I want to make a small box out of wood using box joints, I gave it a go yesterday using wood purchased from B&Q but it was really difficult to get clean straight cuts using hand saws and it ended up being shit. It’s almost like the wood was too mushy and instead of the saw making a clean incision it was crushing the material around it and you could see the grain squashing. It was perfectly fine for ‘rough’ construction type jobs around the house so I suspect its just not the right thing for what I was doing.

What would be a better wood that I can use for small furniture type projects and where can I buy it off the shelf? I’ve looked at some delivery options for hardwoods but nobody seems willing to sell small amounts for obvious reasons.

Have you got a local wood recycling project? Ours has really nice bits of wood. All sorts of different trees.

Also maybe try a pull saw for finer cutting. And a good sharp chisel to finish.

I’ll try a pull saw thank you, I was using a tenon saw then a coping saw to remove the waste followed by a chisel but to be honest the chisels could do with being sharpened.

Yes the wood in DIY stores is generally all shockingly bad fast grown horrible bendy mushy stuff.

As mentioned, wood recycling project, Facebook marketplace, skips, talk to local furniture makers/joiners to ask if they might keep you back some offcuts for practise.

Don’t be the people who ask ‘have you got an offcut of wood mate?’
‘I might have, what sort of size?’
‘Oh, 8×4’ would do’…. 😂

Buy a sideboard from a charity shop and cut that up. And check out YouTube for getting started with carpentry channels. Peter Millard and Steve Ramsey have great videos in their back catalogues that are easily findable from their YouTube main page and are free.
Edit: B&Q do have oak planks and other sections for door and window frames, staircases and skirting. Also better grade pine. I’ve used it and quality and price are good. Best to see what sizes are available and affordable and base your design around that.
I’ve made some really nice furniture and mantelpieces for clients out of that stuff, and been asked back for more. If the piece is going to be painted, MDF windowboard is good. I priced up one wall unit in Oak. Customer at the last minute changed her mind and asked if it would cost more in MDF. I was kind and did it with no increase 😊

Could do with a sharpen”

Isn’t going to cut it it has to be SHARP razor sharp for spruce or it willcrush like you experienced. I also find a gents saw from flinn garlick much more useful than a tenon saw cheap too. Its probably also blunt if you have been using it.

I don’t get on with pull saws at all for fine stuff the cut beautifully. But they track shitly in my experience where as i can cut bang on with a push saw so not that bothered learning.

Paul Sellers has a YouTube channel which shows how to use and sharpen hand tools. You have to search hard for his “basics” though. Normally it’s a bit too refined for me. But Kayak probably is at that level!

Bear with me, the link is for a Swedish site…

Pretty much all the wood that we have used for internal construction over the last two years has been pine and the mitre and normal hand saws work for a lot of the cuts. Building the kitchen needs a lot more delicate work, so I bought one of these:

https://www.proffsmagasinet.se/maskiner-verktyg/handverktyg/sagar-och-filar/ovriga-sagar/hultafors-psx-japansag-240-mm-2870359?channable=00a9e8736b7500323837303335396c&VAT=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw6-SDBhCMARIsAGbI7Uicpt6Nm_7F2MPe63_i3UgE5nUbqqeoaNwaYH38L3fKO7GuvO82ZMQaApvVEALw_wcB

Doublesided, with ne being a slower, but more precise cut and the other being a pull cut. Works for pine and softer woods and it easy to use. We have used it so much I need to buy a new blade. They do small versions as well.

B&Q do have oak planks and other sections for door and window frames, staircases and skirting. Also better grade pine. I’ve used it and quality and price are good

Thats a good point actually i had leftover skirting. Ripped the moulding off and was pretty useful stuff no knots etc.

https://www.axminstertools.com/shokunin-japanese-ryoba-double-edged-saw-240mm-105005

English site for @willard ‘s saw I’ve got one, not quite as good for fine work as a decent tenon saw but probably my most used saw, easier to cut straight than a push saw, and finer than most push saws too.

Have a look for your local wood merchants. You will have one and it might not be on the internet but there will be somewhere the trade goes to buy their wood.
My local one has pine/spruce etc miles cheaper than the big box stores, and miles better quality. It also has oak board, sapele and other stuff. Oak is quite nice to work on compared to pine.
Most wood merchants will sell you the wood per metre so you can buy small amount to pay around with. My local one sell loads of different widths so it’s rare I need to cut it down to the width I need. It will probably be already planed and pretty square so you’ll just have to cut to length and make the joints you want to.
Don’t try and buy wood on the internet. It will be expensive, the risk of damage on its way to you will be high and you won’t be able to check for knots, damage before you buy either.
I only ever use B and Q if I am desperate. They are so expensive and their wood is very inferior. I do have a bit of inside knowledge on them and I know they buy the lowest quality wood from suppliers for their stores.
A Japanese pull saw is good for cuts, I’ve been impressed with mine. Get some decent marking up tools such as a speed square, steel rule and a nice pencil to mark things up with. A small set of quality chisels (I got a set for £30) and a way to sharpen them is a good idea too for cleaning up and finishing joints.
You can make an awful lot of nice things with a simple set of hand tools and a mitre saw.
I watched Steve Ramsey videos on YouTube – Woodworking for Mere Mortals – he’s good at showing you simple tools and techniques to get good results for beginners and he has a lot of “basics” videos to help you out.

