Tools For the Workshop Shed – Electric or Battery Powered?

Your new workshop shed/wooden storage shed is built and looking terrific in the backyard. You and a couple of buddies have built a great looking workbench and now you are ready to stock it with some new power tools but your not sure if electric or battery powered would be best. Well, you can certainly have all electric power tools but you cannot have all battery powered tools.

If you are going to install a bench grinder or a drill press or a table saw in your new workshop shed I think I want a good old electric motor driven tool. Call me old

fashioned but I do not want to be in the middle of ripping a 2”X6” or sharpening the lawn mower blade when the battery suddenly runs out of a charge and I am looking at the next six hours waiting for the darn battery to recharge.

There are definite advantages to using battery operated tools, the most obvious being the convenience. You can take them anywhere without having to rely on an electrical power source being close by. Long extension cords are not required. But that is about it for the advantages. The  battery operated tools generally cost more and the batteries do run down and need to be recharged. A good way to get around the recharging issue is to purchase an extra battery but this just adds to the already bloated cost. It should be noted, as well, batteries do wear out after a certain amount of time and must be replaced.

Electric tools on the other hand tend to cost less and are usually more powerful than their battery operated cousins. With an electric power tool you know that it is always going to work which is not necessarily the case with batteries. A drawback with the electric tool is you have to be close to a power supply and you may need an extension cord as well. The argument could be made that in this day and age the proximity of an electric outlet is generally within reach.

So which do you use battery powered or corded electric power. When is comes right down to it is six of one or a half dozen of the other. Are you going to be doing a lot of light duty jobs around the house? If that is the case than the battery powered tools will serve quite well. On the other hand if you are going to do some serious woodworking and you are going to be driving 3” screws and sawing some good sized timbers than good old electric power might be best. But maybe, just maybe a combination of both is the perfect solution.