Wood workers, looking for advice or inspiration

In the coming months I'm going to have a handful of wood working projects falling into my lap. Unlike my usual projects where I just get pine or PT lumber, I'm looking for something....attractive? Or easy to make attractive?

Projects include bed frames, book cases, and trim work.

I'm thinking maple wouldn't be that expensive and would take a nice stain, but I'm really out of my element here as far as making something actually nice looking instead of just functional.

I'll probably be buying a pocket hole jig set for the project so I'm not staring at screw heads forever, but are there any other tools I should get to make things easier?

I already have an assortment of clamps, power and hand saws and drills, a good orbital sander and decent sanding blocks.

I haven't done anything like this since high school wood shop, so consider me out of the loop as far what's available or methods and practices.

In reply to RevRico :

Please don't listen to me, I'm a highly opinionated old curmudgeon.  Come to think of it, that seems to be somewhat the  trait of all old wood workers.  
Are you really sure you want to be involved?  
 

I don't try to make the wood pretty. I try to find the pretty that's already in wood.  Nice straight grain knot free wood lacks character and color. A stain only changes the color, doesn't add interest.  

The bizarre part is dull boring wood is expensive while interesting wood is cheaper.  Except to the very well informed. Fiddleback maple for example or burls, Birds eye,  etc  

I prefer to go direct to the sawmill and buy my wood rough and green. If you buy mill run ( as it comes off the log) you get all the interesting bits and pay the least.  Yes there is about 15-20% waste but you are buying it so much cheaper it doesn't matter. Give you an idea of what I'm talking about. I paid $25,000 for the wood to build my house.  At retail that's about $850,000 worth of wood. 
 

Everything other than mill run costs extra.  Graded wood adds another 10-15 cents a board foot plus whatever the perceived added value is. For example grade  FAS ( Furniture And Select ) will cost $2.15 a bd ft. Compared to mill run which will be around .85 cents.  
That's rough and green.  By the time that same board gets to the store approximately 10-12 middlemen will be involved each adding their overhead and profit. 
 

That same board will sell for around $10.00 a board foot.  So there is considerable savings  buying at the mill.  

Which mill to buy from comes into play too.  You need a mill that doesn't ordinarily sell retail. But saws enough that volume is how profit is made.  Big Semi's going in and out yet not too corporate.  Plus you can't buy a few boards. You buy the whole bunker.  Or bunkers. Around 500-800 bd ft 

True prices vary, there used to be a weekly publication that printed out prices of all the various woods. Nowdays I suppose that's on line.  

 Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some people like knots and figure, some people like beautiful straight grain. Pick pieces you find beautiful.

 I like them both. 

Maple doesn’t absorb stain well. It’s really hard.

Biscuit jointer can be useful for some applications.

Router for making dado cuts if you don't have a table saw.

You don't have enough clamps, but you won't really know what you need until you start building stuff.

Your wood clarity analogy in valid for construction lumber and what you may find at a home center, but not necessarily at a wood supply house.

Oak is usually a safe bet to start with. Easily available, generally consistent color, finishes reasonably well, cheap enough that when you screw up you won't cry too much. Poplar is similar and takes stains well. 

If building furniture for a specific room, consider the colors of the furniture already there.  You typically want furniture in a room to be of a consistent tone or wood type.

In reply to Ian F :

Ash right now is flooding the market and very affordable. But ash is strong and typically very boring ( straight grain)  unlike white oak which is high in Tannins and thus tends to rust fasteners ( and the area around the fasteners decays as a result)  Ash takes and holds fasteners well 

Contrasting wood produces some stunning looking pieces. Purple Heart and white Maple. For example or Blood wood and Catalpa  

In reply to RevRico :

Maple is  one of the more expensive woods.  Most  expensive in all white.  That's the outer layer of wood. As the wood gets to the center of the log ( older wood ) it starts to turn brown.  Maple does not take stain well, often winds up splotchy.  Spalted Maple produces some stunning figure. But don't be fooled. It's just decay.  Maple is extremely decay prone but left in a dry house it's fine. That's why spalted maple is used adds interest to wood that ordinarily has little character. 

In reply to SVreX :

You are right,  I used knot free wide white hard maple planks for most of my flooring.  IMHO flooring detracts from the more interesting things like timbers. 

Hickory is beautiful but so hard you'll literally wear out your edged tools.

Measure twice and cut once.

A GOOD table saw is key to doing anything.

