I was doing some simple woodworking recently, and I found myself pondering power tools. In my humble opinion, the greatest power tool (for woodworking) is the power sander.

Saws? Modern hand saws are excellent, with high-quality steel that remains sharp. At my sister's timbersports competitions, they sometimes show off for the crowd that a quality crosscut saw will cut substantially faster than an off-the-shelf chainsaw.

Drills? While an electric drill is great for tight quarters, those generally only occur when you're modifying existing things. For new work, two of the three hand-powered drills work fine. The bit and brace gives power for even big bits, the reciprocating plunge drill does fine for quick small holes, and the eggbeater drill is kind of a counterexample, but whatever.

Hammers? Yes, you can get power nailers. They're faster for doing things where you have to put in lots of identically-angled nails, like flooring, but they have only a small speed advantage over a traditional hammer, and a substantial cost penalty both up-front and per nail.

But the sander. Ah, the sander. Sanding by hand is a boring, tedious, laborious task. It takes hours to do it right. But an orbital sander or belt sander will cut 95% or more of the time required for that tedious task. Hooray for power sanders!

(P.S. The lathe probably deserves an honorable mention, because treadle lathes are also much slower than power lathes. But it's a specialized tool not found in the typical workshop- even professionals often don't need one.)

Posted by: Boviate at 05:02 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 257 words, total size 2 kb.