I recently visited a woodworking show and had the urge to seek a 2nd mortgage on my house so I could purchase one of every woodworking jig, fixture and tool being promoted! Fortunately, I stopped long enough to envision my wife’s reaction if I were to bring home more “I Just Had To Have It” devises that all too often never get used and I refrained from doing anything that might have cost me my “ happy home”.
My point is simply this. While clearly it is nice to have all the neat specialty woodworking equipment to perform all sorts of woodworking operations, a lot of it is can be pretty pricey and is not absolutely necessary for you to build very nice projects ranging from woodcrafts to very nice furniture for the home.
I would like to cite one personal experience. I recently decided to start making a matching pair of display cabinets for my scale model tractor collection. I really wanted to utilize mortise & tenon joinery so I looked into various equipment for making precision mortises and tenons. Before spending any money, I spent some time seeing what sort fixtures and jigs I could make to use with my table saw and radial arm saw. To my surprise and considerable satisfaction, I ended up being able to make very nice joinery without the need to purchase anything. Since this experience, I have found it is actually quite rewarding to sometimes just spend time in my shop making my own “Home made” devises to use in various woodworking operations.