Careful of your fingers.

Careful with glue, it doesn't take up stain well.

As a complete Noob, I will say that I love my pocket-hole set. You can turn 2x4s into something that looks good.

Depending on the individual project, you may want to consider doing a veneer - but that is a different skill set. 

My favorite LOOKING woods are as follows: 

Expensive woods:

• Brazilian Rosewood (basically illegal now)
• Indian Rosewood (expensive)
• Cocobolo (another rosewood... can you tell  like Rosewood?)
• Mahogany (another iffy Rainforest wood)
• Koa (only grows in Hawaii)
• Sapele, aka African Mahogany

Cheaper, but still expensive woods:

• Walnut
• Flamed Maple, aka fiddleback. I think it comes from the Sycamore Maple. This is different than the Sycamore tree, which can also have beautiful wood
• Quilted Maple, which comes form the Bigleaf Maple. Not quite as hard as European Maples (but still hard)
• Birdseye Maple, which comes from Sugar Maple. This is where you get Maple Syrup. 
• Cherry - I find it is usually stained too light for my tastes, but I personally love it when it is dark stained. 

I have no clue on the prices of these, other than the fact that Maple and Cherry will probably be cheaper than walnut will be cheaper than the first list I listed. Do a search on furniture forums and speaker forums, you'll find different examples of various woods with various stains. Find out what you like, go from there. What Frenchy said is true, the cheaper stuff is usually really good looking, but not as structurally sound (still good enough for a bookshelf). 

I've trained myself to like the straight grained, "boring" woods because I learned about hardwoods from guitars. The highly figured stuff doesn't sound as good - looks prettier, but there is a reason that they used to burn the highly figured Brazilian Rosewood to heat the shops in the winter.

To me, this is the key statement:

I haven't done anything like this since high school wood shop

Start with making functional pieces with good, tight joints. This can be done with cheap and easily replaced (when you screw up) wood.  After you get a few of those pieces under your belt, then graduate towards using pretty woods.

Figure out a rough idea on what you want the furniture to look like then look for it on YouTube. There is seriously like bajillion woodworking channels on there. Watch different ones until you find a channel that fits your skill and tool collection level. I personally like Third Coast Craftsman. Woodworking for mere mortals is good channel for beginners if that is more your speed. 

I love my kreg pockethole jig, I use it all the time. 

Ian F said:

To me, this is the key statement:

I haven't done anything like this since high school wood shopo

oStart with making functional pieces with good, tight joints. This can be done with cheap and easily replaced (when you screw up) wood.  After you get a few of those pieces under your belt, then graduate towards using pretty woods.

This is a good plan. $100 on hobby grade home depot offerings were in the plan for some practice before getting into the bigger stuff.

So without ordering online, how would I go about finding some nicer woods? I know where all the lumber yards in the area are, but I've never tried buying anything than dimensional lumber or cedar from them. There's a ton of guys selling live edge, rough cut, and reclaimed wood on craigslist though which I've considered, but haven't researched working with yet. 

The only thing I know I don't like is knotty pine. My grandfather's basement was full of it, and I don't ever want to see it again. I don't really have preferences otherwise, I like well shined dark woods, knotty twisted lighter woods, the multishaded weird internal cuts. At the same time, I agree with Ian in a further up post, should probably figure out what the rest of the room is going to look like.

Like I said though I'm just looking for ideas of stuff to look at.

I already have a general bed frame idea that I want with a built in headboard. I actually have it now, but it's not sized for a king sized mattress and I think building new would be easier than adjusting to fit. But it's nice because I can see how it's already together.

Any suggestions on specialty hardware? McMaster Carr or fastenal? 

Lee Valley for hardware - especially for things like bed-bolts and stuff you won't find at construction oriented supply houses, but I'm sure there are other sources.

For nicer woods, I would start with commercial lumber yards. Some will be better than others, but I'm sure someone there will be able to direct you to a source of more exotic woods when you get to that point. 

In reply to RevRico :

I have been working with some reclaimed oak I tore out of my 125 year old house. It is rough cut, and I hand plane it until I get the look I'm going for. I stop when it feels smooth but I can still see bottoms of the saw marks. If I keep going until all the saw marks are all gone it looks like a new board, but a little deeper brown than new oak boards. It has character, but it is really hard. I spend a lot of time sharpening my plane irons. 

