The third machine to buy as you are getting into woodworking and making a shop: the table saw.

Clean, accurate, straight cuts along the length of grain, as well as dead-on cross cuts are required for most projects. Angled cuts at 45°, or any angle, are common. 

Hand cutting cannot match the speed and accuracy of the table saw. The band saw, miter saw, scroll saw, jig saw, track saw, and circular saw, even with all if their jigs and accessories cannot match the efficiency and convenience of the table saw.

There are, however, three big problems with table saws: 

1. statistically, the most dangerous tool in the shop 

2. expense 

3. they generally take a lot of space for the machine and the work itself

Starting with the first issue, I want you to realize that it really is critical! This website is not the place to learn safety. Please learn from the excellent sources available in books and magazines, some classes, and some of the online videos. 

An example is in Fine Woodworking #315, Jan/Feb 2025, page 32 – 37, by Roland Johnson, regarding kickbacks and more. I like some of Stumpy Nubs videos on YouTube. Search on your own for more. 

As you can see from the photo, I have a SawStop. This can detect blade-to-skin contact, and then stop and drop the blade extremely quickly. I have never touched a running blade in the 21 years that I have owned it but I am glad the precaution is there. You can consider SawStop despite the extra price. Machine production, marketing, and legal restrictions may change, so keep track of the available options in SawStop and other brands. 

In the photo here, I have intentionally left out the splitter, crosscut gauge, blade guard, kickback risk controls, and other safety devises and issues. That is your job to study. 

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CAUTION: Electric woodworking power tools are extremely dangerous and can cause severe injury including amputation of fingers. Please do not even begin to use an electric woodworking tool without first learning safety from a highly reliable source, understanding, and using appropriate safety procedure. 

This website is NOT the source for learning this important practice. The brief mentions on the topic are not nearly sufficient to keep you safe.    

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Expense and space in the shop are issues for almost all of us. 

The photo shows the table saw in its mode (unplugged, with the blade fully lowered) as a secondary “bench top” which I need for some veneer work and assembly work. So you can work around the size of the table saw by converting a good, strong, accurate top it in this way. 

Perhaps you want to start off with a much less expensive compact saw (SawStop is an option). Consider that projects you want to do and the sizes and space of the boards involved. 

By the way, I do not own or want a table saw dado blade.

So, a table saw gets spot #3 for the developing woodworker, in my opinion.

Number 4 coming up. 

Machine tool number two that I suggest to bring on as you get into woodworking: the router. 

To repeat: yes, of course, high quality woodworking can be done without any machine at all, as it has been for hundreds of years. Yet machines do add many advantages of labor, time, fast accuracy, and production. 

Routers do so many things: joinery, grooves, curved edges, patterns, and more. I use routing in nearly every project. 

The Bosch 1617EVS 2.25 HP (photo above) is an excellent router for overall use. There certainly are other good choices of this type but the Bosch is one I can recommend based on using it for many years in countless projects. It can run 1/4” and 1/2” shank bits with plenty of power at 12 amps.  

This gets most of its use in my router table. Cutting hight is easily adjustable to .004”, though you can easily go to .002” increments. It also can be used upright with hand pushing guided by various types of edge or circle guides (one is in the photo above) and fences. 

Also get a plunge base for the Bosch and use it for mortising with a good jig setup. This topic is discussed in a series of 10 posts “End to side-edge joinery” 12/31/25 through 3/12/26, particularly the 1/9/26 post. In summary, the plunge base and jig setup are certainly worth having.

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CAUTION: Electric woodworking power tools are extremely dangerous and can cause severe injury including amputation of fingers. Please do not even begin to use an electric woodworking tool without first learning safety from a highly reliable source, understanding, and using appropriate safety procedure. 

This website is NOT the source for learning this important practice. The brief mentions on the topic are not nearly sufficient to keep you safe.    

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I have long had a heavy Elu 3338 plunge router and use that for mortising. It can easily cut large, wide, and deep mortises. It has long been out of production but mine still runs well. Others are available.  

