species for beginner

[Chris Konikowski]

Hello,
As I have said, I am a beginner. I am looking to build some random furniture(bookshelves, wine cabinet, etc.) I am planning on messing up some wood, so what would you suggest for wood that I will be happy with if I complete the project, but not break the bank(read CHEAP)? Something I can stain, no paint.

Seems like an easy question...:cool:

[Richard Venturelli]

Pine, Poplar come to mind. Depending in what part of the country you live. Red Oak is reasonable. Just jump in and don't get frustrated.

[Leigh Betsch]

My vort s for Cherry. The cost is a bit more but I think you will be much happier with your finished projects. Depending on where you live you might find that it isn't too expensive. Poplar and pine are fine for painting but can be difficult to stain. Cherry can always be BLO'ed and shelac'ed (easy).

[Tony Bilello]

The pine most commonly available is construction grade and not furniture grade. Sometimes this lumber will change dimensions as you look at it.
Considering all of the 'bad ' places you have to cut around, it's not so cheap in the long run. A clear finish on red oak is very attractive. This should drastically bring down the price of your project considering you will not need shellac, wood sealers and stain.
Red oak is fairly inexpensive, works fairly easily and the end result will look very professional.

[Gary Breckenridge]

Oak is a fun wood to work with for all woodworkers. It machines well and will last forever. The grain is interesting and it takes stain well. Find a sawmill that kiln dries or an old fashioned lumber yard. We all mess up some wood but I just don't post pictures of my failures. Don't plan on buying quality wood from a borg.:)

[Chris Konikowski]

The pine most commonly available is construction grade and not furniture grade. Sometimes this lumber will change dimensions as you look at it.
Considering all of the 'bad ' places you have to cut around, it's not so cheap in the long run. A clear finish on red oak is very attractive. This should drastically bring down the price of your project considering you will not need shellac, wood sealers and stain.
Red oak is fairly inexpensive, works fairly easily and the end result will look very professional.

Where is the best place to get red oak or any furniture lumber around you or me. I am in Spring/NW Houston.

[Paul Atkins]

As I dislike red oak and I love white oak so I'll say alder. It is soft enough to plane well, hard enough to sand well, glues great and cheap enough to screw up a bit . I had oiled alder kitchen cabinets for 20 years till I ripped out the kitchen and used some of the cabinets for general storage and they still look ok. To me it's very user friendly. Soft maple would be my next choice.

[Paul Demetropoulos]

Ok Chris, you got it?

Pine - Poplar

Cherry

Not Pine - Red Oak

Fun Oak

Not Red Oak - White Oak so Alder!

Anything else we can help you with?

[Dewey Torres]

Ok Chris, you got it?

Pine - Poplar

Cherry

Not Pine - Red Oak

Fun Oak

Not Red Oak - White Oak so Alder!

Anything else we can help you with?

Paul makes a great point here!

You asked about a cheap wood that was easy to stain. Lets review:

Pine takes stain like my backside unless you use wood conditioner but it is the cheapest by far. If you do go with pine, make it premium (without knots) for a beginner it is much easier
Poplar IMO is out because you will NOT like it stained. The colors are ugly ugly ugly and it does not take stain well. Now if you do decide to paint ... you got a winner!
Cherry takes stain in blotches and there is next to nothing you can do about it. Certainly not for a beginner to try to stain.
Red Oak you can get most anywhere, stains ok(ish) and does not cost too much.
White Oak is the most expensive of all suggested but take stains well and smells wonderful when you cut it. As long as you don't try to buy quarter-sawn it is still not terribly expensive compared to exotic lumber.
Alder is called the poor man’s cherry. It takes stain better than cherry and is cheaper than cherry but if you go for a high grade of it the price will go up dramatically. It may come with tons of knots which are dangerous for a beginner to deal with but not impossible.

These are just some things to keep in mind before you buy.

