When we started working on our homestead we needed to get a lot of new tools. Sure we needed tools for our garden, but we also needed tools to work on the the house, construction of things like raised beds, fences, and hen houses, and to breakdown and recycle scrap wood. Before we knew we were on a woodworking journey we hadn’t planned for and all the information online was either too sparse or too complicated.
Today we are going to look at the bare minimum power tools you need for woodworking on your homestead. This list isn’t going to be every tool you will want, trust us there are a lot of nice to haves, but this list will give you the basics you need to start woodworking around your house and get simple projects done.
The Essential Woodworking Power Tools
- A Skill Saw
- A Miter Saw
- A Power Drill
This list might seem small compared to others you’ve seen online. While it’s nice to have a table saw, they’re expensive and certainly not necessary. For most projects these three power tools can get you through a majority of the work.
Others might ask why we recommend power tools when you could use hand tools to do the same work. The short answer is efficiency. It takes almost no skill to use these tools and they’re very forgiving. Try cutting a straight line with a hand saw and check with a square, it will take you twice as long or longer and you’ll never get a perfect line like you would with a power tool.
These tools will save you hours, and if you’re homesteading you need those hours for your animals or your garden.
The Essential Woodworking Hand Tools and Supporting Supplies
- Hammer
- Tape Measure
- Saw horses
- Clamps
- A Level
- Large workbench
- Sandpaper
- Shop Pencils and notebooks
- Wood Glue
You may notice that this list is also pretty short. Like we said before, this is the bare minimum, but it’s honest to the needs of a basic woodworking setup. These are not all the tools you’ll want to make beautiful hand crafted furniture, these are the items you need to get projects done from start to finish.
While this list is small, we still recommend you spend more on quality materials. A good carpenters tape measure will last you a lifetime, so don’t get something cheap and unreliable. Similarly with clamps you can spend a ton of money on a huge array of clamps depending on what you’re working on. We recommend getting high quality pipe clamps which will allow you to clamp up both large and small projects without too much fuss.
Basic Woodworking Tool Recommendations
Get yourself quality tools. For the power tools we trust Dewalt. This isn’t the most premium brand of power tool out there, but at the same time their tools are quality and often have universally compatible batteries and standardized swapable parts. These tools also tend to have good customer service for both warranty and repair, so it’s relatively easy to trust the company.
If you’re not a fan of Dewalt, Craftsman products are also fairly reliable. We use both in our house, but prefer the Dewalt tools in general. There are many other brands that you can check out, and we recommend you keep in mind what price point and quality you’re looking for. As a rule of thumb, quality tools end up being cheaper long term even if they have a higher barrier to entry.
You can pick up your essential power tools online easily from anywhere in the US:
- DeWalt Miter Saw – ~$200-$320 on Amazon
- DeWalt Skill Saw – ~$120-$160 on Amazon
- DeWalt Power Drill Set – $150-$200 on Amazon
As for where to buy your tools, we bought most of ours on Amazon for the best price, but some we were able to get on sale at HomeDepot. We got $160 off our miter saw just by waiting a few weeks for a sale. As with all power tools, prices can fluctuate wildly throughout the year, so just be mindful you’re not paying full price for something when you could save some money shopping around.
When it comes to your hand tools, again, quality is key. We really recommend shopping around and comparing your options. If you’re really industrious you may want to build your workbench yourself. That can save you some cash, but usually the cost of a workbench is cheaper than buying the wood. We use a lot of recycled lumber, so you can build things like sawhorses and workbenches pretty easily if you have access to the materials. For example, we have a ton of scrap wood that was left on our property from when we purchased it. The leftover 2x4s were easily cut down with our miter saw and turned into fixed sawhorses with a couple nails.
Woodworking Nice to Haves
While we’ve listed out some of the most basic tools you will need, there are a handful of items that we see in a lot of lists that get called essential when they simply are not. These are things like routers, which are nice for adding hardware or slotting grooves, but for the most basic application they are unnecessary. When you get one it will open up all sorts of possibilities for you, but it’s certainly not essential. Here’s some of the other nice to have, but non-essential wood working tools:
- Power sander – saves a lot of time, makes some piece fittings way easier
- Nail gun – Makes many project way faster, but ultimately a convenience
- Table Saw – A very expensive tool that makes large scale projects super quick. Most table saw cuts can be done with a skill saw in a pinch, but a table saw makes more complex projects way more feasible.
- Drill Press – If a drill press can do it, so can a drill, but the drill press has a lot of advantages
- Jig saw – very useful for doing cutouts. Essential for a lot of types of cuts, but projects can be designed around not using these.
- Planer – The best tool in the world for working with reclaimed wood. Really unnecessary for other types of projects. When a planner isn’t an option, a router and a jig can work in a pinch.
So there you have it. Lots of nice to haves that are really expensive and will make your work so much easier. These are things we’ve either invested in or put on our wish list, but they certainly are not necessary for most homesteading projects. The essential items we listed before can get you through building raised beds, chicken coops, benches, hobby horses, and so much more. If we’re being honest we use the power drill more than anything else because it also helps us in the house and the garden, so it’s a great investment even if we weren’t doing any wood working.
If you’re just starting out, start small. You don’t need to spend $10,000 on a workshop if you want to do some woodworking around your homestead. Instead just get your absolute essentials and you can be putting together wood projects for under $1000 altogether. Woodworking is an expensive hobby to get into, but once you get into it you can easily add a lot of value back to your life with the skills it unlocks!