1. Precisely! When you run into catches like actual versus nominal dimensions, you don't want to be working with a $40 piece of wood, but a $5 piece of wood. Wh

1. Precisely! When you run into catches like actual versus nominal dimensions, you don't want to be working with a $40 piece of wood, but a $5 piece of wood. When you're wrong, you toss it and try again. Or you unscrew it and try again. 2. That's okay! If it's not quite straight or square, it's really fine for most pieces. Unless you've really s-ed up, you won't be able to tell. 3. I have plenty of pieces of furniture made from construction wood, especially in the kids' room, and they do just fine. Kids grow fast, and an elementary school table won't be what we want in middle school. Heck, we might want something different if and when hobbies change. The point is to make a bunch of pieces quickly, and to develop the technique to be able to: * Make a (roughly) perpendicular screw hole without having the wood splinter on the opposite side, and perhaps with a proper countersink hole * (roughly) cut a piece of wood to length, with a (roughly) square edge * Get intuition for the order to measure/cut/assemble pieces so everything fits * ... and so on. There's a bunch of mechanical skills (like making a square cut) and spatial reasoning skills to develop. The best way to do this is to do it over, and over, and over many times. Once past that stage, poplar is ideal. Starting out, make as much stuff as you can as quickly and cheaply as you can. Even now, I'll sometimes cut a piece of wood to the wrong length, and I've been doing this a long time. The first few pieces? Forgetaboutit.