I also have a handy compact router, the DeWalt DWP611 (see the group photo). This is useful with various setups for figured edging, special joinery, etc. Transferred to its plunge base, it can be used in jigs for mortise and tenon. The 7 amp power is not a good choice for all but narrow, very short mortises.

Having the one router like the Bosch 1617 and accessories, buy or build a router table. I long ago made one that still works very well. I suggest to a new woodworker to spend the money, save the effort, and get one of the many well-made tables now available.   

You can get a JessEm or a Woodpeckers table for several hundred dollars to over $2000. I can only imagine they are excellent but having successfully used my self-made version for a long time, I know you can spend a fraction of that and work very well. For example, the Bosch RA1171 router table plus the 1617 router including the plunge base is now about $500. 

Remember, I do not sell here, or take any payments or kickbacks, etc. Shop around, read honest reviews, ask your friends. 

One more addition to the “part 2”: a power drill. Just a simple, good, cordless drill such as the DeWalt shown here. Screws, dowel joinery, and countless other holes are needed in every shop, as well as around the home.

That is what I suggest for a new woodworker’s second electric machines that follow the thickness planer.

In the next post, we’ll go to #3.

Having recently been visited by a starting woodworker for some discussion and tips, this topic quickly rose. This moved me to write, so here we go. 

You do not absolutely need any machines/power tools. Look in a museum, online, or in a book at some 300 year-old amazing furniture. No electric machines. Though surely one person did not make an entire piece.

Before about 55 years ago, I also had no power tools. Though I made lower quality things, a few are still used. Later, I bought an electric jigsaw and borrowed a power drill. 

So, if you want the quiet, prefer the effort, like the feel, and maybe want to save money, enjoy non-electric woodworking! You can still make excellent things!

The first power tool I recommend is a thickness planer with a helical cutterhead and 13” cutting width. Most have a 6” cutting depth capacity, more than you are ever likely to need in usual use. 

You can get one for well under $1000. A 15” model, though a stronger cutter with larger infeed and outfield planks, is much more expensive, much heavier to move, and you only gain 2” of cutting width.

I now use an Oliver (a little more expensive than some). It works very well for accurate flat thickness. It cuts an excellent surface finish with virtually no tear out, even in difficult wood. My old DeWalt, to which I built in a helical cutterhead, inexplicably bit the dust last year. 

The thickness planer does more work, faster and easier, than any other power tool in my shop.  

This is a fairly heavy machine to move, so I keep it removably screwed on a wood framed platform with at least 4 1/2 feet access on both in-feed and out-feed to allow the vast majority of my work. I use dust collection but that is getting ahead of the overall subject.

Of course, this machine only makes the side being cut come out flat if the bottom side of the board is already flat. Otherwise, the machine bends the board and transfers much of the error at the bottom to the cut surface at the top.

If this is your only machine, what can you do? The most traditional answer is to hand plane the foundation side to be flat. Keep in mind that hand planing has much of the same bending effect as the thickness machine.

You can tape a few slivers of wood/veneer/playing cards at the bottom, using a truly flat workbench for reference to make it not wobble. Once the top surface is planed flat, flip it over, remove the slivers, and machine it. Alternatively, you can bypass hand planing by securely taping the slivers and then directly feeding it into the machine. Make the top flat, then flip it over to do the other side after removing the slivers.

Thickness planers at this level tend to slightly over cut the first 2 to 3 inches of the board going in and coming out. The simplest trick to avoid this is to send in a foot-long piece first, touch the tail end with just the workpiece going in, grab the foot-long by its leading end on the way out, and pass it or another piece in again at the tail of the workpiece. This works. Safety is your responsibility but please keep your hands well away from the opening of the cutting zone!

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CAUTION: Electric woodworking power tools are extremely dangerous and can cause severe injury including amputation of fingers. Please do not even begin to use an electric woodworking tool without first learning safety from a highly reliable source, understanding, and using appropriate safety procedure. 

