Hi all! Been thinking about transition from my office job to study Heritage Carpentry and Joinery at a local college. I currently work in an office as the editor of a military history magazine which...is decidedly not solarpunk, so I'm eager to do something different.
Heritage carpentry and joinery is all about fine craftsmanship, something capitalist society has forsaken for mass manufactured (read: cheaply made) products. Building your own furniture and wood goods is therefor, by my mind, anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist. Beyond that, you're bettering your self due to the handy skills and bettering your community by providing helpful goods and services. Additionally, due to the localist production and sale, alongside using sustainable building materials, heritage/fine woodworking is also a fairly sustainable job. Plus I can still keep using my journalist skills to write about sustainable woodworking/craftsmanship etc. Only downsides I can see are less pay and a more demanding physical labour (which might not be so bad).
Any cons I'm not seeing? What do you all think?
Hello! First post in here. I've been doing woodworking for about a decade, sometimes as a hobby and sometimes as a job, but always fairly rudimentary stuff. I had a job making electric guitars for a few summers. For the last year or so I've been building and repairing boats. Not those really nice wooden boats, more like fiberglass boats with somewhat crude plywood frames.
I want to take it to the next level, so I don't always have to be embarrassed about my lack of woodworking skills. My goal is to make a quality violin.
I'm looking for recommendations on where to start for fine woodworking tools. My requirements are budget, size, and electricity. If all goes well, in a few months I'm going to be moving onto a sailboat I built, which severely limits all three.
I'd prefer to have fewer, better tools, rather than lots of shitty tools. That said, I don't know which tools need to be expensive and which ones I can get away with getting from Harbor Freight or whatever.
The top categories, in my mind, are gouges/chisels, planes, hand saws. Do you have any recommendations on what else I need, and where my money ought to go? And of course, recommendations for specific tools are always appreciated!
I'm posting a similar thread in r/violinmaking, so don't worry about not having specific knowledge about that. I figure I'll get different sorts of useful answers from there and from here
I want to get my dad something woodworking-related for Christmas this year that he'll both enjoy and be able to use on a semi-regular basis. He has all of the normal tools, machines, and gadgets that any carpenter would have, and then some. He specializes in finish carpentry (cabinets, stair railings, doors, custom projects, high detail pieces, etc etc), but his scope of practice extends very wide as well (home remodels, demo, flooring, roughing in, framing, concrete, etc etc). I'm looking for some unique ideas for gadgets or tools that would make his life easier in the shop. As his son I have some knowledge of the woodworking space, but I'm definitely not as immersed as himself or the people in this community, so go easy on me lol. If you need specifics I'll do my best to answer what I can and provide additional details on the kind of work that he does and tools he already owns.
A while back I made a post asking for some help on a dice tower that I was making for my friends for Christmas.
I got some really amazing advice from all of you, and it was great to get a lot of tips from woodworkers much more experienced than I am.
It may not be perfect, but for my first attempt at making something that looks nice, I'm very happy. Up to this point I've basically just made large projects that didn't need to be precise or look exactly perfect (like a basic coat rack, fence gate, and shed for my ramp. So, working on this project was a big challenge.
Ok, enough rambling, here it is: https://imgur.com/a/UxYNZD0
Thank you to everyone that gave me advice from this sub! This wouldn't have turned out as well as it did without you all!
Dovetails definately take practice, but shims and sawdust paste are your best friend! Really happy how it turned out and glad I slowed down when I was getting impatient to be finished. It's going to hold my coaster collection.
White oak, stain, and BLO finish
https://preview.redd.it/d7k9u4bwbj581.jpg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dacc565f951d192a39f539c0e56c81cda00b81bc
https://preview.redd.it/z2ffr7bwbj581.jpg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d9a3720ba0435cfa30c49db7ab19a96a4cf0430a
https://preview.redd.it/uqyfv8bwbj581.jpg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5dedbeb7a81c81ed53e2a92a6bc2ff8d65160833
This new guillotine would bring him more pretty heads for his embalming collection.
I don't know if anyone else has a Fine woodworking subscription but I was just browsing around and have started putting together a list of articles related to Japanese woodworking. Not all of them are subscription articles. I will put a * next to the ones that are free articles. Please add more if you know of any!
*Experiments in Kumiko Woodwork- https://www.finewoodworking.com/2015/03/19/experiments-in-kumiko-woodwork-part-i
Spice up your work with Kumiko - https://www.finewoodworking.com/2016/12/02/spice-up-your-work-with-kumiko
Japanese Lattice - https://www.finewoodworking.com/2012/04/05/japanese-lattice
*A jig for planing super thin parts - https://www.finewoodworking.com/2015/12/17/a-jig-for-planing-super-thin-parts
A Stronger Miter - https://www.finewoodworking.com/2004/01/01/a-stronger-miter
* Center line Layout for Large Stock - https://www.finewoodworking.com/2019/10/03/centerline-layout
Choosing and Using Japanese Chisels - https://www.finewoodworking.com/2013/04/04/choosing-and-using-japanese-chisels
*Understanding Japanese Chisels - https://www.finewoodworking.com/2007/04/30/understanding-japanese-chisels
Japanese Chisels - https://www.finewoodworking.com/1995/12/01/japanese-chisels
Japanese Saw overview with Andrew Hunter - https://www.finewoodworking.com/2019/07/24/japanese-saw-overview-with-andrew-hunter
Choosing and using Japanese Hand Saws - https://www.finewoodworking.com/1993/08/01/choosing-and-using-japanese-handsaws
All about Japanese Planes - [https://www.finewoodworking.com/project-guides/handplanes/japanese-planes-overview-with-andrew-hunter](https://www.finewoodworking.com/project-guides/handplanes/jap
... keep reading on reddit ➡
Sewing machine altars that I can stand at to sew and store my fabric stash underneath.
