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This is great. I took up woodworking last year. The only thing about it that bummed me out is how expensive it is. I didn’t expect that. There’s a saying: “Why

This is great. I took up woodworking last year. The only thing about it that bummed me out is how expensive it is. I didn’t expect that. There’s a saying: “Why would I buy my wife a $500 dresser when I can build it myself for $1000?” Very true with wood unfortunately.

defterGoose 4y ago
This is what I hate about modern society. There are altogether too many voices urging the same thing: "Why would you do something to augment your experience of reality if it's inefficient?"
- ehnto 4y ago
  The internet also makes it see like a consensus exists when in reality it is a tiny sample of the world. I am also constantly surprised by how many people give advice on a topic they have never actually partaken in, so this consensus may not even be borne of the real world.
  - oblio 4y ago
    > I am also constantly surprised by how many people give advice on a topic they have never actually partaken in, so this consensus may not even be borne of the real world. Hey, that's why I'm on the internet. I could hardly talk about woodworking to actual carpenters in real life, could I?
pubby 4y ago
I've managed to do it on a budget. Tools can be bought used and wood can be scavenged from the curb or dumpsters. Both have a large time investment to find, so the trick is to do it passively. I take a lot of walks, and when I see a nice piece of free wood, I take it home and make stuff from it.
peter422 4y ago
While it is true you can often buy IKEA furniture for less than the wood would cost you, for any “real” furniture made out of real wood, anything you build will be far, far cheaper than what you can buy. Of course that is valuing labor at $0 and cost of tools at $0. If you are making something like cabinet doors that are mostly labor and not much wood, you can easily make them for one fifth the cost of what you’d pay from ikea… but tons of labor!
- johnwheeler 4y ago
  No way! I built myself an oak side table. