Beginner woodworking questions

[antp]

Hi,

I'm looking to get into woodworking - particularly furniture making - and I've been doing a lot of reading around the subject but there are a couple of details I'm having trouble answering with Google (a lot of the information online - particularly around buying stock - seems very US-oriented), so hopefully posting here will help! I'll just list the questions below...

• I'm looking at what wood to buy - I think it's sensible to start with a softwood like pine (before I go and ruin a £40 oak board) and I'd like to buy it rough and have a crack at milling it by hand. I've been looking at DIY shops like B&Q but I'm struggling to work out what wood is suitable. They separate their wood into "construction" and "joinery" timber and I can't work out if the "construction" wood is just a rough-sawn version of the planed joinery timber or if it's actually a different grade of timber. Additionally, the "joinery" timber is PSE, which I believe means that it is planed on two sides - does this mean it would still need to be planed and jointed by hand before being suitable for furniture making? Is any of the wood at DIY stores suitable for furniture making at all?
• I've borrowed a hand plane which looks like it's in decent condition but is a bit rusted (on the blade and the base) and the blade is blunted and a bit chewed up at the end. What's the best way of clearing up the rust? Does it matter if there's a bit of surface rust on the base of the plane?

Thanks!

 

[undergroundhunter]

Hi and welcome!

First of all I would like to say that there are people on this forum who are far more experienced than I am but I will share what I have learnt.

Question 1.

Cost wise 'softwood' would be a good choice to start with as its cheaper than most hardwoods, but it can be more difficult to work in some cases, super sharp tools are a must with most woods but especially with softwood as it tends to crumble and tear if the tools are not sharp.
If you want to prep boards from the rough you are going to find it difficult with just one plane and blade set up, when I hand prep from rough sawn I use at least 2 planes one with a heavy camber to hog off wood and a second with a reasonably straight iron for finishing depending on the length of the boards your are going to want a longer plane to make sure you are planing flat (you can do this with just a No4 but it takes practice).

B&Q wood in my experience is not much use for anything it tends to be badly stored which leads to twisted, bowed and warped timber, this is not helped by the poor quality of the wood itself (and its very over priced), I would find a local timber merchants (use the local tab at the top of the forum) and go and have a look, most of the yards I have been to don't mind you looking round. I use a local joinery firm, they keep stocks of redwood, tantalized, oak and sapele and they let me pick through and select the boards I like, these are the best kind of places in my opinion as I now know most of the lads that work there and I'm supporting a small local business.
I think you will struggle to find high grade redwood in the rough as most of the higher quality redwood is sold PAR (planed all round). I have found that more hardwoods and construction grade (where appearance isn't a top concern) is sold in the rough.

Question 2.

As I have said above sharp is the key to hand tool woodworking so that blade needs sorting first there are plenty of threads on here and videos on youtube regarding sharpening so I'm not going to go into that here. The sole (base of the plane) will need to be at least clean or the rusty colour will transfer to the wood, there is a good youtube video by Paul sellers on restoring a hand plane (there are many others as well) he goes through the whole process it in great detail, I would suggest that you start there.

Hope that helps

Matt

 

[MattRoberts]

Hi there. The wood from diy stores is generally Planed All Round (PAR), so shouldn't need any prep. However, as Matt says, it's terrible quality and is also more expensive than other sources. If you search for local timber merchants, you'll find many are open to the public rather than just trade. They'll also have PAR, but it will generally be cheaper and better quality.

If you're keen to prepare some timber yourself, you'll need to find a timber merchant that sells rough sawn timber.

Unless you particularly enjoy hand planing wood flat, I'd recommend just getting PAR and concentrating on building stuff. One you've decided that woodworking is for you, then you can move on to buying rough sawn and preparing it yourself

 

[Phil Pascoe]

PSE = planed square edge. Nothing you buy as square will be guaranteed square ( ... or flat... or straight). Sorry (last) Matt. Everything you need to you find is here with a search, or watch Paul Sellers on Youtube. Books no matter how old by Charles Hayward and by Robert Wearing, - get your books used from Amazon or Waterstones Marketplace. Pay a little arming yourself with some knowledge before you waste it on materials and tools. Forget the sheds for anything worthwhile except the very rare extreme price reductions. 99.9% of the men who work in timber yards are not the devil incarnate - they don't like people pretending they know everything there is to be known when they don't.

