best wood for diy projects?
Discussion
Hi,
Im a beginner diy person but have made some tables / cabinets / shelves out of mdf that have turned out ok. I now want to raise the bar and also have nicked a router from someone to use for the first time so was thinking of doing a chest of drawers.
Question is what type of wood should I use and where should i get it from? MDF is ok but the shelves for example bow a bit and would like something more substantial and longer lasting. I presume oak is good but is it really expensive?
wheres the best place to buy - would bnq etc have this sort of stuff or would i be better going elsewhere?
any clues/pointers great thanks
Im a beginner diy person but have made some tables / cabinets / shelves out of mdf that have turned out ok. I now want to raise the bar and also have nicked a router from someone to use for the first time so was thinking of doing a chest of drawers.
Question is what type of wood should I use and where should i get it from? MDF is ok but the shelves for example bow a bit and would like something more substantial and longer lasting. I presume oak is good but is it really expensive?
wheres the best place to buy - would bnq etc have this sort of stuff or would i be better going elsewhere?
any clues/pointers great thanks
Not sure where you are, but most timber yards have reasonable sized offcuts that you could use. When I started donkeys years ago, I started with pine - easy to work, not great at accepting finish sometimes but relatively cheap. I also used furniture board veneer when I wanted sharp lines and a better finish. Pine will not blunt your tools as much as the hardwoods do - oak being a real tool blunter IME.
Since those early days, I have gained a lot of machinery - thicknessers, table/band saws, massive belt sanders, lathe etc. With this, I tend to buy wood sawn (not planed) and make the stock I need. PAR (planed all round) wood is so expensive outside of the trade these days that I think you will struggle to get it on the cheap. If you do, let me know. Avoid the B&Qs and Homebases - as has already been said, expensive firewood.
I've even made small items of furniture out of pallet wood - with the right machinery you can even clean up and straighten that rubbish out and get a good finish. I tend to buy my English hardwoods from a bloke that has a forest in Hampshire - by their own admission, not the greatest quality but when I spend £400 with him on English oak, it is the equivalent of well over a grand of sawn lumber at the timber merchants. It still needs machining though, so not much good for you. Got my eye on a walnut tree he has drying at the moment...
Before that, I made an acquaintance with a guy at Jewsons who would do me a good deal on sawn pine - but as he is now running a forest in Wales, that has dried up. More exotic hardwoods I get from Arnold Laver, but it ain't cheap.
If you have a router, there is a great website with terrible presenters that can give you some good little projects to get your skills up. Take a look at the Router Workshop videos at http://www.woodworkingchannel.com/dolphin/vidego_v... for making little boxes and trevits etc. Just a few extra cutting bits and you will be having a whale of a time making Christmas presents - and lots of dust.
On that subject, take safety seriously. Wear a decent mask and eye protection at all times. One of my mates has recently died of wood dust related illness - mdf fibres and some hardwoods are really toxic and in small particles that easily get into your respiratory tract and stay there. A router will increase the quantity of dust beyond all non-mask safety levels.
Since those early days, I have gained a lot of machinery - thicknessers, table/band saws, massive belt sanders, lathe etc. With this, I tend to buy wood sawn (not planed) and make the stock I need. PAR (planed all round) wood is so expensive outside of the trade these days that I think you will struggle to get it on the cheap. If you do, let me know. Avoid the B&Qs and Homebases - as has already been said, expensive firewood.
I've even made small items of furniture out of pallet wood - with the right machinery you can even clean up and straighten that rubbish out and get a good finish. I tend to buy my English hardwoods from a bloke that has a forest in Hampshire - by their own admission, not the greatest quality but when I spend £400 with him on English oak, it is the equivalent of well over a grand of sawn lumber at the timber merchants. It still needs machining though, so not much good for you. Got my eye on a walnut tree he has drying at the moment...