One option for wood is find a guy with a portable sawmill. I have a neighbor that has one. You bring him logs and he will cut them into boards for about $50 per hour. I personally haven't had him do it but I've watched and he can make a lot of boards in an hour. 

When you make your furniture save your cut offs to play around with different finishes to see what they look like in real life. I'm not a fan of stain personally, and I like oil finishes rather than varnish where I can get away with it, but that's just me.

+1 for Lee Valley https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca you can peruse their catalogue on line and source locally, or take a road trip and shop at one of their stores.

re: cheaper non-pine wood, that's pretty-ish...

I've been using hardware store rack supplied Poplar for 'getting better at woodworking' projects.  I built sleepykid#1's first bed out of it and some 1/2" (?) plywood.

In reply to gearheadmb :

If you go that route use Wood Mizer. Com They sell a lot of portable sawmills and part of their pitch is that when you buy one you remain listed for life.  
Even is desert states there are wood mizers.  
get ahold of a few guys and ask, "who besides yourself saws wood?" 
They will usualy share that information.  
 

I like oil finishes too. I'm not a talented  painter and oil finish you rub on.  Impossible to mess up.  Another great finish is shellac!  2 parts denatured alcohol and one part Shellac gives even the worst painter a flawless finish. 
The wonderful thing is the first coat dries in 15 minutes. The second, 3rd, 4th, etc cost each doubles the drying time. But blend together flawlessly.  In fact if the last cost was applied 100 years ago the next coat will blend perfectly.  Run free!   
Shellac is what they coat pills with so it is as safe as there is.  It's also extremely hard!!   Much harder than poly urethane etc. While it can be scratched it repairs invisably.   
Shellac also comes in colors from clear to umber 

This makes most wood look just fine.  Gets rid of that odd ickey looking grainy texture so much wood has. 

Decent table saw, good blades, bisquit joiner, router with a small selection of bits will do almost everything. 

A philosophical angle worth the click...

Crxpilot said:

 

A philosophical angle worth the click...

I love that show.  Always a bit of blood, never an empty square foot of workbench.

You have reminded me of the best, by far, resource for learning woodworking.  Become a This Old House insider, and watch the 15 seasons of New Yankee Workshop they have available.  I am a slightly competent finishing carpenter, and EVERYTHING I know, I learned from Norm Abrahm.

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

While I picked up tips from Norm my teachers were the Thousands of carpenters, finishers, etc I met every day selling construction equipment to the housing industry for over 2 decades. 

I work a lot with the "cheaper" hardwoods.

If you're going to paint the finished product, the two I use most are Poplar and MDF.  Poplar isn't very hard, but the grain doesn't tend to soak up paint quite like pine.  It cuts well, stays straight, takes paint really well.  MDF is also a wonderful medium for painted things.  It is hard, stays straight, and is a good, uniform surface.

I built this bar pictured below.  Believe it or not, it is entirely made of pine and a super-exotic phillipine mahogany called Meranti...  which is also known as Luan.  Yup, the cheap stuff at big box stores known as "5mm Underlayment" is a lovely, even-grained thin plywood that takes stain like a champ.

If you want to build with pine and plan to stain it, darker stains tend to work better.  You'll never cover the fact that it's pine, but at least if you get it dark enough, no one will know.

Oak is plentiful and not dreadfully expensive, but IMO it's overused.  Sure, rock hard and structural, but (at least in my area) it's played out.  It was the go-to.  It can be tough to work with.  It's hard.  And in my opinion, the grain is kinda boring.  Expect it to not sand easily, and the first coat of stain, paint, varnish, lacquer, shellac, or poly will make the little wisps of grain stand up like a 5 oclock shadow.

I would get a biscuit joiner.  Handy.

Lots of bar clamps

A gallon of a good water-activated wood glue.  Not just fancy Elmer's, get the good stuff.

Plunge router.

and YES... pocket jig.  What did I ever do without that handy tool.

a GOOD double-miter/bevel saw and set it up accurately.  A good blade is key.  Get one with more teeth than you think.  It will do clean cuts in ply, laminate, and hardwoods.  It won't be fast, but you don't need fast.  You need accurate and clean.  Some folks prefer a thin-kerf blade.  It does save wood, but some of them also wobble which makes getting a perfect straight cut a bit difficult.

Here is an example of the Luan (exotic Phillipine Meranti) and pine trim with a coat of dark stain and poly.

How could I go about getting a wooden dash restored or made?