Starting Tools for Fine Wood Art

If you ready to dive into the world of wood art go in with both feet the right way with the starting tools for wood. While the dive in will be fun it can also cause frustration.

What tools do you buy and how much do you spend?

We need to step beyond woodworking tools for beginners. Starting tools for wood art require power and accuracy. This is fine woodworking with artistic creation.

What equipment do you absolutely need? Beyond the need, which woodworking tool is a must in quality or brand for the greatest accuracy?

These questions can plague a beginner with choices to be made costing thousands of dollars. It is at least nice to know up front if you buy once you only cry once rather than buying twice.

I will give a breakdown of the most imperative starting tools and you can decide how far to take hand working or machining. There are many specialty tools and options for many things in woodworking but I will save those for another time.

Specialty tools you will acquire within your shop on an as needed basis when you grow your art and skill. When it comes to the bigger tools what you buy definitely matters.

Be willing to look into woodworking classes when exploring your tools and how to use them. No only will you learn their proper use, but also gain safety information in how they are to be used.

#1 Air Filtration and Dust Collector

You thought I was going to bring up wood saws first didn’t you? Do not skip over this section if you work within an enclosed environment. Your life depends on it. Seriously.

If your wood shop or wood studio is an enclosed environment air filtration is a must. Let me clarify, if you wish to live get air filtration immediately. A good dust collector will filter your air at the same time as collecting dust.

You would be better off smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for the rest of your life as compared to a few years of cutting indoors with no filtration. Wood dust can and will kill you faster than smoking ever thought about. The reason is for what is and can be within the wood.

For starters many of the more beautiful wood grains are caused by fungus such as spalted wood. Additionally wood dust itself can become as small as a flu virus. Now combine the remaining fungus and dust in the air and you have a problem.

Your filter needs to be serious and able to filter down to 2 microns. Have a unit that is capable of being attached to your machines. The air filtration needs to be powerful enough to pull air from an open port and at least one machine at the same time.

Companies such as Oneida make dust collectors capable of performing this task for a wood artist that runs a small studio. To do this right is not cheap but it is worth your life. I would rather see you running a Lowes table saw with real dust collection and air filtration than nothing and a SawStop.

Keep in mind that while we may have nice air filtration for wood dust we still need protection while cutting. Be sure to have a proper woodworking mask when performing work.

Starting Tool #2 Table Saw

Of all the starting woodworking tools that one could invest in and not cut corners on purchasing it is a good table saw. A table saw is the heart and soul of virtually every wood project. It will see more use than anything else you will have. This is one to not go cheap on.

Forget the contractor table saws from Lowes, they are garbage. In fact forget anything that is not a cabinet saw. Anything portable just is not powerful enough, sturdy enough, nor will it ever be accurate enough over time. The fence systems are as horrible and often give way with time.

We are talking about the minimum quality of a Grizzly saw reaching to the better Powermatic and SawStop table saws. Expect to invest no less than two thousand usd. Be willing to put as much as four thousand into a system that can give you the quality and accuracy that you will need.

Should you buy the good brands used on Facebook marketplace? Let me say to inspect it thoroughly. I will not tell you to not buy a used saw. Many are great.

Yet ask a lot of questions when buying. You need to be very interested in the sellers past woodworking. Get to know what he did and that will begin to tell you more about how the tool was used or if it was abused.

Consider the table saw as your foundation to a house. All else is really built upon it especially when needing accuracy. You need to know that your cuts will be on target and continue to be repeatable as you continue working. A good table saw can give you edges which allow you to joint. If you are not getting edges and holding square, it needs work.

Personally I use a SawStop. Most woodworkers are happy with their whatever branded in the ballpark accuracy. I have pushed the accuracy of my SawStop to the thousandths of an inch with blade runout and accuracy of cut. It is repeatable and holds. Due to some of the detailed work that I do I must have that, its not an option.

Starting Tool #3 Band Saw

A good band saw is another necessity. Here you can skimp a little in that a Grizzly 17 inch would be a great option. Again forget the garbage at Lowes or Home Depot. They are not big enough nor powerful enough.

When it comes to band saws buy bigger than you need, always. The greatest benefit to a powerful band saw is resaw capability. You are looking for around the 2 to 3 horsepower range 220v.

The key to a band saw is power. The baby saws at the local stores just do not have it. Anything not running on at least 220 volt power will be too weak for processing down wood for work.

That is the job mine performs while the table saw is for accurate cuts. If you desire you can make a band saw as accurate as you may need but they are more temperamental creatures in that department.

To get real accuracy out of a band saw there will need to be modifications to the stock machine. The core purpose in the beginning is the ability to process timber down into general dimensions.

