Woodworking for Engineers
woodgears.ca
woodgears.ca
Nothing against the Americans/Canadians etc, but this is one area where regional differences make a pretty huge difference in terms of wood and products available. If, like me, you're in the UK and looking for vaguely specific details regarding woodwork online, you're going to find an awful lot of American content and very little local stuff (a blog opportunity there perhaps).
A good recent example of this effect for me was when I was looking up pine stains. You will find constant references to something called "pre-stain conditioner" online; this basically doesn't exist in the UK. Everyone online is insistent that you need it, and you can just about buy it here (it's expensive), but it turns out it's pretty irrelevant. In the UK our pine is typically a different variety, and so therefore has a different composition, and our terminology is different here too; wood stain in the UK is, I think, "wood dye" in the USA? Please correct me if you know better :)
For reference I use this stain: https://www.wood-finishes-direct.com/product/manns-pine-wood..., which makes no mention of pre-stain conditioner, and I've had very good results with it so far.
And my feeling is that Europeans in general don't insist on staining everything like Americans do. Or maybe it's just us in Scandinavia that actually think the bright natural color of birch, but even pine, is quite beautiful.
I ended up using stain for this current project as the room called for dark wood, but the only two real-wood options for skirting boards in the UK are pine or oak, which are both light woods, so I opted to stain pine for it.
And thank you! Someone at work mentioned his videos recently and I completely forgot the name.
Also, not youtube, but https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/ is a great uk online resource, including this thread https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/timber-yards-wip-add-you... on sourcing timber
Paul Sellers definitely understands that many UK woodworkers are in their garage or garden shed and keeps that in mind for his projects, and uses predominantly hand tools. I'm not saying I don't like the North American channels, and Matthias is a true hacker as well as a woodworker, but it's a different world.
Just to add my own recommendation: Alain Vaillancourt does some excellent stuff, from his vast workshop located somewhere in the New World:
No affiliation. I just found him a couple weeks ago and have been really enjoying it.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzHueSosfT92NUVmhrz7Hjw
It's a guy in South Africa with a small workshop. The main point of his videos is designing space-saving tool mounts and storage for his shop. He uses cheap tools—and lots of plywood—to make some clever stuff.
It's not a channel for seeing furniture made, but it's interesting nonetheless.
From my standpoint as a woodworker, everybody's money's equally green and if somebody wants a piece stained something garish, it doesn't cost me any more than if they want it in a natural color. Although, as a mentor of mine once said: "You don't have to sign everything you build".
I'll let you know if that perspective changes if I ever have so much work coming in that I have to turn jobs down :-)
There's quite a lot of non-US/CA woodworking channels out there, though.
Paska Makes, Australia
Woodshop Junkies, South Africa
Paoson Woodworking, Spain
JSK-koubou, Japan
Laura Kampf, Germany
Crimson Guitars, UK (Mostly luthier projects, but Ben does some crazy stuff that I think woodworkers could find inspirational in general)
Dekay's Crafts, Korea
Get Hands Dirty, Portugal
Resin Timber, Lithuania
I've seen plenty of others - these are just some of the ones that I subscribe to.
Damn that man for working so incredibly neat and tidy. No stains on his virginal birch-ply, ever — not even a smudge. Sawdust seems to bend to his will, and all cuts and holes drilled are surely accurate to the micrometer.
His workspace is as clean as an operating theatre.
Yeah… That's not ever going to happen in my shed.
His recent router table build is also awesome - I'm planning on purchasing a copy of the plans and building it when I get a bit more free time.
Paska Makes https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNyGbxoEo6CQvaRVEvItxkA
Woodshop Junkies https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzHueSosfT92NUVmhrz7Hjw
Paoson Woodworking https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4PI8VEr1ZaKn4TBcXoy3qg
JSK-koubou https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCez62GvvsH05IunJJsRuvuQ
Laura Kampf https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRix1GJvSBNDpEFY561eSzw
Crimson Guitars https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdD1Cqxr8aINzWs1agg3tEQ
Dekay's Crafts https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYVugiFOe-aoh7FXtAuiGxw
Get Hands Dirty https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCETeXD_3awsQv-9rSdCYXQQ
Resin Timber https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCZ2m-mgto7R-4uEgROP2pQ
Our options here generally seem to be pine or oak, from normal stores. At more specialist stores you might be able to pick up some stuff like sycamore and walnut, but it's a bit hit-and-miss as to what dimensions are available.
It’s great for framing but I’ve been hesitant to use it for my beginner woodworking stuff.
She also prefers rollerball or gel ink pens to regular ballpoints. As they require less pressure, that's likely helping.
I like working with pine, particularly because it's cheap enough that you can make mistakes when learning and not feel too bad. But it is much more variable than other woods, I find, and the species vary by country.
I do actually have that rare privilege of having a "workshop" space (a solid shed), but as I'm in Wales it is of course up some extremely slippery stone steps, currently leaking quite dramatically, and full of crap I've chucked out of the house but can't take to the tip during lockdown measures.
“Yeah, here I'm making a simple spice rack out of some purple heart and cocobolo I just had lying around.”
I'm pretty pleased already if I can get my hands on a few scant planks of walnut at a passable price here in the Netherlands.
Every sawmill/timber merchant/whatever near me basically sells fences and roof trusses.
For example: Home Depot (which is a national chain of home improvement stores) generally stocks pine, red oak, some yellow poplar (which is not actually a poplar, but I digress), and sometimes something they'll call mahogany (which almost certainly isn't Swietenia anything) . That is about as good as you'll find unless you go somewhere that specializes in hardwood lumber. Unfortunately, some of those don't do retail sales.
For US readers in the northeast, Highland Hardwoods and Northland Forest Products both do retail sales. Northland is more focused on North American wood, though they stock FSC certified mahogany. They're about 10 minutes from each other about an hour and 15 minutes from Boston (usual traffic caveats apply), where I suspect a lot of people from HN at this time are located.
Smaller pieces will typically cost less at the lumber yard, and it also makes it easier to work with salvaged wood -- you no longer need to find big pieces to salvage, you can salvage a lot of little pieces and build them up.
Also note that salvage isn't just dumpster diving -- at auctions and sales you can find large things people made for particular purposes that no one wants, and break them down for raw materials. I've picked up a couple hundred dollars of dimensional lumber for a $5 bid before because it was in the form of a 9 foot tall viewing platform for refereeing volleyball games.
On the other hand, I always see Europeans complaining that American houses are made out of wood and aren't designed to last like good concrete or brick European houses... Well now you know why. No need to double the cost of materials for most houses.
Stephens 8x6 Workshop - tiny space, clever projects. At the real ale end of woodworking https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8SLw_zYEappZL5rROwvZ1w/vid...
Peter Millard - cabinet making in a tiny workshop, some good meta content on the reality of being a YT woodworker https://www.youtube.com/user/petermillard1/videos
Pask Makes - Australian but totally transferrable to UK materials, lots of reinvented basics https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNyGbxoEo6CQvaRVEvItxkA/vid...
Charlie DIYte - general DIY with plenty of carpentry, good for beginners and those with few tools https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7x7wk8yeN2ZEJCo6BgP2ag/vid...
Ishitani Furniture - Japanese but essential inspiration and meditation https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7FkqjV8SU5I8FCHXQSQe9Q/vid...
Sampson Boat Co - UK boatbuilder in US, any woodworking list on YouTube should have this at or near the top, relevant or otherwise it's astonishing https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg-_lYeV8hBnDSay7nmphUA
If you're working with oaks or hardwoods, I agree with you.
And Matt Eastly: https://mattestlea.com/ https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCxWzA3ZlYEOLr1JkKH0ZMyg
YT: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcO75TzblV9-_WqgXX1mNxg/vid...
Badger Workshop is UK-based https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSQRZgy9lvGsLrWn6sFHZHw
Nick Zammeti is UK-based https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3-0S7vXfwYY2jj5EkMpymA
Rag N Bone Brown is UK-based https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVyE_6jEtVZGmYGXtUOL5FQ
Ishitani Furniture is Japanese https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7FkqjV8SU5I8FCHXQSQe9Q
Giaco Whatever (some woodworking) is Italian https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYH-XXUE2QDaWKvABsWJh8w
Cactus! Workshop is from Spain: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCupK5wJGXHDemXmHFMCMtHA
Lignum is based in Croatia https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfSdejZFhw0rrDFlj9McyNA
Marius Hornberger is German https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn7lavsPdVGV0qmEEBT6NyA
Laura Kampf is German https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRix1GJvSBNDpEFY561eSzw
Ollari's is based in Hungary https://www.youtube.com/user/Sepirabbit
I'm in the US, but I find a tend to like european woodworking channels better.
"A wood conditioner is basically a wood finish reduced to a very thin consistency."
Sounds like a money-making product to use on very porous wood that has water-damage (rotted?) or has been repeatedly treated with solvents, leaving only weak wood fibers. I usually replace such wood.
There are also products for "rejuvenating" rotted wood:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rejuvenate+rotted+wood&t=opera&ia=...
I suppose these have their place but I have been lucky enough to not need them.
https://www.woodcraft.com/blog_entries/stain-or-dye#:~:text=....
You can make your own wood conditioner by mixing 70% varnish with 30% mineral spirits or a 60/40 of Denatured alcohol and shellac.
You only need a conditioner if you are staining a soft, sap wood such as American yellow pine. We have a pine here called slash pine that is similar in properties to your pine, but it is virtually extinct. It does not need pre-stain conditioning because it is a harder pine, and it was mostly harvested from old growth forests.
Point being it is really not, the specific wood, it is the characteristics of the wood, mainly hardness, porousness, sapling harvest or heartwood harvest and oiliness.
If you have a soft, pours, sap wood harvested, with little oil content it is going to need conditioning. If you have something like Ipe, hard as a rock, oily and a tight grain, you will not need it and most likely need a dye to actually stain it.
Matt is from the UK. His vid on applying OSMO finish was a lifesaver for me.
For people interested in this stuff who haven't seen Next Level Carpentry, I highly recommend it: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXRNHTVpEdhz9BIvomETGiQ.
Also fascinating are the many videos about making and using pantorouters, a very versatile machine of his own invention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_72hOY2vPg (see video description, and there are older videos of different models too).
He sells plans for many things he's made on his website.
Also:
"Actually, I did use a table saw to square up some of the pieces."
I did buy your gear template generator and tried it on the laser cutter. It's cheaper than the solidworks add-on that does the same thing :-)
Which is more successful, your plans or your software?
Also, that pantarouter is incredible, kudos! When you routed 3 dowels I was very impressed. How did you envision the machine?
Is there any tool / machinery design in your head that you've been unable to execute yet due to time / space / $$$ constraints?
+1 for your thoughts on patents.
Love your channel. All the best with your new little one!
Long time admirer of your work. I'm curious how you manage the massive amount of content on the site. Is your website plain HTML and CSS? Or are you using some kind of cms?
Cheers, Ben
Have you ever felt constrained by your selection of tools? It appears to me you rely mostly on woodworking tools for your projects. In my own experience I've frequently felt that if I had the capability to mill or turn materials to exact dimensions I could more easily produce better quality tools.
It seems to me that your style of work would naturally lead, at least in part, to using machining tools and metal as material. I'm curious why your path hasn't lead you to transition here.
Thanks!
no question but some praises, not only your wood related material (pun slightly intended) but also the video editing, it's very well balanced and extremely relaxing. A joy to watch..
May you sand for long
Recently got a new tabletop saw. What are the essentials jigs I should build first?
Hey <programmer>, I just bought a new laptop. Which IDE should I install on it first?
I would say it would be more of "what types of extensions or addons should I use", which in itself, is less than cut and dry, since a lot depends on what you want to build.
However for table saws, you'll want a sled and zero clearance plates (for different blades and angles) for sure. Should you make a tenon jig, among other things, will depend on what you hope to build.
I've gone down the rabbit hole of finding perfect tool to accomplish a task, be it in software realm or woodworking realm, only to realize I lost sight of the end goal in search for THE tool.
Thanks for pointer to Mere Mortals channel!
Pocket holes are one of those non-intimidating techniques that have kept me in the game too. I was pretty impressed by Kreg's mission: https://www.kregtool.com/about-us/mission.aspx props to them and any one else leveling the field for novices.
"Kreg products are designed to make wood projects less intimidating, to build confidence, and inspire success." I've been very satisfied by their pocket hole jig
Anyone who would argue that pocket holes are unacceptable for cabinet work is someone I would argue you should ignore.
I've found people to be generally really helpful and patient. My experience is that they really love newbies coming by - there's fewer and fewer people doing woodworking, so the chance of getting a long term repeat customer is a pretty big deal.
I'm sorry you've had poor experiences like that. I've not been involved in the community for an extended period of time, and have found people to be generally incredibly helpful and patient.
Now that the documents from the TechShop bankruptcy are out, it's clear that the gym-type business model did not work at all. The business was kept going by finding new investors to pay for growth. It never paid for itself from membership fees.
There are smaller nonprofit shops and hacker spaces, but they tend to have fewer and smaller machines and not enough working room. The surviving spaces are more into the college prep education business - it's where you send your kid to get their STEM ticket punched for college. Lots of kids working through the same canned projects. Some at the construction paper and scissors level, like advanced kindergarten.
The fundamental problem with the gym model (pay by the month, come as often as you want) is that people who sign up for shop spaces show up too much. Some are there every day for most of the day, doing work. Gyms rely on only a small fraction of members showing up at any one time. At one point, TechShop had ten laser cutters cutting out Etsy stuff from opening til closing, and the laser cutters were booked weeks ahead. Then Etsy allowed outsourcing manufacturing, that stopped, and the Etsy crowd dropped their memberships.
I extended for a couple of months to finish up some projects, but that heavy push at the end is usually the sign of a Membership Death Spiral (if you look at it upside down, it's a pyramid). The folks I quietly warned did not listen and ended up having paid for something they'd never get. I heard of someone at another Techshop who donated some enormous, expensive milling machine to them in exchange for a lifetime membership. Whew.
Still miss it.
Ideally it should be less than techshop's steep $170 a month since I really only need a laser cutter, and maybe for only about 3-5 hours a month.
I do metalworking. One of my good friends does woodworking. We both live in <1500sf houses and do our hobbies in our basements (I specifically bought a house with a walk in basement for this purpose). The trade-off is that we can't turn our basements into bars, mancaves, TV rooms or sex dungeons. Oh well, just like any other hobby there is an opportunity cost. We both have more money sunk into random odds and ends hand tools, extension cords, lighting, fume extraction, etc. etc. than we do our big tools.
And I know somebody is going to point out that the Unisaw is less safe than the SawStop, but the SawStop is only going to save you from cutting yourself. It won't save you from kickback; you still need to know how to use the saw safely. The technology isn't a substitute for training.
If you can find a local makerspace that has a woodshop, you can trade capex for opex, get access to far bigger and better tools than you'd likely buy starting out, not have to pay for the space to put them in, and likely be able to get training in how to use them safely and effectively.
> I recommend printing the gears with an ink jet printer. Even cheap ink jet printers print very scale accurate but Not all laser printers are accurate.
Does anybody know whether that's still the case, and why?
Basically photolithographic printers can have the same issues as you have with projectors where the image can be skewed or morphed so if you are printing say a square you might not get 4 90 degree corners or perfectly straight lines, the size of the print can also vary depending on the distance between the projector and the drum if it’s not exactly the same as the printer thinks it is the size will change and it varies it would cause perspective shift skewing.
With ink jet alignment errors would maintain the shape and size but the shape might not be aligned perfectly to the page so your errors would only be positional or rotational with photolithography you have perspective and projection transformation errors.
Photolithography printers for engineering/architecture have builtin auto alignment to correct for this.
While the errors even for most home printers are very small if you print something like a gear it’s enough to cause wobbling and fit issues.
That said for wood gears if you cut them by hand I would imagine the tolerance errors from cutting would be worse than from printing unless you are very skilled.
