Upgrade Your Home Woodshop with these Essential Woodworking Tools

From simple woodworking projects to furniture and cabinet making, the proper woodworking tools will help get the job done right. If you need to attach or join two boards without nails or screws, you’ll want a biscuit joiner. This tool allows you to cut slots into the boards then insert the ‘biscuits’, which are compressed wood pieces covered in wood glue. You then clamp the boards together and as the glue dries and expands it forms an extremely strong bond. A jointer, on the other hand, is used to cut flat edges on boards prior to joining them edge-to-edge. It is often used first to get one surface perfectly flat before taking a planer to the wood. A wood planer is ideal for reducing the thickness of wood and for making it smoother. You can also use an electric planer for finesse work like shaping wood trim, beveling door edges, and scribing cabinets and countertops.

A wood router is another useful woodworking tool. Compact and easy to handle, it excels at joinery, edge profiling, flush trimming, inlays, hinge mortising, and many other tasks. Router tool kits are available that come complete with a router, collet, straight guide, wrenches, and carrying bag.