Am I insane to be thinking of selling my Festool kit?

[Jon Toebbe]

Or: how to make the most of a very small shop.

I live in an apartment, and I have two small kids. Thus shop space and shop time are extremely limited. My workbench, for the time being is a WorkMate with solid 3-1/4in cedar tops (soft, but weather resistant) that lives on our front porch underneath the grill's cover to keep the snow off. A couple of sandbags on the lower shelf actually firms things up rather well for hand-planing and chopping mortises with a chisel.

As you've no doubt gathered, I'm mostly a hand-tool woodworker -- by necessity (a small pad-locked tool chest near the front door gives the kids a place to take off their shoes and me a place to stash chisels, planes, saws, etc.) and proclivity (I'm more a "Woodwright's Shop" kinda guy, and don't own any red flannel to speak of). But ripping boards by hand is an awful lot like work.

We also have a one-car garage, crammed full of boxes, bikes, a car, and my power tools. And here we reach my dilemma ("Finally!" the gentle reader cries): I have very limited storage space for a mobile/collapsible/portable power tool that will make ripping boards easy, accurate, and fast. My shop time is often measured in minutes, not hours -- so bonus points for quick set-up/take-down with a minimum of fussing.

I currently have a Festool TS 55 EQ, the MFT/3 table with guide and fence, and an FS 1900/2 guide rail. I picked it all up second-hand and largely unused for a good price. It's nice. Really nice. But ripping truly parallel and repeatably takes an awful lot of fussing with what I've got. The whole Festool system seems brilliant for working with sheet goods -- but I don't do a lot of that. I'm not making large cabinetry; I'm making stepstools and toy-boxes for the kids.

So here ("at last!" our intrepid reader sighs) are some options I'm considering:

1. Get the Parallel Guide attachment for the Festool rail. Wide rips, narrow rips. Once zeroed to the saw/rail, reports say that it stays that way.
2. Sell the Festool kit and buy a 14" bandsaw and mobile base. The proceeds from the Festool would buy a pretty nice bandsaw and selection of blades. Rips would likely need some cleanup, but I actually like edge-jointing by hand -- it's easy, fast, and satisfying. I'd also gain the ability to cut curves quickly and resaw... both would be nice for the type and scale of work I do.
3. Sell the Festool kit and buy a portable table saw. The Bosch 4100 on the gravity-rise stand looks like a contender. I'm not sure "beefy" is the right word for any portable tool, but I was pretty impressed with how the floor demo looked and felt. Ripping is what table saws do best, and there wouldn't be much (any?) need to clean-up the cut afterwards.

I only have the room to store one of the three, and I'm in grad school -- so keeping the Festool and buying a bandsaw or table saw isn't a realistic option for me. Given space and money, that's clearly the "correct" answer. The other thing that strikes me is that the proceeds from selling the Festool setup would likely pay for option (2) or (3) with money (and shelf space) left over for a lunchbox planer. Thickness planing, like ripping is too much like work... and rough lumber is much less expensive than surfaced...

At the moment, I'm drifting (ha!) towards the bandsaw. Properly set up and on a mobile base it seems to solve my immediate issue and add lots of new capability, especially if I get a planer, too. Hooray for option (2)! But I keep coming back to the thought that the Festool equipment is really nice. Option (1) doesn't seem like a bad choice. The parallel guide is probably fussier than a table saw, so let's not wholly neglect option (3).

I feel like I'm going in circles here. My wife, exasperated at my constantly pouring over tool catalogs said "Oh, just consult the Hive Mind, see what they say, and do that!" So, in the name of domestic tranquility, what would you advise me to do?

[Ron Kellison]

Sell the Festool, buy a decent bandsaw. As you observed in your succinct note, you can rip, cut curves and, with the right blade, resaw to save planing time. You can also use it to do many of the cuts needed for joints. Be aware that a bandsaw needs to be set up correctly and this will take a bit of time. It's much more versatile than a tablesaw. Just make sure you get a 1-piece steel saw rather than the older style 2-piece cast iron.

[Bill ThompsonNM]

I think if you asked this as a poll. . . Most of us would vote for the bandsaw. Your style of work and what you create lend themselves readily to a bandsaw. Something like the 20 inch Inca for sale in the Inca users group for $500. (not by me!)
I don't think you need big resaw capability but more width capacity is useful.
Have fun whatever you decide!

[Jon Toebbe]

Fate almost decided the question for me. A posting for a "like new" Bosch 4100 came up on Craigslist in my zipcode for $500. Sadly, it turned out to be a 4000. If I'm getting a table saw, it'll have a riving knife.

[Justin Bukoski]

Well, I have plenty of Festool kit and love it. It really helps make my shop time more fun and productive. That said, I consider the bandsaw the single most useful tool in my shop. My only concern for you would be power. A 1.5 HP bandsaw needs a 20A circuit and I'm guessing your apartment doesn't have that. That would leave you with a 1hp motor which I'm afraid might leave you disappointed. Something to think about.

[Jon Toebbe]

My only concern for you would be power. A 1.5 HP bandsaw needs a 20A circuit and I'm guessing your apartment doesn't have that. That would leave you with a 1hp motor which I'm afraid might leave you disappointed. Something to think about.

