Advice
How to actually do it
Procedures rather than opinions. Each page covers one thing end to end, says which step matters most, and links to the gear it assumes rather than the gear we would like to sell you.
Getting started
First machine, first flat face, and the order to learn things in.
- Flattening a board without a jointer A thicknesser references the face on its bed, so it makes a cupped board thinner and still cupped. You need one flat face first, and you do not need a jointer to get it.
- The grit progression that does not leave scratches Each grit removes the scratches of the one before it. Skip a step and you polish the old scratches instead of removing them.
- Clamping a panel flat A cupped glue-up is almost never a lack of clamps. It is clamps doing the wrong job.
- Moisture and movement, practically Timber moves across the grain with humidity, permanently and forever. Every joint that ignores it eventually fails.
Setup & tuning
Fences, blade height, table flatness — where accuracy is won or lost.
- Setting a table saw fence parallel Almost every complaint about a table saw — burning, drift, kickback — comes back to a fence that is not parallel to the blade. Here is how to check it and fix it.
- Reducing snipe on a thicknesser Snipe is the shallow dip at each end of a thicknessed board. No machine in this price range eliminates it — you manage it instead.
- Testing a square before you trust it Every error in a piece of furniture starts as a marking error, and a square sold as precision is not necessarily square.
- Squaring a crosscut sled A crosscut sled is MDF and two runners, and a well-tuned one is more accurate than most bought accessories.
Maintenance
The routines that decide whether a machine reaches year twenty.
- When to replace planer knives A planer that tears out, burnishes or leaves lines is telling you something specific. Learning which is which saves a lot of unnecessary knife changes.
- Looking after cast iron tables A cast-iron table is a reference surface. Rust does not just look bad — it drags, and it marks the work.
- Sharpening turning tools A dull gouge does not cut — it scrapes, tears and catches. On a lathe, sharpening is not maintenance, it is part of turning.
Buying
How to spend a budget so the money lands where it changes the result.
- Choosing a saw blade for the material The blade changes a saw more than the saw changes the cut. Three numbers decide which blade you need.
- How much to spend on a first workshop The most common mistake is buying the machine and not the things that make it work.
- Choosing a band saw blade A band saw that cuts badly usually has the wrong blade on it, not a fault.
- The first five router bits worth owning The German catalog lists over 150,000 router bits. Five of them do most of what a router is asked to do.
Workshop
Bench height, lighting, power and layout — the things that decide whether you go out there at all.
- Sizing dust extraction that actually works Most workshop extraction underperforms for one of three reasons, and all three are fixable without buying a bigger machine.
- A workshop in a single garage The limiting factor in a garage workshop is rarely money. It is floor space, single-phase power, and where the dust goes.
Safety
Dust, guards, push sticks and hearing — the parts nobody photographs.
- FFP2 or FFP3 for wood dust FFP2 filters about 94% of airborne particles and FFP3 about 99%. For hardwood dust, that difference is the decision.
- Push sticks, featherboards and kickback Kickback is the offcut being thrown back at you at speed. It has a mechanism, and the mechanism has three defenses.
- Why big router bits must run slower A router's speed dial is not a comfort feature once you own bits over about 40 mm (1.57 in).