[Josiah Bartlett]

I like poplar, ash, alder, maple, and walnut. Poplar is dirt cheap, dimensionally stable, and really nice to machine but the grain is very boring. Its great to learn joinery with, and I use it a lot for drawers and doors that are going to be painted. I've found ash to be fairly inexpensive but it has more interesting grain. It machines ok but planing is difficult if you get swirly grain. I have a nice electric guitar body I made out of ash. Alder is cheap but it isn't terribly stable while drying and the grain isn't that interesting. Cherry and mahogany are nice to machine and nice looking too. Mahogany is really expensive but its easy to find good salvage pieces out of things like old church pews and packing crates. I like apple and pear as well, but those are difficult to find in large pieces. All of these machine pretty nicely, but the price is going to depend on the region where you live. Ash, alder, maple, and walnut are local species for me, and so is red oak, but I don't find red oak to be enjoyable to work with. Oak is too porous to finish without grain filler, and doesn't plane particularly well. Walnut is porous too, but certain finishes look fine without filling the grain. Walnut is fairly expensive everywhere but I managed to score a pretty good stash of it for free by cutting up some urban trees. Maple isn't too expensive as long as you aren't looking for a lot of figure. I have some nice big leaf maple I cut out of a downed tree.

I really dislike pine. A lot of beginners use it because it is cheap. I started out using it too, mostly offcuts and leftovers from the pine wall paneling my dad built into the log home he built in 1979. It is really hard to get fine furniture out of pine. It is unstable and it machines terribly. It dents and cups if you look at it wrong, its full of knots and pitch, it turns black if it gets wet, and it yellows with age. Pine is the path to frustration. I wasn't proud of any of my work until I started using better wood.

Some of my favorite projects were things I built out of salvaged or scrounged wood. What you can do with it is going to depend on what you have. Sometimes its just a little box or turned item, or sometimes its a table or chair or a cabinet door. I think learning how to scrounge wood is a good skill for a beginner or someone who is a bit tight on money. Then you can use the cash for tools!

[Dewayne Reding]

I'm not sure of Texas wood prices, so I'll offer this instead. Start by building a few uncomplicated smaller projects so mistakes won't be so expensive. Large cabinets, shelving units, tables etc really eat of the board feet. Maybe work your way up to an end table in a month or so.

And get over to the finish forum, so you don't mess up your work on the last step, with a bad stain job

[Russ Sears]

Chris, in my opinion you should pick a domestic wood which looks good to you. You might like the open grain of oak or you may prefer the tighter grain of cherry or maple. Whatever you make is going to be around a long time. Would you rather walk past it and say to yourself "that looks really nice and I made it" or "there's that shelf I made. At least it was cheap"?

Stay away from the exotics and highly figured domestics like quilted maple which can be irritating to your lungs and wallet.
For my money, cherry with a BLO and shellac finish is stunning. The downside is that cherry burns easily when being cut and might require a lot of sanding.
You could also consider hardwood plywood with some kind of edge-banding for your shelving unit.

[Jerry White]

Chris,

Poplar is a good wood to work with and some on this forum have reported good results in staining with it.

Another wood you might consider is common grade soft maple. You will have more waste with the common grade, but it is cheap enough that you will still find it economical. It will stain just fine.

I see you are in Houston. I just happen to have on my desk a price list from Houston Hardwoods. http://www.houstonhardwoods.com/

Their prices on soft maple #1 common, random size, rough lumber is $1.55 per board foot. The same grade poplar goes for $1.03 per board foot. They will plane the lumber for you for $0.30 per foot.

Have fun!

[Mike Parzych]

Chris - Use red oak. Period. It's as cheap as any hardwood, has a nice grain, and will last. Just in my opinion, the pine, poplar, alder, etc., will look "cheap" and will cost pretty much the same as oak, maybe a little less.


Tony - I loved this line:

The pine most commonly available is construction grade and not furniture grade. Sometimes this lumber will change dimensions as you look at it.

Ever go to the BORG and cut open a bundle of pine 2x2's? It's like they're snakes that come alive when the bands are cut. Guaranteed to twist like pretzels by the time you get it home.

[Jim Summers]

I agree with what the others have suggested. Along with another steer clear of pine from the borgs.

[Jim Becker]

Beginners and experts in woodworking tend to all be of the same species... LOL

Personally, I'd choose yellow poplar over red oak, but that's a subjective thing relative to both how I like or don't like each and availability for me. Contrary to some views, poplar dyes very well (it doesn't have to be painted and will nicely mimic more expensive close-grained woods), mills up as nicely as cherry and maple and is generally at the lower end of the cost spectrum.

[Chris Padilla]

Just find some cheap wood (craigslist) and have at it. I wouldn't worry too much about the species in the beginning. Buy what you like and go for it.

You'll learn something new with each species of wood you try out.

[Chris Konikowski]

Chris,

Poplar is a good wood to work with and some on this forum have reported good results in staining with it.

