My most underrated tool is the silicone kitchen baster I use to apply glue. As good as any "glue specific" brush that is sold, and a fraction of the cost (got a set of 5)

I could echo many of these, but I'll add a new one Ipe. What I usually hear is the hardness being rough on blades. That went ok for me, but every time I tried screwing into the end grain, it would split

@Michael Schwartz I've only done straight cuts on zebrawood (both rip and crosscut) and drilled holes in it with a forstner bit, and I haven't had major problems

For me it's a bed. I reeeaaally want to build one. I have lots of plans. I've offered to build , without success, to each of the three kids - either for them or the grandkids. No takers. Nor have I had a client approach me to build one. I can do rustic, traditional, mission, you name it. Any takers? 🤣

Man, I feel like I have done everything listed so far - bought cheap tools, only to replace; bought unnecessary tools, cuz they seemed like a good idea; ruined expensive wood by mis-measuring..... So, just to add something that hasn't been said and is the most recent: start with what was going to be 2 cutting boards, with curved cuts and inlays (tape two together, cut curves, and "swap" the pieces. One board walnut; one board hard maple). Bandsaw blade wasn't sufficiently tight, so while piece A matched pice B of each board, if I swapped them, they didn't match up. I tried to salvage by gluing the boards back together, with the plan of cutting them into strips and doing an end grain chess board. Well, didn't rip the right width, so had even number of strips (can't alnernate as checkerboard) and too narrow with an even number......so, decided to make a chaos board. Had it all glued up and cleaning up with router sled. Board wasn't sufficiently secured and router bit caught an edge, tore out a corner, and flung the board. It was trash. The cost wasn't that high, but the loss of time was