An alternative path would be going with hand tools. Mathias Wandel is a very good wood worker but he tends to use a lot of power tools, not all of which are affordable and they require a ton of space. If you're interested in hand tool work, check out Tom Fidgen's (the Unplugged Woodshop) and Paul Sellers' YouTube channels.
For a budget of about $1000, you can get a very nice, full featured suite of hand tools that you can build pretty nice projects with. And this price is for getting premium quality tools brand new. If you've got more time than money, you can get second hand vintage tools from online auctions and real estate sales and refurbish them to work as good as new ones (I wouldn't recommend going this path if you have no prior experience).
By contrast, you'll blow your entire $1000 budget on a table saw and a planer, and you can't even get very good ones for that price.
Word of warning: do not buy new hand tools from the big box hardware store. Either buy vintage ones or premium tools from woodworking speciality stores. Modern, mass produced hand tools (e.g. saws with hardened teeth) aren't very good, they're harder to tune and are not designed to last a lifetime.
Working with hand tools isn't all that much slower than using power tools, unless you'd do something very repetitive where you do the same cuts on a ton of pieces.
I do woodworking using hand tools almost exclusively (I visit a shop once a week, where I have power tools). I find it really enjoyable and relaxing compared to working with power tools with all the noise, the dust and the danger (the power tools at the shop aren't great quality).
I'd recommend the following tools to get started:
* A rip saw and a cross cut saw (or a Japanese Ryoba which has both)
* 4 chisels: 1/4", 1/2", 3/4", 1"
* A #4 smoothing plane (if you have a good workbench or intend to build one)
* OR a low angle block plane (if you don't have a bench)
* Sharpening equipment because tools don't come sharp out of the box
* A saw file if you got a re-sharpenable saw
* Optional: a coping saw or a fret saw, depending on what kind of joinery you're into
The above will cost around $200-300 and is enough to do quite complex projects.
Paul Sellers series of videos are an engaging introduction to woodworking, focusing on why we have certain hand tools as well as the surprising amount they can accomplish.
His woodworkers bench project is a great place to start when planning an entry level tool set.
This is offtopic, but I put "unplugged workshop" into Google (without the quotes) and got very few results. I added "tom" to the end of the query and instantly found his page. I would have thought the first (less specific) query would have generated too many results and adding more terms would have narrowed it down. In this case, the opposite appears to be true.
Even though I own some rudimentary power tools, including an ancient Sears tablesaw, my hand tools get the most use. For one thing, though I have made a fair amount of furniture, the biggest return on my woodworking skills has come from maintaining my house. A few basic tools can go a long way.
Besides, the tablesaw is almost always piled with crap, mostly from bike maintenance. ;-)
I remember reading about Japanese saws in the Whole Earth Catalog years ago - and it mentioned how they were different in design and features from traditional Western saws, with some advantages. (Used to do amateur carpentry as a hobby when a teenager.) Do you know about the Japanese saws and their benefits? I remember some had very different appearances from Western ones. I looked in Wikipedia, but interested to know your opinion anyway, if you know about them.
Matthias Wandel makes facinating youtube videos, look through his youtube channel. He's made loads of his own woodworking machines, marble machines, mouse traps, lots of tests on woodworking methods like joints and dust in the air, etc etc. He's an ex-RIM engineer with a family history of woodworking, his high intelligence and skill for making things make amazing videos, been following him for years.
I really enjoy watching his videos, not because I have any desire to start woodworking, but because I really appreciate his approach to problem solving.
There's something so satisfying about woodworking, that I've never felt with other, similar skills, such as metalworking (except maybe blacksmithing).
The most satisfying and long lasting thing I have from high school is probably my cabinet set I built. They actually look really nice (probably because you can't see my amateur attempts at dovetails), and they're built to last.
I guess it's because cabinetmaking is so permanent. You build a flatpack cabinet in an afternoon and you don't feel bad throwing it out 6 months later, because there's a million like it. But when you make your own cabinet from scratch, there's just so much care and effort that goes into it. My cabinets were built to last. They didn't have any veneer on them, and all the joints were dovetail joints, they do contain some plywood for the side paneling though, but I don't really see that as cheating myself.
It's something that software lacks, I've nuked entire directories of a project that I may have spent a week or two working on. If I spend 2 weeks working on a woodworking project, I'm not going to throw it out and start again.
It's unfortunate that I haven't been able to do much woodworking since I left home, since I no longer have any tools, and I've been moving too often to build up a supply.
Luckily there's a "Menz Shed" nearby where I'm living now, which has woodworking facilities (and also acts as a social and support group for men).
One aspect I enjoy about woodworking is that there's no "undo". Or "repeat".
