Settle a debate with my wife

[Bobby O'Neal]

So, the question is: Is it better to build projects with the Depot's cheap stuff, "hobby wood" and "whitewood" as a means for sharpening skills as a new guy to the craft or is it better to go ahead and buy real hardwood and build the same projects? The idea being spend less money on the early projects that will have oh so many mistakes involved. Though, cheap wood doesn't work like real wood so do I miss out on some things there?


Bobby

[Rich Engelhardt]

Which side is your wife on?
;)

(I like to go with the winner ;) )

Having said that.....
I do make a lot of prototypes out of lesser materials, such as scraps, MDF, borg whitewood and CDX plywood.

We also have rentals where I can hone up on my ideas before I move to "the good stuff".

Add to that, that, there's no end to the number of shelves, cabinets, carts, stands, etc. needed in the shop.

A cabinet door is a cabinet door, if it's on a kitchen cabinet or on the router table right?
Same with drawers and just about anything else.

[Joe Scharle]

I usually recommend that folks starting out, to build shop boxes with cheap lumber. If you try to make those as 'fine furniture', you can learn a lot without a huge investment in lumber.

[Vince Shriver]

Rich nailed it.

[joe milana]

Don't forget to make things for "Her". Get some nice cedar and make some flower boxes, board and batten shutters, bird feeder, whatever.

Soft maple from a "real" hardwood dealer is a dream to work with and not too expensive. Start with something simple that you both can enjoy.

[John Coloccia]

I make prototypes out of inexpensive lumber, though RARELY anything I buy from Home Depot. My local lumber yard gets nearly all of my business.

As for the original question: You're wrong and your wife is right.

[glenn bradley]

I have found building proto-types out of old pallets and scrp I have picked up cheap or free alows me to try new things without the fear of wasting nicer material.

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=126955

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=140370

[Phil Thien]

I use a lot of cheap stock. Just built two replacement hanging shelves for the shop and used the cheapest plywood at Menards (on sale, to boot) for the caracases. And instead of saying, "well, it is cheap, so it is going to look cheap," I try to dress it up. This gives me a chance to learn methods to conceal screw-ups and also try new finishes.

For my shop shelves I used milk paint followed by a wipe-on varnish. I had someone give me a bunch of white oak that had a lot of defects, but I only needed 24" wide shelves so I was able to work with what they gave me.

The milk paint was the most expensive part (that stuff is kinda expensive). But each cabinet only ran me about $20 sans the milk paint.

The only downside is that my shop now looks a little Pottery-Barn-ish.

[george wilson]

I'd recommend making a few things out of less expensive woods. When you are more sure of yourself,don't waste your time on crappy wood any more. Just make sure you are ready to graduate to better woods,which will cost a lot more.

[Lee Koepke]

No easy answer!

Using pine / whitewood to get started isnt a bad idea, but until you worked with maple / cherry ... its not the same. It machines differently and you learn to really like the grain patterns!

My dad makes some pretty neat things from pine ( kleenex boxes, magazine racks, etc ) good for a 'rustic' look, but it also paints real well.

As noted earlier, make something for her! That helps.

[Bill Huber]

I generally don't use plans, I design my own things so I do make a lot of prototypes and those I make out of cheaper woods or scrap. Then when I get the design the way I want it I get the good stuff.

The one thing I have built from plans were some chairs and I made the first one out of pine and then went to the Cyprus on the finished ones.

The first things I made when I started working in wood were slide outs for the kitchen cabinets, they were just plywood for HD. There is not much to them and you can hide mistakes really easy, but I did learn a lot with them.

[Steve Bracken]

Your wife is right!

Having established that, your question is a good one :)

Given the lumber prices in Lowes and Home Depot, my Sawmill provides Red Oak cheaper than some of the pine in the stores so .... we have lots of oak.

Large projects are often best mocked up in MDF which, if you got it right first time, makes excellent reference or templates for the real thing.

For the 5 to 6 bucks a board foot that Lowes charges for Red Oak, I can get 8/4 Walnut from the sawmill, and I pay anything from $1.40 to $2.00 for Oak, $3.75 for quarter sawn.

Cheap boards of various pine varieties can make great furniture. Much of the Shaker stuff that is so popular these days is painted pine. Lines and joints are simple, and the end products popular.

