It depends how far you want to take things. Imagine yourself sitting in front of yourself, asking yourself a favourite job-interview question "Where do you see yourself in 5 years from now"?
If you have an idea of a full-fledged framing business, starting from home or a small unit somewhere to test the water and then - if it's nice and warm - a shop or a bigger unit, then you may be wary of lashing out big money on the best equipment and buy hobbyist stuff instead, with the intent to upgrade if and when you become more successful.
It's exactly what I did.
I started by taking a course at a local college, I had no idea the tools were hobbyist/DIY - I thought framers used mitre boxes and tenon saws, vices and hammer & nails, stanley knives and straight edges for mounts, hand held glass cutters for glass - and that's what I was trained on.
The guy that ran the course could cut a perfect bevelled oval mount free-hand, after drawing it using a pencil, a piece of string and a couple of nails placed X far apart using a maths formula.
I couldn't do that, nor could I even cut a bevelled square aperture using a stanley knife and a straight edge like he did, and nor could I use a vice like he did (not a mitre vice -just a vice)! He'd put one leg in vertical and then he'd offer up a horizontal leg up so it overhung the vertical one and start to tap a brad in, and on the very last tap, the two legs matched up perfectly!
All I could do confidently after that course, was mitre a moulding, cut a piece of glass and do washlines. It was worth it just for the washlines!
So, I sought out a framing supplier, up-graded from a miter box and tenon saw to a Draper mitre saw - I thought that was the dog's! and lashed out on a foot-operated manual underpinner - a Euro - Prospero still uses one and look at him, (well, at his business, you wouldn't want to look at him)
Also lashed out on Maped mountcutter - just a straight edge with a cutting head that ran along grooves in it, you had to draw lines and judge over/undercuts by eye, got quite adept with it. The things I couldn't do were covered - bar the oval mounts - I just talked customers out of those!
Got quite busy, had converted half of our garage to a workshop - expanded; converted the whole garage! Bought a keencut ultimat. Then I bought a used Morso, well, my wife got it for my birthday! Wondered how I'd managed without either for so long.
Then a shop came up - went for it, but no room for a workshop - wife ran shop, I still worked from the garage, on call to the shop when it got busy.
Was still cutting glass and boards by hand, no room for a wall mounted cutter like the Keencut excalibur.
Got even busier!
Then a much larger (about 6 times larger) shop came up, about 100m away from ours but on the main drag - and with a workshop out back.
Went for it, bought the wall mounted board/glass cutter, and soon after, a pneumatic underpinner, which needed a compressor of course, so, soom after, bought a pneumatic tab gun. Wondered, in every case, how I'd managed without.
In hindsight, which is a wonderful thing, we could, and maybe should, have bought most all of the equipment up to this point to start with and found more suitable premises than our rent and rate free garage - trusted our instincts and our market research. If we had then we could have concentrated on the road ahead more than the foot pedals and the gear levers.
Even when we upgraded to a CMC 18 months ago, we wished we'd done it as soon as we had the room for it instead of it being some kind of 'reward'
Just do it! Bite the bullet, many items of pro equipment bought new come with training and after-sales support and many bought used can be sold for pretty much what you paid if things don't work out.
Regards training (and all the above was not to build up to this, I just got a bit carried away - devil of a keyboard)! - click on the directory to the left. Under 'tuition' you'll find me - I think I'm pretty unique in offering fly-on-the-wall training in a live environment.
