Hobbyist woodwork need help!

[custard]

One of the last pieces of wood I bought was a 3m length of ash, about 18 cm wide and 2.5cm thick. It cost under £14 at Yandles.

Bloody hell that's a good price. I expect you could add a zero to that in a lot of places here, no exaggeration.

Well, actually, quite a lot of exaggeration!

Chris's board was around half a cubic foot, so he bought his Ash at somewhere about £25 a cube. That's a good price, but not an especially great price.

Adding a zero would mean £250 a cube.

For less than that I can buy musical instrument grade fiddleback Maple, or Satinwood, or rippled Bubinga, or pretty much anything shy of Macassar Ebony!

 

[E-wan]

. At the very beginning stick to "unsorted redwood" from a proper supplier .

Intresting

Any idea of supliers of unsorted redwood in north or west yorkshire

Thanks

Ewan

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

 

[Sheffield Tony]

The most discouraging thing for me about getting on with it and making some actual furniture, is that a quick look around the shops seems to suggest that making wood into furniture actually devalues it quite a lot. Most of the things I've made, I could have bought an adequate alternative ready built for less than the cost of the timber. Not so satisfying though.

 

[johnnyb]

Its the market perverting prices. The price of good dry firewood is high because people are buying fashionable wood burners. When firewood was little used(only sticks) and coal was king firewood was cheap but not easily available. The price of mass market furniture has to be competitive so if the Americans want to sell mahoosive amounts of white oak and Ash to China the price has to be very very cheap cos it's gotta ship to China be made into stuff then shipped back.if the price is to high then the entire shooting match collapses.(along with oak furniture land)
The few sticks we consume is very secondary. Hence the quality issues because of speedy drying.

 

[Jamster21]

Any idea of supliers of unsorted redwood in north or west yorkshire

Duffield Timber?

 

[Fergal]

Do you have a wood recycling centre near you? There are a few dotted around the country. I've used the Bristol Wood Recycling Project and got some good stuff from them over the years.

Sawmills sometimes sell off their scraps cheap. There'a s a sawmill in Chippenham where a mate bought a ton (literally) of green oak off cuts for £60.

Gumtree is also a good source of free or cheap wood if you have the means to transport it. My workbench is made from nice, old Douglas Fir beams rescued from a skip found on Gumtree.

My local B&Q has started selling hardwood planks and bowl blanks. Not cheap though. A 1ft by 4ft by 1.5 inch oak board was £44.

As a last resort there's always pallets, but I'd steer clear as unless you get very lucky and find a hardwood one, the wood is usually very poor quality and not really worth the time and effort to get into usable shape. Ok for practising on though, or "rustic" projects.

 

[Deadeye]

When I look at the cost of wood, I try to compare it to the other things I spend my money on. And given the return the wood gives me, I find it to not be so expensive.

It's sad that the success rate in hobbyist furniture making is so extremely low, based on what I've seen on this forum only a small percentage of enthusiastic beginners will ever complete a straightforward but high quality project like this. And I suspect that sourcing timber is a big part of the explanation.

We've all gotten used to the easy convenience of modern purchasing, where everything is just a click away. Buying hardwood isn't like that, and for many it comes as a shock. But unless you can get out of your comfort zone and fix the timber sourcing problem, then your woodworking hobby will come to a grinding halt.

You can watch all the YouTube videos there are, agonise over this plane versus that, witter on for England about sharpening; but at the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, without decent quality wood you'll never make much progress as a woodworker!

Personally I don't believe reclaimed timber provides the answer. It has it's part to play, but more when you're a few rungs up the experience ladder. At the very beginning stick to "unsorted redwood" from a proper supplier (ie not B&Q), and then maybe a year down the road locate a good timber yard and build up hardwood supplies in different thicknesses of just two, or at the most three, sensible and versatile timbers like European Oak, American Cherry, or Ash.

Mind you, I can say this until I'm blue in the face, it won't make a blind bit of difference. It'll still be the case that for every ten newbies who fetch up on this forum, after a couple of years eight or nine of them will have crashed and burnt without ever having made anything of any substance. That's just the way it seems to go.

As someone just at the very start of the learning curve that's interesting to hear.
As well as wood supply I'd say the dropout is also caused by some other things too:
- trying to run before I can walk. Partly this is just enthusiasm getting ahead of myself (and after all we all would like to make something nice); but partly becuse it's actually quite difficult as a newbiew to assess how hard something will be to do. Consequently, although it's sensible to build up gradually, it's very easy to find oneself out of your depth and get discouraged.
- self taught is slow learning. I'm booking a course because the learning I have has 50% been advice from here/videos and 50% the hard way. I'm pretty sure I'm now using the table saw reasonably well, but I'm massively inept with hand tools currently - even things like clamping straight! And it's all been a sort of "pull up by your shoelaces" endeavour: started out on the kitchen table; made a bench; used that to make some other bits; but the bench was my first build and isn't great so now have made a better one, with drawers. You can see the later drawers are better than the earlier ones... and so it goes on
- The move from workshop projects to furniture in the home feels like a big step. The need not to screw it up becomes imprtant, the timber is more expensive and you want the final product to come out right. I'm going for a bed for my first indoors project in the belief (hopefully it's true) that it's more straightforward than cabinet making.
- Space. I've got one end of the garage... but it's almost gridlocked and I spend more than half my time moving things around to be able to make the next cut or free some benchtop
- Plateaus in progression. At the start I could definitely see improvement everytime I went in the garage. In most things, there are spells of improvement and then plateaus before you improve further. The problem is for a beginner, it's quite a solitary pursuit, so hard to judge where on the learnign and skill curve you are. That can be discouraging.
- Time. For beginners it's a hobby within busy life. I think it's often taken up in retirement, so some folk find their eyes go after 10 years. I decided that I'd done 30 years of office work and wanted to see if I could do anything with my hands - jury is out!
- Isolation. I like my own company, but I do wish I had someone nearby to compare notes with (and get advice from!)