Hmm... yeah, we've definitely only got 15A breakers. Looking at the Grizzly G0555X manual online, it states that 15A is the minimum breaker requirement at 115V. I likely wouldn't be taxing the motor to 100% capacity. Are their specs dangerously optimistic, or is 20A a conservative choice? If I go the bandsaw route, 1-1/2hp would be awfully nice but I could probably live with 1hp and a slower feed rate. I'm not planning to resaw 11" wide rosewood.

I know the conventional advice is "bigger is better," but in my current situation I think "small is beautiful" may be more apropos.

[Bill ThompsonNM]

There's always a bigger bandsaw in the future - doubt you'll be in an apartment forever. Some garages in newer apartments probably do have 20 amp circuits. Make no assumptions! If Grizzly says 15 amps is enough then 15 is fine. One plus for a bandsaw as opposed to a jobsite tablesaw- the tablesaw will probably be a lot louder -- might be a problem with close neighbors.

[Steve Costa]

I own an Inca table saw that I bought in the mid 90's. Great saw but unfortunately Inca went out of business sometime in 2002/03. I have been told that you can buy Inca parts from a site in Europe, but the parts & shipping may be a budget breaker. Before investing in the Inca bandsaw I would make sure that the site is still in business and they carry the parts for your model of saw. Garret Wade no longer supports the Inca line. Eagle Tools in LA, CA can provide some support but they haven't crried these tools for several years.

[Van Huskey]

I am 99% in the bandsaw camp. 1. you will get most if not all your money back from selling your Festool stuff. The 14" bandsaw is extremely versatile, the Grizzly is value priced AND when you get to the point you have a larger shop and want a larger bandsaw the 14" saw will be excellent to keep as a second saw.

[Jon Toebbe]

Thanks all for the input. Guesstimating on what I could get for my Festool gear, I can get a pretty decent Grizz *and* a lightly used DW735 on a mobile base for very little out of pocket. That combo gives me an awful lot of utility with the hand planes taking care of the jointing. Heck, I *like* face jointing by hand. It's the drudge work of taking off 1/4in or more that eats up what little shop time I can manage. It's a pretty good workout, though.

So... G0555P or G0555X. Discuss! Actually, I've been reading through past posts on just that topic. I think I can swing the X. Stay tuned for incoming gloats.

Cheers!

[Josiah Bartlett]

Put some money in the budget for blades.

It sounds like you already made up your mind with the bandsaw. I'll say that I'm a bandsaw convert. I used to do everything on my table saw. I've been changing my ways as I've gotten my BS dialed in, and I just spent some time making some 7"x7" trivets out of walnut scraps and the only saw I used was the bandsaw- I resawed the blanks out of the end of an offcut of a bigger piece (which I had already jointed but was too thick), ripped the sides parallel, and crosscut the other two sides, all on the BS with the same 1/2" woodslicer blade. Since I have the saw well tuned, I was able to just tap the fence into position, and use the miter gauge and everything came out square enough. I just smoothed the tops and bottoms with the belt sander to remove the saw marks and went on to treating the edges with other tools.

Its a major pleasure to be able to use a good bandsaw. My saw (16" Walker Turner) is a good 10db quieter than my Unisaw, and it tends to be my goto tool when I need to dimension a small piece. I really only use the table saw when I need to work sheet goods or make a lot of repeatable cuts.

[Matt Winterowd]

I would think that dust control would be a major concern in a small shared space. In that case Festool >>>> table saw >> bandsaw. Even well designed bandsaws hooked up to DC throw big clouds of sawdust. Table saws are a bit better, but small portables are not nearly as good as hybrid or cabinet saws. Festool stuff hooked up to a vacuum will be by far the cleanest option.

[Brian Kincaid]

Don't sell anything you will want later. If you're in grad school you will finish at some point and move residences. I expect that if you sell off your nice gear you will want it again down the road.

Matt is right about the bandsaw being a duster. You should consider building a ripping jig and crosscutting jig for your tracksaw, perhaps with a short rail.

Lunchbox planers are dusters as well. Having been through one I would recommend skipping this step. The noise a lunchbox planer generates will likely not be tolerated by neighbors.

-Brian

[Russell Smallwood]

I was a hand tool / bandsaw shop for a while. Really nice combination which served me well (on and off) for several years.

I had a Delta 14" with riser, no other modifications. After a good tune-up, some patience learning how to set the drift, and a handful of Wood slicer / timberwolf blades, there was nothing I couldn't do that a couple of swipes with my #7 couldn't finish. Even though it was under-powered by today's standards, it seemed to have an insatiable appetite for large slabs of wood.

I miss that saw.

I later traded it for a Laguna 16 (which I also love) and my shop has exploded back to being fully equipped, but my experience left me with a soft spot in my heart for those old Deltas. I would try to see if I could steal one that someone has already upgraded (riser, carter guides, below blade dust collection, etc.) off of CL.

[Greg Portland]

But ripping truly parallel and repeatably takes an awful lot of fussing with what I've got.

How are you ripping with the tracksaw and what problems are you having? Perhaps a new method of work would help...