The world is a pretty big oyster, really :)

[Andrew Gibson]

For me, I perfer to use hardwoods as much as possible. I think the key is to find some good suppliers and make friends with them. I may be somewhat of an anomaly, at least in my area, as a fairly serious 25 year old furniture maker, so the lumber yards start recognizing my pretty quickly.
You also have to make friends with the right guys at the yard.
I have reached the point that I go to the the hardwood supplier over the BORG as much as possible.
I got a fairly large piece of Hard maple for a projects last visit because I know the guy in the back. He set it aside because one of the salesmen screwed up an order (Curly Hard Maple!) I came in looking for some Curly and he pulled it out of his "private stock". I ended up walking out with the maple and a piece of 5/4 Sapele for $20 I think it was close to $100 worth of wood. The sapele was left over from an order... it was an orphan and also in the "private stock collection"

So this table has about $20 including finish and hardware invested in it.
http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk294/handyandy3459/100_0879.jpg

I may have also found a guy locally (private seller) that I can get some nice hardwood from for less then half of what it goes for at my favorite Supplier.
The trick is to make friends in the right places and make hardwood a better buy them the softwood at the BORG.

[Charles Wiggins]

Bobby,

Lots of good advice so far.

There are two issues here: $$ vs. quality.

I don't think there is anything wrong with trying a few things out lesser woods like pine or poplar. I've used salvage like pallet lumber as well. You just have to be REAL SURE that you got all of the metal out before you start cutting. I wouldn't use construction grade lumber for woodworking projects unless I was just trying to work out some things in a mock-up, like a new joint.

If you are talking about dimensional lumber like one-bys, the home improvement stores are generally more expensive for the same bd/ft. In other words, if you by pre-dimensioned oak as the BORGs you are paying more, BUT for small projects, particularly if you don't have a jointer and planer, this may be the way to go. Just be aware that widths and thicknesses are not always consistent.

When it comes to plywood, I reserve the stuff that the BORGs sell for shop furniture and the like. It's just aggravating how inconstant the stuff is sometimes. For real furniture, I think the better grade ply from hardwood dealers is worth the difference in price. I would rather do fewer, better quality projects, and the investment ($$) makes me be more careful in my process so I am less likely to make mistakes.

[Bill ThompsonNM]

Must not be married very long if you are even debating with your wife!
When I started out I used just about any wood I could afford. Pine bookcases and even tables can be just fine for learning and you won't be quite attached to them when you replace them with something better. For really nice wood--I usually could afford enough for boxes including jewelry boxes for the LOML. It gets you experience with woods which might be tough to machine, gets you thinking about joining and design possibilities without a huge expenditure AND gets you many extra points when you need a new tool!

[Kent A Bathurst]

....As for the original question: You're wrong and your wife is right.

Bingo...............

Edit: FWIW - my first venture was Stickley repros with top-quality QSWO. After I made some pieces, I redid the kitchen in flush-door cherry cabinets. I was stunned at how easy it was to work the cherry (and then later walnut) compared with the QSWO.

Two theories - if you are going to learn to drive both a stick-shift and an automatic, (a) start with the stick, because then the automatic will seem trivial. (b) start with the automatic so you learn the basics - like not hitting sign posts, etc - then make life more complicated. I took method (a) because that's the stuff I wanted to build. If not for that, I'd have to admit that (b) would have been a better approach. Point? Is there a point here? Ummmm.......yeah......well........after you get past the "Yes, Dear. You're right, Dear" political issue, I'd go to a lumber yard (not the BORG) and get some RW/RL poplar and make stuff. The rules dictate that you spend a minimum of the first 6 months making stuff for your shop. "You've spent the last year making workbench(es), cabinets, etc for your shop. Isn't it time to make some furniture or something?"

"Yes Dear. You're right, Dear."

[Dan Friedrichs]

Given the lumber prices in Lowes and Home Depot, my Sawmill provides Red Oak cheaper than some of the pine in the stores


+1!!
Find a good lumber yard. The hardwood place I go to often has a pile of low-grade mixed hardwood that they sell for $0.50/bdft. That's cheaper than you can buy a 2x4 for!

