Identifying Parts of Your Woodworking Project
George VondriskaYou wouldn’t start a project without looking at the plan first. Similarly, you shouldn’t start any projects without having a really close look at your material.
What’re we looking for?
When you purchase solid wood for your projects, especially hardwoods, they most likely will be in random width and random length. That means just what it sounds like; it’s unlikely that any two pieces will be exactly the same size, or predictable in size. So, what we’re looking for is, how to get all the parts we need for our project out of the available material. A little time spent doing this will reduce the likelihood that you cut a piece wrong, and end up not having enough wood.
Marking out
Grab a piece of chalk. Chalk works really well for what we’re doing here. It’s really easy to see the marks, and it’s also very easy to remove the chalk marks later. Working from your plan and cut list, grab a tape measure and start identifying parts. Keep in mind that some pieces of wood may yield more than one part. For instance, a wide board might give you a drawer front and a face frame piece. As you start cutting parts you may need to make new marks to keep track of your work.
Putting these skills to work
No matter what kind of project you’ve got coming up, this approach will help you avoid mistakes. With the cost of material, anything we can do to prevent waste is a good thing. As you look through the WoodWorkers Guild of America site, remember that we’ve got more woodworking projects that you can take advantage of, from cabinet making to lathe turning to how to build furniture.
Here is a really important part of working on a project in your shop, and that is turn on the music, put all of the hardwood you've ordered on a bench, go through the cut list, and just start working on what's gonna go where, and this is gonna help you prevent making mistakes later. So I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. I'm gonna build a dresser out of cherry. I love cherry, it's really cool. I love that one.
So the dresser's got some real specific needs. The drawer fronts are just over seven inches wide, the face frame components are really narrow, they're only an inch and a quarter, the top is quite deep, it's over 22 inches wide and about 38 inches long. So what I wanna do is not just walk up to this material and take it to my miter saw and start cutting it up, because I'm maybe gonna look back later and be like, "Oh shoot, I wish I had this other piece." So here's an example. I know the drawer fronts are over seven inches wide. So looking at my pile here, this is obviously not a good candidate for a seven-inch drawer front 'cause it's so narrow.
I'd have to cut it, glue it together, can I avoid that? Probably. So looking at these pieces, they're over seven inches wide, so my brain says these would be great candidates for my drawer front. Now, to keep track of what's going on, I'm gonna use a piece of chalk to label these babies. Chalk because it's really easy to see, drawer, front, and when I don't need it anymore, it's really easy to get it off of the material.
So obvious marking, drawer front, I've got four drawer fronts coming at me, drawer front. Now, looking at this big guy, what a beautiful piece. Remember I said my face frame pieces are only an inch and a quarter, so looking at this, 10 inches wide, not only can I get a drawer front out of this, but there are gonna be some face frame pieces that come off of the edge as well. And that's good to know, 'cause here's the thing. The drawer fronts are only about 36 inches long, but my longest face frame piece is about 48 inches long.
So when I go to cross cut this, if I cross cut it at 37 for a 36-inch drawer, I can't use that offcut for a 48-inch face frame piece. So knowing ahead of time that I can get a face frame out of this, I could take this eight footer, cut it in two, and then that rip, the offcut, can also become a face frame piece. Let's look at what else is going on here. So I talked about the top, so then the other thing I would look at is out of these parts, where am I gonna get my face frame pieces? Where am I gonna get my tops?
And it just makes natural sense that to get that glue up I need for the width of top I want, this is gonna become a top, this is gonna become a top, and that's gonna give me the size of panel I need. It's gonna give me plenty of wood to make that. So it's something where, you know, even talking about this as I went, it took me what? Five minutes to do this, but it's gonna give me a roadmap to follow as I go through the project to make sure that I don't cut the wrong piece for the wrong part. Chalk makes it really easy to see, really easy to identify those parts, and it's a great first step anytime you're using solid wood in a project.
I have found laying out my oak boards on the floor and staring at the whole for the parts to be quite entertaining. But, then, I like to play with wood.
What's with the ads that are longer than the video.
Thank you for the video. This was a good overview for considering lengths and widths, but no mention of grain patterns / character which can make or break a project. Sometimes need to sacrifice a little wood to get the best looking piece.