So for the alignment to stick (anyone else remember when you had to manually align inkjets?) they have to move very consistently across the page.
He does have an HN account and may show up here if he notices enough inbound traffic from this submission.
Woodworking has been a hobby of mine off and on my entire adult life. Two things stand out as having a big impact on woodworking in the past 15 years or so, related to this post:
1) The large-scale adoption of Sketchup as a drafting/designing tool. If you go to any woodworking forum you'll find lots of people talking about it, and it has raised the skill level of a lot of people who are new to woodworking considerably, just by making it a "computer friendly" hobby and making more complex designs possible for people without a high amount of basic knowledge.
2) The social aspect of the internet generally, results in a lot of knowledge about paints, finishes, equipment, and methods being shared. Before the internet, fine woodworking was still something that could only feasibly be learned by apprenticeship. These days, you see people buying historic homes that need a lot of work, for example, and "just figuring it out."
PS: for anyone else who might try playing with wood, the answer to how close your measurements should be to make mortises fit JUST right is 5 thousandths ;).
I don’t have much love for the product as it is now however. I would prefer the free SketchUp from 10 years ago to the current free tier (web app).
Does anyone know if any good open source SketchUp-like tools?
Maybe it’s better for more complex woodworking projects that aren’t just composed of simple rectangles. It’s certainly great for mechanical design and other use cases with smaller, more complicated geometry.
Care to elaborate?
Bring in a couple 4x8 sheets, cut taking blade width in to consideration, join, test whether the edges are flush, etc.
Maybe even import plans, then give you a cut list that maximizes the wood you want to use. (Will I need 6x or 7x 8’shelving pieces? Ok, 7, but oh right, it’s reminding me to get and extra one to allow for mistakes.)
Have never used any of these, but they've all come up on various woodworking forums I've read over the years.
Sketch-up's non-Linux presence is a pain, but can be worked around - the web version's useless for me, but again you can download the last .exe version they released still, from the official page (albeit they've hidden it).
FreeCAD and LibreCAD are worth diving into just because they're going to be around for a while, and at least one of them seems to be well supported.
Blender's another option, and though it doesn't align feature-wise quite as well, and has a steeper learning curve - learning it is going to be useful forever, and for a wider range of use cases.
You write your project in you code editor of choice, auto-run on save, and set the OpenSCAD viewer to ato-load on file changes. So you have the immediate feedback of a 'visual' tool, all text driven, git managed and you are probably already familiar with most of the tools.
Yea this approach is not for everyone I'm sure.
The Clojure - OpenSCAD script is amazing but also extremely slow (and I'm no good with Clojure even after staring at it for hours).
The Python OpenSCAD link seems way faster and that suggested workflow is great!
Happy to read this. It'll save me many hours. Seeing code getting converted into 3D renderings that you can actually 3D print (or woodwork) into real life is super cool.
Also I can't easily compose or build composite objects, where is a one-line loop in Python. And how do I deal with libraries of components ? Dunno, seems like a step back to me.
Have not tried it though - perhaps you are right.
What's nice is that since it's a true Python API, you have total control over everything, including iterating over named edges of the object, which openscad can't do at all.
I spend many hours a day poking at lines with a mouse, and it's really more productive than typing a few things, rendering to make sure the result is what you want, etc etc.
And I put my plans in git too!
Of all of Google's completely selfish moves in terms of turning their backs on viable products, selling off Sketchup seems to be pretty high on the list of worst offenders.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blender+vs+sket...
Can you add it to your page? I found it via https://jayscustomcreations.com/sketchup/, which has a dropbox url that includes the magic string "FM-3-0-16845-EN.dmg". That's all I needed to make the Mac URL from your Windows URL.
I found a channel from the UK of a cabinet maker [0] that uses Graphic for mac - simple, easy and I can do the same style drawings.
Maybe Sketchup is more helpful when you have complicated joinery or need to sell plans online.
0 - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_FksrzP3q-IuoWTiG501LQ
After about 3 projects on Sketchup, I'm now proficient enough to crank out simple furniture in a few minutes. That 15 minutes spent modeling things in sketchup pays dividends when it comes time for cutting and assembly.
I think a lot of the question is going to be, is your goal to work with wood and make things in general, or do you have specific sorts of things you want to make?
There is really no limit to what you can make by skillfully assembling small pieces of wood into large panels, but it's a lot easier to make inlaid wood boxes in an apartment than bookshelves and desks.
A lot of the woodworking you see is furniture making, which typically involves a lot of dimensional lumber and large wood panels which are easiest worked with table saws, planers, joiners and routers, and a large shop and lots of machinery is a boon.
But inlay, woodcarving and even scrollsaw work can be done with smaller pieces of wood and little or no power tools.
I recently bought a Craftsman bench jointer, and tried to flatten some walnut for furniture making with it. I went over and over the jointer with it, and it still wasn't flat. I tried various techniques found on YouTube, read until my eyes crossed, and still couldn't get the walnut flattened. Granted, maybe my particular jointer is bad, but I had limited walnut stock and didn't want to continue grating on the pieces I needed until they were too thin and unusable.
So, I threw my hands in the air and just went at it with a hand plane. It was a bit of work to get the pieces flat and square, but planing is kind of enjoyable. You're also not creating a ton of sawdust - just nice, silky shavings. On top of that, the surface of the wood looks great when hand planed vs. sanded or machined in other ways.
These days they have much better "job site" table saws that are fold-up portable.
