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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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?