Woodworking General

This thread is for all things woodworking: ask questions, show your projects, get inspiration, whatever. Please don't hesitate to join in, we'd surely enjoy you posting whatever woodworking thingey you made, whether you succeeded or not. The pic is a dovetail i made out of a piece of firewood a couple of days ago; It's rather imprecise, but it's the most current woodworking pic I had lying around.

I don't have access to a table or miter saw, where are places I can get project cuts done?

>>86 If your plans are simple enough you can get many home improvement stores to cut down sheet material (plywood/mdf) or cut boards. They usually don't have a limit on cuts but I bet they will start charging around the 8th cut. Just get a second-hand circular saw and a new blade to go with it. One trick is to pick up a sheet of insulation foam and lay your wood down flat on it. Raise/lower the blade till its just taller than the material your cutting. The blade will cut through the wood and into the foam a little. When the foam gets too cut up after a while get a new one.

>>86 maybe find the closest joiner or carpenter and ask them if you can do some cuts there in exchange for some beer or food.

i'd like to make a kotatsu and maybe a nice desk someday, but i don't know anything about woodworking at the moment

>>92 kotatsu's should be easily makeable using a square (?ikea?) table with shortened legs, some cushions + blankets and some heating thing, but they always look like a housefire waiting to happen to me. A desk is a nice project too, if you want help please ask.

It would be interesting to establish a base-line of tools that we should use. that way we have a standard where we can collectively share knowledge that applies to everyone.

>>116 >ikea table + heater Be careful: a lot of Ikea stuff is literally (not figuratively) made of cardboard.

I've been thinking about making a gaming table like this, but I have zero experience with any woodworking. Is it a good thing to start with?

>>466 Others would say it is fine to start with, as some one that has a level of expectation with regards to furniture quality, I recommend you start with something smaller (at least in terms of wood working concepts). E.g. A single chair or coffee table. Then work you way up to to a small chest of drawers or a small cabinet, before taking on something as ambitious as the gaming table pictured. The first thing I remember myself or any of my colleagues making in any shop class was a small box that was like a drawer without surrounding desk or cabinet structure, we were introduced to several simple concepts regarding cutting, measuring, joining wood and finishing wood. See the resources attached. The Woodwrights Guide Working Wood with Wedge and Edge (by Roy Underhill from that PBS show) Woodworking Basics Mastering the Essentials of Craftsmanship (by Peter Korn) And The Encyclopedia of Wood from The Art of Woodworking series by Time Life Books (Pierre Home-Douglas was the editor) Please note, my recommendation is for the rest of the series in general, this book is rather focused on the different types of wood, and less on tooling and project techniques. Also see the following resources. Woodworking StackExchange and questions like the following https://woodworking.stackexchange.com/questions/898/creating-my-first-wooden-gaming-table Boardgamegeek Forums have several threads on gaming tables. http://makezine.com/2015/12/08/how-to-build-a-high-end-gaming-table-for-as-little-as-150/ https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1471747/build-gaming-table-150 WoodWorkersWorkshop provide a source of free plans http://www.woodworkersworkshop.com/resources/index.php?search=FREE%20GAME%20TABLE If you want to a kit of materials and existing plan with instructions then resources like https://thewoodwhispererguild.com/product/gaming-table/ and http://www.woodworkerssource.com/shop/product/GR-00932.html may also be useful. This guide : http://imgur.com/gallery/A2H4W

Kotatsu i made in a friend's shop. He was nice enough to let me use his equipment after my cheap soykaf got stolen. Pics are from before finishing it. Just did a coat of polyurethane after sanding, but no pics of that yet.

Love the dune reference

>>463 Establishing something like that would be difficult because there are very many tools for use in woodworking, and a lot of them can do the work of other tools, in a better or worse way. I'd say the BARE minimum setup would be: - A surface to work on, table, bench, etc - A couple of wood clamps - A hand saw - A square/ruler A more complete workshop would probably include: - A workbench with a groove and a vise - A pair of sawhorses - Half a dozen small (12") clamps, one or two longer (3'-6') clamps - A set of wood chisels and a rubber or wooden mallet - A bench plane - A skill saw - A table saw - A router

>>84 Nice job on the dovetails OP. My first attempts at dovetails went right to the fire pit, could not risk letting anyone see them! What is the plane in the background? Ulmia smoother? >>86 Hand saws are always a good way to go, takes some practice, but you do not end up getting home from the lumber yard just to find out they cut your wood out of square and a hair to long. >>463 It really depends on what you want to make and the style it is in, many of the tools which are good for one style are quite wretched for another even if it is a similar piece. But there are a few tools everyone should have some skill with if they want to get into wood working and will allow some fun on their own. Smooth plane - A few bevel edge chisels, the basic set of four is a fine place to start. - A rip and crosscut handsaw, or a ryoba, the ryoba has a steep learning curve but it can do some of everything for a fraction of the cost once you learn to drive it. - Square and straight edge (good first projects!) - Scratch awl and or knife, straight blade and single bevel is nice, but you can do plenty with your pocket knife. - Pencils, just for marking which way is up and which end is out, soft lead is best. - Sharpening equipment, learn to sharpen your tools! - A couple hand screws or cam clamps, you never seem to have enough, but you can get by with just a few and a little ingenuity. With these tools you can do a fair number of projects, you will have to make do at times, but you have to make do at times no mater how full that tool chest is, so it is good to learn that skill early. I learned most of my skills with the above tools more or less, and made a small table, a stool, a few guitar impersonations, book shelf, cutting board and some odds and ends, these tools really form the foundation skill set of hand tools and if you get good with these, you will be able to do quite well with most of the hand tools.