Limited woodworking?

A 14” bandsaw will take up about a 1/4 of your shop, same problem the table saw.

You need to think of the mantra, it’s a poor craftsman who blames his tools.

Think Jointer Plane instead of Jointer. 12” Bandsaw at the largest.

I know everyone loves to show off their latest tools, but the bigger/badder tools don’t allow you to work wood that much better, its the skill that you have that allows it.

I agree with Marc. I don’t own a jointer or a planer, my band saw is a 9” Delta, and my table saw is a $99 Ryobi. I think I turn out some fairly respectable stuff with limited equipment.

Having said that, I do have plans to upgrade and get more tools into my tiny shop as finances allow. I think the key to a small shop is mobile bases. You’ll never be able to set up a full array of stationary tools in a 10×12 shop, but if you have most of them set up to where you can roll them out of the way when not in use, I think you can do a lot with a small space.

-- Charlie M. "Woodworking - patience = firewood"

I have hand planes. so the jointer problem is solve. I got a no 8 jointer plane, and I have a scurb plane that can take the cup out of board, I guess a good Bosch Jigsaw solve the bandsaw problem I am just looking to cut curves anyway, The table saw is going to have to fit, I just got rid of my cheap benchtop table saw because it was to little.

-- CJIII Future cabinetmaker

Great, you’re 1/2 way there. Now you can probably get the saw in place. Fine Woodworking put out a little book a while ago about shop storage tips. One of the shops featured was a small garage ment to house a Model-T car, I think it was about your size. You should see if you could find it.

My first shop was a (barely) one car bay garage. I had a six” jointer (which I’ve since parted ways with), a 14” band saw, a craftsman table saw, bench top planer, Jet dust collector, drill press and a small lathe. I managed to make an entire bedroom suit out of that little space. Charlie’s right——- mobile bases are the way to go. In a small shop, organization is everything.

Good luck!

-- Betsy - GO BUCKS!

I’ve got a teeny little shop, and I’ve gone the Festool route in it, with a DeWalt 735 benchtop planer on a moble table that I wheel out of the way most of the time (I’d have skipped the table, but my sweety insisted that it not be a “lift it on, lift it off” situation). The router table hangs off the Festool MFT table, and on the wall when it’s not in use. I use the circular saw on the rail instead of a table saw or jointer, I’d love a bandsaw for resawing, but for now get along with other techniques.

There’s stuff I can’t do, and some rips are a little harder with the saw and rail than they would be on a table saw, but as marcb noted, those of us with one car garages built in the 1940s have to make compromises.

-- Dan Lyke, Petaluma California, http://www.flutterby.net/User:DanLyke

like said above the key is mobile based, storage, and multi functioning. making things like a mobile table saw station with a router table is a great way to take up space because the fence rails would have taken up the space where the router table was, a roll around assembly table can double as an outfeed table, and if you really want a jointer and planer you might want to thing about a combo unit. i know that Jet has a comb 12” jointer and planer in one machine, if you put that on a mobile base you’re good to go. hope that helps.

If I could have just one machine it would be a band saw
and the second would be a lunchbox planer.

In my early days I flattened a lot of boards by hand.
It put me in really good shape. It’s hard, sweaty work
but you can kind of get into it. The real hard work is
thicknessing boards with handplanes. I did some big
slabs a while back and I found a little Makita hand held
planer was a good way to flatten both sides – I dubbed
off the sharp blade corners on a grinder so the strokes
would overlap better.

A 12” or even 10” bandsaw is actually fine. A lot of the
saws availabel new today in that size range are not very
good though. It’s worth hunting for an old Delta, Shopsmith
or even Inca 10” saw.

For plywood cutting I would go with a circular saw and
guide system. Both Festool and EZ-smart are well-designed
but pricey – better for pros really. I’ve generally been
impressed with the Lee Valley stuff and they have a nice
ripping guide system that’s not to pricey.

I think the table saw is over-rated for anything but cabinet
making or production work. Table saws hog up so much
space and it’s a dangerous way to rip solid wood unless you
have a good splitter.

-- http://amherstcabinets.com - also a marketing consultant with expertise in direct response marketing for woodworking and online business building

hi all like a lot of people here my single car garage ( small car) is my work shop i have a dewalt planer thickner which sits under my work bench when not in use if i need my tablesaw that has to be rolled outside i like you would love a bandsaw but space is tight so not just yet but saying all that i love MY SPACE and at least we know were everything is lol (sort of)

-- cut it saw it scrap it

for small spaces check out tools that do more than one thing, for example mini max makes a very nice jointer/planer/horizontal mortiser, that would fit perfectly in a one car garage. surf the web and you’ll fing cool stuff like that.and just to tell you we use this tool at school and it works very well.

-- Roper - master of sawdust-

I noticed that you left out a router or two. With a little creativity, a router is an extremely versatile tool. I’ve made a variety of jigs to help trim boards to length, run dadoes and rabbets, and even shape curves. If you have a tablesaw, a jigsaw, a router with a handful of bits, some chisels and handplanes there isn’t much you can’t do. All the above mentioned tools are great multi-taskers. Small shops demand multi-tasking tools and mobile bases. A decent grinder to keep those hand tools in shape would be a good addition too. Good luck.

-- Chuck Bender, period furniture maker, www.acanthus.com

If you have outside space you can use you could go for for a lightweight portable table saw or mitre saw. Bandsaws don’t take up as much room but you do need the space around them to get the best use from it.

-- Grumpy - "Always look on the bright side of life"- Monty Python

I got a router Chuck I am going to get another one.

-- CJIII Future cabinetmaker

To Loren’s comment, Makita has apparently come out with a Festool knock-off, now that some of Festool’s patents on the plunge saw have expired, so you might look at that. Here are some comments I made in another thread about things I'd look for in saw-on-rail systems.

However, the other thing Loren mentioned that I wanted to address is price. As I said in that thread, yes, the tool costs can seem pricey, but be sure you consider them as capital costs in relation to your materials. I’m just a hobbyist playing around with projects for the house, and most of the lumber I’m working with is scrap or reclaimed and seems to cost me circa $2/bf, but even having bought a Domino and a planer, this year I’m going neck and neck between lumber and tools. We’re about to blow that back towards the tool side with a grand or so upgrading our router table setup (PC7518 + lift, and a couple of bits that run about a Franklin a piece), but if we finish the kitchen cabinets before the end of the summer I can see going back and spending more on wood.

And if we start counting things like slides and hinges there’s at least another $600, so we probably will end up this year, our second doing woodworking worthy of the name, having spent about the same on tools and materials.

So even if you’re “just” a hobbyist, take a real look at what you’ll be spending everywhere. For me, when I started looking at a couple of thousand bucks a year on materials, all of a sudden the high end tools didn’t look that scary.

(I’ve got a friend who’s got a nice little side table that’s got about $700 worth of wood in it. If I were buying the super-exotics, rather than just scraps of Maple, Mahogany, Massaranduba and Ipe, then one or two screw-ups would pay for a better router system right there…)

Of course if you’re actually aware of what your woodworking will cost you may also end up sticking to a whittling knife and firewood, and I wouldn’t blame you there either. Grin.

-- Dan Lyke, Petaluma California, http://www.flutterby.net/User:DanLyke