Black Friday, Woodworking Edition

From J:

Big shop upgrades for me this Black Friday! First up: clamps. Jet has a huge parallel clamp sale, 50% off, every Black Friday. It's a mad scramble. I got up at 5:00 on Friday and found one website that still had them in stock. Four 24", two 31", and two 40". Clamps: check!

Allie approves.

Next, I was browsing ads online. Turns out that Harbor Freight had one of the gems of their collection on sale, a benchtop drill press, for $50. One 20% off coupon later, I'm walking out with a $40 drill press. Crazy.

$40. I know it's not the best one on the market or anything, but come on. $40.

Now, even crazier: I've wanted to get a planer for some time now, as it will let me buy rough stock and dimension it up myself when I need it rather than paying to have it done all at once. I can also do some neat things with glueups for cutting boards and other projects now that I can easily flatten things. The unit that looks like the best combination of price, performance, and size was a Ridgid benchtop unit at Home Depot. They theoretically match competitors' coupons, so I wanted to see what they would do with a 20% Harbor Freight coupon. Not exactly a competitor for an item like this...but they took it. The cashier was shocked. The manager had to come over and authorize it since the discount was so large. I paid and felt like I'd gotten away with something.

Welcome to the tool family.

Merry Christmas, J. I'll be working the next few months on redoing my shop. I've got plans for two new workbenches, a smaller table saw stand, a planer cart, a drill press stand, a new router table, and new clamp storage. Phew!