Authors
The writers behind Workshoppicks. Each person owns a domain, from the gear they test to the criteria they use. Here is where they come from, why they cover it, and how they work.
Ethan Cobb
Cordless tools
Columbus, Ohio · testing since 2013
Cordless tools are a battery decision, which is why Ethan picks a platform before he picks a drill. He keeps a drill only if the chuck still holds a bit straight after a year of job-site use.
Background
Six summers on framing crews around Newark, Ohio came before the maintenance job at a Columbus food plant, where the line runs three shifts and tool downtime is measured in dollars. That is what shaped how Ethan thinks about battery chargers. He still owns the first 18-volt drill he bought in 2013, though the batteries died years ago.
A detached garage in Clintonville is half shop and half bike parking at Ethan's ranch house. A pegboard over the bench holds the drills that survived testing, each with a strip of tape and the month it arrived. His wife banned tool purchases in December, so his notes get heavier around the holidays.
Why I got into it
The maintenance job is where cordless tools stopped being a hobby. He watched crews burn through cheap drills on a single shift and started timing battery changes and chuck wobble on a clipboard. When a coworker first asked which combo kit to buy for a home garage, Ethan wrote a page that ran longer than he expected.
He now covers the drills and drivers lane because it is the one purchase that decides every tool after it. A person who buys into the wrong battery platform ends up paying twice when they add a saw. Ethan writes to save people that second purchase, and he says plainly when a cheap kit is the smarter call.
How I review
Real work, not a bench demo, is the only drill test: at least forty holes in pressure-treated lumber and a few dozen deck screws before any verdict. Ethan measures chuck runout with a dial indicator, times battery recharge from empty, and records how hot the pack runs under load. Grip feel and balance get noted after an hour of overhead work.
The tiebreaker is battery cost over five years, because the tool price is the cheap part. Ethan prices a kit by the cells, the charger, and whether the platform still sells that pack in three years. Homeowners with one occasional project should skip the pro kits and buy a single good drill, while anyone building furniture should start at the 20-volt tier.
Maintenance tech and home builder who runs every cordless tool through framing, trim, and repair work, with a focus on battery platform cost.
Domain: drills-drivers · battery-platforms · combo-kits · torque
Focus: battery platform · chuck quality · torque under load · grip and balance · combo-kit value
Jordan Pike
Metalwork and welding
Wichita, Kansas · testing since 2014
Jordan learned to weld by fixing a rusted trailer hitch in his driveway, one bad bead at a time. He judges a machine by how it behaves on the last inch of a long bead.
Background
On the Hays farm where Jordan grew up, west of Wichita, broken equipment got fixed the same day or the hay did not get cut. He spent a decade as a diesel mechanic before he moved into teaching ag mechanics at a community college. His first welder was a used Lincoln tombstone he bought for a hundred and fifty dollars.
A shop that used to be a horse barn, dirt floor and all, sits on the two acres Jordan owns outside Wichita. The barn stays cold in January, which is why input power and warm-up time get tested harder than the spec sheet suggests. A shelf by the door holds every safety hood and glove he has rejected, mostly for fogging or a bad auto-dark lens.
Why I got into it
Teaching ag mechanics put a beginner behind a welder in his shop every semester, and the same problems came up: thin sheet metal, a 120-volt outlet, and no patience for a machine that quits mid-bead. Jordan started keeping a notebook of which machines survived a student's first project. That notebook became the basis for his reviews.
He writes for the person welding on a 120-volt circuit in a garage, because that is the constraint that sinks most first machines. A welder with a great duty cycle on paper is useless if it pops the breaker on a cold morning. Jordan says which machines need a 240-volt run and which jobs are better sent to a shop.
How I review
A full spool or a box of rods goes into each welder, along with the same three test joints: a butt weld on 1/8-inch plate, a lap on 20-gauge sheet, and a vertical bead that shows whether the arc stays stable. Jordan checks duty cycle at real amperage with a stopwatch, not the brochure number. He logs arc start, spatter, and how the wire feeds after an hour.
Safety gear is part of the review, not an afterthought. An auto-dark hood that does not react fast enough on a low-amperage bead gets failed. The tiebreaker is whether a beginner can lay a decent bead by the second session without fighting the machine. Anyone welding 1/4-inch steel all day should skip the 120-volt units and move to 240.
Diesel mechanic turned ag-mechanics instructor who tests welders on 120-volt garage power, with a focus on duty cycle and safety gear.
Domain: welding · metalwork · duty-cycle · safety
Focus: duty cycle · input power · thin-gauge work · gas setup · safety gear
Ray Morales
Woodworking
Tucson, Arizona · testing since 2012
Ray builds furniture in a one-car garage, so every tool has to earn its floor space twice. He writes about repeatable cuts, because a saw that needs ten minutes of setup per cut will not stay.
Background
Fifteen years as a finish carpenter on custom homes around Tucson taught Ray that a square cut matters more than a fast one, and that a wobbly fence costs hours over a house. He grew up in Nogales on the Arizona border. He bought a used contractor table saw off a classified ad and rebuilt the trunnions himself.
A single garage holding a table saw, a miter saw, and a bench on wheels that gets pushed against the wall to park the truck is Ray's Tucson shop. The desert is hard on cast iron, so a coat of paste wax and a rust eraser stay within reach. Sawdust collection is not optional, because his shop shares a wall with a bedroom.
Why I got into it
Fifteen years of finish work meant Ray used other people's tools and then bought his own to match. When the housing market slowed, he started building custom furniture in the garage and found the saws that worked on a job site did not always work in a tight shop. He began comparing machines by setup time instead of horsepower.
Most tool guides rank horsepower and blade size and stop there. Ray writes the way a furniture maker buys, asking whether a machine can hold a setting across twenty identical cuts. If a router or a planer needs constant re-truing after a single board, that shows up in his notes long before the price does.
How I review
Real furniture comes before a word about a saw, router, or planer. He makes twenty identical cuts and measures the spread with a dial caliper, then checks the fence for drift after a blade change. Snipe, tear-out, and how long setup takes between operations all get logged in a shop notebook.
The tiebreaker is repeatability, because a tool that makes one clean cut and then wanders is not worth its footprint. Ray says which machines fit a one-car shop and which ones need a dedicated 220 circuit he does not have. Anyone planning only weekend projects should skip the cabinet saw tier and start with a jobsite saw and a good blade.
Finish carpenter turned garage furniture builder who tests every saw, router, and planer on real projects and measures cut repeatability.
Domain: woodworking · saws · routers · shop-setup
Focus: cut capacity · fence squareness · dust collection · setup time · blade and bit quality