2/6     I love wood work, I love building my own things. In HS I was the
        best student in wood shop. When I was in college I got a nice 18V
        Makita drill/screw driver set... best investment ever. Later in my
        life I bought a jig saw to speed up cutting, and I bought a nice
        variable speed Ryobi. Later on when I needed to cut straight edges
        precisely and quickly, I bought a circular saw. I also bought a nice
        Makita hand sander, which is heavily utilized. Now I'm at a
        point where I need a router but I'm not sure if it's actually worth
        the investment. The reason is that routers are actually quite
        expensive and I only need it occasionally to round off edges of
        wood pieces but beyond that it'll not be heavily utilized the way
        drills/sanders/saws are utilized. Any advice? Ideally I'd like
        to have an easy/any-time access to a wood shop, with a nice
        stationary drill, table saw, and other goodies. Either that, or
        I can start building one in my garage which will cost a lot, and
        take up too much space. So... router? or wood shop?
        \_ You can do a lot with a good router.  See the show
           "the router workshop" where they make pretty much everything with
           just routers.
        \_ My advice is: stop saying "utilized" instead of "used".  It doesn't
           make you sound smart.
           \_ And stop saying "investment" when you're buying the tools for
              your toys projects.
        \_ If you're in the south bay, there's one place that was mentioned
           in the sjmerc of a warehouse that some guy had converted into a
           walk-in woodshop.  If you only need certain expensive things
           occasionally, it might be more cost efficient to go there.  I think
           Home Depot also rents tools like these.
        \_ Both Berkeley and Oakland have tool lending libraries.  -tom
        \_ In the long run, if you want to take the time to really learn
           how to use the router, it will be worth it.  You probably won't
           use it as much as, say, your drills or circular saw, but it'll save
           you a lot of time when you do need to use it.  Like having a drill
           press versus handhelds.
           In the short term, tool lending libraries.