‘Basic woodworking’ is really about learning about the simple stuff; materials, tools and how to maintain them, and basic joinery. You only need a couple of tools really; a handsaw, chisel and ‘plane, maybe, to get started. Ok, a few more bits and pieces, but not loads. Box joint is a reasonable place to start, but things like lap, butt and mitre joints, dovetails, mortice and tenons are the foundation to so many possible projects. And you don’t need many tools to get started here.

I’d echo suggestions of a Japanese/Gents type pull saw. Really good for fine cuts, especially in smaller pieces. Flexible blade, so you have to go easy and slowly, and as with all hand saws, let the saw do the work. Tenon and dovetail saws are reinforced along the back, to stiffen the blade to cut on the push stroke. Finer/greater number of teeth per inch means finer cuts are possible, but take more work/are slower. A bit of ordinary candlewax on the teeth and side of blade help with gliding through wood and lubricating things a bit; overheating a blade can cause the teeth to become brittle and wear more quickly.

As for material; forget the DIY sheds. As mentioned, it’s mainly cheap crap, but also poor value. Find a good local timber merchants; mine has a huge range of materials and services such as planing, machining and jointing (they supply a lot of raw and part-finished materials for high end restorations and renovation projects, as well as bespoke furniture makers). But the trick here is to persevere with the crap wood you have; if you can make something decent out of that, you can make something decent with most other woods. A good practice is to knife your lines; a few strokes with a decent sharp marking knife (a Stanley knife is a bit ‘agricultural’ and the blades aren’t really fine enough for good marking, but can be used at a pinch) will create a nice clean sharp edge, so when you then cut on the waste side, you don’t get that ‘mushy’ cut you describe (always cut to your lines, as well as marking your face and edge sides!). Sawing takes practice, and you’ll build up muscle memory, so it will get easier and easier to make clean, accurate cuts. I tend to use hand tools mostly, as getting powertools out, setting them up etc, often take longer and for no real benefit.

Buy a sideboard from a charity shop and cut that up

Don’t do this. Either you’ll get some unusable cheap laminated/veneered chipboard shite, or if it’s actual decent solid wood, might be something quite nice, so you’ll simply destroy a decent bit of furniture. And it would be an extremely expensive way to obtain some not particularly usable pieces of wood. Reclaimed wood yards are getting scarcer, as materials become scarcer, but Ebay can yield some decent results if you’re after a particular thing. Expensive, but easy. Look out for skips outside posh houses as well.

Maintaining tools is vital if you want to have consistently good results. Learn how to sharpen a chisel and plane blade. A few quick strokes on a water or diamond stone, regularly, is much better than hacking away until a blade is dull, then trying to bring it back again.

Get some decent marking up tools such as a speed square, steel rule and a nice pencil to mark things up with

Take time to mark up properly and accurately. Measure at least 3 or 4 times. Then measure again. A good exercise is to get a piece of wood all square and flat; so if you have two sides that are perfectly square to each other, your marking etc will be much more accurate. Takes quite a bit of practice with a plane to achieve this, but practice is the most important thing of all; you won’t be making really high end stuff for some time, maybe even a decade or more. Seriously. Don’t be put off or demoralised by projects that don’t go perfectly; finish it off, put it aside and start again. A simple lap or mitre jointed picture frame is a really good project to start off with; it’s surprisingly not so easy to do that and get it nice and square. Start slow, keep it simple, build up momentum gradually.

Then go to the V+A and look at Grinling Gibbons’ work, and give it all up because you’re never going to be anywhere near that level. 😉

Didn’t Grinling Gibbons’ basic woodworking involve about 500 chisels? Bit spendy that.

I’d rather have a sprintery footstool hammered together with rusty nails that any of that horrific stuff in my hoose.

Airvent, would you let us know where abouts you are? Someone might be able to recommend good hobbyist-friendly timber suppliers.

It sounds like you’re off to a good start with the basic hand tools and your intent to learn to cut a simple joint.
As above, the two other key pieces you’ll need to learn to be a good basic woodworker are:
1. Tool sharpening
2. Obtaining and understanding good timber.

Plenty of fun!

Thinking back, there’s a reclaimed wood yard just south of Cambridge that I have used in the past. Really nice place, but you need to actually be there to check the wood and also be prepared to be disappointed or flexible if they don’t have all the wood you need.

Speaking of planes, there seems to be a dearth of good ones these days. I found my last one for buttons in a second hand shop, but I do need to fix the handle on it, possibly by making a new one. Knowing how to use one will drastically improve how you can get things to fit with small adjustments.

