jig and all my videos that I show on how to build stuff even though I’m using the domino jointer you can simply interchange the Dalek jig in replacement for that no problem so there’s joining [Music] something that goes right along with joining is clamping now clamping is a tricky thing when you’re first starting out because it’s true you can never have enough clamps and when you’re first getting started you’re not gonna have enough clamps because you could easily drop three thousand dollars just on clamps I probably have and I still don’t feel like I have enough clamps but when you’re just getting started there’s a few clamps I would recommend just as the bare minimum first you’re gonna want some of these F body style clamps you’re gonna want a couple of the little ones cuz they come in really handy for doing little stuff and then get a couple of the longer beefier f-style clamps these are great clamps I use them all the time you can use them in a bunch of different circumstances they’re awesome and then for bigger stuff where you need a little bit more hold I would recommend getting some of these big cabinet makers clamps they’re really nice the slide is good the thing that I love about them is you got so much surface area in here that’s actually like giving clamping force so you can really get it on a big beefy piece of stock and get a lot of clamping force these are a great option another good option are these bar clamps they’re a little bit more expensive because when you’re buying these clamps one thing to note if you’re just starting out you’re gonna buy them and you’re just gonna get these little orange parts and you’re gonna be like what the heck you have to go buy the pipe separate and the piping can be a little bit expensive but the nice thing here is you buy the ends and you can make them any length you want so you can have you know you could just buy a few ends but have a bunch of different lengths of pipe and then switch them out when you want you no longer or sure clamps so that’s another great option but like I said you’re gonna be buying clamps for the rest of your life just deal with it it’s the bane of every woodworkers existence so welcome to the club [Music] last but not least is measuring marking and this one is super simple have you ever heard of a tape measure now the thing to note is not all tape measures are exactly the same if you go into Home Depot and you just buy a big bulky Stanly tape measure those are really designed for framing houses so they’re not gonna have the accuracy that you’re probably gonna want when you’re building furniture my preferred tape measure is these little fast cap tape measures but they’re super cheap you can get them on Amazon for $7.99 I put a link down below these are actually pretty cool they got a built in pencil sharpener which is awesome that I’ve never used they got this little foot on the bottom so when you stretch it out and set it on a piece of wood the foot actually keeps it in until you pick it up and then it goes back in so you’re not fumbling around trying to keep the thing out the thing I really like about this is the measurements are double-sided so you have the exact same measurements on both sides of the tape which comes in more handy than you would think when you’re laying it out because depending on how you’re oriented you got a mark on one side and you’re not trying to guess by extending that mark across the tape measure so it’s a lot more accurate this one also goes down to 30 seconds of an inch which is great because obviously you’re going to want to try and be as accurate as possible one weird question I get all the time is what’s my preferred pencil to use in the shop I just go get little mechanical pencils you never have to worry about sharpening them I just keep a bunch of packets of lead laying around I buy like cases of a hundred of these and I just chuck them all over my shop that way I know wherever I am I can just grab a mechanical pencil and there’s probably a zillion of these that end up in my washer and my wife gets really mad about that but mechanical pencils are great for marking get some of those the other thing you’re going to want to get is a speed square or a little square so that you can just transverse straight lines across pieces these are wood peckers brands I cannot say enough good stuff about woodpeckers accuracy is the best you’re gonna find on the market but they are pretty expensive so if you’re trying to save money don’t necessarily get woodpeckers to start out with I am sponsored by woodpeckers so hopefully they don’t get mad at me saying that but my guess is you’re gonna get something cheaper it’s gonna work great for a while and eventually you’re gonna want to upgrade that’s when you can get the woodpeckers I put a link in the description to a more affordable square option to get you started but keep woodpeckers in mind I did my job there all right that’s it for all of my tool categories now I’m going to lay out what I think is the pared down bare minimum to get you started and like I said it’s under $1000 everything you need to build furniture for quite a long time until you want to upgrade so here it is [Music] all right I have scoured the internet to find affordable but good quality tools to get you set up for under a thousand dollars and here’s what I would recommend like I said with these basic tools you can pretty much build any piece of furniture you’re gonna want to is it going to be the most convenient probably not but it will get you started this is what I recommend you’re gonna want a drill and an impact drivers set get a combo kit cost about a hundred and sixty nine dollars Makita great brand I highly recommend it you’re gonna want an orbital sander you don’t have to get a Festool I put a link in the description below for a comparable Dewalt orbital sander forty-seven dollars not bad great sander you’re gonna want a router super Universal tool you can do a ton of different stuff with this everything from cutting out different shaped tabletops to putting nice edges on things routers are great this 2 watt 1 super awesome when it comes to joining get the doweling jig $47 it’s not gonna set you back too much you can build a zillion different kinds of piece of furniture you can join things it’s gonna be great and they’re kind of fun to use so do that get yourself a tape measure like I said I like the fast cap get yourself a speed square I have a good affordable option in the product too in the video description down below get yourself a few basic clamps get a couple of the F style bar clamps here and then get a couple of the bigger cabinet maker clamps I found two different options that I put in the video description where it’s actually a 2 pack so kind of saves you a little bit money and there are these same Pony clamps so they’re good clamps it’s what I prefer to use in my shop then you’re gonna want to get yourself a table saw just get a simple jobsite table saw to start off with the nice thing is this is the first table saw that I ever got before I got my big cabinet table saw and when I upgraded I still now have my jobsite table saw so if I ever have to go out of the shop and do installs I already got this one so it’s not like you’re spending money that you’re gonna have to then throw away later it’s always nice to have a backup table saw if your other one breaks down so just get a jobsite table saw to start out with and then upgrade later I put a good job site table saw in the video description as well and then last but not least you’re gonna need a chop saw this is where you’re gonna break down all of your material get yourself a nice one I put one it’s a Hitachi in the video description great little chop saw to get started with all of this stuff is all you’re gonna need to start building furniture and you can get it all for under a thousand dollars just look in that tab in the video description it says shop set up for under $1000 all the links are right there I really hope this helps them please if you have any other questions put them in the comment section down below and I will try and answer them to the best of my ability now go make some furniture or go to the bathroom or something this video is kinda long you might need a bathroom break go to the bathroom then come back and make some furniture [Music] …

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