" I can't work out if the "construction" wood is just a rough-sawn version of the planed joinery timber or if it's actually a different grade of timber" - It's a lower grade of timber - it's rubbish that experience has told someone there's no point in processing further because of many faults.
Welcome, btw.

 

[antp]

Cheers Matt (and Matt) - exactly the kind of response I was looking for. As it happens I'm a five minute walk from a timber merchants' so I'll have to go and have a look round!

Couple of follow-up questions though:

- If I buy PAR pine boards will they be accurate enough for furniture joinery and edge gluing without further milling?
- What if I need to cross-cut them - will I need to plane the end grain again or will cutting and sanding be enough?
- Since you say most of the softwood will be PAR - would you recommend picking up some cheap hardwood offcuts to practice hand milling?

Will check out those videos too.

 

[antp]

Thanks for the book recommendations Phil - will take a look at those tomorrow.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

There is nothing you buy that does not need further prep.
Without meaning to be funny - start at the beginning. Keep your eyes open here for good second hand tools and machinery. Get yourself some decent books or some tuition, or you are heading for a lot of wasted time, money and material. Slow down a bit! Come back and thank me for the advice in a few months. Mark it on your calendar.

 

[MattRoberts]

Couple of follow-up questions though:

- If I buy PAR pine boards will they be accurate enough for furniture joinery and edge gluing without further milling?
- What if I need to cross-cut them - will I need to plane the end grain again or will cutting and sanding be enough?
- Since you say most of the softwood will be PAR - would you recommend picking up some cheap hardwood offcuts to practice hand milling?

Will check out those videos too.

- Yes, to an extent. Ideally, you'd plane and square everything yourself so you know it's all perfectly square. However, you can use PAR from a timber merchant (assuming you hand pick the best boards) and get decent results. I don't have a planer thicknesser myself, so all of my furniture is built from PAR. Is the timber all perfectly square? No. Will anyone other than professional woodworkers be able to tell the difference? No. While I'm still learning and using pine, it's perfectly fine.
- Cutting and sanding the end gain will be fine, as would planing
- You can practice milling on any wood that isn't flat, doesn't matter whether it's hard or soft wood. Arguably, it's harder to work with softwood, because it's... well, soft. It doesn't cut as well with chisels, and it sands too well if you're not careful!

 

[undergroundhunter]

Every piece of wood you buy in my opinion will need prep of some sort weather that be sanding, planing or scraping. I hate to see machine planer marks in finished products, just makes me thing the maker didn't care or was too lazy to get rid of them. If you are planning on edge jointing then you will most defiantly need to plane the surface square and straight to get a tight joint.

Matt

 

[ED65]

Welcome to the wonderful world of woodworking! Warning: addictive.

I've borrowed a hand plane which looks like it's in decent condition but is a bit rusted (on the blade and the base) and the blade is blunted and a bit chewed up at the end. What's the best way of clearing up the rust? Does it matter if there's a bit of surface rust on the base of the plane?

A little rust on the sole of the plane isn't a big deal. Even a lot of rust on the sole isn't always a big deal. You can rub off the loose stuff with fine sandpaper, a scourer from the kitchen (clean preferably) or steel wool, then just wax or oil it and that's pretty much all you need to do.

What is a big deal is the blade (commonly called the iron) being blunt and chewed up. You'll need to sharpen it before the plane can do any work. And unfortunately if it's in really rough shape you have a lot of hard work ahead of you I'm afraid. Once you can post pictures post some shots of the plane in the Hand Tools forum and we can give more advice.

There is masses of previous info here on cleaning up old tools if you need more detail on that. A forum search for "rust" and "cleaning" should give you at least a couple of days of reading.

There are also loads of previous threads on sharpening too but to warn you in advance, that's a hotly debated topic so many of the threads get mired down in endless arguments about various aspects of it, the two big ones I think being whether to use a guide or not and what sharpening materials work best.

