Johnathon
Good advice so far, but the answers you seek are very dependent on your interests. These could be as varied as:
- wanting to replace your kitchen cabinetry, or wanting to make storage shelves for a laundry room,
- wanting to make reproduction furniture or wanting to refinish a dresser for a child's room,
- wanting to turn a 20" serving platter or pen turning,
- learning intarsia (picture making with veneers) or picture framing,
- carving wood decoys or carving furniture, etc etc.
There is no one 'goal' or one path to that goal, and certainly not one way to do things. Just reading the quotes or sayings the 5 or so people earlier in this thread use in their signature line (bottom line of their post) gives you an indication of their different approaches.
The advice I have heard that best summarizes my answer is to pick a project you want to finish, then acquire the skills and only the tools you need to finish that project, and proceed. When a project is completed, then you get to assess what went well, and where you might need to improve, and how eager you are to make another project. It seems foolish from a budget perspective to create a list of tools you think you want, then acquire those tools, then decide to make something (again, unless you have money to burn). Acquire tools as you need them. For example, I do not own a jointer - but many here consider that tool as a fundamental tool in their arsenal; and yet I can still make furniture.
To that I would add start simple (and inexpensive, unless you have money to burn) in terms of both projects and tools; doing so will teach you (by the trials of error) about stock preparation (square and parallel), about joinery (butt joints, fasteners, mortise and tenon, dovetail, etc), about surface preparation (sanding, planing, scraping), about finishes (stains, dyes, oil or film forming finishes etc). See even my example list there shows my interests in that I wrote it like you were building a piece of furniture and not carving a wood decoy; square, parallel, and joinery don't in (much) to decoy carving, at least as far as I know.
You don't need a 220V 5 HP table saw to make a bird house, but to accomplish a kitchen cabinet renovation most of us would advise that you need more than a jig saw and some C-clamps. Some of us have a 5'x8' space we call a shop, other consider a 30' x 60' building a minimum for a shop. Our approaches and project choices can be limited (dictated?) by our shop space (i.e a 5x8' shop not conducive to making kitchen cabinetry, but make work great for making musical flutes).
There is no one answer - and that is why I (we?) enjoy reading here about how other people do things - design decisions, stock selection, joinery choices, scale and proportion, surface prep methods, tooling choices and options, finishing materials and methods - there is no one way. I have asked a lot of questions here, and received excellent ideas and advice. I have learned much here at NCWW over the years, incorporating some ideas and methods I have read about here and learned in NCWW workshops, and in other aspects I still do things the same way I have always been doing them. I just may not know any better.
So ask us about a project you may want to accomplish, and what tools you might need to accomplish that, and you will get great advice and likely be amazed by how many approaches there are. Know that not all the things you read on the internet are true. I had read a list published by a well known woodworking magazine - something like 26 essential tools for any woodworker - and been amazed by how many of those I don't have.
Hope that helps
