good. one less person on earth.
My wife recently passed away. I used my time off to build her a giant bookshelf
161–170 of 246 posts
Re: My wife recently passed away. I used my time off to build her a giant bookshelf
#162Can someone repost the actual story? I can't figure out how to find it on Reddit. I can only see some of the comments.
Re: My wife recently passed away. I used my time off to build her a giant bookshelf
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a bad woodworker. My furniture has bad joints, gaps between pieces of wood. I don't use good wood. I do a poor job painting or staining it... and everyone still just sits down on my chairs and says, "This is so cool that you make your own furniture." Start small, start bad, improve on each project... and give it time.
Stupid question - would it be sane to get involved in this stuff without having a means of transporting large objects? Every time i look into wood related work, be it home repair or artsy stuff, everything is huge. I have a Prius. I'm not too thrilled at the idea of buying a 2nd car (truck), and i don't want to drive only a truck.. so how am i to get the supplies? Sounds like a silly question, but yea - things are ju…
I had the same problem and what I do is cut the big 4x8 panel in to 4 equal size pieces. 99% of initial woodworking projects are small. You are rarely making big giant dining tables and every car fits 1x4 panel.
Re: My wife recently passed away. I used my time off to build her a giant bookshelf
#164It seems so fulfilling, being able to make such beautiful things. But also a bit expensive eh... to get the woodworking skills (presumably by taking classes at a technical college?), the equipment, and the time involved. If any folks here are capable of doing this stuff, would you please share details of your journey, I feel inspired to learn some of this myself. Did you feel it was all worth it, what would you do di…
I started when we bought our first house and there wasn't much money left for kitchen furniture. But we needed a kitchen, so I decided to get some big box store pine, hinges, drawer slides etc to build some temporary cabinets. I didn't know much and I made many mistakes, but the kitchen I built lasted us... 7 years, and is gone now mainly because we're renovating the whole house. All the tools I had back then were a…
I too used Paul Sellers as a guide when I started up, but it's important to realize that he isn't really unplugged. He shows you how you can do it unplugged, but he uses a wide variety of power tools for "monkey work" as he calls it. This includes jointers, planers, and bandsaws (though he demonstrates that tool explicitly).
Unless you're able to get wood already S4S, unplugged is a helluva lot of work.
Re: My wife recently passed away. I used my time off to build her a giant bookshelf
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
But surely your raw materials will be significantly higher quality? Well-made furniture lasts for generations. IKEA is a consumable.
It's difficult to generalize, given that they have an absolutely huge inventory, but the IKEA pieces I own (Two tables, two sets of cabinets) have held up for a decade, and are likely to hold up for at least two more.
The key to IKEA furniture, I have found, is to place it where you want it and never move it. I have Billy bookcases that have lasted 15 years while being FULLY loaded. I also have had to replace my son's Billy cases as we've rearranged and updated his bedroom multiple times over the years. He doesn't abuse them, they just don't like be moved in and out the room,even empty, for painting or other projects.
Re: My wife recently passed away. I used my time off to build her a giant bookshelf
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's less expensive than pre-made furniture. A good place to get started is construction lumber -- just 2x4s. They're not bad once you clean them up with a sander and potentially planer and finish them, and they have a certain industrial aesthetic raw. They're cheap enough that if you mess up or change your mind, you can throw them away and try again. And if you want to redo a piece of furniture, you can do that too.…
> (GOOD) clamps Any advice on what to look for or what brands you might recommend? I bought a couple furniture clamps a few years ago and they are complete garbage.
Bessey is very good and worth every penny. I also have some Bora clamps that are good. Parallel clamps are generally the best since the clamping force is even.
Re: My wife recently passed away. I used my time off to build her a giant bookshelf
#167Can someone repost the actual story? I can't figure out how to find it on Reddit. I can only see some of the comments.
Re: My wife recently passed away. I used my time off to build her a giant bookshelf
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Miter saw (even without sliding) was transformative for me as well. A cheap table saw complements it nicely (I then splurged and got a CNC router, too, which opens up a wide range of techniques). AFter that I ended up playing with chisels, which I always thought were very primitive, but you can do a surprising amount of nice work with just a chisel and a hand saw. I'm a computer programmer but I expect that more and…
That’s the exact reason I (as a programmer) want to start doing some wood work, there’s something about creating tangible stuff that web programming just doesn’t fulfill. You talk about the table saw as a complement. I thought it was a must have, legit question, how do you make precise long cuts without a table saw?
A track saw is a great option for long straight cuts. As with any tool you can find inexpensive to very expensive options. The cheapest option is to use a straight edge with a normal handheld circular saw. Next up are jigs that attach to a circular saw. Finally there are the true track saws. For the budget friendly end, look at the options from Kreg, on the high end, Festool.
Re: My wife recently passed away. I used my time off to build her a giant bookshelf
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
I enjoy woodworking quite a bit, but before anyone gets any misconceptions, cost savings is NOT a reason to get into it. Unless you need very specific custom dimensions, IKEA can sell a piece of furniture significantly cheaper than I can get raw materials (even if my time is valued at zero).
But surely your raw materials will be significantly higher quality? Well-made furniture lasts for generations. IKEA is a consumable.
Not necessarily in ways that matter. If I use equivalent materials (MDF), it's still more expensive for me. If I use good plywood (which is usually the right choice) or solid wood (which despite common perception is the wrong choice for almost anything involving large flat panels), it may be more durable but becomes significantly more expensive.
IKEA stuff may not last centuries, but it often lasts fine for its intended use. I have a number of cheap IKEA Kallax-style bookshelves around my house. They're made of cardboard, hopes, and dreams, but have held up to all the loads I've thrown at them for years and even survived a couple of apartment/house moves (admittedly, the big one would probably not survive another move). How many people ACTUALLY want to keep the same piece of furniture with the same dimensions and styling forever? How many people who want to actually manage to in the face of new residences, combining furniture with roommates/partners, etc.?
IKEA is only one example. The same arguments apply for other brands, including some "real" furniture. I'm in the middle of building a queen-sized Murphy Bed. All said and done, my material costs are approaching $2000 (without a mattress) and I've spent several weeks worth of evenings on it. It's been a challenging project, and I don't regret it, but economically it would ABSOLUTELY have been better to buy one.
Re: My wife recently passed away. I used my time off to build her a giant bookshelf
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
My high school was the regional hub for vocational training, so we had an entire wing devoted to these things. There was even a small restaurant and I remember one of the capstone projects for the year was actually building a house. Fortunately it has continued to be well-funded. Unfortunately, an honors-level academic load meant there was no time in the schedule to take many of these classes.
35 years ago I had to argue quite a bit with my high school advisor to be allowed to take drafting. She was adamant that a “college bound” student shouldn’t take shop classes. I use things I learned in that class to this day (it was all hand drafting but there was an Apple II sitting in the corner with a primitive CAD program that I was allowed to play with towards the end of the semester)
My only saving grace there was that my dad was a Land Surveyor and made heavy use of AutoCAD. We had the full digitizer tablet and access to a color plotter.
I didn't care so much for the 2D stuff, but over time I taught myself a lot about modeling stuff in 3D. I blew people away in drama club one year when I showed up with a rendering of the auditorium, stage, and lighting locations for one of the plays.