@Ttrees
I'm not really in a rush for anything, I don't intend 'making my money back' in any way shape or form and i'm not even calling it an 'investment' in a financial sense. If anything it's an investment in me & what I enjoy doing but nothing more.
Hey Sebastian, just quoting a post at random to reply to you.
First of all, well done for staying patient for so long I read the start of the thread this morning over breakfast and I would have snapped at that point but didn't have time. By the time I got in from golf it's just become laughable. You'd be well within your rights to not come back but please bear with it as the forum can on occassion be helpful. I personally prefer to linger now and again than ask for help.
Don't apologise so much in future for "being unclear". You were perfectly clear, it's just you got responses from people answering a question they wanted to answer, rather than the question you've asked. I'm going to deflect a bit of the fire away from you; firstly by criticizing the arrogant, unwelcoming and patronising approach of others and secondly by saying I've spent over £30k on my workshop in the last 6 years and an average of about what you've done. I'd have spent it in one year if I'd had the money, I'm 24, family not minted, all money I've earned and paid tax on and not come out of some carpentry business pre tax write-off. There's no rule that you have to spend a certain amount or that you're any less of a woodworker if you haven't chopped a mortice out with your teeth before graduating to a chisel, what a joke. You're not crazy for spending that much in a year, it's only £400 a month, people spend that on car finance. It's your money, and working to the assumption that you've earned it through legal means then it's also nobody else's business. The mistakes you've made in cheaper tools you're dissatisfied with is something the majority of people do, and only a certain number of those actually learn from it. It's all part of the education - and as I can see you've said you've learned a lot so far and are looking to keep progressing with that.
About 15 years ago, the generally accepted figure for setting up a workshop was £10k. While possible, there's lots of things even back then that were excluded from calculations. If you were wondering, the amount you've suggested you're looking at spending seems about right. Bear in mind, that this is start up, of course every now and again you'll tinker and change your mind on stuff and it'll creep up.
In between all the patronising there were some good questions asked, but you may not know the answer to it yet. What do you make and what would you like to make? If this is just a hobby (which is absolutely fine by the way) it may happen that you change every now and again in terms of what you make. As a result, a "general approach" workshop might be best.
If you perhaps attach a diagram with your garage layout dimensions please including doors, we can all work together to see how you're doing for space and what a good layout will be. For what it's worth, I also have a large single garage but I've also built an extension to house my dust extractor and wood lathe. If it helps, here is what I have:
In the garage:
Wadkin CK Radial arm saw
JET 3hp 18" bandsaw
Wadkin AGS10 Table saw
Sedgwick MB planer thicknesser
In the extension:
JET some kind of dust extractor, I don't even know what
Myford ML8 lathe
Also an entire wall of my garage is dedicated bench space. Bench tops are festool mft style (you can buy them cnc cut in 8x4 sheet sizes). These are pretty useful for tracksaws for cross cutting, makes it pretty easy to build in a router table and make fences up for a the radial arm saw.
All the above in the main garage area I think would be good candidates for machines for you. I bought everything there second hand and I did spend a long time looking around to work out prices before pulling the trigger on any - I'm confident I'd recoup any investment if I sold them, which I won't. The radial arm saw I bought because I wanted it, that's all. I picked up a second hand Festool Kapex 120 for £450 recently. That was definitely worth the money, I was a bit dubious because I'm actually not a festool nut and even on the owner's group a lot of people do say they can take it or leave it. I prefer it to the Bosch GCM12 I've also used, but that's a good option. I've still got a dewalt 216mm mitre saw which gets used for framing whenever I do that as it's light enough to lug around. When I get round to my loft conversion, it'll be the cheap old 216 that will be used. The Kapex is accurate enough for cutting shoulders for tenons - horses for courses.
If possible, please have a think about buying second hand equipment. I am a bit of an enthusiast for old british stuff (only bought the JET stuff as it was available for a very low price, but I am delighted with the bandsaw). The main things to check for are that surfaces are flat (check using a thin straight edge across many different lines), things that move do, and things that shouldn't don't. Also, if stuff is missing it can be very expensive to get machined up as parts can be hard to come by - even then it'll still be cheaper and outlast most things that can be bought new. That said, if you want to buy new, you do you. Record Power bandsaws are well regarded I know that, and I'm sure you'll be happy enough with the axminster stuff. As for the stuff you put on your want to have list I can't really speak for much of it, as I've no experience personally. For me, the Festool router is the power I'd want in a 1/4" router. I'd like to own one for their superior dust extraction but I'd only use it for detail stuff, or things without massive power requirements. I use my router to make mortices so for that I find the Makita RP2301 ( I think it is anyway) to be dead useful. For my router table I use the Triton TRA001 (again I think, it's their most powerful one anyway). It's a weapon but I think it's too much to be used free hand and it isn't weighted or handled correctly for that. As for router tables, I've made them myself, all sorts. Once you've priced up all the MRMDF, formica, aluminium t tracks, etc etc that you'd use to make it (and your time you could use to make something you want to make) you may feel it's better off buying. If you make one built into a long bank of benches it's pretty efficient and will work well for 95% of what you want to do. I also have the Trend PRT as if I'm going off to do a job for someone, paid or a friend, or I'm renovating my house, it's so easy to move around and is also great quality, unquestionably flat. Again, I bought it second hand. The festool vacuums are worth the money - bought one second hand for £150.
If you use your track saw a lot, it might be worth upgrading. I bought the Makita and it's okay but I've been having issues lately with blade wobble - haven't got round to checking it against a thicker blade to see if it's just that it's deflecting. When I do upgrade, it will be for the Mafell. It's made tonnes of mdf fitted furniture and paid for itself many times over so if you do use yours a lot, I think you'll reap the rewards of upgrading. Again, these do work exceptionally well when paired up with mft style tables.
The spiral thicknesser - have a look into this and weigh up if it's definitely what you want. I bought my sedgwick mb off someone who had "upgraded" to a helical cutter, he regretted it. You can't take off as much stock with a spiral cutter at once. A good quality PT with sharp blades I would say gives you a great finish for most applications - occassionally I'll burnish the pieces with the chips on the floor, no real sanding required. Spiral thicknessers work great on stuff like figured maple. Again, if it's what you want then go for it.
Cordless angle grinders are great for quick jobs, on site or working on a car. If it's only getting used in the workshop for carving work I'd just buy a used one from a brand like Makita, Dewalt - it's not a precision tool and £30 will still get you a good condition used one I'd imagine.
I don't know if you mentioned it, but have you had your electrician out to tell you how much power you can get out to the shop? If you can do more than 32A, try to do that. Start up currents of machines can be quite tasty, and if you've got a dust extractor running at the same time, a 40A supply would be much better. I think you might be aiming a little low on your £300 for electrics. I dug my own trench to my garage, and installed all the sockets and conduit for the spark. I'd have glady wired it myself but you need an electrician sign off anyway. My electrician underpriced his labour woefully so it cost me less than £450 all in to do and £300 was materials. All dependent on number of sockets of course, but £1000 would have been perfectly reasonable in the south east, even with the amount of work I did myself.
Feel free to private message me or reply on here if you can face it if you've got any questions, I know what I've written doesn't give you much advice on everything you've suggested buying as I just can't give you personal experience.