When you've spent 10 hours doing joinery on a work piece, you tend to be really careful before sticking your knife, saw or chisel into it. And when you realize that you've done a knife mark on the show side, you know you've fucked up (just did this last week on a piece with 30 hours in it).
It's a very good balance to software engineering. It's (arguably) an engineering discipline but a very different kind.
I'm in Sydney and heard of the men's sheds. I heard they are aimed at older guys and a provide a community as well as tools. There are quite a few makers clubs here too.
If you get a chance, try learning how to turn wood on a lathe. I've got a very nice shop but if I had to shrink down to one tool it would be a lathe.
Using a lathe teaches discipline. If something goes wrong, it's your fault, you should have stepped away and come back more rested. As an ADD person, learning that I have the power to stop what I'm doing and try again later was enlightening.
I did a reasonable amount of woodworking and some metalworking in the 1990s, but have recently been looking in to more industrial, bulk processes for http://8-food.com/
Others interested in physibles with an emphasis on bringing prototypes to manufacturing ready status through an enhanced understanding of materials and transformation processes available to industry and their limitations, one book I can thoroughly recommend is Fundamentals of Modern Manufacturing - Materials, Processes, and Systems (4th Edition). While not uniformly detailed, it has a rigid, logical structure that most programmers will probably find appealing.
I was surprised to not see any comments here referencing ol' Dick Proenneke, whose creative, improvisational woodwork will, in my opinion, remain legendary for the duration of humanity. For most, his work won't be practical or directly applicable, but only for the most indifferent will it fail to be inspirational.
The need for stationary jointing and planing hardware seems to be the major obstacle to doing decent woodworking on a low budget. The cheaper machines have low maximum widths and low lifespans, produce fairly low-quality results and aren't even all that cheap. For a really solid and versatile planer/thicknesser (alias jointer/planer) it seems you'll have to spend a low-five-figure sum if you buy new from a respected manufacturer. And trying to plane well by hand instead is quite a serious adventure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojeul33vXL4
I'm eager to make my workbench. Creating a workbench is a right of passage for the craftsman. There's even sub-reddit forum dedicated to it. Going from sawhorses to a solid, sturdy workbench must feel great.
It starts with Mike haggling with some used tool collectors for good deals, and then he teaches how to clean + prepare the tools for work. He then teaches how to build some solid sawhorses, and then a very sturdy workbench. This is all with hand tools. The whole thing was really cheap! Under $400 for me to get all the necessary tools and materials.
I've got a question sort of related to woodworking, indirectly. Supposed I wanted to build a stool. Just a simple design, with some flat kind of wood for the seat (plywood, maybe?) covered with some padding, and three simple legs consisting of rectangular prism shaped wood.
Even with my limited skills I could manage to find a way to attach the legs to the seat. What I have no idea how to do is figure out, given a particular choice of materials, how much to use. If I know my weight, and know that I'd use the stool for sitting and occasional for standing on when trying to reach something, how thick do I need to make the plywood seat if it is a given length and width, and what cross section do the legs need to bear that load?
I did the obvious thing, and looked for "Structural Engineering for Dummies" or something similar, but did not find anything. From the people I've talked to who build their own things from wood, they either build from published plans, or they use their intuition developed from seeing a lot of successful designs and make theirs similar.
Christopher Schwarz, who wrote "The Anarchist's Tool Chest", recommended elsewhere in the comments, also wrote a book "The Anarchist's Design Book". In it, he covers two basic, simple construction techniques for building what he calls "furniture of necessity".
He doesn't cover specifically a stool of the type you're describing, but he does discuss exactly the problem of joining legs to a seat, and gives several projects using the technique that could be adapted to what you want to build.
If you're looking to build something bar stool height, you'd probably need to add stretchers to make the chair strong enough. If you're going for chair height, you could trivially adapt the staked back stool in chapter 6 to your purposes.
In the interests of full disclosure, I own both "The Anarchist's Tool Chest" and "The Anarchist's Design Book" by Christopher Schwarz, as well as "With the Grain" and "Chairmaker's Notebook", which are also published by his company. My standing gift request is anything from Lost Art Press (said company) that I don't already own. I have no business interest in the company, but I do wish them well, because they publish excellent material.
Yeah, woodworking relies rather heavily on apprenticeship and oral tradition.
I'm more of a bodger than a structural engineer, but I will tell you two things: joints are the weak points, and triangle rigidity is your friend. If you go looking for pictures of stools, you'll see that only the very lowest "milking stools" consist of three legs and a slab. Almost all stools will have a subframe at the top which reinforces the seat and stops the legs from wobbling, and most will have pieces lower down making the legs into trapezoids (and providing footrests).
Furniture rarely fails with a clean snap in a structural member - more like a joint goes, rigidity is lost, and the thing folds over sideways.
You can work this out from structural engineering principals - Euler's theory of column buckling would likely govern the cross sectional area of the legs.
But yes, you're right, building things from wood is such a time-honored technique that it is rare for this to be required. Millions of stools, cabinets, and timber-framed houses have already been successfully built, so there's no need to reinvent the wheel when you can just copy what has been done previously.
I'd say start with pocket screw joints. You can buy a jig from Kreg for ~$100 for making the holes. You could build the entire stool in a few hours if you have all the right tools.
I like the pocket screws for beginners because it allows beginners to have some success and build confidence to do more. It also helps to finish a project if you don't have lots of time.
I wouldn't use plywood but something like poplar. It's still cheapish, it's easy to work with and it's reasonably easy to finish or paint.
Something nobody has mentioned is finishing. You can construct something beautifully with dovetails but if you don't finish it correctly you will ruin it. Conversely simple construction that's well finished looks great. Finishing in my opinion is the hardest part of any woodworking project.
You get a hang of these things by building stuff, as well as looking at works and designs of others.
3/4" (~19mm) plywood is thick enough for most furniture projects. You could use 1" dowel for the legs and attach them by making a hole through the plywood, sawing a small split to the leg, drive it through and tighten it with a small wedge in the split.
> From the people I've talked to who build their own things from wood, they either build from published plans, or they use their intuition developed from seeing a lot of successful designs and make theirs similar.
Or just look at actual "shipping" furniture and borrow their dimensions.
Also, for table saws, there's SawStop. This is expensive, about $1500 for their table saws (made in USA), but protects you from lost fingers. Table saws cut off about 4,000 fingers a years in the US. SawStop has a system which detects a touch to the blade by anything conductive (such as a finger) and fires an explosive charge which jams a stop into the blade, stopping it in half a tooth of rotation. This costs you about $150. TechShop has these, and they get about two emergency stops a year.
Apparently wood dust—the invisible diesel-exhaust-like particulates, not the stuff you can see—is also a major health hazard, and will progressively destroy your lung capacity if you let it. A rubber mask with proper particulate filters is called for, as well as one or more forms of local or general extraction.
I grew up in a family full of woodworkers where I was the odd one out preferring building in code instead of wood. I like to think my ability to hold large software designs in my head comes from my moms ability to visualise and build large intricate pieces of furniture without written plans. I picked up all the basic skills around using tools living in a house with a large wood shop but I never developed my skills in it. Stuff like this definitely makes me think it'll be something I pick up again in the future as a hobby.
I highly recommend checking out estate sales for dirt-cheap, high quality woodworking tools and equipment. A lot of this stuff is built to last. Once you get past the old looking appearances, you will appreciate having spent 10 cents on the dollar for things you use once in a while to do great things in the shop.
+1. I used to feel creepy about going through some dead guy's stuff. I was having a beer with my old tool dealer (Dave Paling, long since passed on, unfortunately) and mentioned that to him. He fixed me by saying:
Dave: "Larry, who do you want to have your tools when you die?"
Me (instantly): "Someone like me, someone who will use them and take care of them."
Dave: "And that's why you don't need to feel creepy, he'd be happy you got them."
Thanks for posting this link. I've been doing a little bit of woodwork while staying at my parents. It has been so fun playing with lathe, bandsaws, circular saws, routers etc. Woodwork is definitely something I'd like to do more of, and this resource looks like a decent place to start.
Can't help but mention this great video where an enthusiast woodworking engineer makes a parallel between tools in the real world and tools in computing:
For Bay Area people, there is techshop. Or, if you want to drive out to the Santa Cruz mountains you can check out my shop. We can always throw some firewood in the lathe and make some shavings.
I need to take some more pics and show the equipment in there better but you get the idea. Full on woodworking setup and some metal working (Logan quick change lathe, MIG welder, grinders, bandsaw, etc).
Get to know your local saw doctor, most of us are happy to give recommendations, tips and the like. We often have good quality secondhand tools for sale.
Great article. I think that the advice on cordless tools is a bit off, maybe the article is a bit old. Most of the tools sold today are cordless. Drills especially can be used for many things, and you can use them more than once in six months.
[+] [-] exDM69|9 years ago|reply
For a budget of about $1000, you can get a very nice, full featured suite of hand tools that you can build pretty nice projects with. And this price is for getting premium quality tools brand new. If you've got more time than money, you can get second hand vintage tools from online auctions and real estate sales and refurbish them to work as good as new ones (I wouldn't recommend going this path if you have no prior experience).