If you are serious about acquiring more exotic and rare lumber for wood art you need to be able to create your own wood canvas. This quality of wood does not come in dimensional planked boards at Lowes.

Starting Tool #4 Wood Planer

If you are an artist the three above tools I would count as the most critical. Yet if you are a real artist you will not be buying your wood from Lowes or other lumber yards. You are looking for rare materials in the nooks and cracks of the market. This means you will need to process your material before you can turn it into usable boards.

A planer becomes very critical when processing wood for consistency in any project. Here you do not need to spend a fortune. At minimum a benchtop planer will get you by for a little while.

The wider feed the better, I would say no less than 13 inches and thats pretty small. Make sure that it has some kind of helical cutting head. Forget the tools that have only knives for cutting. They are a waste in the long run as blades dull too quickly and mar the surface of your boards in time.

These requirements of course automatically knock out almost all of Lowes and Home Depots listings. Fortunately to meet that minimum requirement actually does not require much more money than the big box chain stores.

A step up from this minimum you begin to get into the bigger machines and this is always better as a long term investment. Yet if needed you can start out small then work up from there.

Two Soon Needed Accessories: Router Table and Router

This one may raise some eyebrows. In the beginning you may have no need of a router or router table. It was about a year into my work that I began to see the need for a router table even though I had a cnc mill.

Many woodworkers or carpenters bypass a router table. If they need one they will toss some plywood together and throw legs under it, cut a hole for the router and can call it done. For fine wood art this will not work.

There are many fine cuts especially for an artistic creation that can only be accomplished with a quality table and router. Again, buy bigger than you need and stay away from Lowes or Home Depot.

If you can build your own router table that is a major plus for customization yet it depends on how much accuracy you need. Some tables offered out there can get to within eight thousands of an inch with accuracy on the top surface flatness. It can matter.

As for the wood Router, go big or go home. You need power. Here is where you need to look around online for some used tools. There are some routers built years ago that are better than what you can find in the stores today.

Whatever you choose just be sure to check compatibility between the router and the mounting plates offered from router table the vendor before you purchase. Here I have placed more information on router bits to help save you money.

Wood Jointer

This is not a requirement but but I toss it in for it can be nice to have for some purposes especially if you do not have a cnc mill. If you are just starting out odds are you do not have a cnc machine.

Oddly enough I never use my jointer for jointing. Instead I use my table saw to create my edges for jointing. In how much use my tools see the jointer sees the least. So why do I have one?

Where it excels is quickly leveling out the surface or face of a board without needing to fire up my cnc. This only works as long as the board will fit onto the width of the cutting surface.

Again avoid knives and stick with helical cutting heads. It really is a tool for quick adjustments if needed and is a time saver. Other than this purpose it collects wood dust in the corner of my studio.

Woodworking Vise

At some point if you get into hand carving or hand tooling wood you will need a woodworking vise. This is an altogether different style of vise than most are accustomed to seeing.

These vises will be one of the more useful investments one can make as your work begins to expand. At first they are not critical. Yet there is nothing like having an extra set of hands when you need them from these options.

Other Tools and Equipment

There are other tools that you can acquire as you move along. Often they can be bought at the local big box chain store or on Facebook marketplace without the need of spending much money.

The basics should be easily had. Wood carving knives and of course wood chisels are a given. Every woodworker will have something along these lines in their shop.

Tools such as a basic drill press can be very handy for wood hinge making. Grinders, sanders, a coping saw, and basic hand tools are cheap enough and plenty available. These can often be found almost anywhere including a yard sale.

Other tools you will find needing eventually would be a quality miter gauge for your table saw or perhaps the Ibox by Incra for box joints. Here no one is breaking the bank for these tools.

If I were to opt for buying something before I had a real need for it then I would say a quality miter gauge such as a Kreg or Incra. As a beginner the Kreg would be more intuitive and suffice. I still use a Kreg myself.

When you begin to add the cost to set up a basic wood shop with the necessary tools the sticker shock sets in. Yet make adjustments based on what you can do and what you can live with.

The total price just for an air filtration unit when adding the ductwork required can easily reach 4k usd. A SawStop can run between 3 to 4k usd. The band saw between 1 to 2k usd. These are no small investments for the average person. Yet this is why I also suggest to buy once cry once.

More advanced tools you can acquire later such as building your own cnc mill. This too is not cheap and if building with hand picked parts can easily run no less than 8k usd. There are many choices to be made that impact price such as choosing between a router or spindle.

That is the minimum price just to build. Buying the software to design that is around another thousand to two thousand alone. Shops and studios are often built over time. It is rarely something an individual just jumps into with both feet. Take your time in getting started before diving into a load of debt.