If you are undertaking a woodworking project, you will probably need to store your wood somewhere, probably in your shop, for a period of time before you get going on your project.

And actually, before we talk about a couple techniques for wood storage, we should also mention that it makes good sense to store the wood in your shop for at least a couple weeks before beginning your work, which will allow it to adjust to the climate of your workshop before trying to build anything with it.

Keep it off the floor

You don’t want to store your wood on the floor, concrete or otherwise. This is just a bad idea.

Moisture will more than likely seep through the floor and get absorbed by the wood, causing undesirable results. You want to keep your wood high and dry. Put it up on a shelf, build a shelving system that provides you with plenty of wood-surfaced storage shelves to store all your lumber.

Basic inventory system

Try to keep your lumber organized, and store similar sized chunks together. This will prevent a lot of mix ups and confusion when looking for certain sizes of wood pieces.

You can mark down thickness, width and length, or any combination that you find useful. Basically, you just want to be sure that you can pick out certain sizes easily without much confusion.

Ventilation

Make sure that your storage space can breath, you want good air circulation. You will also want to try to keep the storage area dry and free of excessive humidity. This goes back to the point about keeping your wood in your shop for a couple weeks before using it. This will ensure that it has a chance to adjust to the dryer conditions of your shop before beginning work.

Storage methods

You are going to want to keep your extra wood out of your way, where are some good places to try to keep it? How about these ideas:

• In your rafters
• Put up some shelves
• Store wood under your workbench
• Vertical racks

Any of those options will work, and should allow you to keep your wood in ideal storage conditions in your workshop.

Let’s face it, if you are going to try to build something, it’s always better to have clear direction right? Most people would agree. That is the idea behind using woodworking plans when taking on a woodworking project.

Where can you get plans?

If you know exactly what you need to build, and have the ability to measure and draw it out, you can simply plan out the project yourself. Even if you have a pretty good idea in your head what you want to build, you’d be foolish to at least not attempt to draw it out first so that you can get your measurements set.

Don’t want to plan it out yourself? There’s plenty of places where you can simply buy plans to use for your next project. Just pick up a furniture plan, for example, and follow the details. You’ll build yourself a piece of furniture in no time. Just follow the directions and you are good to go.

It’s a little more complicated than that, of course. You need tools and a workshop, but once you’ve got all that stuff you simply just need some direction.

Another reason that you might want to use plans that you got from an outside source is that you might be able to be more confident in the design of the project, especially if the plans are tried and tested.

What’s worse than building a chair, only to realize that you designed it all wrong and it can’t even support the weight of a person trying to sit on it?

And, of course, using plans can simply be a good way to give kids direction when they undertake their first woodworking projects. You can give them clear guidance and they will get an idea of how to approach woodworking the right way, methodically and patiently.

In this article we are going to go over some important woodworking tips you’ll want to know if you are going to take up woodworking as a hobby. Be sure to check out the resource box at the end of this article where you will find a link to a page where I show you step by step how to make a simple decorative wooden box with a hinged lid.

1. One of the first things you should know about woodworking is that you don’t have to have a lot of money to get started. Woodworking tools can be expensive, but you don’t have to have the best of everything in the beginning. Most of my woodworking tools are fairly plain and simple and I am still able to build beautiful projects. I’ve seen small table saws for $120 at home improvement stores that would be suitable for small shelf or box projects.

2. You will want to know a little about the wood you are using. Oak is a very hard wood and is very expensive. Pine is much cheaper, softer and thus easier to work with for beginners. A mistake with an oak board is much more costly than the same mistake with pine. It’s also nice to begin with a good straight board too. I’ll often spend 30 minutes or longer going through a stack of wood until I find what I want. You can pay extra for the boards that are already hand picked, but I like to look for gems in the “less than perfect” area.

3. Square your tools! It is of utmost importance to square the blades, saw guides, and fences on your power tools, particularly saws. If you’ve ever tried to assemble a woodworking project and found that it was just out of whack, then chances are your power tools weren’t square. There are plenty of inexpensive metal squares on the market that are made for woodworkers and it only takes a few minutes to make sure that a setup you are using to cut wood is square or not. I make sure my guides and fences are square every time I start a new project.

So don’t be afraid to start with tools you can afford, wood you can afford and spend a little time making sure your guides and fences are square. Woodworking is one of the most rewarding hobbies I can think of. Go make something and have fun!

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