Thread: New Woodworker shop fitout (tablesaw, jointer/thicknesser & dust extraction)

I have the SawStop Job site saw and it has already saved me a finger, did cost me a new blade but $99 is a small price to pay. I choose the job site model as I have a small (1 car) workshop and it folds up out of the way between uses, does everything I need.

Cheers Bucky

Welcome Aercam,

I noticed you joined the forums in 2014 but this is your first post - so long time lurker maybe?

The machines you mention all generate too much fine dust at a rate that vacuum cleaners simply cannot capture so you will need some sort of higher air volume air flow system. The most important thing is to be able to either locate the DC outside your garage or enclose the DC in an air tight enclosure inside the shed and vent the enclosure outside the shed. Are you able to do this?

I would definitely recommend getting 2 x 15a circuits in your shed - this will allow you to run 2 x 3HP machines at the same time ( ie DC and other)

If you're primarily a WW machine user then it's better not to rely on passive ventilation. If you want to use ventilation then it should be forced using fans, with a target rate of around 20 room air changes per hour. You would still need to leave a door partially opened and locate the fans on the opposite wall.

Seeing as you are local, rather than reinvent the dust wheel yet again on these forums, you are welcome to visit my shed and check out my DC setup which might give you some close up ideas of how this all works. If you are interested send me a PM.

Hi Aercam,

My 2cents

- save up for a cabinet saw. Be it a saw stop or another worthy brand without the safety feature, e,g Harvey.
- get a proper floor standing jointer/thicknesser and forgo the benifits of the spiral cutter, initially. You are better off getting the better machine/s and upgrading the cutter at a later date when you can afford it.

Hi Aercam,

I consider myself still at the beginner stage so take my 2c with that in mind. I have a 1 car sized shed and a 1 car sized carport to work in. I roll stuff out into the carport to work most of the time which gives me a space a little larger than a 2 car garage in total.

My suggestions are to assume that your workshop will always evolve. Put wheels on everything.

1. A tablesaw.
I think there is no right answer to that one. Not unless you are independently wealthy and can throw money at your hobbies.
I want to upgrade to a cabinet saw and I can afford a Harvey. The Sawstop cabinet saw is twice the price but whenever I read things like this: "...I have the SawStop Job site saw and it has already saved me a finger,..." I sit back and try and think if there is a way I could afford the Sawstop cabinet saw.

2. Jointer and Thicknesser.
Forget about a benchtop jointer. You need the beds to be long enough for the timber you want to feed in and out of it.
"...solid wooden furniture like desks, bookcases, coffee tables etc." means that you will want to process timber 2m long. That would not be easy on a benchtop machine.

I ummed and arrhed about a combo machine until a 2nd hand jointer came up for $200.

I have a 2nd hand 6" jointer and a new segmented lunch box thicknesser (Hare and Forbes). The thicky is stored away under my router table so takes zero floor space when not in use. The little jointer is on wheels. The thicknesser gives a wonderful finish. A proper spiral head would be even better, I'm told.
Storing the thicknesser down low, is not good for my back. Also when I pull it out I have to place it on my assembly table. This is not ideal when I am in the middle of making something and decide that I need some more timber of the same thickness. I'll probably make another cart for it at some stage. My point is that, although I have two machines I made a compromise to save floor space. This has pros and cons over a combo.

Rather than upgrade the cutterhead in my jointer I might upgrade the whole jointer at some stage but at least I have options. At that point I'll seriously re-consider a combo machine. However I'd like to have a long bed machine so that might mean I stay with 2 separate machines. We'll see.

The idea of buying the best machine(s) you can afford and then later upgrading to a spiral cutterhead is a good option I think.
Either way, definitely aim for a spiral cutter head as an eventual goal.

3. Dust extraction.
The machine is the cheap part.
There is a difference between a 15A outlet and a 15Amp circuit with 10A outlets.
I have a "3hp" dusty sitting in a box but I think it has 10A plugs. At least 2 of my other machines are 2,300W on 10A plugs. (Thats because they probably only reach 2,300W for a few seconds).
My problem is not the plug. My problem is with running two 10 Amp machines on a single circuit at the same time.
So I'm looking at an expensive electrical upgrade.