- you go in and pay for some hands on time with the shop master to learn the rules and prove you can use the tools safely.
- Once you're vetted, you can rent non-master shop-time at a much lower hourly rate.
- If you encounter a problem, can rent an hour of master time to get advice and help.
- They had spaces where you could leave items being glued, etc. Store your in-progress work with a sign that has your contact info - they'll reach out if you leave it there too long.
I helped my friend with the glue up as he built a pair of end tables. Was a pretty cool space.
Discoverability is a bit tough, but seems it could be ideal for your use case.
Roy's the best kind of nerd. He REALLY loves what he does and how he does it, and makes it so contagious that I kinda want to take up woodworking just so I have an excuse to attend one of his classes.
The first ones look awful. The last ones look ok. I rated myself on how strong they are, how quickly I built them, and how few steps they took rather than on how good they looked.
It felt analogous to iterative hacking in a scripting language. Oh how I’d love a workshop in which to do some actual quality work as opposed to random hacking!
But in general, among hobbies, woodworking is pretty gear-intensive. Even if you try to avoid it.
Actually, he doesn’t have much "project videos" except for the "workbench" series.
You will find that problems arise when you need to prep stock. You can totally do it with hand tools, as it’s been done for centuries, but it’s hard work.
His channel is specifically for beginners on a budget.
I would also suggest watching Steve Ramsey [1], he puts a lot of effort to explain simple and beginner stuff. I believe he still has a PDF in his website about filling a workshop for under 1000 USD.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFPLFyxkhzc [1] https://www.youtube.com/user/stevinmarin
See e.g. Paul Sellers or Chris Schwartz.
Sure, you're not going to set up a furniture factory that can compete with IKEA on price using hand tools, but who cares? You're doing it for your own enjoyment. And hand tools are enjoyable to use, much less noise and dust than machine tools.
Any woodworker is going to need a collection of both. Things like a good chisel set are going to be essential no matter what.
The basic power tools like a circular saw and a table saw aren't all that expensive either. Even cheaper if you buy them second hand. Add in a drill press, a jigsaw, router, sander and that's pretty much the basic ensemble. With good sales, all of it can come around to 1-1.5k
The real expensive stuff is when people buy useless festool crap when they can make a jig.
Most importantly, with hand tools you don't have to have a big permanent wood shop. The tools don't take as much space, and most importantly, you don't have to set up dust collection etc.
Also, you can work in complete silence.
Unless you're mortising or chopping dovetails...
It's worth buying your first dovetail saw and/or tenon saw new so you know what it should cut like, but you can buy subsequent saws used and sharpen them yourself.
The expensive bits are the sharpening stuff and the layout tools. For sharpening, I spent $200 on the set of 220/1000 4000/8000 Norton water stones, and $40 on a used grinder. You can get by with a grinder, a $15 oil stone, and a strop.
Layout tools are pricey because they start overlapping machinist tools and come with commensurate accuracy. You don't need a square accurate to .001" over a foot for woodworking, but your options are pretty much that or one accurate to .030" over a foot, which is emphatically not good enough for woodworking. But depending on how you work, you need those tools for machine work anyway.
You don't need to spend a fortune on most of the hand tools. Whether or not you find the maintenance a nightmare or not is mostly a matter of committing to learning and practicing until it's second nature.
I wonder how many tools an average contemporary hobbyist/industry worker would need to build that same thing.
I'm from Estonia, and I recall a local master stating that in the 1930s a typical farmer had to do a lot of woodworking for his own use. And often they only had five(!) tools: a knife, a saw, a wide chisel, a narrower chisel, an axe. Most even didn't have a plane. This is all the equipment they used to even make furniture.
Unplugged woodworkers of HN might find the book "Estonian woodworking" [1] interesting (it's a true classic of Estonian etnography, translated to English without permission in the 1960s and circulated as hand copies back then; these days published in English by Chris Schwartz). Or build a Roman Workbench (=Estonian workbench :) [2].
[1]: https://lostartpress.com/products/woodworking-in-estonia
[2]: https://blog.lostartpress.com/2019/07/24/free-download-roman...
I have hit the point where I have more tools than space.
Now, if you want to venture on manual woodworking, several resources from the following masters:
- James Krenov (in memoriam)
- Paul Sellers, a Lifestyle Woodwoker
- James Wright, Wood by Wright
- Mike Siemsen
- Rob Cosman
- Frank Klausz
- Shawn L. Graham, Worth The Effort
- Roy Underhill
- Joshua Farnsworth, Wood and Shop
- James Hamilton, aka Stumpy Nubs
- Matthew Cremona
- Jay Bates
- Shannon Rogers
- Simon James
- Rex Krueger
Some of their stuff is nearly indispensable in a high volume or time constrained shop, though. The domino's only real competition comes from mafell, and it's similarly priced. Triton and some others have tried to compete with some dowel joiners, but they don't work nearly as well.
My beef with TOH is now that all the houses are so expensive and the work is so custom or complicated that it is not relatable.
When I used to do Theatre carpentry, I regularly used Festool equipment (that wasn't mine). It was an education in how careful thought to your product design can make something much better to use. I have an Evolution Sliding Chopsaw at home. It cost £200 and it's great. The Festool Kapex is just better in a lot of small ways - the mechanism for adjusting angle is quick and precise, the laser lines mark out kerf width accurately, the airflow has been designed so that dust extraction works well etc.. It's 10 times the price though, so obviously not worth it for me at home.
