OT Cheep shop-vac

On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 12:06 PM, Ben<bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> wrote: There's people on the woodworking forums that do it. I agree that it does present some problems though. :-) If I had to do it, I'd probably either keep the tools in a storage rental place that had power, or keep to hand tools at the apartment. Kitchen cabinets are no better. They look good on the outside, but as soon as you open something, it's sawdust inside. I agree. The machines are expensive. And like computers and cars, there's no limit to what you can spend. Basically, the only machines I don't have at this point are a shaper and wide belt sander. (although I do have a router table and a drum sander) New, shapers with tilting arbors would be in the $2000-$3000 range for a good one, and the cutters are expensive also. The wide belt sanders are even worse. They're in the $3000 to $20,000 range new and require 3-phase power for the larger ones. If I had to buy all the tools in my shop again new, it would be as much as a new japanese sedan. But I've been really shopping sales over the years. Amazon was clearing out tools for a while at around 70% off. So I got good stuff at good prices. I don't really need half of the tools in the shop to make furniture though. They just provide more options or make certain tasks easier, faster, better results, etc. If you look at higher end furniture where a dresser could be $2000, it doesn't take many pieces to offset the cost of the tools. Plus you get exactly what you want in terms of size, shape, finish, durability, family heirloomicity, etc. If you're used to walmart funiture though, it's nowhere near worth it. A couple without destructive kids who never moves could do just fine with a $75 ikea dresser for quite some time. But that's not us. But a few thousand dollars could get you off to a good start and able to make some nice furniture. I'm thinking about getting into metal working also. I'm planning to get a box and pan brake, and sheers at some point. I'm also planning to take a welding class and a class for learning how to use lathes, mills, etc. It would be nice to add metal to the furniture I make. I could make my own steel computer cases also. Do you mean MDF? And which computers used something like it?