When one thinks of woodworking, one may imagine hand tools such as chisels, carving knives, gouges, v-tools, and veiners. But woodworking machinery can also play a role in woodworking. Woodworking machinery includes two sorts of equipment, both of them types of power tools. Power tools are tools that are powered by electricity, a gasoline engine, or compressed air. On the one hand, this machinery includes a variety of hand-held and stationary power tools that are used in home workshops and small woodworking operations. On the other hand, it includes larger equipment used in large-scale manufacturing and in dealing with panels.
The larger equipment can be summarized as treating the surface or edge of the panels, boring the panels, or packing the panels. The smaller tools are somewhat diverse, including tools to cut, shape, grind, carve, smooth, flatten, join, and make holes in wood. These tools include saws, routers, rotary tools, biscuit joiners, jointers, planes, drills, nailers, and pinners, as well as lathes, mortisers, wood shapers, and bench grinders.
There are many types of wood machinery saws. Those that are handheld power tools include circular saws for cutting straight lines, chain saws or chainsaws for logging or for chainsaw art, jigsaws for cutting curves and stenciled designs, and miter saws for making crosscuts and miter cuts. Stationary saws include band saws mainly for irregular and curved cuts, radial arm saws for making long cuts as well as dado, rabbet, and half lap joints, scroll saws for creating ornamental scrollwork, and circular saws set up as table saws.
Other woodworking machinery in the form of hand-held power tools would be routers, used to cut, trim, and shape wood; rotary tools used for cutting, carving, sanding, and polishing; jointers and planes to produce a flat surface; biscuit joiners to make joints; drills to make holes; and nailers and pinners to fasten pieces of wood together. Other stationary machinery includes lathes for woodturning, and mortisers to create the mortise for a mortise and tenon joint. Wood shapers, also called spindle moulders, which function like stationary routers, and bench grinders, which can be used for polishing, are other types of woodworking machinery, as are drill presses, which are mounted drills, made stationary.