If it's the best of the best the average homeowner shouldn't own it. (It's not a good value for them)
Also, in woodworking you always want that one more tool.
There's been so many times I've had to saw say a meter of plywood, by the time I've gotten out the circular saw, plugged it in, taken the extra safety precautions such a power tool needs, sawed the wood, then spent more time afterwards cleaning up.
All to realize that I've spent maybe 5-10 minutes in total (almost entirely setup time) making a cut with a powertool I could have just made in 2-3 minutes max of very leisurely sawing with the handsaw I already had at hand right next to me
In those cases the circular saw has a better chance of delivering the goods. Of course it can also be a shortcut to the ER...
Saw, set of chisels, tape measure, good clawhammer, drillpress, drills, white glue, good set of screwdrivers.
Then some time and materials to bootstrap your way into making clamps, a workbench, miter box and so on and before you know it you have a working woodshop for relatively little money.
Professional wood-shop costs easily >$100K :)
Number one cost factor, IMHO, is space for a shop. You need enough room to store and handle lumber. If you have that, you can start with hand tools (saws, chisels, planes) for let's say ~300$. This will in-principle allow you to do everything. People have done this for ages, this way.
Power tools make woodworking much faster. I would start with a jig saw, drill press, circular hand saw. This will be another ~800.
The first expensive mile stone is the table-saw. This will be the most used tool in your shop. Everything gets better when you have access to a good table saw. I have spent 1.2K on mine.
Next upgrades are miter-saw, band saw, planer, jointer. They need a lot of space and are not cheap. This is were you enter the more professional realm.
To get high quality versions of all that tools will cost a lot of money. Oftentimes ebay has used tools for small money. E.g. I bought 15 hand planes for ~100 EUR last year and 50EUR for a used drill press.
Happy woodworking!
But, here's the thing: Most of those tools are about saving time. You don't need a $2000 planer, you can use $200-$300 in hand planes. You don't need a $4500 table saw, you can do nearly everything with a $200 circular saw and straight edge. You don't need a $750 rotex hand sander and a $2000 drum sander, you can use paper and sanding blocks. You don't need a jointer, you can buy pre milled lumber. Depending on what you're working on, you might not need things like a bandsaw or drill press. A handheld router can be turned into a plunge router with some work, you can use jigs instead of a router table, etc. etc. etc.
Once you learn how to use a handful of tools - and there's lots of youtube videos on that - and understand how and where they can be used, you can start translating from all the fancy stuff you see in the YT shop to what you have on hand. It'll just take longer.
The other aspect of it is... yeah, a lot of people that just do it as a hobby are also spending nearly that much. A lot of the DIY guys are also doing projects that have similar requirements on accuracy/repeatability, etc., that you would see from people doing furniture level woodworking. People doing that for a hobby and using powered tools are going to be spending tens of thousands of dollars, generally.
If time was no constraint, you could do basically everything in woodworking with a few different hand saws, hand planes, hand chisels, a mallet, some gouges, sandpaper, and high precision marking and layout tools. And a lot of clamps. You need a ton of clamps if you ever use glue to join material.
As for a beginner resource on a limited budget - Steve Ramsey's Woodworking for Mere Mortals is great.
Power tools are easier on the body, but also more dangerous, noisy and dusty.
My personal approach has been to learn how to do everything by hand, from felling frees to making doll house furnitures. What I enjoy doing, I do with hand tools, the rest I do with power tools.
It takes time to build muscles, posture and risk awareness.
But something like a domino will give you what is essentially a mortise and floating tenon joint that is far easier to do for a beginner than trying to accurately chisel it out themselves.
I think that most anything you'd use a router for is also way easier, skill wise, than doing it by hand as well.
This is a very important point.
For anyone interested in woodworking or just starting out, I'll expand on this a bit:
Some of the dangers are quite obvious: Spinning blades that are sharp enough to cut wood are sharp enough to cut you. SawStops are nice for protecting you from this at the table saw, but they don't make a bandsaw, router, etc. etc. etc.
Some are fairly obvious if you've got a solid physics background and are thinking about it, but might not occur to you: Kickback from the table saw, ejecting a piece of wood at you at high speeds. Similar concerns with a router. Lathes are great at turning pieces of wood into deadly projectiles.
Some are non-obvious: Lots of people take angle grinders and use them to power carve wood. This isn't super scary if you follow general safety practices and are using reasonable discs on your angle grinder, but there's also some out there that are basically miniature round chainsaws, and angle grinders can kick back in ways that aren't super intuitive if you're not experienced with them. Couple those together, and if the teeth of the chainsaw disc catch on you, the tool will basically ride along your body in the direction of the rotation. This has resulted in them climbing up people's chests, necks, etc.
And there's the long term stuff. Dust is huge. If you use power tools, you must invest in respiration and dust collection - the long term use of them without it will kill you.
In general, with hand tools, if you screw up and injure yourself, that's the end of it. You probably won't keep going and further injure yourself beyond whatever you did initially. This can still be scary - your chisels need to be sharp, and if you do something really dumb, this can still result in something fairly severe. But power tools (with exceptions like the SawStop) don't know if you got hurt. They don't care. They just keep going.
A 1,000 dollar Powermatic tablesaw is functionally immortal. It will always be worth 1,000 dollars, so you buy it and use it until you don't need it, then sell it to someone else for what you paid for it.
When I last had a big shop full of stuff at home, my machine and cost list was...
