My wife recently passed away. I used my time off to build her a giant bookshelf • Hacker News Board

Re: My wife recently passed away. I used my time off to build her a giant bookshelf

#231

Post by Jaruzel » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 6:33 AM UTC

anjc wrote: post #155

Jaruzel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> presumably by taking classes at a technical college? Trial and Error is all you need. I've never formally trained myself in woodworking and I'm pretty good at it. I could definately replicate what this guy did if I had the time and money. My wife and I have a book collection that currently lives on eight 2.5 metre high by 1 metre wide Oak bookcases that fully line two walls of our living room (which we call the Lib…

> I could definately replicate what this guy did if I had the time and money Perhaps you can but for anyone else reading, this is a big and complicated project. Far beyond the capabilities of an enthusiastic/studious beginner. Your mitre saw or cross cut jig/sled being just a few thousanths off will mess this project up. This guy did a really great job.

I wasn't dissing his work. It IS great. What I was trying to say, is that without any training, and by pure self-learning, I have the same skill set. I was replying to the parent comment about needing formal training.

Re: My wife recently passed away. I used my time off to build her a giant bookshelf

#232

Post by wegs » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 10:29 AM UTC

bardworx wrote: post #35

wegs wrote: post #12

Earlier 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.…

You probably know what you're doing but for a beginner, 2x4 isn't a good choice because: 1. 2x4 are not 2" x 4" and when you start, you make a lot of assumptions that land you in hot water. 2. A beginner will not know what does "green" vs. "klin" mean and will have a hard time getting anything to be straight. 3. Construction lumber is made for construction and not interior use because of many different factors. I wou…

1. Precisely! When you run into catches like actual versus nominal dimensions, you don't want to be working with a $40 piece of wood, but a $5 piece of wood. When you're wrong, you toss it and try again. Or you unscrew it and try again.

2. That's okay! If it's not quite straight or square, it's really fine for most pieces. Unless you've really s-ed up, you won't be able to tell.

3. I have plenty of pieces of furniture made from construction wood, especially in the kids' room, and they do just fine. Kids grow fast, and an elementary school table won't be what we want in middle school. Heck, we might want something different if and when hobbies change.

The point is to make a bunch of pieces quickly, and to develop the technique to be able to:

* Make a (roughly) perpendicular screw hole without having the wood splinter on the opposite side, and perhaps with a proper countersink hole

* (roughly) cut a piece of wood to length, with a (roughly) square edge

* Get intuition for the order to measure/cut/assemble pieces so everything fits

* ... and so on.

There's a bunch of mechanical skills (like making a square cut) and spatial reasoning skills to develop. The best way to do this is to do it over, and over, and over many times. Once past that stage, poplar is ideal. Starting out, make as much stuff as you can as quickly and cheaply as you can.

Even now, I'll sometimes cut a piece of wood to the wrong length, and I've been doing this a long time. The first few pieces? Forgetaboutit.

Re: My wife recently passed away. I used my time off to build her a giant bookshelf

#233

Post by wegs » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 10:31 AM UTC

anjc wrote: post #157

wegs wrote: post #12

Earlier 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.…

> It's less expensive than pre-made furniture. Not a chance. Perhaps if you live in the Pacific Northwest, but outside of certain regions wood can be very very expensive.

The desk in my son's room cost $1000. It's customized to his interests/hobbies. If it didn't have all the bells and whistles, it would have been <$50 (a few 2x4s and a spare chunk of wood I used for the top).

Re: My wife recently passed away. I used my time off to build her a giant bookshelf

#234

Post by wegs » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 10:36 AM UTC

war1025 wrote: post #148

wegs wrote: post #12

Earlier 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.

I agree with the advice of all the other commentators, but I'll add a recommendation to have a few Irwin Quick Grip clamps on-hand (or similar). They're my go-to for 90% of just holding something in place for a moment (e.g. when drilling a hole with two pieces aligned).

You want a good pair of parallel clamps or pipe clamps too, for when gluing stuff, which can hold something precisely for a long time with a lot of pressure, but most of the time, you want something fast.

I also recommend a few clutch-style bar clamps, since a lot of time, you're reaching over something.

Re: My wife recently passed away. I used my time off to build her a giant bookshelf

#235

Post by wegs » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 10:47 AM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #65

wegs wrote: post #12

Earlier 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.…

I wouldn't expect a beginner to have a planer. (Nor would I put it in the first $2500 of tools to recommend to someone starting out.)

Price list:

* Bosch drill/driver kit: $100

* Circular saw: $100

* Tape measure: $20

* Square: $10 x2 (one big, one small)

Total: $240. That's 1/10th of what you quoted.

"Step it up a notch" kit as next step:

* Random orbital sander: $70

* Router: $170

* Planer: $120

* Guides: $20

* Clamps: $100

And we're up another $500. Still a good ways short of $2500. And that's at current Lowes prices. If you wait a few months, you can find complete 5-tool kits on sale sometimes.