I recommend listening carefully to what BobL says and take him up on his offer to go visit him. He reluctantly agreed that I might be able to get away with fans in my case. Like he has in your case. He did point out that the fans need to blow air OUT of the Shed - NOT blow air INTO the shed. However once I plugged in the fan and experienced the bliss of a strong air current moving around the hot shed I set the fan up at the back of the shed to blow air around the shed. Awesome! Bought a 2nd fan, I was so happy! Bad mistake. Before I even unpacked the 2nd fan, I ended up with dust on everything. Which in turn has resulted in rust on my tools. Not to mention it probably made things worse health wise.
Now the fan is switched off and I'm back to mulling over quotes from sparkies. Lesson learnt.

I went through this just over a year ago for myself. Unfortunately there is no Timbecon in Brisbane but I like that they have 5 year warranties on Sherwood products. I've got several bits of kit from their other store brands, Baladonia and Torquata and their stuff has been well performing and well priced. Can't say anything bad about Carbatec equipment either, I have a thicknesser, jointer, and dust collecter of theirs, so far all have been working problem and hassle free.

When you buy your machinery, you'll need an accurate engineers square or combination square, dial gauge (or something like this), and a long straight edge. Your machines will only be as accurate as your setup, so get decent quality measurement tools. To make the install job easier, I'd also suggest getting some long handled hex keys, so much easier to grip and reach places than the rinky dink ones that come with machines.

Definitely get at least one 15A outlet in your garage. 2x would be great. For dust collection, BobL is the man with the info. A vacuum is totally not going to cut it. My garage doesn't have a rear door and my overall dust collection is pretty average, so I open both my garage doors and have a fan blowing behind me, out through the doors when I'm sanding or using machinery. I find this has dramatically reduced the amount of dust left behind in the garage. I've got a 3M respirator that's comfortable to wear for a long time, don't bother with the little disposable dust masks.

One of my overarching requirements was that whatever I bought would not be 'fiddly'. I wanted to spend time using the machines, not tinkering with them to get them to work properly or accurately.

I looked at practically everything available from an Ozito to a Hammer sliding table saw. Sliding table saws are awesome but they take up a lot of space. With my garage setup and the space used up by household storage it was a no go. Good sliding table saws are also a fair bit more expensive ($8,000+) than cabinet saws and generally can't be moved without re doing setup and calibration (they also tend to be much heavier than cabinet saws).

If it is in the budget, get the Sawstop Professional or Industrial. You will not regret the purchase at all. The PCS is just a joy to use. There is no play in the blade angle or height adjustment. The fence is accurate and locks down securely. Get the 36" T-Glide fence, a good fence is really important. The biggest bonus for me has been, as a newbie, I never question that the machine is in error. Any time I have had issues, I questioned my technique or my setup of the saw and each time it was user error. When you're putting together the Sawstop and using it, you'll come away with the feeling that someone did think about how to make the saw easier to use. My only regret is not getting the 52" rails - it would have been a bit of struggle to fit it in but the PCS is just so nice to use, it would have been worth it. If I had to buy another saw tomorrow, I'd get another Sawstop.

Don't get a 6" jointer! It'll just be too small. I've got this one. Personally I'm a fan of the spiral heads for two reasons. The surface quality left behind is better and cutter installation is a no brainer. No need to align knives or anything, just screw in the cutters. The other thing to consider is how the tables are adjusted, dovetailed ways or parallelogram adjustment. Parallelogram is the way to go - it means the tables can be adjusted by tapping cams. With a dovetail setup, shims may be required and over time (albeit many years) the beds may droop out of alignment. But spiral head + parallelogram adjust = super easy to setup jointer. The spiral head does cost more but the included cutters are tungsten carbide and 4 sided, so you get the equivalent of four sets of sharpening out of them. I'd rate having the parallelogram adjustment as more important to me than the spiral head.