Buy a sideboard from a charity shop and cut that up

For good wood you might be surprised at what you can pick up at an antiques auction house if you have one nearby and the means to transport something away. I sat in one watch big oak dresser after big oak dresser sell for around a tenner. Like pianos (which would be another source of good wood)  there are more big bits of furniture – sideboards, dressers and wardrobes- than there are homes big enough to house them. However, sadly, people who own them believe them to be valuable so they send them to an auction rather than the nearest charity shop – but they probably sell for less at the auction.

Like pianos (which would be another source of good wood) there are more big bits of furniture – sideboards, dressers and wardrobes- than there are homes big enough to house them.

I’ve no problem with recycling materials, if the piece has reached the ‘end’ of it’s useful life. And some large pieces can indeed yield some useable timber. Quite often though, time means frames are often warped and twisted, panels can be damaged (panels are often base wood with fancy veneers), and you can have issues such as rot and woodworm. Introduce untreated
wormy wood to your workshop, and you can almost guarantee misery. So you need to learn how to spot signs of woodworm and other potential issues. Even if the wood is ok, you’d probably have to spend some time cleaning it up and getting it to a condition that’s useable. That can be very time and labour intensive in itself. Getting a large piece with some useable material for cheap, would be great, but chances are you could well end up with a piece of crap that becomes an utter nightmare to dispose of. Furniture that really is well made and sought after, won’t be selling for a tenner. If you find such a piece locally, and the logistics aren’t a pain to deal with, and it’s problem free, then yes you can end up with some good ‘raw’ materials. It takes some experience to be able to assess old wood for reuse though. Far better to find a good reclaim yard, where you can find stuff that’s been salvaged from old railway carriages, buildings and ships etc. Genuine Teak and Mahogany are getting increasingly difficult to get in decent sized pieces, and prices are going up (due to the international ban on the harvesting and sale of ‘new’ timbers, so all there is is old stuff), but you can find lots of old Oak, Beech, Cherry and Sapele for example. Old church pews, school science benches and PE equipment, stuff like that.

As mentioned, wood recycling project, Facebook marketplace, skips, talk to local furniture makers/joiners to ask if they might keep you back some offcuts for practise.

Excellent advice. You may end up with small, practically useless triangular pieces though, so don’t be expecting big chunks of gorgeous Black Walnut or something! But small pieces can be invaluable for practicing sawing, planing etc, and also for testing different types of finish. There’s a whole world of bewilderment and confusion awaiting, just in the finishing of wood! But for example you might want to test how a range of different finishes affects the colour of a piece of very light Ash, of what offers a tough durable finish for a table top, etc. It’s not fun to spend ages on a project, simply to ruin it by applying the wrong type of finish.

Speaking of planes, there seems to be a dearth of good ones these days

Ooh I’d argue the opposite; the recent renaissance in woodworking has led to some fantastic quality tools being produced, from Canada to China. Older English Record tools are pretty good, but the stuff being produced by the likes of Lie Nielson, Veritas, Clifton etc, is just incredible. And don’t go anywhere near Bridge City tools… Quangsheng tools have a very good reputation and are somewhat cheaper, and Axminster do a ‘Rider’ range which looks pretty good too. I love getting hold of old English tools for cheap/free, nothing like using something that’s 60, 70 year sold or more, but some of the new stuff is in another league, quality wise. That said, I still regularly use a couple of cheap MachineMart ‘Irwin Record’ planes for the odd rough job. If you’re on a budget, even cheap tools, sharpened up and used properly, can give decent results.

Furniture that really is well made and sought after, won’t be selling for a tenner.

go and see for yourself. It’s well made and it’s sought after in the sense that anyone would look at it and think it’s lovely but there’s too much of it and nobody who would want it has room for it.

It’s well made and it’s sought after in the sense that anyone would look at it and think it’s lovely

Well, the average punter might think so, but as someone who makes furniture, I know that the really nicely made stuff generally doesn’t sell for cheap. You’ve got to remember that even 100 years ago and more, there was still the high end stuff and the more ‘mass produced’ furniture, so even though things are hand made, there’s different levels of craftmanship. And the top end pieces still go for good money. It’s all about provenance. Think, Aston Martin vs Austin. Less Astons ended up in scrapyards…

I totally get what you’re saying about people not wanting stuff; a friend was recently trying to get rid of a lovely old kitchen dresser; 100+ years old, possibly Danish, but that style isn’t at all popular, so no takers. I think it did go, ultimately, but I think it’s a combination of lack of space in modern homes, and that style being out of fashion. On the flip side, Mid Century stuff is (was, maybe the fad has died down a bit now) all the rage, so mass-produced G-plan stuff was selling for silly money. G-Plan is nice enough, but it’s not ‘high end’. Those popular ‘Astro’ coffee tables were fetching £400+! I think prices have calmed down a bit now though. And as for space; we turned down a set of proper original Cadovious Royal shelves simply because we had nowhere really to put them; these were genuine 50s items, go for £2-3000 upwards now. Shame.

Peter Millard

Big fan of his, very useful videos.

Plus he’s a huge Festool devotee.

Rex Krueger has some good stuff on YouTube. I used his plane tuning video to make my cheap 80s Stanley plane much better. The thing I like about him is that he’s not perfect.