Whether you’re making fine furniture or decorative birdhouses, there’s a process in woodworking that you go through on each of the machines to get the lumber that you’re using into the shape that you need.
Woodworking machinery could involve different cutting operations.
Boring operations with the drill.
Material removal with a router to create joinery.
And all these machines do have a specific job that they do very well.
Now, some of the tools overlap and can do the same job.
And it’s your job as a woodworker to figure out which one is the better one for the job at hand.
But, this is a quick overview.
1.Cutting tools
We’ll look at the main cutting tools first.
sliding table saw
Usually, in a wood shop, you’ll have a table saw.
That’s the workhorse of the shop, in my opinion.
You can do pretty much anything on the table saw.
Making straight cuts, rip cutting, using the dado set.
It is very versatile tool.
Chop Saw or Miter Saw
You also might have access to a chop saw.
Which is also, can be a miter saw.
So, you can do angle cuts in addition to just basic chopping.
Band saw
In addition to all those cutting tools we’ve got, usually, you know, most shops will have routers and a router table.
Those are used for all variety of tasks.
You can do edge profiling, creating decorative molding type appearance on wood.
You can also do joinery, creating dovetails, slots and dados.
2. Router
In addition to all those cutting tools we’ve got, usually, you know, most shops will have routers and a router table.
Those are used for all variety of tasks.
You can do edge profiling, creating decorative molding type appearance on wood.
You can also do joinery, creating dovetails, slots and dados.
3. Drill press
And then, you also will have tools like a drill press.
Which are really dedicated to just boring holes in wood.
But, they can also be used to create different types of joinerys, such as moritises.
So, all of these tools function in, as a group, you go from one to the other in your project and to get your job done.
4. Jointer & planer
Now, in addition to those basic tools, if you’re working with rough lumber, you’ll also need milling machines.
And that’s some of the other tools we have in our shop.
We have a jointer and a planer.
And the surface planer flattens and smooths boards.
Gets it down to a certain thickness.
The jointer will also function to flatten the faces of boards and also square off edges.
So, if you’re working with rough lumber those tools are also a must.