I don't think $250 is unreasonable to spend on a hobby starting out. If OP is at FAANG salaries, then dropping $750 isn't unreasonable either. And if OP is a student, use a university woodworking shop, or buy used. These things go for a song on Craigslist sometimes.

Planer (or belt sander) saves money in the long run. You can recycle (free) old wood, use cheap S1S2E wood, and similar. For the most part, you just want to build a lot of stuff. Given the random orbital recommendation, I thought of the two, a planer was more versatile. It has unanticipated beginner uses too. E.g. If you mess up and make something 1/16th of an inch too small, you can trim a bit, and it will fit. Or if you can't do layout/cuts precisely and well, you can leave a bit of margin, and keep trimming a piece of wood until it fits.

Re: My wife recently passed away. I used my time off to build her a giant bookshelf

#236

Post by kls » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 12:02 PM UTC

kls wrote: post #224

blhack wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just buy a welder. Seriously. The machine I learned to weld on was a lincoln 140, and the machines we have at our space are miller 210s (which are LUXURY imo). There are probably thousands of videos on youtube that will show you how to use it, but here's the thing: if you use it wrong, who cares? You really can trial and error your way to it.

I learned to weld when I was a kid, I was raised on a citrus farm by my grandparents and when you grow up on a farm you are by virtue a farm hand. My grandfather was past the age of "I want to learn new stuff" and a lot of modern parts for machinery where starting to be produced in aluminum, so my grandfather bought a TIG machine and I was told figure it out (I also learned how to rebuild automatic transmissions due…

Also follow up tip, welded metal does not look hot but it can be very hot far away from the weld. When learning try to not pick it up with you hands, use a welder clamp or some grips. Assume all metal is hot, but when learning you are inevitably going to pick one up, we all did it, we all do it. You learn quick to not trust that metal is not hot.

And another tip, for those of you that do look to get a machine if you are in the US don't buy a 120v welder, they will do the job for really thin metal but about the time you get the hang of welding you will say to your self I should have bought a 240v machine. You pretty much outgrow a 120v machine the moment you grasp the process. Don't get me wrong, they have their place like fixing panels on cars but they are very limiting on the thickness of metal you can weld.

Re: My wife recently passed away. I used my time off to build her a giant bookshelf

#237

Post by anjc » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 1:16 PM UTC

wegs wrote: post #233

anjc wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's less expensive than pre-made furniture. Not a chance. Perhaps if you live in the Pacific Northwest, but outside of certain regions wood can be very very expensive.

The desk in my son's room cost $1000. It's customized to his interests/hobbies. If it didn't have all the bells and whistles, it would have been <$50 (a few 2x4s and a spare chunk of wood I used for the top).

You're comparing apples and oranges, if you're building a desk out of some 2x4s and a spare chunk of wood, and comparing that to $1000 products. Undoubtedly the manufactured products are lighter, more robust, and made from better materials. That isn't to say that these desks are more suitable.

One could build a desk from even better materials than the $1000 desk; maple, walnut, mahogany, stainless steel, brass, whatever. But it wont be I'm in favour of DIY and think it's admirable that you would build your son's desk yourself rather than buy, but I think it's important to be realistic about the costs and materials. These costs were a surprise to me at least, after getting into woodwork/metalwork.

Re: My wife recently passed away. I used my time off to build her a giant bookshelf

#238

Post by dr_orpheus » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 1:52 PM UTC

war1025 wrote: post #228

dr_orpheus wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely love pipe clamps. They still provide a lot of clamping pressure but are significantly cheaper than parallel bar clamps. And if you need a longer clamp all you need to do is go buy a longer piece of pipe

How much adjustability do they have? If I got pipe clamps would I need to have a whole range of pipes just to handle standard work?

No, the pipe clamps still work for anything shorter than the pipe. One end of the clamp screws on to the pipe and the other side slides so it is very adjustable. But I would still recommend some small clamps like the quick-grip clamps or some F clamps.

Re: My wife recently passed away. I used my time off to build her a giant bookshelf

#239

Post by rigrassm » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 1:58 PM UTC

dugmartin wrote: post #128

fatnoah wrote: post #112

Earlier 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)

I took am automotive technology class in highschool and my teacher was amazing at teaching students the art diagnostics and troubleshooting. The skills I learned from that teacher did far more to get me where I am today in my career (started out at the bottom ring of IT Support and have since moved up through Sysadmin roles and now in the dev process automation game) than any other class.

Re: My wife recently passed away. I used my time off to build her a giant bookshelf

#240

Post by codegeek » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

blhack wrote: post #158

codegeek wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am intrigued. What is the minimum age requirement for this workshop ? Do you have a website for this ?

The ideal age is 13+ for that class. There have been some really bright kids that are younger who have done it, but that is the right age for the kids to get the most out of it.

Ok Thx. I have a few years to wait then :)