No intent of starting a brawl, but pocket hole vs biscuit joining? Why one over the other, given that there's biscuit hinges and metal connecting biscuits to assemble/disassemble stuff now?
Either of ya'll, or anyone else for that mater have experience with Shopsmith's? While a power swiss army knife doesn't sound good due to swappity swap swap, there's one for sale (Mk5 with various upgrades) locally for $700 in good condition with some custom boxes and such the previous owner threw together. Press, table saw, and lathe being the primary things I would see it do service as. I'm just looking at the $700 for that shopsmith compared to $500 for a new "baby" contractor model or $200+ for a used table saw, then more $$ for a drill press, then another 500 to however much I don't want to spend on a lathe... and I've turned stuff before so having a lathe is something I'd want, even just to be able to make some ornamental stuff let alone supports, table legs, etc.
Power drill I've got, Dewalt unit as well as a Dewalt handheld impact (one of their smaller ones, this ain't doing lug nuts on anything) and 4 batteries between the 2 of them so I can spin through things battery wise as I use them. I also have a couple corded ones of various manufacture so running out of batteries is solely a convenience thing.
Sawzall I've got already, jigsaw we've got one around here but I'd almost rather get a scroll or bandsaw down the road. Bandsaw would make it easier to nip off ends from turned work, although you can always take a saw to it while it's still on the lathe at slow speed then run it on a sander to clean it up and square it if there's any that needs to be done.
I will say that I still have a HUGE CASE OF THE ASS at Hitachi. I had a full set of tools that I bought from a pawn shop (Circular, drill, light, sawzall) and at one point Hitachi made a fucking AWESOME charger.... that also had a 30' cord with a battery connector at the end. You could run with the 3 batteries I had, and if you ran through those you could continue charging one while using any of the tools as a corded tool. They don't make that charger anymore and the few that are known good and selling on Ebay or the like command prices that are well above what the entire blasted kit sold for new! I can't understand why no companies did something like that, but I guess they have more profit by selling more batteries rather than giving you the option to continue work.
My most major reason for wanting to get all of this is that for a nice raised twin with drawers and a bookcase integrated for the kid is like 3k around here, out of real wood. The computer desk/cubicle I looked at that is only a 75% match for what I would want out of a desk given my varied things I do? $2500 before shipping. I can build both, custom to what I/we/she wants (for the bed) and specifically for what I want to be able to do for the desk, for way cheaper and get to sit behind, or go inspect, something that I can be proud of that if I do it right will last for eons. Then I can turn around and make fancywancy mixed wood turnings and such to give out as christmas presents, build the shelves I want in the living room for storage of crap, build the dressers and desk for the bedroom so we have storage how we want, build the bed that I want so I can store my 1750's under the fucking thing plus have additional drawers for blankets and sheets, etc etc etc. And at the end of the day, I can look and have something to show for all of that money that's actually crafted, not made out of crapwood that can't even get rained on if you keep it while you move.
Plus, I can always do it as a hobby and people eat up decorative one-off stuff like nobody's business.
I'm no Norm Abrams but it's not rocket science, it just requires attention to detail more than anything... and I was in Ranger Regiment. I can be fucking anal if I want to. LOL
