Building my shop on a budget - Part 1 in a series of unknown length - My table saw and thickness planer.

Being new to woodworking means I still have plenty of tool purchases in front of me, but I have acquired many of the essentials. Having limited funds to make these purchases has forced me to be creative and to compromise. Prior to having kids and living on a single salary I would never had considered buying anything used, let alone tools, but necessity sometimes pushes you out of your comfort zone.

Make no mistake about it, if money was no object I would have gone out and bought a shop's worth of Powermatic, Festool, Leigh Neilsen and other high end goodies. However, with a little frugality, resourcefulness and acceptable compromise I have bought a table saw, band saw, router, planer, random orbit sander, shop vac and a #5 hand plane for under $800. The table saw and planer are the only tools I have bought new and the others, while used, are of good quality. In this series of blog posts I'll explain how I researched and bought each tool, the websites I used and some tips I discovered along the way.