I already had a lunchbox thicknesser with a spiral head, so I looked briefly at combo machines but then went with separates. Again, the benefit of the spiral heads are easy to adjust cutters, better surface finish. Also if you get a nick in one cutter, you can just rotate that one instead of getting new blades or having to sharpen them. With the combo machines, be wary of the 'budget' 10" machines. I couldn't get satisfactory answers as to how adjustable the machines were. I don't remember the details, but I believe there were a few things that you were relying on to be accurate from the factory as some settings weren't adjustable. This limitation didn't apply to the more expensive 12" machines. Also, try to get hands on with changing them from jointer to thicknesser and vice versa and see if you don't mind the process. I find the jointer easy enough to tuck against a wall under my wood storage so it doesn't really impact my garage space, and the long beds have been useful jointing some very long boards. Also, if I need to joint a board while my thicknesser is still setup for another project, it's a non issue.

Originally Posted by DaveVman

He did point out that the fans need to blow air OUT of the Shed - NOT blow air INTO the shed. However once I plugged in the fan and experienced the bliss of a strong air current moving around the hot shed I set the fan up at the back of the shed to blow air around the shed. Awesome! Bought a 2nd fan, I was so happy! Bad mistake. Before I even unpacked the 2nd fan, I ended up with dust on everything. Which in turn has resulted in rust on my tools. Not to mention it probably made things worse health wise.
Now the fan is switched off and I'm back to mulling over quotes from sparkies. Lesson learnt.

You can still set up those fans to vent your shed of fine dust and (eventually) of the hot air. Of course you won't get the nice evap effect of moving air on hot skin but its still worth doing.

If your garage is attached to your house, and has a shoppers entrance I'd highly advise that you do not skimp on dust extraction, as every time you open your shoppers entrance you'll end up sucking fine dust into your house not a good idea especially if its also your kitchen door like most homes. Plus dust extraction saves time and we all know time = money, and also adequate dust extraction also helps protect your tools from fine dust ingress.

The question of separate or combined machine is a matter of choice/preference. Both will do the job at the expense of convenience/space. The one advantage of a combo machine is depending on the machine you get or plan on getting, you can end up with a larger jointer. ie to get a 10" jointer will cost significantly more than a 10" combo machine as most jointers are in the 6-8" range. The obvious downside is if you only have one machine ie if it breaks or you destroy a blade then both functions are unavailable.

In terms of your table saw get the largest/heaviest you can afford/fit in your space, especially if you're planning on making stuff with sheet goods, I have a cabinet saw with extension wings on both sides and sometimes i wish i had a bigger table.

I second the comments about having some accurate tools and take time to setup your new equipment accurately.
Also get some Silverglide or similar to protect them from rust from the beginning.

You'll probably discover you want to have a shop vac as well as a dust collector. Both.
The dust extractor is designed to capture dust before it fills up the atmosphere. (Although you can also get fittings for the floor).
A shop vac is useful to clean up any it didn't capture or on some tools that move - like a hand held sander.

You can buy a cheapo shop vac as long as the motor is good. You don't need a large capacity. This is because if you use a cyclone there will be bugger all inside the vac. It almost all goes into your cyclone bucket. You can buy the cyclone from eBay for stuff all.
I made a series of 6 short videos on YouTube to explain what I did for my Dad to copy me.
You might also be interested: Intro: https://youtu.be/sX89Qf9Cipw

Video 2 shows you the outcomes you can expect by doing it this way. Advantages: https://youtu.be/pBwD4noy6XQ

A friend has the Sawstop Contractor. He bought it not long after they were released on the Aussie market and it has performed faultlessly so I don't think you would regret going down that path.

Wood dust is easier to manage if it is divided into two categories.
Coarse dust that you can see and has nuisance mainly value Unless you have a contact wood dust allergy, or stick your head under a coarse dust stream, because it falls out of the air mores or less immediately.it doesn't hurt you anywhere near as much as the fine dust.
Fine dust that cannot be seen - this pervades every nook and cranny in a shed and enters and can stay inside any open orifices on your body.

Shop vacs simply don't have enough air flow to make a difference in controlling fine dust that escapes from tools and machines into your .
Worse still some of them make more fine dust than they pick up by mincing coarse dust into very finer dust.
This is why I recommend vacs be vented or located outside shed. or at the very least use a W&D type that has an outlet that can be sucked on by an externally located or vented DC.

