New to Woodworking

[Don Bullock]

Thank y'all for the encouragement and the heads up about woodworking. I am way passed the point where I would consider Ikea as a furniture store. It's more of a death trap to me if a fire would ever occur if you know what I mean. My main goal is not just make my own furnitures but it's really to have a hobby that I can focus and enjoy. Whether my work is ugly or unpolished, it will be something I am always willing to and can improve on. It's a learning process for sure and it seems that everyone here enjoy woodworking very much which leads me to believe that there is got to be a secret to the joy.

You’ve got the idea now. It’s a great hobby and making furniture and other things from wood is a bonus. You’ve had some excellent advice in this thread to get started. Taking some classes would be high on my suggestion list. I took one at a Woodcraft store where we made a Shaker table. It was an outstanding and helpful experience.

I’ll add in one important one that has helped me greatly. Don’t start woodworking without support from your wife. She needs to understand that tools and even most wood is expensive. I wouldn’t be able to have the shop, tools and materials that I have without my wife’s support. I’m not saying that she and I always agree on spending money but we’re able to work together to budget major purchases as well as the smaller items. For example, when I discovered SawStop table saws my wife realized, especially because she knew my frustrations with my old Craftsman table saw, that I should get one. We worked together to figure out how we could afford to buy one. She’s continued that support for other purchases and as a result I now have a well equipped shop. No, I still don’t have everything I want so we’ve continued to budget in things for the workshop and a mini-split is our next major purchase.

[Chris mcadoo]

By all means, build your own work bench. Be creative with storage. Learn from your mistakes. Woodworking is a very individual thing. Enjoy

[glenn bradley]

My house is decently furnished at this point but I am missing 2 coffee tables and 2 side tables mainly because we can't really find what we both loved at first sight. I am a 37 years old middle class that works hard and continues to improve my daily life. After browsing around big box store like Pottery Barn, Crate & Barrel, or Restoration Hardware, it's really not the fact that I can't afford the furniture from there but it's more of the fact that I can't bring myself to pay what they want being in the factory side of things. Purchasing is my job and I deal and visit factories overseas on a monthly or yearly basis. It really ruined me in a few ways lol

I am not looking to start building a coffee table that's elaborate. In fact, I can live with a plywood tabletop and 4 legs. i think the important thing to me is that, it's something that's made by me and it can be improved and will be improved as I improve.

Kudos to you Steve and Welcome! While it is not always true that we can make furniture for less than we can buy it, we can certainly make much better furniture than many of us can afford. It is good that you are open to replacing things as you go. Many of my early pieces had to be wrestled from SWMBO's hands to be fed to the scrap pile. Parts of those now live on as secondary woods in the pieces that replaced them.

We all learn at a different pace and all start with different natural abilities. I recommend diving head long into online resources such as Fine Woodworking, Woodsmith and Wood magazines, joining or at least visiting wood working groups in your area like Steve Jenkins mentions. I read and re-read articles and watch and re-watch demonstrations of methods and processes. Then I practice them.

Although many folks have reached the point where they have built their last workbench, I think I have a couple more versions ahead of me and I'm in my 60's. Build something that will work well for you now, learn from its use what things about it you would keep, add and leave behind. For example, all my benches have had front and tail vises and all have had round dog holes. Those features have proven their worth to me and follow from bench to bench.

You are at an exciting phase of this craft. I wish you much enjoyment and look forward to having you progress along with the rest of us.