Woodworking or carpentry is considered as the most creative occupational art form. Anyone who is interested in crafting and carving can try their luck with woodworking and make it a successful career for themselves. The prior components of woodworking are a set of effective tools that make the job of woodworking easier for the woodworkers. There are a slew of tools and equipment according to different genres of woodworking. Such as hand tools like tenon saw, hacksaw etc and power tools like miter saw, power drills etc.
In this article we will particularly enlighten our fellow readers and beginner woodworkers who want to take woodworking as a career about different types of power tools that every woodworker must need to keep in their wood workshops. The purpose of such power tools is to improve and quicken the project jobs of every woodworker. These tools are intimidating for most of the DIYers also, especially those who have online channels and need to be updated on a regular basis on those channels with their brand new project activities.
Therefore, in this article we will talk about such 5 unavoidable power tools that would play different roles for any particular part of woodworking and also help to save your precious times that you might utilize in their further projects.
Let’s start unfolding those power tools:
- Power Drills
Power drill is the most important power tool for any woodworker. Whether it is a beginner or an expert, power is indispensable to everyone. Except few old school wood-crafters every single woodworker includes this equipment as a basic power tool in his or her wood workshop. Power drills have versatile usage. This tool is particularly not used only for drilling holes. Woodworkers can attach related attachments to the same and convert an electric power drill to other tools according to their requirements.
Power drills come in two particular variations like corded and cordless ones. It is suggested to get a corded one if you are a novice and do not want to spend on buying such things over and over. Corded drills contain more strong torque than cordless ones while drilling. Moreover, corded ones’ longevity is also guaranteed. Or else if you are interested in investing in buying cordless drills, go with the updated versions of power drills as their manufacturers keep upgrading the drills’ features according to the advanced technology.There are mainly three types of basic power drills. Such as, Hammer drill, regular drill and impact drivers.
Hammer drills impose higher power forces to make the drill bits rotate back and forth and allow the woodworkers to bore through any hard or concrete material surfaces with great ease.
Regular drills are used both for commercial and residential tasks. You can use it as you desire by attaching suitable accessories to it as per your job. For your workshop you should buy a high voltage and high power driven power drill and the best part is you can change its drill bits and convert it to an electronic screwdriver by replacing it’s bits to screwdriver bits.
Impact driver drills are more like hammer drills and usage are also the same. But the only difference is, there are no similarities in the power forces of the two. However, power drills are handy as well as portable too and efficient enough to make holes on any materials like a sturdy plastic to thin metal sheet.
- Random Orbital Sander
If you are planning to buy an easy handling wood finishing tool for your workshop, random orbital sander is the best pick for that. This power sander is more quick and faster than traditional hand sanders in making the uneven wood surface smoother and even. Orbital sander differs from the belt sander as in belt sander there are sand paper attached to a belt like material that revolve in a circular way after connecting with the power, whereas orbital sander never circulates rather oscillates randomly to any direction and makes the wooden surface more smooth and scratch free. It prevents making grooves and swirling marks on the wood pieces because of its orbital movement. You can sand not only wider surfaces of wood pieces with orbital sander, but shaping edgy corners also. Moreover it stands without removing too much wood from the wood pieces. You can change the sanding sheets according to the sanding grits you need for polishing easily.
- Circular Saw
Circular saw is the most familiar power tool for both newbie and experienced woodworkers. This one is known as one of the most versatile power tools as except woodworkers this particular power tool is also used for construction works, household reconstruction etc. Some ancient woodworkers address circular saws as buzz saws because of their unique buzzing sound while cutting. Circular saws can be applied to cut so many other types of materials too rather than wood by installing suitable blades to them.
You can use a circular saw by holding it with your hands and also can be mounted on a table. It can be carried to anywhere because of its compact design and structure. Circular saw gives you the privilege to set the depth of the blades of the saw and using different types of depths of the blades you can cut several different edges, dados, narrow slots, cut offs etc.
Bandsaw Blades is best option as a powerful tool for woodworkers that make their work easier.
Circular saw should be the first power tool for every woodworker, both for novice and the pros because of its eminent versatility. There are few things to be considered while buying a circular saw like woodworkers must check the TPI or how many teeth are there per inch of the saw blades. The more tooth the blade will contain the cuts will be more smooth whereas wide toothed blades would create rougher cuttings. The only drawback of the tool is, it can leave burning marks on woods because of the excessive spinning and the frictions that produce while the teeth running through the woods may burn the same sometimes. Therefore, it is important to be very careful while working with fine-toothed blades and try to control its speed in order to resist it from leaving scars on the wood pieces.
- Rotary Tools
Rotary tools are another must have power tools that every woodworker must own. This hand held power tool comes with a fast-spinning motor tip that is used for too many different tasks like honing, sanding, grinding, cutting, polishing etc. Rotary tools can be both corded and cordless. It can be used even in the most fiber edges of any type of joint corner. Most of the house owners keep this particular power in their houses because of its utility in household repairings. Rotary tool comes with a huge range of attachments designed for different purposes and all them are assorted in a compact toolbox that can be portable to anywhere. The key of successful usage of rotary tools is to arrange the wide range of additional accessories and attachments of the same. The more attachments you own your rotary tools would be more useful to you.
- Router
Router is the last recommended power tool especially for every beginner woodworker as it brings perfection to your job. This semi-portable tool is very much efficient in cutting rabbets, dados etc with great accuracy. This can be applied to make hollow out woods and cutouts also. Along with its usage particularly in woodworking, routers have wider applications in hardware construction industries. Routers are able to cut hard fibres to heavy duty metals too.
There are many routers available in the market from different manufacturers with only two basic bases. Such as, plunge router base and stationary router base. Most of the beginners go for choosing stationary base models of the router as they are easily accessible and can be mounted on the router tables too. Moreover, its effectiveness is wide enough. Plunge routers are to some extent the pro woodworkers’ toys as they are applicable for a few specific tasks. Whatever the model you choose according to your needs, just make sure that the motor of your router is not less than 2 hp in size.
There are few more features that you should consider while buying a router, like, easy accessibility, soft-start mechanism, easy changes of bit collets especially suitable for using ½ inch and ¼ inch shank router bits, electronic speed controller variables so that the speed can be controlled during working with larger cutting bits etc.