I'm fascinated by minimal shops that can produce high quality wood products.
I worked in a shop right out of high school in 1970. They made a line of kids furniture and a line of butcher block furniture. They also did lots of custom store fixtures. I started there in their first year and they had 4 woodworkers in the shop. They kept growing and made good money. When I left to start my own shop after 3 years they had 8 woodworkers.
In the 3 years I was there they only had:
2- radial arm saws
1- Safety speed cut vertical panel saw
Lots of big routers, belt sanders and porter cable 505 1/2 sheet sanders
They bought butcher block slabs in bulk for the common size furniture. Some was cut to size on the panel saw. 2"x2" hard maple was ordered surfaced in random lengths for table legs.
The kids furniture was 3/4" hardwood plywood mostly birch. We had tons of router jigs.
This was at a time when Scandinavian Modern furniture was big.
We did all our ripping on the radial saw and some on the panel saw. We never had a table saw in that shop!
Anyone have any stories about minimally equipped shops?