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Comment by codingdave | Hacker News Reader

I'm a bad woodworker. My furniture has bad joints, gaps between pieces of wood. I don't use good wood. I do a poor job painting or staining it... and everyone still just sits down on my chairs and says, "This is so cool that you make your own furniture."

Start small, start bad, improve on each project... and give it time.

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Woodworking is one of those skills where you can see literally every flaw about your finished product, because you know what greatness looks like and you cannot achieve it.

And nobody will notice but you, and maybe another woodworker. But generally they're nice enough not to say anything mean.

I like it because it keeps me humble. Just when I believe I have the largest amount of domain knowledge related to my job, and just when people are starting to view me as an expert. . . .

The god-damned half blind dovetails don't fit, and I know I made them right. I KNOW I DID.

Can't upvote this enough!!

And there's no freaking undo button with wood.. it's mentally challenging to not freak out about every little mistake.

Over time I'm learning to get better about this, but it's rough.

It's also one of those frustrating life lessons about putting in the work.

Like, sanding. When you first start out you're very tempted to just give it a very cursory sand to get any splinters off the edges or whatever, but once you sand something butter-smooth once, you have the frustrating realization that you're going to have to keep investing that much time and effort on every project you make going forward.

OCD sanding warning: down this path you may discover it's possible to sand some types of bare wood to a mirror finish.

Sanding well is huge. It can be the difference between "yep, you nailed some 2x4s together" and "oh my god, that is so beautiful"

I took Jory Brigham's TWW guild Hank Chair class, he said something like 30% of his shop time is spent sanding.

For me, finishing is not as fun as joinery; but patience during the sanding and finishing is absolutely essential to a good result.

Or you just cheat and epoxy the thing and then poly it for UV protection. Gives a nice glass smooth surface, but every woodworker will know you cheated and took the easy route and you loose the feel of a nice oil finish but everyone who is not a woodworker will marvel at it.

Amen

I built my daughter a rocking horse- any woodworker or trades person looking at closely would chuck it in the bin as the joins are slightly off and the seat isnt symetrical but when i posted a photo of it on instagram or showed it to anyone- my friends where sharing it and people where commenting on it saying wow asking could i build one for them

Stupid question - would it be sane to get involved in this stuff without having a means of transporting large objects?

Every time i look into wood related work, be it home repair or artsy stuff, everything is huge. I have a Prius. I'm not too thrilled at the idea of buying a 2nd car (truck), and i don't want to drive only a truck.. so how am i to get the supplies?

Sounds like a silly question, but yea - things are just big. And i always thought i can't bother if i don't have a truck. Especially with the ~$70 overhead on shipping i see from lowes, home depot, etc. And i'm not aware of any local (wood) places that deliver.

Am i missing anything obvious?

Near me we have U-Haul (not sure if they're a national company) and you can rent a truck for $20 and then it's something like $1 a mile.

Home depot will rent you a pickup for an hour for $20. And you can drive it to pick up at stores that aren't Home Depot.

There's also the idea of making friends with someone who has a larger vehicle. Minivans work almost just as well and are more commonly available.

If you have a Home Depot nearby, they rent trucks for like $19 for the first 75 minutes. Go for a wood run, rent the truck for an hour, buy enough to make it worth it, and return it.

From what I've seen though, wood isn't cheap to have delivered. They can cut it for you in the store, but obviously a prius still isn't best to ship it in.

Maybe find a friend with a truck or light trailer that you can borrow every couple of months?

if you have a smaller vehicle, just stick to smaller sizes. At HD (or any large box hardware store) you can have them cut large stuff down.

The biggest things I put in my SUV are large plywood panels and long dimensional lumber. Those can be strapped to the roof if you have a top rack.

My local lumber yard offers free delivery.

Also, I have fallen in love with the fold down rear seat on my Civic. You can fit surprisingly large objects in the car with the seat folded down.

You can drop the back seats and fit wood from the end of the dash to the back of the trunk. I put a movers cloth on the back of the seats to prevent it from getting messed up. You can use a hand towel on the dash to prevent it from getting scratched.

But you cant really fit a 4x8 sheet into the back of the car, truck rentals might work out. But honestly if you have a buddy with a truck, just ask, and if they say yeah, fill up the tank for them when your done with it.

I had a 2003 Pontiac Vibe, a hatchback, and the best feature, next to the variable valve timing, was the hatch glass lifted up apart from the hatch. All I had to do was lift the glass and slide in long lengths of lumber. Brilliant design feature that I remember from my family's obligatory station wagons from the 70s and 80s. I still love wagons...