By contrast, you'll blow your entire $1000 budget on a table saw and a planer, and you can't even get very good ones for that price.
Word of warning: do not buy new hand tools from the big box hardware store. Either buy vintage ones or premium tools from woodworking speciality stores. Modern, mass produced hand tools (e.g. saws with hardened teeth) aren't very good, they're harder to tune and are not designed to last a lifetime.
Working with hand tools isn't all that much slower than using power tools, unless you'd do something very repetitive where you do the same cuts on a ton of pieces.
I do woodworking using hand tools almost exclusively (I visit a shop once a week, where I have power tools). I find it really enjoyable and relaxing compared to working with power tools with all the noise, the dust and the danger (the power tools at the shop aren't great quality).
I'd recommend the following tools to get started:
The above will cost around $200-300 and is enough to do quite complex projects.[+] [-] sugerman|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] firegrind|9 years ago|reply
His woodworkers bench project is a great place to start when planning an entry level tool set.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v
[+] [-] criddell|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] analog31|9 years ago|reply
Besides, the tablesaw is almost always piled with crap, mostly from bike maintenance. ;-)
[+] [-] vram22|9 years ago|reply
I remember reading about Japanese saws in the Whole Earth Catalog years ago - and it mentioned how they were different in design and features from traditional Western saws, with some advantages. (Used to do amateur carpentry as a hobby when a teenager.) Do you know about the Japanese saws and their benefits? I remember some had very different appearances from Western ones. I looked in Wikipedia, but interested to know your opinion anyway, if you know about them.
[+] [-] JKCalhoun|9 years ago|reply
That means though that the smaller hand tools won't fly. My table saw is what I use 90% of the time.
Orbital sander, drill, the occasional router...
At the same time, I had no need for a planer, joiner, lathe — those bits of large equipment.
I've gotten by without a bandsaw as well (but that would sure be nice form time to time).
But Mathias is right, start small, see what calls you. (Hand drill and circular saw is where I began. I made what I now call "dorm furniture".)
[+] [-] TamDenholm|9 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/user/Matthiaswandel
[+] [-] JshWright|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k_sze|9 years ago|reply
I discovered it when I watched the video about the making of the Wintergatan marble machine.
[+] [-] internaut|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomanybeersies|9 years ago|reply
The most satisfying and long lasting thing I have from high school is probably my cabinet set I built. They actually look really nice (probably because you can't see my amateur attempts at dovetails), and they're built to last.
I guess it's because cabinetmaking is so permanent. You build a flatpack cabinet in an afternoon and you don't feel bad throwing it out 6 months later, because there's a million like it. But when you make your own cabinet from scratch, there's just so much care and effort that goes into it. My cabinets were built to last. They didn't have any veneer on them, and all the joints were dovetail joints, they do contain some plywood for the side paneling though, but I don't really see that as cheating myself.
It's something that software lacks, I've nuked entire directories of a project that I may have spent a week or two working on. If I spend 2 weeks working on a woodworking project, I'm not going to throw it out and start again.
It's unfortunate that I haven't been able to do much woodworking since I left home, since I no longer have any tools, and I've been moving too often to build up a supply.
Luckily there's a "Menz Shed" nearby where I'm living now, which has woodworking facilities (and also acts as a social and support group for men).
[+] [-] exDM69|9 years ago|reply
When you've spent 10 hours doing joinery on a work piece, you tend to be really careful before sticking your knife, saw or chisel into it. And when you realize that you've done a knife mark on the show side, you know you've fucked up (just did this last week on a piece with 30 hours in it).
It's a very good balance to software engineering. It's (arguably) an engineering discipline but a very different kind.
[+] [-] bbcbasic|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luckydude|9 years ago|reply
Using a lathe teaches discipline. If something goes wrong, it's your fault, you should have stepped away and come back more rested. As an ADD person, learning that I have the power to stop what I'm doing and try again later was enlightening.
[+] [-] contingencies|9 years ago|reply
Others interested in physibles with an emphasis on bringing prototypes to manufacturing ready status through an enhanced understanding of materials and transformation processes available to industry and their limitations, one book I can thoroughly recommend is Fundamentals of Modern Manufacturing - Materials, Processes, and Systems (4th Edition). While not uniformly detailed, it has a rigid, logical structure that most programmers will probably find appealing.
[+] [-] internaut|9 years ago|reply
What IS that?
