Plans & Tools for Woodworking

Today's woodworking tools rely on motors instead of muscle.old woodworkers vise image by Jim Mills from Fotolia.com

The image of people running saws and turning out beautiful pieces of furniture from garages stocked to the brim with exotic lumber is held in the mind's eye by many when they think of woodworking. Woodworking, though, covers all the ways you work with wood, even carving. Regardless of what you want to create, you will need plans and tools for woodworking.

Process

When you work with wood to create things, you are essentially reshaping lumber and sheet goods like plywood into other things that have more use for you. That reshaping is largely done with tools, but before a blade touches the wood, you need a plan. Without the plan, you will quite likely find the piece you just cut is too short, or the two pieces you want to join are different thicknesses. The tools used to all be powered by hand, but today most of them have motors. They make the creative process faster and in many cases more accurate.

You can find woodworking plans on the Web and in woodworking magazines. Plans should include a materials list, step-by-step instructions and a cut list showing how to cut the pieces from plywood and dimensional lumber. How-to photos are also very helpful. When you order from the Web, you can usually choose to download the plans or have them mailed. If you want to download the plans, and you want to print them, make sure they will print on the paper sizes your printer uses. Otherwise you can save them on a CD and take them to a print shop for printing.

You can get plans for any conceivable project from telephone stands to picnic tables and even for very high-quality furniture.

You could easily fill a large shop with tools when doing woodworking. If you want to do simple, straight-cut projects, then you will need at least a circular saw, a work surface, a jig saw, a mitre saw, a drill with wood and metal bits, a router with bits, clamps, hammer, screwdrivers (or screw bits for the drill), tape measure, square, level and chisels.

When your projects become more complex, like when you get into cabinet making and decorative pieces, you will need to add a scraper set, burnisher, combination square, self centering bits, tapered plug cutters, tapered drill set, table saw, scroll saw, band saw, butterfly template and router kit, dowel and tenon centers and Forstner bit set.

Perhaps the most important tools are the skills you acquire and bring to the woodworking process. You learn these over time and make them better with experience. Without good skills, all the plans and tools in the world can't bring your projects to life.