If you are going to do a fair amount of work or unusual shapes, it's
worth getting a) a table saw and b) a planer/thicknesser (or separate
planer and thicknesser.

This allows you to buy sawn rather than prepared timber and to machine
it to exactly the required sizes. There is often quite a price hike
for prepared timber even in standard sizes. If you want it machined
to size it gets very expensive.

So to some extent, if you are committed to making things from wood
then you can justify the machinery costs.

For example, over the weekend I was making a ramp with 2.5 degree
slope for my parents' garden. This involved cutting 2.4m joist
bearers at this angle along the length. I was able to do this on the
table saw pretty easily once I'd worked out a suitable jig. I needed
the same angle across the width oof a piece of board and was able to
do that in the thicknesser using a jig.

I still used a handplane to finish in a few places, though.


I feel like such a dip stick asking but where is the best place to buy
wood? At the moment I have been practising with the sort of wood that
you can get from the various sheds which pretty much means ply and pine
but obviously I don't want to always use that. This is like being 17
years old again and going to buy your first car without the faintest
clue what to look for )

How much would you spend on a table saw? I suppose more importantly
would it survive being kept in a detached garage (prefab concrete job
that gets pretty damp in winter)? I suspect that it would only last a
couple of years which is one reason I have put off investigating getting
one.

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