Before that, I made an acquaintance with a guy at Jewsons who would do me a good deal on sawn pine - but as he is now running a forest in Wales, that has dried up. More exotic hardwoods I get from Arnold Laver, but it ain't cheap.
If you have a router, there is a great website with terrible presenters that can give you some good little projects to get your skills up. Take a look at the Router Workshop videos at http://www.woodworkingchannel.com/dolphin/vidego_v... for making little boxes and trevits etc. Just a few extra cutting bits and you will be having a whale of a time making Christmas presents - and lots of dust.
On that subject, take safety seriously. Wear a decent mask and eye protection at all times. One of my mates has recently died of wood dust related illness - mdf fibres and some hardwoods are really toxic and in small particles that easily get into your respiratory tract and stay there. A router will increase the quantity of dust beyond all non-mask safety levels.
The good thing about MDF is that it is stable and relatively cheap.
What about trying some veneered MDF boards?
http://www.cfanderson.co.uk/module/page-77/type_id...
You can get matching edge veneers that you iron on.
Oh and get yourself over to Discovery Home and Leisure. The New Yankee Workshop is great to watch even though Norm looks a bit like something out of Bo Selecta.
What about trying some veneered MDF boards?
http://www.cfanderson.co.uk/module/page-77/type_id...
You can get matching edge veneers that you iron on.
Oh and get yourself over to Discovery Home and Leisure. The New Yankee Workshop is great to watch even though Norm looks a bit like something out of Bo Selecta.
Edited by B17NNS on Tuesday 17th August 22:40
Quinny said:
Got the Oak from a local saw mill... Kiln dried and in 4 x 4 and 4 x 2 sections..
total cost was £120
Nice job. How much oak have you got there - say 2.5cu ft or so? Was it PAR?total cost was £120
As a comparison, my latest £325 of sawn oak made:
1) a rather complex, telescopically adjustable artists easel
2) a 5 foot chunky, fully enclosed flat panel sideboard (+ply back and drawer floors)
3) a matching 6 foot 6 inch corner unit (+ply back)
4) a 5 foot rabbit hutch (+ply floor and OSB roof).
So probably £360 lumber all up, plus handles, hinges, finishes & glue. Oak comes in at about £25 a cubic foot from the forest and even though it is air dried, arrives at about 12%, which is not too bad at all for prepping stock. That tends to be cheaper than softwood from timber yards in this area. I bought about 2 cubes of sawn Iroko a while back and they stung me £90 for it, but it was nice stuff for some planters for mothers' day!
There is a huge difference in price if you can prep the material from sawn, but the machinery is not cheap, so you would need to do a lot to recoup the cost. Prep also takes some time - in most cases longer than the rest of the woodwork even using machinery such as a table saw, jointer and thicknesser! But as they say, get the stock dimensions spot on and you are half way to a successful project.
PS - did you use a dedicated morticer in that workshop for your joints? Great tool and cheap too, I wouldn't be without mine nowadays as pretty much everything I am doing these days seems to be M&T joinery for some oddball reason.
Go to a timber merchants
I found that the prices vary a lot - some things are cheaper in B and Q and soem things are cheaper at the merchants
plus points of the merchants if you xan find a good one
- much more wood to choose from - materials and sizes
- they can offer advice
- can deliver usually
- they will have someone there to cut it to the sizes you want - which almost never happens in BQ/Wickes
downside is that they are full of tradesmen and it can feel a bit intimidating as they move so fast it can be difficult IMO if you are unsure of what you want and wanan browse - obviously this will vary from place to place
I found that the prices vary a lot - some things are cheaper in B and Q and soem things are cheaper at the merchants
plus points of the merchants if you xan find a good one
- much more wood to choose from - materials and sizes
- they can offer advice
- can deliver usually
- they will have someone there to cut it to the sizes you want - which almost never happens in BQ/Wickes
downside is that they are full of tradesmen and it can feel a bit intimidating as they move so fast it can be difficult IMO if you are unsure of what you want and wanan browse - obviously this will vary from place to place
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