Your best tools purchase of the year?

[Dan Hintz]

Dan, are you the lucky guy that bought his personal lathe? If so you acted fast, it wasn't listed more than about an hour!

Van,

I'm lucky, I have friends on the lookout for me. I'd say within 20-30 minutes of the post going up I had a text about it. 5 minutes after that I had sent emails to two different addresses and left a voicemail

[Craig McCormick]

WOW my best purchase was pretty small. Bosch cordless multi tool. $89.00 I use it more in my remodeling business. I use it almost every day. I leave the Fein in the shop now.

AZCRAIG

[Dean Chapel]

I did pick an unused performax 16/32 sander for $225. Is that a good price?......

[Martin Wasner]

Holy ancient thread revival.

2015 has been a very good year. We picked up a new customer in May that fed us almost another $200k in work up until now. Extra income means extra reasons to add equipment and extra capital to do so.I can't easily add anything else as I've got no room and no juice to run it.

So far this year:

New Jet/Grizzly spindle sander
Used Toyota forklift (in storage)
Used SCMi T130N shaper
Used SAC TS125 shaper
Used Ritter R46 line bore.
Used 18" Whirlwind 212L pop up saw (in storage)
Used 12' Tigerstop. (in storage)
Used Murphy Rodgers 20hp dust collector. (in storage)
All new cutters for making doors to the tune of about $7500
A new Makita track saw.
Two new Maggi four wheel feeders.
Plus I paid off the widebelt I bought last year.
I think I spent at least $40k on toys this year, maybe more like $50


Next year? A new shop. Things on the short list is a straight line rip saw, a real planer to get rid of the junk powermatic/grizzly unit we've currently got. I'm CNC shopping, what I'm looking at is going to cost around $125k with all the other stuff that is required to go with it. Also looking at a CNC dovetailer. I'm torn between buying five new normal shapers or a pair of Martin's to accompany a double ended coper. I'm not sure what order those things are going to happen in. The new shop is the priority there's some expensive things like benches that need to be equipped.

[Patrick Walsh]

This is a fun thread for me as i have been on a tool purchasing binge this year.

This has to take the cake for me...

[Jesse Busenitz]

Oh man has it been a fun year... maybe not very profitable but very fun.

Started off in March I believe, I picked up a Greenlee 16" jointer off of CL for 1300, which I then proceeded to convert to spiral head/ball bearing. And then a month or so later I picked up a PM 66, 141, and 1150 off of CL from the original owner who bought them in '67. Oh and a Blum line bore machine from the same guy. And than just a bit later I saw an add on CL for a bunch of OWWM so I called him up and he was 13 hours from my house, but had family close by. Ended up buying 10 industrial 3 phs machines, which I resold all but a PM 70, two big disc sanders, and an over head router/mill, and I got all my investment back! And needless to say I needed more shop space for all of this so increased my space by 8Xs. And wrapping up the year I've finally been able to use all of this stuff.

[Peter Kelly]

AutoCad 2015 for Mac OS. I'd thought about trying to really learn Sketchup this year but I was able to expense my license for AutoCad to a project at work. Bye Windoze!

I think anyone else that bought that Fein Drill / Driver kit when Toolnut was running the sale a few months ago would agree that it was a pretty great score too.

[Joe Calhoon]

A few years ago I was in Martin's position. Doing big jobs and buying machinery to boost production and take advantage of sec 179. Now my goal is to cut production in half for more ski, swim and grandchildren time.
My machine purchases this year were vintage Euro machines. A Wadkin DM to compliment the Maka and a Ayen drill to compliment my vintage Delta drill press. These machines will not pay back like some of the others but are fun to play with.
Ayen 1.jpgAyen and Delta.jpg

Unloading DM.jpgMartin, Wadkin & Maka.jpgMortising check rail.jpg

[Tom M King]

It's been a decent year of finding what I need, but this afternoon find tops it all. I actually have a need for this exact profile.

[Mike Henderson]

I was able to get an 8" jointer with a spiral head. And a Festool track saw. The jointer has seen a lot of use. The track saw, not as much, but it's invaluable for certain things.

Mike

[Shawn Pixley]

Compass Plane that I refurbished

[Robert Parent]

The best new tool purchase for 2015 is........ Bosch Glide Arm, 10 inch, Miter Saw.

Robert

[Mike Ontko]

This year's winner, hands down, is the Grizzly 17" G0513X2BF. I went with the 17" so I could resaw 8" x 84" x 8/4 ash, which went through a 1/2" 3 tpi Timberwolf like butter across a hot knife.

Equally as handy (I'm hoping), I was at Powell's Books in Portland this past weekend and picked up new newly released SketchUp: A Design Guide for Woodworkers by Joe Zeh.