Thinking About the Basics

So what are some basic skills for a woodworker? This is a question that I was thinking about yesterday working in my shop.  I think the most basic of skills is to be able to take a rough piece of lumber and dimension it down to the finished size needed to be able to be used, this includes cutting it to length, width, planing it to straight and to thickness, and making both all four sides parallel. That process is repeated many times in a project because that is the bases of each piece of wood you use in the project, unless you work with plywood or already dimensioned lumber in which case some of them steps have already been done for you. 

The question for most woodworkers is " what tools and techiqnec do I use to get from rough lumber to dimensioned, ready to use lumber"?  Some use only handtools, some power tools and some use a mixed shop picking the tool they feel that is the best for the job.  Me, I like to keep it simple, I use the simplest tool and method I can to get the job done, sometimes thats is a handsaw to cut an 8' board down to a 5' board, but if I have more than three or four cuts I get out my circular saw and let it do the manual labor, if I have some wonky cuts I might get out my jig saw, if I am cutting really thick boards I'll use a sawz all with a tree trimming blade in it, or if I am cutting timbers I use my electric chain saw.  There are many times in my work flow or I am working with dimensioned lumber and need repetitive cuts so I set up my miter saw with a stop on the fence and use it. Which ever tool I use it falls back on me knowing my basic woodworking skills and going for the tool that is the safest, simplest and quickest to get the job done.

Since one of reasons I write this blog is to create a record for my grandsons to read one day, I think I will start a series on basic woodworker skills for them. Most will find this repetitive and thats alright with me, some might even disagree with how I do things and again thats alright with me, but to those that this series may help remember there are many ways do this thing we call woodworking, learn the basics then go out and develop your own ways of doing it, be safe, have fun, don't over complicate things REMEMBER it's only wood, and BUILD BUILD BUILD.