Popular Woodworking 2001-10 № 124, страница 2
Woodworking TOOL BUYING GUIDE 2002^^ FROM THE EDITOR Buy With Confidence Save money and find your comfort zone. Admit it. Spending money on tools and machinery for your shop can produce lots of anxiety. Your budget is limited, and so is your knowledge of all the product lines. Go to the store, buy on-line or over the phone and the salespeople aren't giving you any confidence that you're making the right decision, either. If you're lucky, you may have a friend who owns a tool you're interested in, but it's several years old and there are lots of new models to consider now. We publish this comprehensive Tool Buying Guide for only one reason. That is to give you the best chance you have to make the right decision the first time when selecting a new piece of equipment for your shop. Our goal is to arm you with more than enough knowledge to put you in the comfort zone when you open your wallet. On the following pages you'll find 17 categories of woodworking tools as well an important article about what's going on in manufacturing these days. In specific tool categories, ranging from table saws to combination squares, we give you three important pieces of information: • We tell you what are the important features to evaluate and compare among all the tools in this category (as well as those features that don't count for much at all). • We list all the brands and models available in the U.S. market with their specs and street prices. • And we go the extra mile and make specific recommendations about the models we have actually used in the Popular Woodworking shop and have confidence in. We also know that all woodworkers are not alike. Some of you are just getting started, others have years of experience but keep a casual attitude about your hobby. Others are passionate about spending time in their shops almost every day, or are pros depending on their skills and tools to make a living and support a family. Clearly, different woodworkers make different demands on their tools and have different expectations about reliability and how much to spend. For these reasons, we make our buying recommendations in three user categories so you can match yourself to the right tools. In this year's Guide we added the most essential non-powered woodworking hand tools as a category: low-angle block planes, combination squares and chisels. For space considerations, we dropped scroll saws and lathes for this year. In the cordless drill category, we focused on 12-volt models only. In our opinion, this is the right sized cordless drill for most, but certainly not all, woodworking shop applications. These 12-volt drills deliver the power and runtime to get the job done without the weight that makes you feel like you just did 100 arm curls. And if you fret over the question of advertiser influence on editorial recommendations, don't. Our job is to serve you, our readers. Not only is it our job, but truthfully, your subscription or newsstand purchase goes a lot further in paying our bills than does advertising income.We just couldn't afford putting anyone other than you first. One final note, many thanks to the Edward B. Mueller Company in Cincinnati, Ohio, for allowing us to shoot photos in their store. PW 10 Popular Woodworking October 2001 2 Contents 6 CHINA BOUND A lot more tools are now being made in China. What does this mean for prices and quality? 14 12 VOLT DRILLS 20 BAND SAWS 28 BISCUIT JOINERS 32 BRAD NAILERS 38 DRILL PRESSES 44 DUST COLLECTORS 50 HAND TOOLS 54 JIGSAWS 58 JOINTERS 62 MITER SAWS 66 MORTISERS 70 ROUTERS 78 SANDERS 82 TABLE SAWS 86 THICKNESS PLANERS |
