Getting Started With Woodworking
Watching the activities of birds in your garden or backyard is a satisfying experience. Once you’ve selected the best wood for your birdhouse, you may want to paint it to attract nesting birds. But is it safe to paint birdhouses? How will a bird react to a painted birdhouse? Is it safe for them? These … Read more
The classification of trees falls into two broad categories – hardwood and softwood, according to their seed structure. Although most hardwoods are hard, softwoods aren’t always soft. In fact, some hardwoods are softer than softwoods. Many softwoods are so named because they are more prone to dents and scratches. Because hardwoods have better abrasion resistance, … Read more
When the surface of wood has cracks and blemishes or gaps between joints, we use putty or wood filler to fill these gaps. Although we use these two materials for similar purposes, they are distinctly different from each other. We also use each one for a specific set of tasks. In this post, we take … Read more
Whatever wooden items you have in your home, you would like them to look smooth and shiny. There are many different types of finish that you can apply to wood surfaces to make them look sleek. Waxing hardwood floors is a good and economical way of restoring life into the wood. In the mid-1900s, wax … Read more
If you have hardwood floors, you have a variety of finishes to choose from. It is critical to know which type of finish will be the most suitable for the kind of hardwood floor you have. The effect of wear and tear on your floors will determine the frequency with which you need to refinish … Read more
Making wooden musical instruments involves a craftsman who is usually also a musician. If the instrument has strings, a neck, and a soundbox, we call the craftsman a luthier. The luthier will pay great emphasis to the type of wood needed for a particular musical instrument. Whether you are a luthier or just a woodworker … Read more
Traditional woodworking used sheer manual muscle power. But modern woodworking has come a long way. These days there are a variety of electric tools that make the craft of cutting wood easy. Woodworkers now cut wood in ways that were not possible with traditional instruments. Laser cutting is a popular way of cutting material. If … Read more
As a woodworker, you may come across several different projects. A popular project that is simple but satisfying to execute is making a chicken coop. Although the project is not a complex one, you still have to make specific considerations, keeping in mind that livestock will live in the structure that you create. One crucial … Read more
Chainsaw carvings are a great form of art that everyone appreciates. As a woodworker, if you have some experience and talent in wood carving, you could give chainsaw carving a shot. The chainsaw carver uses modified chainsaws for carving and whittling down a tree trunk or stump into shapes of animals and other objects. The … Read more
If you use raised beds for a vegetable or flower garden, your plants will thrive. A raised garden bed will take care of poor soil, sloping terrain, and lots of other issues. These beds consist of rectangular wooden frames that you can raise to the desired height and then fill with fresh soil. That way, … Read more
When you start to learn woodworking, one of the first tools that you will handle is a woodworking mallet. These tools form an essential part of any woodworking toolbox. We get different types of woodworking mallets to perform various carpentry tasks. Although you can find mallets that we use in several fields, the mallets we … Read more
If you are into woodworking, you will know the value of a clamp. They are versatile tools that hold a workpiece in place temporarily. We use clamps in so many places – in woodworking, carpentry, metalworking, construction, and a variety of other areas. Clamps come in a variety of types and sizes, and the names … Read more
When we use clamps while woodworking, one of the prime questions that arise is regarding the required tightness of a clamp. The basic answer to that question is that a clamp doesn’t need tremendous pressure. If it is to hold glued joints together, then it needs enough pressure to hold the two surfaces together until … Read more
To the layperson, woodworking consists of cutting boards and planks and assembling them into something useful. Others on the other hand may consider it as a medium of expression and creativity. When we look at these two aspects of woodworking, you may wonder under what category does it fall? An art? A Craft? A trade? … Read more
Teak oil is not an oil extracted from the teak tree or the wood. Although teak wood contains a high degree of natural oil, it remains within the wood for most of its life. Teak oil is a mixture of different oils and solvents. We commonly apply it to teak wood, which is why people … Read more
A power drill is one of the most indispensable tools of a woodworker. But you need drill bits for a power drill to be of any use to you. You get a wide variety of drill bits and attachments for a power drill. Yet, the two commonest types are metal and wood drill bits. As … Read more
When you get trained as a woodworker, there are many best practices that they may not teach you. Specific processes and procedures, you will learn through experience. One of the most annoying occurrences in woodworking is when your wood unexpectedly splits. Wood may split due to a variety of reasons. One of the primary causes … Read more
Out of all the woodworking shop equipment, a drill press is probably the handiest. But as helpful as it is, we could conclude that a drill press could be the most underutilized item on your shop floor. There are so many amazing things you can do with a drill press, given the right accessories and … Read more
Handling wet wood is always a tricky situation. When we call wood “wet” it doesn’t mean that only the surface of the wood is wet. In this post, we refer to wet wood as wood that has not had a chance to fully dry after harvesting the timber from the tree. Whether the intended purpose … Read more
It’s always the woodworker’s conundrum to procure wood that is dry enough to work with. A freshly-cut tree can show a moisture level of 80% or above. It is too high a moisture level to work comfortably with. Another issue is the possibility of the wood getting deformed as it dries at a later stage. … Read more
What Is Plywood? Plywood comes in the form of boards of different thicknesses. It consists of several thin layers of wood veneer bonded with an adhesive. The thickness of the plywood varies in line with the number of layers that make it up. The direction of the wood grain of successive veneer layers lies at … Read more