Likewise, in most parts of the country, you can get poplar, soft maple, red oak, or other such less expensive woods for ~$2/bdft or less. That probably works out to half of what you're paying at Home Depot.

[Ellen Benkin]

Depends on the project. If you want to practice and can paint the final product, I'd go with poplar. You would be using a real hardwood and you might score a success on the first try. There really is no "cheap" wood anymore.

[george wilson]

Starting out with cheaper woods at least gets you checked out in the measuring,accurate sawing,and all other skills you may or may not have yet. It is easy to cut something wrong if your project has several parts.

I am another who never uses plans unless I draw them myself if the project is complicated.

[Louis Reynolds]

Price wise (and sometimes quality wise) it's best to not buy any more lumber that you have to from the big chain stores Lowe's, Home Despot, etc...I've found that you can get good quality kiln and air dried wood for decent prices if you look around for small mills and dealers. IMO...

[Peter Quinn]

I don't think any wood from the Borg represents a real value for your affairs. I can buy poplar, ash and red oak cheaper when you figure it by the board foot from my local lumber yard, and it is still 15/16" hit and miss planed, so it can generally be flattened. Having worked with Borg lumber on several paying jobs where the contractor had to provide it (because the client had a line of credit there) I can tell you it isn't great stuff, and its the most expensive way to buy materials I can think of. Check it with calipers, the widths and thicknesses are all over the place, most of it is warped, and those darned stickers make my blood boil. Who puts permanent stickers on the A face of S4S?

I often buy poplar to make prototypes, as test pieces for tricky joinery, or as the final product for simple utility grade shop goods. I've seen some pretty nice things made of this budget wood, even in stain grade. MDF comes in too, though I never enjoy working with it. MDF IMO will not teach you very much about the subtleties of working any other product. You may learn basics of machine set ups and stock sizing with it, but other wise it is a unique animal that machines like butter, won't take screws and fails on me in some way every time, just not quite like wood or plywood does.

Most importantly remember to have fun. As long as that happens you can't go wrong which ever way you go.

[Myk Rian]

I started with cheap stuff from HoPo and wasted a lot of it with mistakes. But I learned.
Like Bill Huber, I don't normally use plans, except for my tool chest.

No matter what wood you use, you'll screw something up and have a bunch of shorts for something else.

[Andrew Gibson]

Measure Twice cut once has served me well.
Never draw and build on the same day.
Measure at the bench and if you get to the saw and have any doubt in your mind, go back to the bench and measure again. I have been know to go back and forth 5 times before I am confident enough to make the cut... it takes a lot longer to drive to the yard to get more materials.

[David Nelson1]

I messed up quite a bit of good oak trim before I got the hang of using a miter box and coping saw. Needless to say I did go by some cheaper material to learn on.

Regardless of the material you use please make sure your tools are tuned and sharp. I made the mistake of hap hazardly setting a few tools up, with the notion that I was not doing work down to the .0001 range. I quickly found out that tooling is tooling and needs to set up as close as possible. Since then I have gone back and reset everything in the shop. I do believe I still have to align the miter slot to the blade on the table saw.

[Bobby O'Neal]

Good thoughts, gents. For the record, I am in agreement with my wife as well. I would say that the initial debate stemmed from me wanting to work with "real wood" because that's what woodworkers do. Being honest with myself, I am in fact not a "real woodworker." I am a guy who has really enjoyed the little bit I've done so far, would definately like to get into more and has lightyears to go in my skill set. So my first two "real" projects so far have been a toddler bed out of ash ($150 in lumber) and a kitchen island that is nearly done ($330 in red oak and hard maple). Both have plenty of errors in them and I think I could really be well served making those mistakes for less per board foot. Thanks for the input, everyone.

Bobby

[Ken Platt]

IMO, as others have posted, I don't think you'll really save much money using wood from the big box places, and in my experience the quality of wood (even pine and such) that you get there is poor. You'll end up fighting the wood and not having fun or learning.

There are plenty of ways to get decent hardwoods cheaply, so that you don't feel bad when you make a mistake. Also, even experienced folks and pros make mistakes and waste wood, so it's not like you'll stop making mistakes. It's certainly a good idea to start out with something besides the instrument-grade $20 bd ft quilted maple, but you can get reasonably cheap hardwoods.

