Hi James,
As you've probably noticed by now, at this particular moment I'm nothing more than a dreamer without certain direction. Yes, I'd LOVE to do the cabinet and woodworking like Jim has done, in my own house. I'd also like to find a niche selling said quality items, but I also fully understand the time consuming reality of even learning that craft, let alone the equipment and space investment.
If I were to prioritize my initial goals, they would be:
1) Sign Making
2) Speaker cabinets and amplifier head shells
3) nick nacks that look like fun to play around with
4) Kitchen cabinets for my house
I believe the first two are attainable within reasonable amounts of time, and reasonable machine and tool sets. Number three is so broad as to have very little meaning, but could entail cutting some guitar bodies, fun stuff for kids, whatever.
And finally, I have a friend who's been a cabinet maker for many years, albeit he's gotten out of the fabrication business and moved into carpentry and cabinet installation over the last few years. That is to say, I realize I'm not going to be cutting cabinets overnight because the learning curve is steep and as you've clearly pointed out, a lot of tooling and space is necessary to pull it off.
Please don't misunderstand me, as I do appreciate your input, however, while I'm choking over a $20k machine and that probably won't change, I cannot allow analysis paralysis because 5 years from now, I'll still be stressing out over it, without having cut a single part.
I'm not buying a Chinese machine. The CAMaster and Shopbot are the only two machines I'm looking at now. I'm going to call Joey on Monday to see what he suggests and if there's an acceptable solution as far as machine sizing, etc., I'll buy one. If not, I'll go with a smaller Shopbot.
The smell of wood shavings in my garage beckons me. I must make it happen.