Last night I ran into a reader of the magazine. It was a chance meeting: he did not recognize me right away … but then I looked familiar. (This is not a common occurrence; it has happened maybe four or five times in 20 years.) It was really fun to talk woodworking with him and hear about what he was doing. (His current project is building an electric guitar.)
I told him I was moving and the challenges it was causing with my woodworking. As a result, he asked me a question that took me a minute to answer: What tool would I not give up in my workshop? I finally answered with my table saw, but I went around in my head: band saw, combo square, planer/jointer, beermeister (OK, I don’t really have one of those)?
Which made me wonder what you all would answer. So that is what I want to know. What tool would you never give up? Or, perhaps another way to think of it is — if you had to start your shop all over again, which is the first tool you would buy?
Let me know and we will share as many of your answers as we can.
Rob Johnstone, Woodworker’s Journal