The most obvious is just getting whatever's cheap at your local hardwood dealer, but less obvious is getting the lower grades of hardwood, such as #1 Common. I did this a lot when I was starting in WW, and for me a bonus is that I found I frequently liked the look.

Also, if you can find a bandmill operator, usually their prices are a lot less. If you post where you are located, usually someone here will chime in with a good source or three.

So my vote is to get cheaper stuff, but go with hardwoods that you like the look of. Way I figure, the most expensive part of woodworking is my time, and compared to that wood's fairly cheap.

Just my $.02

Ken

[Steve Bracken]

Good thoughts, gents. For the record, I am in agreement with my wife as well. I would say that the initial debate stemmed from me wanting to work with "real wood" because that's what woodworkers do. Being honest with myself, I am in fact not a "real woodworker." I am a guy who has really enjoyed the little bit I've done so far, would definately like to get into more and has lightyears to go in my skill set. So my first two "real" projects so far have been a toddler bed out of ash ($150 in lumber) and a kitchen island that is nearly done ($330 in red oak and hard maple). Both have plenty of errors in them and I think I could really be well served making those mistakes for less per board foot. Thanks for the input, everyone.

Bobby

About those errors ....

Trust me on this ... Unless you drilled a large hole in the wrong face, then you are the only person who will ever notice the errors (and even the hole can be filled).

My wife laughs at me when I look at a piece I have made, because all I see are the errors, and all she sees is the beauty.

Learn to love your mistakes, it's way more relaxing, and then you make fewer.

[Jason White]

There is no cheap wood at the Home Center because it's all "dressed" lumber. Buy rough sawn lumber and mill it yourself. I also regularly scour Craigslist regularly for wood in the "free stuff" section. Jason


So, the question is: Is it better to build projects with the Depot's cheap stuff, "hobby wood" and "whitewood" as a means for sharpening skills as a new guy to the craft or is it better to go ahead and buy real hardwood and build the same projects? The idea being spend less money on the early projects that will have oh so many mistakes involved. Though, cheap wood doesn't work like real wood so do I miss out on some things there? Bobby

[Nathan Callender]

Definitely use some less expensive materials for the first few projects but a first project doesn't have toturn out badly. Sure you might have a little more scrap left over but it is really hard to completely ruin an entire piece. Also where I live o can get real materials for cheaper than the stuff they sell at the Borg. Definitely find a good lumber yard though.

[Roger Pozzi]

Almost 38 years with SWMBO and I really don't want to be a part of this.
But,,,,,,,,:rolleyes: I always listen to my wife. What goes on in my shop, behind closed doors may differ from her opinion though.
All the previous posts were good ones though.
That's all I'm saying about this. ;)

[Don Alexander]

do yourself a huge favor and eradicate the phrase "close enough" from your thinking process :)

[Brian Kincaid]

About those errors ....
Trust me on this ... Unless you drilled a large hole in the wrong face, then you are the only person who will ever notice the errors (and even the hole can be filled)...Learn to love your mistakes, it's way more relaxing, and then you make fewer.

Even if you dork it up good, if you patch it well it will not be noticeable. I domino'ed through a fine ww bookshelf top... 4 times. Didn't set the stop correctly. Took a while to make the patches with the belt/disc sander, but after install,sand,stain you can't even tell they are there. I forget about the mistake from time to time.

I seldom use pine now even though that is what I used almost exclusively when I started out. I just got tired of cleaning the pitch off my blades.

-Brian

[george wilson]

Being in Tn,there ought to be some country sawmills somewhere near you. Wood is generally cheaper in them,though they usually do not kiln dry their woods. You'd have to buy 1" wood that is reasonably AIR DRIED,and let it acclimate for 1 year in a controlled indoor environment. That may sound inconvenient,but I have done it by accident many times.:) I've got wood I bought on 1960.

[Ben Franz]

I play (at?) tournament bridge - not so much now but in the past quite a bit. I read a quote from a well regarded expert who said the fastest way to improve was to play rubber bridge for frightening stakes well beyond that which you can afford. Perhaps there is some crossover here - better wood means more expensive mistakes so one might exercise more care and concentrate harder. Can't say I recommend this but it does have a certain logic to it.