On the book front, there are quite a few decent older books available in various formats online if electronic copies are your thing. Look on Archive.org to begin with, that's the best legitimate source I think. If you prefer to have an actual book in your hands, in addition to cheap copies on Amazon Marketplace as already recommended don't forget your libraries. I've scoured my local libraries (both county and city) and between them there are more than a score of good books that any beginner could use to go a good way along the road to being a journeyman furniture maker.

 

[custard]

Hi,

I'm looking to get into woodworking - particularly furniture making - and I've been doing a lot of reading around the subject but there are a couple of details I'm having trouble answering with Google (a lot of the information online - particularly around buying stock - seems very US-oriented), so hopefully posting here will help! I'll just list the questions below...

• I'm looking at what wood to buy - I think it's sensible to start with a softwood like pine (before I go and ruin a £40 oak board) and I'd like to buy it rough and have a crack at milling it by hand. I've been looking at DIY shops like B&Q but I'm struggling to work out what wood is suitable. They separate their wood into "construction" and "joinery" timber and I can't work out if the "construction" wood is just a rough-sawn version of the planed joinery timber or if it's actually a different grade of timber. Additionally, the "joinery" timber is PSE, which I believe means that it is planed on two sides - does this mean it would still need to be planed and jointed by hand before being suitable for furniture making? Is any of the wood at DIY stores suitable for furniture making at all?
• I've borrowed a hand plane which looks like it's in decent condition but is a bit rusted (on the blade and the base) and the blade is blunted and a bit chewed up at the end. What's the best way of clearing up the rust? Does it matter if there's a bit of surface rust on the base of the plane?

Thanks!

I think you're taking exactly the right route. You've got one plane (that's all you need) and you've decided to begin by learning how to use it to turn a rough sawn board into a straight, true, and dimensioned component. You're not running before you can walk, and you're aiming to gain mastery of a key tool. Most cabinet making apprenticeships or training schemes will start with a similar challenge, the objective being to learn to use basic hand tools to produce work at least as accurately as with professional grade machinery..

In fact many UK training programmes use exactly this same exercise, you're given a rough sawn Oak board about 400mm long by 320mm wide by 30mm thick, and you're told to make an octagonal breadboard with chamfered undersides that's 300mm x 300mm x 25mm.

You have one bench plane, a saw (cheap hard point disposable is ideal), a straight edge, a pair of winding sticks, and for your layout work a pencil, a 400mm x 400mm piece of MDF with one true edge, a large compass, a large adjustable square and a small adjustable square.

The top and base of the breadboard must be true and co-planar with a maximum thickness deviation of 0.5mm, and every side must be within 1mm of every other side. All sharp arrises to be rounded. There can be no tear out.

Along the way you'll fettle and sharpen your plane and learn a little about precise setting out and transferring dimensions from a plan or "rod" to a workpiece. So it'll probably take at least 50 hours, and maybe over 100 hours to complete. After that you should aim to complete a second to the same or even tighter tolerances in about eight or ten hours.

In your case sourcing a suitable Oak board might be tricky, but there's no reason why you couldn't set yourself a smaller and slightly simpler challenge using a clear piece of pine from a DIY store. Rough sawn or PAR won't make much difference, it's rare to find any of it as sold that's true enough for furniture work.

+1 for Paul Sellers by the way.

Good luck!

 

[antp]

Thanks for the advice, all - very helpful.

I'll be sure to post a picture of the plane I have (it's one of these). Will post some pictures of its current state when I can. I've also come across some Stanley Bailey 5 1/2s that look to be in decent condition for about £30 - wonder if it's worth grabbing one of those?

@phil - I've never been one to skimp on the reading (in fact I have a nasty habit of researching things for ages and then never getting round to actually doing anything) but the background here is we need to knock together a shoe rack for the house and, since I've been thinking about getting into woodworking for a while, it seemed like a good opportunity to try and learn to do things properly. I might just get some plywood for the shoe rack and look into learning proper woodcraft in parallel, though.

As a more general question - is it worth buying a long straight edge? I was looking at making a simple router jig using a piece of PSE pine from B&Q as the fence but if I can't trust that it's square then I'm not sure what to use for an initial reference point.