I do this (edit: build furniture) for a living. I have a roof rack on my Civic for getting lumber, and I occasionally rent a cargo van for deliveries.

Be aware that nominal lengths are usually approximate. I busted a windshield in the Civic because I knew I could fit a ten footer. Turns out my ten foot board was 10' 2" and when I was wiggling it to get the back end in the trunk, I wiggled it into the windshield wrong :-(

I had that happen.

I knew I had successfully put in a 10' piece of plastic conduit before. I tried it again, wiggled a little too hard, and crack. The 1" conduit is not as flexy as 1/2" and that was enough to cause a problem. I use a towel on the windshield end now.

I have transported a bunch of lumber with two Civic sedans, mid-1990s and mid-2010s. Small cars with seats that fold down, kind of like the Prius in that respect.

If possible, I get the store to cut the stock down beforehand. Works for 4x8 sheets of ply, for example. To fit in my car, it kind of needs to be less than 36" wide and not much more than 8' long, but specifics vary.

If I need basically a full sheet (4'x8' or 5'x5'), I put a blanket on my car roof, put the wood up top, and use 2 moderate-duty ratcheting straps (less than $20) to hold it down. No problem.

If it's long stuff (for my car, ~10') then I either put it up top, or let it hang out the back with a red flag on it. You can optionally get an accessory for your car to hold the trunk lid partway open so it does not sway up and down throughout the trip home. Keep the driver's window down a bit so you don't pull exhaust into the car.

Another solution that I've used to avoid delays getting pieces cut down is to take a saw with me. A basic $25 Japanese-style pull saw will do a great job on mouldings (and is just a good tool in general), and a hacksaw works for thinner metal. Some people take a battery-powered circular saw -- again, not a bad tool to have anyway, especially if you're bought in to a given battery-powered system (e.g., Bosch, Makita).

I live in a city, and this means I often have to take surface streets on the way home. I favor closer lumberyards for that reason.

8' (or even 10', depending on your model) studs can probably fit inside the vehicle if you fold down the rear seats and use a towel to protect your dash. If you have a sunroof, it's even possible to transport a few 12' boards by sliding them up through the sunroof and out over the hood/bonnet (again, with a towel to protect the roof). It looks ridiculous, requires taking slower backroads and is probably best done when there is little/no traffic but it is doable.

A Prius is one of the best compact cars you can have for this purpose, it can easily fit 8' lumber that's 2' wide, stacked 2' thick. In mine (2008), I drop the back seats, slide the front passenger seat forward and tip it all the way back, both extremely easy.

I haven't tried it yet, but I'm convinced with the right strapping and padding, and driving at low speeds on a non-windy day, you could also strap full 4x8 sheets on the roof.

You'd be surprised how many mom and pop places will deliver. And like others have said, for anything else, there's always the rental truck or a U-Haul.

I had the same problem and what I do is cut the big 4x8 panel in to 4 equal size pieces. 99% of initial woodworking projects are small. You are rarely making big giant dining tables and every car fits 1x4 panel.

If you want nice furniture, listen to all the other comments here. If you want the joys and sorrows of woodworking, look into making boxes.

We're not talking about apple crates here. Some people make some very nice boxes. You can start simple and get more complex, but even the simple projects require precision and care. You can involve all sorts of advanced woodworking techniques like inlay, homemade veneers, marquetry, hidden joints, it's an endless list. You can't really buy nice boxes like you can build, unlike furniture. And you end up with nice gifts, especially for people who appreciate fine craftsmanship.

Transporting the full sheets of plywood can be really hard. But I have a hatchback and that's the only thing I have had really a lot of trouble with. I have had 16' long pieces of trim hanging out of the back of my car. As long as it isn't dragging on the ground you can still get it home! Now getting those 16' pieces down in to my basement was the real challenge...

I think this is wisdom that applies very generally, to more than just physical things we make.

Thanks.

Beckett's famous "fail better" is broadly instructive.

I can totally relate. I always strongly believed in being able to do and build things myself. That's why I also even learned to knit at some point.

There is a great sense of self to be experienced by doing these fundamental "tasks".

Same here. Every project I finish is something where I go, "Well if I were to do it again, I'd do it like this instead..."

meh... I asssure you a bunch of that its only impostor syndrome... we need only keep doing it. Mastery comes later

It happens to my here and there.

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