Best practice wood

[Zac wingert]

What do you think is the best wood species to practice hand tool work with?

I’ve had very frustrating experiences in the past trying to say, plane figured/curly wood or chiseling really soft wood or wood like pine with varying latewood and earlywood and not understanding why I was just butchering it and having massive tear out etc.. I’ve read up a later and learned why I had such a hard time and have been able to correct.

I also learned that sometimes to get past the hump, sometimes things go well and you do a good job once. You gain confidence and are more likely to practice something you are not good at more, and when you try agin to work with a less than ideal situation you have a better understanding how to adapt and do a good job.

I am thinking walnut. What do you all think?? I may just buy a board that will be totally scarified to practicing dovetails and cut away after each set or may make boxes or trays that I will probably be embarrassed of that will hold fishing gear or something and hidden away and not really looked at.

[Michelle Rich]

poplar isn't soft, nor is it hard..cheaper than walnut. But if you have walnut or cherry lying around, good to practice on that too.

[Phil Mueller]

Zac, if you’re having trouble with pine, it is probably due more to the sharpness of your tools. It takes very sharp tools to work pine end grain (when chiseling out tail and pin sockets, for example). Same can be said for curly/figured wood. As I’m sure you’ve read here before, sharp solves lots of problems.

But if you’re looking for more forgiving wood to practice on, I agree with Michelle...straight grained walnut, cherry, poplar, as well as basswood would be good choices.

[Nicholas Lawrence]

Look at what you have in the local lumberyard. Around here walnut is not cheap. But prices vary around the country.

[Prashun Patel]

My advice is make projects with wood that you want to have in furniture you would use.

Just buy a little extra for each project so you can practice a little before you start.

That’s a fancy way of saying practice on all woods. Each situation has its challenges including grain direction and drying.

[James Pallas]

Poplar is probably good. Diversity is your friend however. Learning to read the wood is far more important. A board can be far different on one end than the other. Looking at the grain and being able to say “I have a good idea of what is going to happen when I cut dovetails in this end of the board” is far more valuable. Try a little of each if you can.
Jim
Forgot to say make a little something out of each you try, a small box a sheif or something.

[Dan Hulbert]

I needed several drawers for the shop and all I had on hand was 1/2" CDX plywood. I decided it would be a good opportunity to practice hand cutting dovetails on all four corners of the drawers. It was a miserable task at first, but it got better with practice. I learned a lot and the drawers are still in use in the shop.

[Robert Engel]

I would definitely avoid figured wood or wood with knots when learning. Don't beat yourself up, tho. Figured wood is a challenge for anyone. Often I won't even try a hand plane and use a scraper or sandpaper instead.

Then again, sometimes it has more to do with reading the board than the wood. Sometimes a board just won't plane in the direction you read the grain, sometimes the grain goes both ways in a board.

An extremely sharp iron and well adjusted plane are key. So you might want to review your techniques.

As mentioned poplar is a good choice. Soft maple too. Walnut planes very nicely, too.

For joinery, I keep a couple extra chisels ground to 20° for soft woods. Keep strop or stone handy, touch up edges frequently.

[Jim Koepke]

Every project starts with the selection of wood. For me it is often the least expensive wood. In the Pacific Northwest that is usually pine or some other kind of fir.

As others have said sharp can cure a lot of problems. Learning to take lesser cuts can also help in avoiding tear out.

If pine or fir is the inexpensive choice in your area, buy a 1X4 and cut it to 2' lengths. Then practice dovetailing two pieces together. Then practice sawing them off about a 1/2" from the dovetail. Number and date each one and toss them in a box. This way you will be able to study your mistakes and hopefully correct for them as you go.

If you chop out your waste instead of using a fret or coping saw you will quickly learn how far from the base line to chop before paring away the last bits of waste. The tear out of end grain doesn't show on the inside of dovetails. The goal is to learn how to cut them while leaving a smooth surface inside the joint.

My paring chisels are different than my chopping chisels. Parers have a 15-20º bevel and the choppers are at 30º. This makes a difference in soft woods, especially the firs that have a lot of pitch pockets.