The best way to control fine dust is to capture as much of it BEFORE it escapes into the shed using a powerful DC - large ducting and machines that can breathe.
However, some fine dust escape is inevitable so to get rid of fine dust that escapes into a workshop and will hang around for hours without even noticing it, some form of ventilation is needed.
The choices are to run the DC for longer (noise, more power), or use forced ventilation like exhaust fans that generate as close as possible to 20 room air changes per hour.

Most users of 3HP and above DCs in medium to small sheds that have used 6" ducting and opened up their machines so they can breathe should no longer have a significant fine dust exposure even if they work 40+ hours a week at making dust. The main issue that remains is to remember to use the system especially when "oh I'll just make this one cut", "Just one more" "OH crap one more" and not turn on their system. Do this often enough and we're back to square one.

Vacs are not necessary to pick up chips. The only place I see a lot of chips in my shed are around my lathe which I sweep into a pile and then disconnect a length of 4" flexy attached to the nearby BS and use that to suck up the chips. On top of the TS I have a dedicated length of 4" flexy that I use to clean up escaped chips around the TS when I cut something that requires me to move the over head dust guard aside from the TS blade. Above my workbench I have 3 m of 2" flexy connected to 6" ducting that drops down and attaches to power tools. That also can be used as a vac hose to clean up the workbench.

All this has been tested most which ways with dust particle counters. The main dust issues I have nwt in my shed is metal working dust - welders, grinding and linishing/sanding/polishing. I have some metal dust extraction setup but I need to make it more foolproof like my wood dust system.

Thanks everyone for the input, I didn’t think I would get so many responses in such a short time. I want to respond to everyone but I’m a bit tired right now so I’ll get back to you all tomorrow.

Thanks again for everyone for welcoming me to the forums and taking time to give me your insight, especially BobL, DaveVman and Alkahestic for your long and detailed posts. And BobL for your invitation to see your workshop. I’m definitely weighing up everyone’s advice.

Today I was in the general area so made a small detour to stop by Timbacon and had a look at their combination jointer/thicknessers. The 10 and 12 inch models look to be built identically except for scale as far as I could tell. Looking at the jointer forum I found a post on the woodman 10” jointer/thicknesser, and it appears to be the same machine as the Sherman which is a slightly modified JET JPT-260M. Reviews seem to be quite positive.
Woodman 10” jointer/thicknesser
Timbacon Sherman 10” jointer/thicknesser
Carbatec 10” jointer/thicknesser

The machine seemed solid and was quick and easy it to convert from jointer to thicknesser mode. I had a look at the 10” carbatec machine last week and noticed that the infeed and outfeed tables lift up independently to form a gull wing pattern (can be seen in photos on the carbatec website). In contrast the two tables hing up together on the sherman machine. I’m sure both work fine but having both tables fold up together would seem more ideal as far as keeping them coplanar, plus it’s slightly easier to operate. It uses a parallelogram method (Alkahestic). So all in all I think it’s a nice little machine that would meet my needs.

I also had a look at the Sawstop range. It’s the first time I’ve seen the contractors saw in person. It was definitely more solid than the jobsite saw and not much different to the cabinet saw as far as I could tell without cutting something on it. The standard 30” rail also seemed solid enough to me, although the T rail fence was a bit smoother to adjust. I’m told it’s also easier to make it square than the standard fence. I was told it’s possible to upgrade in future should you want to. I understand that the cabinet saw is an even more precise machine but I do find it hard to justify the price when I only plan to do woodworking for a hobby and not as a profession.

I’ll wait before meeting up with Bob before tackling the dust extractor side of things.

I have the Woodman 12" combination and cannot fault it. I went to order the 10" before christmas from GregMach and was informed that it wasn't available for the previous 6 months and cannot be obtained. Another supplier also informed me last November that they haven't been able to get any for months. I was fortunate in being offered an upgrade to the 12" for another $400 so took that.

Jane

That's great to hear it's working out for you Jane. You got nice upgrade for sure - the longer table would be handy. I didn't ask about stock levels but if I were offered a $400 upgrade I'd jump at it for sure. Did you get it with the spiral head? Also have you had a need for the 12" capacity?