HELP!

[CreatureOfBuddah]

Hi all, am new on the forum and to woodworking in general.

Seen as i am such a NOOB, i need help with a couple of things.

1) What is the best/cheapest wood to use for practicing joints and the like? been to my local timber merchants but they don't seem to want to sell or give away off cuts :x Seems I'm not part of their club yet.

2) I am trying to source Beech for a assignment, 35mm W, 45mm T, 600mm L. Only place i found so far is timbercut4u
but they also charge £23.00 delivery too :shock:

Hopefully i will be a quick learner and have some better questions soon

 

[Tetsuaiga]

I'd avoid the timbercut4u. For practicing I guess you could look at wood recycling places, pine is probably best for practicing.

Pine isn't really that expensive unless you have a big project to practice. Even B&Q do some sawn stuff at a price that isn't too awful.

Sawn wood which hasn't been planed and thicknessed is cheapest but of course you'll have to plane and thickness it yourself. When I started out I did it with hand planes but was very glad once I bought a cheapish planer/thicknesser.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

If you are using softwood look for pine rather than spruce - spruce is the white one, pine tends to be redder/darker. Spruce tears more easily and is harder to cut joints in. Most builder's merchants sell softwood only by the length, so you won't get offcuts anyway. The stuff from the sheds is usually spruce, and often CLS which has rounded corners and will make marking and cutting joints anyway.