I'm curious what y'all would list in priority order as THE list of power tools to have in a woodworking workshop. Not a commercial venture mind you but something that could turn out cabinets and such.

As a side issue, how big is big enough in band saws. I haven't seen anything in bandsaws at the home workshop level above 14 inch. Is that really big enough? I think I want a tilt table and good throat height. How important is tilt? How much throat height is enough?

When it comes to planers for the shop, not needed to be portable. How big is big enough in width,thickness, single pass cuting depth, horse power? What are the must have features that I'd regret not having?

I have always been attracted to the xx in one tools but in reality I chafe at having to spend so much time reconfiguring the tool. No matter what it would be configured to be I would invariably need it to be something else. I will prefer to just bite the bullet and get separates.

In nearly all cases, no matter what the rationale or immediate reasoning, I have regretted, almost universally, buying cheap tools. Maybe that should be low quality tools, which isn't always the same thing. I have a Harbor Freight floor standing drill press that works well for me. The other day I looked at their 12 inch compound slliding miter saw. The linear bearings felt really herky jerky vs the silky smooth big names. Hundreds of $ difference but I resisted the "BARGAIN".

I do some welding with a wire feed gun and a stick welder and have a chop saw, several 4 1/2 inch grinders (dif blades avail without changing, I call it efficiency not laziness) This work makes an entirely different sort of mess from wood butchering and I will be struglling to lay out the new shop to accomodate both operations in a compatible manner. Don't want grinding debris in the urethane finish of a piece of furnature.

Of course anyone with experience or ideas is welcome to advise or comment. I will get a large dust collector but that shouldn't get near the welding-grinding. On the topic of a dust collector... I'm thinking in the 1200 to 1500 cfm size and intend to install rigid tubing to plumb the suction lines around to various areas of the shop. This will impact the shop heat less if the heat is radiant so I'm leaning in that direction. Alternatively I could build an enclosure for it in the conditioned space and mount a large surface filtration system in one of its walls. This wold avoid "throwing away" expensive heat or A/C. To avoid recirculating dust, I'd have to be pretty serious about the filter in the enclosure's wall. Any experience out there?

Late breaking idea... Run two tubes to each major dust/chip producer, one exhaust and one makeup air (ambient from outside). Terminate the ambient air supply where it can supply air to make up for that exhausted. Put a "blast gate" (slide valve?) on each suction and makeup tube and only open them in matched pairs. The idea is to not exhaust conditioned air but to suck up untreated air with the debris. If neccessary, a little boost fan could make the ambient air more available.

When sucking 1500 cfm out of a conditioned space for very long, you make quite a negative impact on humidity in our climate in summer and waste a lot of heat in the winter. These performance hits vs the relative low cost of some thinwall plastic pipe to route ambient air seem like a bargain.

The shop will have 10 ft ceilings unless someone makes a case for taller ones. I can go 12 ft (full building wall height) easily. It is 35x23 ft finished open floor space(6 inch walls). This is 8050 cubic ft and at 1500 cfm I would get over 11 air changes/hour with the dust collection system running and no amelioration as mentioned above. Starts to look more like enclosing the dust collection bags and installing large area filters in the walls of the enclosure.

Well by now you know that I am open for sugestons on just about everything about layout and populalting the shop. Don't be bashfull.

Pat