I think, taken together, that's bound to produce some attrition. Should keep the supply of lightly-used second hand kit bouyant though!

 

[thick_mike]

- Isolation. I like my own company, but I do wish I had someone nearby to compare notes with (and get advice from!)

I think, taken together, that's bound to produce some attrition. Should keep the supply of lightly-used second hand kit bouyant though!

Is there a men in sheds group near you? Plenty of experienced people to compare notes with I’d imagine

https://menssheds.org.uk/

If it was Shoreditch they would be called maker-spaces I guess!

 

[johnnyb]

I have to agree some of the issues you've raised are greatly alleviated by joining a group. I joined a woodcarving group years ago and tools and timber suddenly became a non issue. Everyone had timber they would give sell. And the club had tools.guidance too.

 

[custard]

As someone just at the very start of the learning curve that's interesting to hear.
As well as wood supply I'd say the dropout is also caused by some other things too:
- trying to run before I can walk. Partly this is just enthusiasm getting ahead of myself (and after all we all would like to make something nice); but partly becuse it's actually quite difficult as a newbiew to assess how hard something will be to do. Consequently, although it's sensible to build up gradually, it's very easy to find oneself out of your depth and get discouraged.

Excellent point.

YouTube must carry some responsibility for this. The objective of YouTube posters isn't to educate, it's to entertain so viewers keep watching. The web sites that succeed are those that promise impressive results in double quick time. But real life furniture making is absolutely nothing like how it's portrayed on the internet. I'll illustrate the point this way.

If you sign up for a traditional apprenticeship or a long training course your first exercise is likely to be something like this.

This is an octagonal breadboard from a single piece of Oak, and it's the first challenge for an aspiring cabinet maker in several training establishments in the UK. You start with a single rough sawn board and you need to finish with an item that is within 0.5mm of the plan dimensions, with the top and bottom faces perfectly flat and parallel, with all eight sides equal in length and square to both the top and the bottom, and the chamfer presenting a perfect octagon at both the top and the bottom.

Along the way you'll learn the basics of setting out a rod (in this case a life sized plan), learn how to use a bench plane on both long grain and cross grain, and bring a rough sawn board to perfectly flat, true and square on all six faces. Apart from a bench, a sharpening kit, and the Oak board itself, all you need is one bench plane, a 300mm square, a cheap hard point saw, a pencil, and piece of MDF, ply, or even wallpaper lining paper to use for your rod.

Many people might dismiss a project like this as too banal to hold their interest. Furthermore they probably think they're well beyond stuff like this. They'd be shocked if they were actually put to the test to discover just how difficult this exercise is, and how woefully low their hand plane skills really are. I'm pretty sure there's less than a dozen people on this forum capable of completing this exercise to this standard in under forty hours.

Forty hours, a full working week!

Can you imagine a forty hour long YouTube video, where all the presenter had to show at the end was one crappy breadboard. That's the scale of the disconnect between real life woodworking and the jazzed up internet version.

Good luck with your training course by the way, it doesn't matter if it's a week or a year, you'll still find yourself rocketing up the learning curve!

 

[Just4Fun]

Many people might dismiss a project like this as too banal to hold their interest. Furthermore they probably think they're well beyond stuff like this. They'd be shocked if they were actually put to the test to discover just how difficult this exercise is

Undoubtedly true, and I think it is indicative of a more general point. It seems to me that some tasks that look as if they should be simple are in fact more demanding than other tasks that look as if they should require advanced skills. For example, I find a simple mitred corner much more difficult than a mortice & tenon or dovetail, but I'm sure most novices would expect it to be the other way around. Making a "simple" face frame with 4 perfectly square and well-fitted mitred corners is as challenging for me as anything more "complicated" but looks like nothing special when completed.

 

[TeshCB]

I am glad I found your post and all the replies. Thank you all.

Likewise I am new woodworking hobbyist and started buying a few tools and bits and bobs. Currently, I am focused on the dust extraction and sorting out my space. However, the main requirement for woodworking is wood and I do not have any apart from some old pieces.

When I cleared my garage out I went to the local re-cycling center in Hillingdon and there was a ton of wood the I would have paid for. I have no Idea why the local council does not offer a purchase stuff service to the residents. For example if I say I am interested in real wood min size x and max size y (my car is smallish) then they could make additional money from me and that would surely help the council. or they give to an independent up-cycle company where I can buy the wood.

My plan is to use various sites including social media to obtain the wood. Lets see how that works out. Good luck.