Take note of the wood you are using. It will help you to see what pieces of lumber may be a problem before buying it.

Sometimes the hardest part of doing a good job is paying attention. If your mind wanders, give yourself a break. Get up and sharpen a few tools or work on something else for a while.

There are many simple things to make for practice. Just about everyone can use a tool tote or boxes to hold small parts.

Most of all have fun and continue to learn as you go.

jtk

[lowell holmes]

I could not have said it better than you did Jim.
I totally agree.

[James Pallas]

Sometimes wood does not cooperate. The first is qs sycamore shreds like paper. The 2nd is hickory, hard not easy on tools. 3rd is borg pine, watch those corners maybe an issue. 4th is wonderful walnut, no telling what issues may be with this. 5th is qswo, pretty good, but watch the corners. 6th is qs sycamore, look out, flecks will fall out at slightest provocation. All wood can display all of the things. Try it all so you learn what to expect.
Jim

[Andrew Seemann]

In general, species good to practice hand tool skills on (and build furniture with hand tools out of):

are uniform grained
are knot, burl, wave, and curl free
have little hardness differentiation between early and late wood
are not overly hard in general
do not crush easily
are not prone to tear out
are relatively cheap
are easily available


Examples of these in no particular order are:

Cherry
Walnut
Butternut
Sugar Pine
White Pine (usually)
Soft Maple
Poplar (usually)
softer versions of Ponderosa & Idaho Pine
various locally available woods that are nice to work with

However, note that in every one of these species, I have found individual pieces of wood that were absolutely unworkable, so take the list with a grain of salt.

It will depend a lot on where you are and what is available to you. What is easily and inexpensively available in the west will differ from the east, midwest, and south. For example, Walnut is quite expensive here, while Cherry is fairly cheap.

Also note that most people often refer to generic-softwood-that-is-cheap-at-Home-Depot as pine. Actual species can vary from:


Spruces, hard to work with hand tools, although sometimes Sitka is ok
Ponderosa Pine, sometimes good sometimes bad with hand tools
Hemlock, yuck!!!
White Pine, very nice with hand tools
Sugar Pine, a dream to work with but I rarely see it
Fir, usually unpleasant
Southern Yellow Pine, the softwood equivalent of concrete
various other less common softwood species, can be good, can be bad


Really, anything that doesn't make you want to quit will work.

[Warren Mickley]

Some have recommended woods that are not at all easy for a beginner because they require good technique to work successfully. Here are two woods that are quite forgiving and are satisfying for a beginner: soft maple and black walnut. These are high quality cabinet woods.

For practice purposes you can buy lower grades of timber and cut out pieces between knots and defects. You probably will want to use smaller pieces for practice and experience anyway. Above all, avoid the notion that you are going to make museum pieces with your early efforts.

[James Pallas]

Some have recommended woods that are not at all easy for a beginner because they require good technique to work successfully. Here are two woods that are quite forgiving and are satisfying for a beginner: soft maple and black walnut. These are high quality cabinet woods.

For practice purposes you can buy lower grades of timber and cut out pieces between knots and defects. You probably will want to use smaller pieces for practice and experience anyway. Above all, avoid the notion that you are going to make museum pieces with your early efforts.

100% agree with you Warren. I do think one has to approach it paying attention to “Why did it do that?”
Jim

[Tony Wilkins]

Kirby recommended genuine mahogany. Of course all the reasons that it is such a wonderful wood to practice and work is why it’s now protected and expensive.

do you have Beeksvoort’s ‘With the Grain’ or similar book on wood? Lots of great answers but the bottom line is that boards of any species can be gnarly but a few species are in the primo position of hardness for handtools.*

*there is also a section on good hand tool woods in Jim Toplin’s New Traditional Woodworker. A good clue is the woods used in your area before power tools became prevalent.

[David Myers]

Pick some small projects for the shop (box to hold glue, wall shelf with housing dadoes for finishing supplies, small cabinet with dovetailed sides), use one of the woods noted above and finish to your taste (my saw till is painted pine, for walnut I'd use shellac, etc).

You can keep things simple and still have useful items, and the act of finishing will let you see where surface defects telegraph through (even with paint).