[+] [-] eth0up|9 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Proenneke
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYJKd0rkKss Alone In The Wilderness, Part I
[+] [-] leoc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Dowwie|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wyc|9 years ago|reply
https://lostartpress.com/products/the-naked-woodworker
It starts with Mike haggling with some used tool collectors for good deals, and then he teaches how to clean + prepare the tools for work. He then teaches how to build some solid sawhorses, and then a very sturdy workbench. This is all with hand tools. The whole thing was really cheap! Under $400 for me to get all the necessary tools and materials.
My build (before boring dog holes):
https://imgur.com/a/97Xiv
[+] [-] jpitz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edvinbesic|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roel_v|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tjic|9 years ago|reply
I'm glad i did it.
https://goo.gl/photos/W3FeEukR9Dj4qbXT8
[+] [-] luckydude|9 years ago|reply
Note the leg design, I swiped that from someone else, very simple, easy to tighten up, doesn't rock back and forth like a lot of other designs.
[+] [-] tzs|9 years ago|reply
Even with my limited skills I could manage to find a way to attach the legs to the seat. What I have no idea how to do is figure out, given a particular choice of materials, how much to use. If I know my weight, and know that I'd use the stool for sitting and occasional for standing on when trying to reach something, how thick do I need to make the plywood seat if it is a given length and width, and what cross section do the legs need to bear that load?
I did the obvious thing, and looked for "Structural Engineering for Dummies" or something similar, but did not find anything. From the people I've talked to who build their own things from wood, they either build from published plans, or they use their intuition developed from seeing a lot of successful designs and make theirs similar.
[+] [-] mauvehaus|9 years ago|reply
He doesn't cover specifically a stool of the type you're describing, but he does discuss exactly the problem of joining legs to a seat, and gives several projects using the technique that could be adapted to what you want to build.
If you're looking to build something bar stool height, you'd probably need to add stretchers to make the chair strong enough. If you're going for chair height, you could trivially adapt the staked back stool in chapter 6 to your purposes.
In the interests of full disclosure, I own both "The Anarchist's Tool Chest" and "The Anarchist's Design Book" by Christopher Schwarz, as well as "With the Grain" and "Chairmaker's Notebook", which are also published by his company. My standing gift request is anything from Lost Art Press (said company) that I don't already own. I have no business interest in the company, but I do wish them well, because they publish excellent material.
[+] [-] pjc50|9 years ago|reply
I'm more of a bodger than a structural engineer, but I will tell you two things: joints are the weak points, and triangle rigidity is your friend. If you go looking for pictures of stools, you'll see that only the very lowest "milking stools" consist of three legs and a slab. Almost all stools will have a subframe at the top which reinforces the seat and stops the legs from wobbling, and most will have pieces lower down making the legs into trapezoids (and providing footrests).
Furniture rarely fails with a clean snap in a structural member - more like a joint goes, rigidity is lost, and the thing folds over sideways.
[+] [-] azza2110|9 years ago|reply
But yes, you're right, building things from wood is such a time-honored technique that it is rare for this to be required. Millions of stools, cabinets, and timber-framed houses have already been successfully built, so there's no need to reinvent the wheel when you can just copy what has been done previously.
[+] [-] mmmBacon|9 years ago|reply
I like the pocket screws for beginners because it allows beginners to have some success and build confidence to do more. It also helps to finish a project if you don't have lots of time.
I wouldn't use plywood but something like poplar. It's still cheapish, it's easy to work with and it's reasonably easy to finish or paint.
Something nobody has mentioned is finishing. You can construct something beautifully with dovetails but if you don't finish it correctly you will ruin it. Conversely simple construction that's well finished looks great. Finishing in my opinion is the hardest part of any woodworking project.
[+] [-] dilemma|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exDM69|9 years ago|reply
3/4" (~19mm) plywood is thick enough for most furniture projects. You could use 1" dowel for the legs and attach them by making a hole through the plywood, sawing a small split to the leg, drive it through and tighten it with a small wedge in the split.
[+] [-] JKCalhoun|9 years ago|reply
Or just look at actual "shipping" furniture and borrow their dimensions.
[+] [-] quickben|9 years ago|reply
I'm surprised most of these sites don't mention this.
[+] [-] Animats|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leoc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sanswork|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Yaggo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjc50|9 years ago|reply
(/joke)
[+] [-] Dowwie|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luckydude|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patrickdavey|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] fmjrey|9 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/ShEez0JkOFw
[+] [-] siavosh|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luckydude|9 years ago|reply
http://mcvoy.com/lm/luckydude-shop
I need to take some more pics and show the equipment in there better but you get the idea. Full on woodworking setup and some metal working (Logan quick change lathe, MIG welder, grinders, bandsaw, etc).
[+] [-] davepm|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JamesAdir|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KiDD|9 years ago|reply