This website is NOT the source for learning this important practice. The brief mentions on the topic are not nearly sufficient to keep you safe.    

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Having no other machine, you can still size, straighten, and square the edges and ends of the workpieces to perfection with a hand saw and hand plane. Sure, I do most by machinery, but if you are starting out and/or lack space or money, this is very doable work without plugging in. 

Next, my suggestion for the next machine to buy early on. 

I think it would be good to review and make sense of this handy device that was pictured and cited in the previous post.

As you can see from the photo above, this is simply a glue-up of three pieces of flat sawn red oak on a base of plywood. It is 11/16” thick, and about 15” from the screwed-down end point on the left to the opposite end where it is measured. I cross sawed it from a much larger piece. The “long” grain (which is essentially stable) is just 1 1/2”.    

Observe that the glue up is done with pieces in alternating grain orientation to avoid a large curl-shaped change with moisture change. The large amount of exposed end grain allows moisture content and resultant wood movement to change rather quickly with humidity change. Changes of temperature have no significant effect on the wood length. 

Note also that this wood has not been finished. Therefore, reduction in expansion and contraction, depending on the type of finish used in a project, does not affect this device. 

There is a grid of 1/16” gradation on the plywood base at the right end of the red oak. (The grid is actually wider than needed.) A brad in only the plywood meets the bottom side of the oak to prevent it from rolling from the screw hold and dropping down when you pick up the device to look closer. It is stored vertically on the wall using the hole just above screwed end.   

left side:

right side:

The full range of movement, going from the initial full ~30% water content of wood to fully dried in an oven to 0% content, for red oak, is 4.0% radially and 8.6% tangentially. The approximately “flatsawn” wood in this piece would move somewhere between those two numbers, closer to the 8.6%. Let’s say about 7%.

So, if this piece of red oak went from the ~30% wet to oven dry, it would loose about 7% of its length. 15” would become about 14”. Of course, this never happens in the shop.

What if it really went from a humid shop holding it with 13% moisture content to the shop being drier and holding it with 7% moisture content? The 15” board would shrink to about 14 3/4”. You would see that on the gradation at the right end of the gauge.

Does this really happen? Yes, or at least somewhat that. Also, note that wood shrinkage and expansion actually decreases in range over the years. So, you may observe less than you calculate. However, the expansion-contraction issue is real and must be considered in your construction design.

This simple monitor helps keep you aware of this in a rather large but simple example. I highly recommend it for your shop. It is very easy to make!

I have accumulated attachments for several handy items on the wall just behind the right side of my workbench. This allows for quick grabs and returns of very frequently used helpers.

Here they are, left to right, top to bottom:

1. The shop-made tool oiler. I wrote about making this in a 3/29/2009 post:

https://www.rpwoodwork.com/blog/2009/03/09/shopmade-tool-oiler/

The Camellia oil gets used on lots of tools every day. It sits in a little box rack screwed to the wall.

2. A light weight wooden mallet.

3. A heavier mallet hammer. 

4. A group of usually sharpened pencils: good old #2, and red and white. These stand in a leather chisel guard glued to the wall.

5. Two pieces of wood, each with three grooves. The neck of my Japanese chisels sits in a groove so the tool will not role. 

6. The pair of bench dogs that I wrote about in a 8/10/25 post. 

https://www.rpwoodwork.com/blog/2025/08/10/make-these-bench-dogs/

7. The handy little brush with bristles cut short. This gets countless uses, such as clearing the cutting edge opening of a hand plane.

8. The dead-on accurate 12’ tape measure. This also sits in a little box rack like the oiler.

9. A constantly used, durable Lie-Nielsen dusting brush. 

10. Wood shrinkage/expansion monitor. I wrote about this in a 5/30/2020 post.  

https://www.rpwoodwork.com/blog/2020/05/30/watch-the-wood-move/   

This modest set up helps efficiency in the shop, and improves the comfort of time in the shop. 

And that is still good time!