 

[Fitzroy]

A shoe-rack was the first thing I made when i got into this woodworking malarkey. I bought a couple of sawn oak boards off of fleabay, they cost about £50 inc delivery ( search for 27mm oak kiln dried boards). I made some shelves for a recess in the bathroom, 50cm wide and as deep as the board. Which was a great way to practice making small boards flat(ish) and square(ish). Then I bought some square oak beading on ebay and joined two boards with wedged tenons at the end of each pole to make a rack. The tenons were rounded using a plug cutter and the mortises drilled with a Forstner bit.

Not a lot of skill but also not too much money, about £70 on materials and £15 on the plug cutter. But this gave me lots of evenings in the shed practising planing and thining about how to join bits together and solved a messy shoe problem so the wife was happy.

 

[ED65]

I'll be sure to post a picture of the plane I have (it's one of these).

I hate to say it but that is a terrible plane. The original of it (by Stanley) was terrible and no copies of it have done anything to rectify the situation by all accounts. Frankly I don't think it's worth your effort trying to put one of them right for what you need the plane to do, if you were just shaving a bit off the edges of a few doors to hang them different story.

You'd be much better served by one of the 5 1/2s you mention, although you can get secondhand planes in the UK a lot cheaper than this £30 is not a bad price for one of them by any means (they're intrinsically worth multiple times more if there are no major condition issues).

Are you able to handle the Stanleys before buying or did you find them online? If you can handle them first you can give them a thorough examination, looking for cracks in the casting, that the mechanism isn't frozen, all parts are present and accounted for and the iron isn't too rusty on the flat side for you to work with.

Some slight play in the handles isn't a problem, they're often a tad loose on older planes so don't sweat that if you find it. You might want to pass if there are major cracks. These are usually fixable but you might not want the hassle at this point, if you're a confident sort though don't let them put you off a tool that is otherwise in good shape.

As a more general question - is it worth buying a long straight edge?

I think there are better things for you to spend money on at this point. A metre steel rule will work well enough as a straightedge for what you need now while also being useful for what it is.

 

[custard]

As a more general question - is it worth buying a long straight edge? I was looking at making a simple router jig using a piece of PSE pine from B&Q as the fence but if I can't trust that it's square then I'm not sure what to use for an initial reference point.

The factory edge from a sheet of MDF is good enough as a straight edge when you're first setting out, or even a decent plane held corner down onto the workpiece.

What you do need though is a pair of winding sticks, if you know someone with a good circular saw you could ask them to rip you two parallel strips of MDF about 400 or 500 mm x 75mm x 18mm, then check they're identical even when flipped around. After you've learnt to plane components true then making your own hardwood winding sticks is usually the next exercise, the catch 22 is you'll need access to winding sticks in order to verify you've planed something true in the first place!

 

[deema]

You don't need a straight edge, it's wood, it moves around a metal ruler is good enough.

However, if you want a true length for some reason you can make one with a small amount of effort. You need three pieces of wood. Plane all three as flat and straight as you can by eye. Use chalk and rub it down the length of one of the pieces, now rub one of the two pieces against it. Use the plane to remove the points from both pieces where the sticks rub together. Now take one of the two sticks and repeat with the third piece. Keep going around each stick until there are no high spots left. You now have three perfectly straight true lengths of wood.

It won't work with two pieces of wood, you need three. It's the old trick used to scrape metal surfaces to get them flat and true.

 

[custard]

You don't need a straight edge, it's wood, it moves around a metal ruler is good enough.

A decent quality thick metal ruler is good enough to get you up and running, there'll come a point though where you'll want something stiffer so that you can identify high points by swivelling the straight edge and feeling for a pivot point. It doesn't have to be an engineer's straight edge, a lot of makers use the blade from a combination square.

 

[antp]

I hate to say it but that is a terrible plane. The original of it (by Stanley) was terrible and no copies of it have done anything to rectify the situation by all accounts. Frankly I don't think it's worth your effort trying to put one of them right for what you need the plane to do, if you were just shaving a bit off the edges of a few doors to hang them different story.

Can't say I'm surprised to hear it - it was borrowed from my partner's dad who probably used it for exactly that.

One of the 5 1/2s I've found is local and the ad says inspections are welcome. Looks in pretty good nick on the photos. I'm away this weekend but I'll look into it when I get back.

Thanks for all the advice, all - has been invaluable. Now I just need a bit of time and a bit of wood :-k