Woodworking Tool Kits

There are a lot of woodworking toolkits in the market you want to buy. But it is a good decision? Or is it better to buy individual carpentry tools? Woodworking toolsets have a lot of advantages, as individual woodworking tools. Let’s analyze several questions that let us decide what is better for you and your woodworking projects.

By Jose Alberto Guastavino

What we call wood toolkits or toolsets for wood

In this category, we can find 4 +1 kinds of tool sets.

• 1.- A kit to do a specific task or discipline that has a set of different tools for different uses.
  Like a Starter Kit with a ruler, clamp, pencils for children. It can be related to a more specific discipline like a set of wood carving tools.
• 2.- A multiple toolsets with several accessories or functions, like a Rotary Took Kit with Several Accessories
• 3.- A set of some kind of tool with different sizes or similar functions like a Precision Knife Sets with several blades.
• 4.- A Set of accessories for a general tool … like a Rotary Tool Accessories Kit.
• 5.- Any other set or combo of tools.

Buy woodworking toolkits or individual woodworking tools.

There are many criteria to decide which is better.

This is a concern, especially when you are a beginner and you want to have your workshop and woods equipment. What to choose when you go to the woodworking supply store?

Some questions to take into account to decide are:
What specific tools used in woodwork do you need
What tools would you need next
how frequently you plan to pull out your tools

There are more questions.
When you ask the question: What tool do you expect to use we avoid to buy a tool kit with a lot of variants that we never use. On the other hand, some tools we have we never thought to use could give us new woodworking ideas or goals we had never thought.

 

Some advantages of toolkits

About buying only the individual tools you will use, have the cost to choose, buy each one each time. And using that time at least before beginning each project. It’s also true that having a kit, mitigate that risk but it is not full guarantee you will have all times all tools you need. In that case, could be a balanced solution, to buy initially a basic tool kit that has tools that you think you will use most of them, and later to buy those you don’t have.

Another concern about buying kits is that some of them in the market are not always of the same quality of individual tools. You can avoid that risk buying toolkits from recognized brands. Or simply buying a first starting kit to taste the activity and know if you actually like, and later with more experience, buy those better quality tools you think will make easier your work. But be careful with this kind of decision as better tools certainly make life easier in many ways. And many times the money you save buying cheaper tools you spend on time (time is not returnable) and materials. But I would like to remark that is not an absolute truth that kits have less quality than individual tools. Generally, recognized brands maintain their quality in most of their products.

Also, quality can affect different aspects. If quality affects the final result, it is important to start with quality tools. If quality only affects the durability, it could be also good to decide considering diverse alternatives based on the frequency you use these specific tools.

When do people prefer to buy woodworking toolkits?

You have to decide which are the most important woodworking tools for you. First, it is great to initially know woodworking tools and their uses.
One of the areas where toolkits are great winners over individual tools is space and portability. Most of them come with an interesting box and a way to save them. You can see if any piece is missing at a glance. It’s very easy to have control on you have the complete kit. Generally, the kits generally are great winners in portability. Some woodworkers don’t worry about having “repeated” tools because they find useful the portability of their kits.

Another area where toolkits are winners is when the kit has a set of the “same” tool with all the available sizes in a range. Generally, you can imagine the type of tasks you will do or not, but it is useful to have tools for many sizes, like woodworking chisels.

 

Woodworking toolkits people like

Another great winner is the multi-tool. Like power tools as Rotary Tool Kit that has the main tool and many woodturning tools accessories. In this case what lets you decide if you prefer a kit or each individual tool is to make these questions.

What do I “want” to buy? Despite we would like to find a reason for our decisions. Most times the reason is the excuse of our decisions. Then if you like something and want to do you need no more reasons.

But, on the other hand, in a reasonable way other questions are:
Does the kit come with additional parts I can’t buy without the kit (like a charger or a case)?
Is it convenient the difference of price compared to the set of accessories I actually expect to use?
Can I buy those accessories separately? Would I be able to buy them in the future if models change? Is the connector to the accessories “universal” and “standard”? Could I use these tools accessories from other brands?
Those answers could allow us to mitigate the risks we consider we would like to avoid.

Many times kits are great for beginners because they avoid a lot of decisions when we still have not enough base. Woodworking kits, among woodworkers supply, are the most common between novice woodworkers.
So, enjoy woodworking, enjoy your individual tools, as you want. Make your woodworking projects lead your decisions.

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