You'll also see that imperfect dovetails can still be perfectly adequate to hold something together.

[steven c newman]

Walk into a Lowes store, they have a few racks of "Project wood" Pine, Oak, Poplar.....might check out a few such boards...as for Poplar..
401034
The wood for this came from the Poplar bin at Lowes
401035
and
401036
Just so my Stanley No. 45 would have a decent place to call home..
401037
As the USPS had almost destroyed the original Roxton Pond box.

[Zac wingert]

Thanks for the suggestions. I have some extra poplar.

[Tate Harmann]

Go to the bargain bin at home improvement stores - Menards has a great one.

Other than that I think the best wood to practice on is free wood. Get your hands on all kinds of species because if you perfect dovetailing in poplar you will probably have some issues doing them in white oak or other tough wood.

You can often get free wood from craigslist.

[Jim Foster]

Walnut works very nice, if it's not full of knots and changing grain. Cherry seems to work very nice, the few boards I've had were very pleasant. The easiest wood I've had to practice on were Poplar, and it's easy to get. Pine can be a little frustrating in my opinion because it can be so soft and easy to dent or crush just handling it a little rough, even if your tools are sharp. We do not have Southern Yellow Pine locally in New England, which I think has better characteristics when working it by hand.

[Mike Kreinhop]

This is a timely thread, as I have been looking for practice pieces as well. Trying to find decent furniture grade wood in Germany is not easy, as construction lumber seems to be the most commonly available type. I am back in the States for two weeks and found what I wanted at Home Depot. I bought one 9-foot length each of poplar, maple, and oak in 1 x 6 inch (actually 3/4 x 5-1/2 inch), and had them cut into 3-foot lengths so I can mail them back. I also bought a 9-foot piece of 1 x 3 inch poplar to start with and had it cut into 3-foot lengths. It was a bit expensive, but less than a quarter of the cost for similar wood in Germany, even with the USPS postage.

[Jim Koepke]

Pine can be a little frustrating in my opinion because it can be so soft and easy to dent or crush just handling it a little rough, even if your tools are sharp.

Pine can also be frustrating if you live in an area where the humidity is always changing. Pine can swell and contract between when time when the tails and pins are cut and give a person fits trying to get them to go together.

jtk

[Jake Rothermel]

I don't think I'm going to do anything except echo other people's already good advice:

I'd throw in my predictable +1 for poplar but almost more than that, find the cheap(er) wood in your area and practice on that. Practice projects are like cash you take to Las Vegas - don't plan on keeping any of it, and you'll enjoy yourself so much more in the process. Even if you're using reclaimed, pallet, or construction wood from the home center, you can find the "good bits" within larger boards. Don't expect to plane through those knots without trouble like I did on my first projects. Not all wood is precious, especially if it's riddled with knots and checks and other crud. It's tempting to use the "bad" wood to practice and save the "good" wood for heirloom projects but that's a road to frustration, i think.

Above all, enjoy it as much as you can!

[Brandon Speaks]

I have a local 1 man saw mill where I can get great deals on walnut and cherry shorts, they are great for small projects. I use quite a bit of poplar from HD as well. Poplar makes for good cheap practice wood, the walnut is a real treat though and I get get a ton of small projects out of $40 worth of wood.

[Steven Mikes]

Southern Yellow Pine, the softwood equivalent of concrete



Haha this made me laugh. I'm on my second bookcase build from SYP, this is so true. There are stripes of almost mineral-hard resinous wood through some boards (looks beautiful though!). Gotta keep the tools extra sharp for working, but the edges nick easily on the hard bits.

Zac if you put your location in your profile people could give location-specific answers too. I know here in central NC poplar is basically as cheap as yellow pine and makes a nice practice wood as everyone else suggested. Cherry is really nice too, I made a couple small boxes from it and it's a real treat to work, can easily get full-blade-width transparent shavings.

[lowell holmes]

Why don't you buy an eight foot length of three different species of wood and try them.
I bet you fin one you like.

[steven c newman]

Except....OP has to ship it back home to Germany....I don't think UPS does boxes that long....