Another wood you might consider is common grade soft maple. You will have more waste with the common grade, but it is cheap enough that you will still find it economical. It will stain just fine.

I see you are in Houston. I just happen to have on my desk a price list from Houston Hardwoods. http://www.houstonhardwoods.com/

Their prices on soft maple #1 common, random size, rough lumber is $1.55 per board foot. The same grade poplar goes for $1.03 per board foot. They will plane the lumber for you for $0.30 per foot.

Have fun!

So, does Houston Hardwoods seem to have the best lumber at good prices? Is that where people get their stuff?

Thanks for all the suggestions from everyone. The one thing I learned is that there is no answer. It is personal opinion and something that I need to figure out by working with different woods and developing my own opinion. Kind of exciting...

[Gary Herrmann]

First piece of furniture I ever made was out of poplar and birch ply from the borg. If you're careful you can find decent stock. I had no problem staining the poplar, but I used a wood conditioner before the stain. Poplar can get fuzzy edges when routed.

You also need to consider what tools you have. No jointer and planer - then you'll probably need to go with S3S or S4S stock. If you have a sawyer, lumberyard or retail wood store, go and look and see what you like then factor in price.

[David Keller NC]

"The one thing I learned is that there is no answer. It is personal opinion and something that I need to figure out by working with different woods and developing my own opinion. Kind of exciting..."

As you gain experience on net WW forums, you'll find that you'll get conflicting opinions on everything, no matter how basic. But you can glean some useful guidelines from the replies. In general, the posters are quite right about "pine" in the sense of what you'd find at most lumberyards - Southern Yellow Pine. There are exceptions - eastern white pine is exceptional wood, quite beautiful, and more stable dimensionally than any of the domestic hardwoods. Sugar pine, if clear and of decent dimensions, is also wonderful stuff, but it's dang hard to find.

And - no one's suggested you go after mahogany. While this is the king of hardwoods when it comes to stability, workability, ability to take a stain and finish, and beauty, it isn't inexpensive - about $10 a board foot. So from the standpoint of messing some stuff up, this is probably not the route you want to go.

And in Houston, I'd expect that you'd find red oak, white oak, and soft maple toall be under $5 a board foot, which is relatively inexpensive and will give good results.

[Rob Damon]

I would have to agree, definitely not pine wood from the Borgs. When I first started making furniture 30 years ago, I bought some pine and made these. They have been shifted and move 100's of times and they are still rock solid, no cracks splits for looseness. I am hoping they will give way in any decade or two and lose that awful petina...:rolleyes:

The candle sticks were turned from a ordinary closet pole;). Great pre-rounded strong material for learning on.

Rob

[Prashun Patel]

Definitely red oak.
It's readily available (at home centers; s4s), cheap, machines well, and takes stain very well.
The only downside is it's open grained, so it's hard to get a glass smooth topcoat finish without filling the pores. But in every other way, it's easy to work with.

Cherry is a dream to machine and pretty timeless, but expensive to experiment with, and hard to color if that's yr inclination.

Clear Pine is cheap, and machines and sands easy. But it can be a real bear to stain, and isn't so stable. Often, I'll make up dummy models in knotty pine so I can get the measurements right.

[Bill Keehn]

You can never have too much poplar. Around here it sells for around $2 a board foot. Buy it 8/4 rough if you have a jointer and planer. Don't buy it at the BORG. It's a great wood to practice with and you can use a lot of it as a secondary wood (stuff you don't see in the finished piece).

White Oak is great and I think it looks good no matter what you make. Brazilian Cherry (Jatoba) and Purpleheart are pretty cheap around here too.

One place I have found is Lumber Liquidators. You can look up the store near you and find many species for not very much. For example, at LL near you in Houston they have 3/4 UNFINISHED walnut for $0.99 per square foot. Thats $1.33 per board foot for walnut! So what if you have to cut the tongue and grove off? Even after you plane off the grooves on the backside it is still well over 1/2" thick. Just make sure you get unfinished flooring.

[Jerry White]

So, does Houston Hardwoods seem to have the best lumber at good prices? Is that where people get their stuff?


Chris, Houston Hardwoods has good furniture grade hardwood lumber, but there are others, too. Here is a link to a thread that discusses hardwood lumber sources in Houston: http://sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=34898

If you are so inclined, I recommend you pay a visit to some or all of these establishments. Consider it part of your learning curve in woodworking....besides, it would be a fun day :D