The mind is the greatest tool you can ask for.
The mind is the greatest tool you can ask for.
In the wood shop, the Domino is pretty impressive for speed. Overall, my best tool purchase yet to date and biggest timesaver is my Cat 247b tracked skid loader. When it comes to moving dirt, I have estimated that it is up to 100x faster than 1 human...and it doesn't complain. It's also very useful for loading logs onto the mill.
Last edited by scott lipscomb; 08-29-2019 at 10:04 AM.
Festool Rotex ROS
My track saw in the home shop saves a lot of time and makes long cuts a breeze. Also in the field it’s a big time saver. In the big shop the sliding table saw is insane how quickly I can rip, joint, and square rough lumber and sheet goods. Making a cabinet is so easy with that thing.
Calculator.
My storage system. I do so many things, but can get my hands on anything I need very quickly. It has since grown significantly from when I took this picture in 2010, and it's in a different location now too.
Actually, my biggest timesaver is my helper that knows where everything is.
For me, by far, the single biggest time saver is the internet/computer. There are few things in this day and age that someone hasnt already done, and either commented on or made a how to video.
(maybe that only works for me because I dont know much to begin with....
for pure time savings, i'm going with:
wide belt sander
CNC
kundig edge sander
Really depends on what you are building and what you already have.
My castle pocket hole machine is a lot faster than the kreg manual unit i started with.
Though im currently looking for a 6x108 edge sander since i think thats the next big time saver for my shop.
Clearly it depends entirely on what you're doing - less obviously it depends on what you mean by time savings. For example, time savings on specific tasks and be huge without adding up to much in a week or month. Thus a domino can make some tasks go from around 20 minutes to around 1 for a 20:1 time saving (95% of the original time), but if you only do it once a week, the total is less than the switch a larger hand sander that only produces 15% time savings per use, but does so quite often.
Thus the obvious total time winner for me is the table saw versus hand sawing - but the highest percentage saving comes from two small metal drawer cabinets I got at a garage sale for maybe $5.00. These have 60 small clear plastic drawers each and sorting things like nails, nuts, washers, router heads, etc into has meant that I can find what I need in seconds - hundreds of times faster than pawing through the misc junk box looking for just the right wood screw.,..
There is really only one area in which I would wish to save time: the preparation of rough boards into usable stock. In years past, I used hand planes - a jack plane followed by a jointer plane. This is now the province of a jointer-thicknesser/planer, in my case a Hammer A3-31. The remainder of the work is not drudgery; it is why I am in the workshop.
Regards from Perth
Derek