It’s DI-Buy time – why I’m replacing my woodworking tools

I got into woodworking during COVID. Partly, I was inspired by my cousin who’d been using some pretty cool tools to make great things for years. Partly I was inspired by the desire to build something physical with my hands, instead of just building virtual objects. I also really wanted to learn some DIY skills I could use around the house, to help make those small changes that turn a house into a home.

COVID, of course, was not really a great time to pick up a hobby. For one, the supply of anything was nearly impossible (except toilet paper, we actually had plenty of that – don’t tell the Americans). For another, even though we had plenty of spare time during the lockdowns, that soon vanished like water in the desert. So – unusually for me – I only got a little bit into woodworking. But what I did, I really enjoyed. Hours absolutely melted away in the garage. I even forgot to eat and drink I was so engrossed in what I was doing.

Much of that time, unfortunately, was spent working around and with tools that weren’t exactly designed for the jobs they were doing. One of the things about woodworking is that as you progress to larger projects, you need (generally) larger tools. Not only could I not get many of those tools thanks to COVID, I also had nowhere to put them in our garage. And in the back of my mind, I always had the thought lurking that we’d be moving to Canada where the majority of houses are only wired for 110v. And that means a lot of tools I’d buy wouldn’t work here.

So I settled for the basics in SA. I bought an 18V Ryobi drill/driver, impact driver and jigsaw, along with a decent 255mm compound sliding mitre saw, and Bosch random orbit sander. I borrowed a circular saw from a neighbour. I had a few basic hand tools which I added to over time, but that was about it. No table saw (arguably the heart of a woodworker’s shop), no router or router table, and definitely no planer or jointer. No proper dust collection either.

Still, I made do with these tools for a few smaller projects – a rolling workbench for the garage, some angled wall planters for my mom and mother-in-law-to-be, new decking for our Juliette balcony, and basic cupboards and doors for our patio area. And then our Canada adventure arrived, and now we’re moving into a house that needs (or wants, you know what I mean…) some fairly significant additions and renovations.

This includes things like a new appliance garage/pantry for the wall nearest the kitchen. Wainscotting for the entrance way and living room. The reconfiguration of the primary and one of the spare bedrooms to a single room to give the primary more space. Finishing of the downstairs spare bedroom/gym. A catio for the two floofs. Maybe some new shelving for the storage room and garage. Possibly some chairs for the dining table.

Most of these jobs are beyond the tools I have available right now even though I brought pretty much all my tools to Canada. I even brought the mitre saw and sander, in the hopes that I could get my workshop space wired for 240v. And as it turns out, a previous owner of our house was a woodworker and wired the garage for 240v! So the mitre saw and sander should work. And it means other, more power hungry tools could run happily in the garage. If there were space, that is.

I will still have to get some extra tools though. Some I’ll borrow temporarily (like a table saw), whilst other tools we’ll be better off buying – like a circular saw, a brad nailer, a palm router and a shop vac. These four tools will get a lot of use on all of these projects, and the thought of asking to borrow them repeatedly (no matter how kind our friends and neighbours are) fills me with horror.

Normally I’d go with my system of buying the best tool for the job, no matter the brand. But when it comes to cordless power tools you want to stay on one battery system as much as is humanly possible. Batteries are expensive, so having to buy n+1 batteries (where ‘n’ is the number of tools) for two or more brands quickly gets expensive. And it also gets irritating to have to manage multiple chargers, and ensure every battery is charged up. Inevitably the tool you want to use will be the one with the flat battery.

Unfortunately for me, because I bought what I could get during COVID, there are no compatible Ryobi batteries in Canada. Heck, even the Ryobi tools themselves are a different colour here. That means I have to look at another brand of tools. The nice thing about being in Canada is that I have access to every major tool brand in the world. Hilti? Yup. Milwaukee? Tick. Metabo? Yessir. Makita? Uhuh. DeWalt? Absolutely. Ryobi? Green for go. The choices are overwhelming.

If you’ve known me for a hot second, you know that one thing I’m really good at is research. And Excel. To narrow down my choice, I put those two skills together and built a spreadsheet. I listed all the major and minor power tools a woodworker might need, separated into corded and cordless. Some tools just don’t make sense to run off battery in a home workshop. For all the cordless tools, I went through each of the major manufacturers and listed whether they have a tool for the category, the SKU, and the price. I also made sure to only pick tools from one battery system per manufacturer – most have more than one.

I won’t bore you (further) with (too many of) the details, but the only brands of the ones listed above that had every tool I was looking for were:
Milwaukee
Metabo
DeWalt and
Ryobi.

On an average price-per-tool basis (a metric I totally made up), Metabo was the most expensive, followed by Milwaukee, followed by DeWalt, followed by Ryobi. I costed the battery systems of each based on a fast charger, one small capacity, one mid-capacity, and one large capacity battery. The battery system costs were the highest for Milwaukee, then Metabo, then Ryobi and DeWalt (about the same price).

Milwaukee and Metabo have better and longer warranties and after-sales support versus DeWalt and Ryobi. Both companies have more durable tools. But Ryobi and DeWalt are pretty hard to beat on price. A full set of Milwaukee tools and batteries will be nearly $1,000 more expensive, Metabo nearly $2,000.

After all the agonizing and research, my choice comes down to Metabo versus Milwaukee. They both meet my durability, warranty and support needs. They both have great long-term support for their battery platforms. They both have authorized distributors near us. But at the end of the day, I just can’t see us spending the sheer amount of money Metabo is asking for their tools and batteries. So our tool shed is going red in the future.

PS. Here are some pictures of the few projects I’ve made so far. I’ll do some write-ups on the projects I finish for the house once they’re done.