1) Used Powermatic 66 table saw ($1000)
2) A used Woodmaster 18" planer ($1200)
3) A router table I spec'd to my local machine shop which attached as a replacement wing on the Powermatic 66 to share its fence ($500)
4) A used Grizzly 8" jointer ($500)
5) An "American Sawmill Machinery Unipoint" miter saw from the 1950s ($300) (^)
6) A General International mortiser ($1000)
7) Couple of routers, one big one and one 1.5hp one ($600)
(^) This was the best machine I ever had, sold it for $500 when I was done with it. Imagine a miter saw that's all cast iron rather than aluminum and plastic that can cut invisible miter joints.
So not 8,000, more like 4,000-5,000 if you buy a bunch of used stuff. I can't think of a reason to buy new woodworking machines, when there are so many used machines floating around craigslist or exfactory on any given day.
Any of these machines could be lesser/smaller alternatives, which would not limit the quality of output but rather just limit the size of raw materials you could use and perhaps slightly increase waste. For instance there's no reason you can't cut small pieces on a small table saw and break down 4x8 sheets of ply with a Skil saw. The only thing the big cast iron saw gives you is the ability to skip the Skil saw and minimize waste, really.
Similarly, anything that I did on my custom built router table (or a shaper) could be done with a hand router and jigs, it'll just take more time to build the jigs. About 80% of woodworking is learning 'clever tricks' and learning how to conceptualize jigs to accomplish repetitive tasks accurately. Machines can do it for money but your brain can do it for cheap, just a matter of learning how.
Look at this dude: https://youtu.be/RYzgP_Ucs1I
Doesn't have a shaper but he has raised panels at the end of the day ;).
I mean, I've stumbled across guys that make a living building wooden windows, doors, and cabinet doors with a small army of used Powermatic 2A tenoners (no longer being made, you can only buy them used). They're not required to build a cabinet door, though, they just reduce it to unskilled labor simplicity.
If anyone can recommend UK equivalents to some of these brands I'd be very grateful!
Reason being, industrial businesses will sell off used machines way cheap when they upgrade or replace. Their stuff is a cut above the home use stuff like what I listed above.
5 horsepower is the upper end of what you can get from a single phase 220v motor. 3 phase motors can well exceed that limit.
Otherwise, these machines are really very simple. Most of their mass is cast parts which don’t wear or break. The wear items are just bearings and belts which can be replaced. The only thing to be careful of is bent derive shafts on the motors. Take a dial indicator and measure the run out of the motor shaft on a used machine. If it doesn’t wobble and the motor runs ok you’re fine, buy it and polish it up.
For those not in the know, Northfield makes only industrial tools. There's a reason you don't see their stuff at your local home improvement store. Or your local Woodcraft/Rockler.
Tannewitz, incidentally also still exits and is still making the GHE.
Sadly Oliver, once one of the greats, is now another badge stuck on the same castings coming out of the same foundries as Powermatic, Grizzly, and everybody else.
[1] Actually, it might be the nicest miter saw mere money can buy.
[2] http://www.northfieldwoodworking.com/pricelist/pricelist.htm
American Sawmill Co was the original Unipoint designer. Their models in the 1950s were the holy grail... a single phase, 110v saw that two guys could carry around, but was made of all cast parts so still had the accuracy of the modern Northfield variants.
Northfield bought the company in the late 1950s iirc.
http://vintagemachinery.org/pubs/detail.aspx?id=700
Small single phase ones no longer exist, you can only get the big ones. They are still ubiquitous in roof framing shops. No one has come up with a better design than the unipoint in the last 7-8 decades.
A guy on there bought mine when I eventually sold it.
I replaced a Delta RAS with it, that I never got aligned properly.
The problem with long arm RASs is they tend to have inaccuracy along the arm itself. The bigger it is the less likely that is, but throwing mass at it is a poor solution. Having a shorter movement footprint is without question the better design. All of the bearings that guide the movement of a unipoint are within inches of each other and fixed in space. The bearings on a long arm RAS have all of that movement distance to get out of alignment.
Good luck! There are a few floating around out there.
I mostly lurk on owwm, but I've found it to be a very knowledgable and supportive community when I've had questions.
:-D
Did something similar with a hollow chisel mortiser. The head was hitting the fence, so I didn't set the depth stop. Which was fine, until I moved the table to cut another mortise in a location where the head didn't hit the fence. Turns out you can't cut square holes in cast iron with a hollow chisel and auger bit :-/
There are a lot of old machine designs that weren't commercially successful, but are absolutely still relevant and useful. See my other comment about Powermatic 2A tenoners. If I had my pick of a shop wherever I lived, I would always have no less than two of those machines, even though Powermatic stopped making them years ago.
For another example, check out blogs and videos of window and door making machines from the late 1800s. Anyone who has ever built a wooden window can explain precisely why they are the most complex things in any building with wooden parts. Those machines from over 120 years ago were far superior to anything purpose built for window making today.
1) prohibitively expensive power tools
2) prohibitively expensive hand tools
3) cheap hand tools
4) cheap power tools
...I'd go for cheap power tools every time. You could get more tools than you'll ever need for $1-2k buying cheap but usable brands. They probably wouldn't stand up to more than DIY use, but they will work, and you'll learn what items you really value. For example, I now know that I use my cheap table saw enough that I could justify a more expensive one, however I'll never buy an expensive scroll saw.
I think it's bad advice to start with good hand tools unless you have a high tolerance for manual labour or are apprenticing under someone in a fine woodworking area (e.g. luthiery).
And you can move down market and get something with a 100-1000 hour service life for half or a quarter of the price.
On a broad sense I think the most important tools if you want to go the power tools route, are: a table saw, a tracksaw (or just a circular saw and a jig, if you're ok with loosing some precision), a router, a drill, an impact driver and a random orbit sander. Then one or two hand saws a chisel a hammer, wood glue and some clamps. Table saw is the most expensive and probably one of the most dangerous machines if not operated correctly but I really which I didn't took that long to invest in it. You can do a lot with it that is very difficult otherwise.
Than I would say the best is to start with simple projects so you can keep frustration/success levels in a good balance. and then slowly move to more complex ones.
Not that hand tools can't get just about as expensive as power tools.
The outcome: https://www.reddit.com/r/woodworking/comments/ex4hej/first_p...
I guess it calms you down after a stressful day.
Nothing relax you more than hand planning a crooked board and making a simple dovetailed box.
Seeing something physically taking shape and the pride of your craftsmanship after it is completed is quite rewarding.
For me, it's that, but also something simple, concrete and long-lasting.
At work, I sit in front of a computer, wrangling with something as abstract as "information" through 147 abstraction layers, standing on the shoulders of software and hardware high-tech representing certainly $trillions of investment. In some ways, it's the pinnacle of human achievement, but it also means that you're but a very very small cog in the whole machinery.
In contrast to that, woodworking with handtools is something where the tools have existed for hundreds of years, if not millenia, the techniques are largely millenia old, and whatever I do is something physical I can see and touch, and won't be obsolete in a few years.
All of them are level.. however I do need to work on my cable organization and slim down some of the cables.
Turned out great - except the headboard wasn't tall enough (kid bangs his head on it occasionally so re-doing that soon).
In general, just find something you want to build and build it. You will learn a LOT. Its very much like programming in that sense. You can do very simple 2d plans in openoffice draw or similar visio style tools and then buy the basics at home depot or lowes or wherever. Hand tools are ok to start but would suggest some basics like a circular saw or a portable table saw to help make things a little more straight. If you don't have any of these things then expect to spend a few hundred dollars on tools to even do something basic. You can get away with cheap tools for a project or so but if you are serious about doing this long term you are better off buying fewer higher quality things than more lower quality things as they won't last (ie dewalt over ryobi and anything from a woodshop over anything from harbor freight).
As for things I wish I'd have known when I started? Buy a good face-mask for dust protection. I had no idea how freakin toxic pine dust is. If you don't have a super high quality (read thousands of dollars) dust vac system then work in a well ventilated area (like outside) with that mask on then clean up after each session before you go inside so you don't track that junk in.
Oh and hand planing is the suck.
Actually I think I also had one of those "Miter box" type guided hand saws, and used that to make the square cuts. If I were starting out now, I'd get a decent handheld circular saw and improvise a jig to make a clean crosscut with it. That too can be fun experimentation and construction lumber is cheap material.
Later wanted to hang a lamp over the table, and going all the way to the ceiling and back with the cable, for a lamp this low, didn't seem right. So added a stick of wood to an IKEA shelf bracket, and: http://wandel.ca/pic.cgi?4db2d897
The key is not to kick myself because I can't do as good a job as my brother or my dad, but rather take pleasure in what I can do.
I have a friend who owns a company that manufactures and installs metal roofing, and this is his professional opinion.
Searching, it seems to be somewhat contentious. Most --- but not all --- manufacturers recommend installing in the flat (usually with shorter screws at the ridge to join panels). Sometimes a distinction is made based on gauge and style of panel: very thin is always on flat, rounded corrugated is always on the ridge. Some local regulations though appear to require installing through the rib. Discussion here points to some of the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches: https://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/projects/179392-metas-ro....
If you find a firm manufacturer's recommendation for the style of panel that Mattias is using, perhaps email him? I think this is the sort of thing he'd be eager to get right.
As you said, it's also my understanding that the corrugated wavy stuff should be screwed on the ridges (that's how my friend did our sauna roof), not the valleys; and the flat stuff should be screwed on the flats, not the ridges. But I don't know whether nails have different recommendations (I imagine my friend would say don't use nails, use screws instead). I'm certainly not an expert, but my friend is.
I'd rather not contact Matthias though. I once wrote to him about some minor problem with his website (many years ago, way before his YouTube channel was popular), and his reply was rather mean-spirited and completely uncalled for. I don't hold it against him, but it's soured my opinion of him ever since. In any case, once you make holes in the metal, you can't really remove the screws.
The tools and the wood - I kept trying but I couldn't really figure out a way to procure these easily and with some help in selection. Getting them from abroad would cost multiple limbs.
- Cooking for engineers - painting for engineers. Etc.
* Never leave the tool running * If I can't keep my fingers at least 6 inches away, I need a jig. Many tools I keep 12+ inches away. * Clamps and wood scraps are your friends. * Unplug every tool immediately after done using. * Hand and body check immediately before turning on a tool. * Again, jig everything that I can.
Risk is accident probability x damage potential. I guess that if you think your nature increases the probability factor, then I would choose the tools with the least damage potential, I would stay off power tools.
The downside to this is that the cost of safety is relatively high ($2000+), and there is no way to retrofit high-quality used saws from the used market ($500+)
Anybody know of a printer that can get me very close to this goal?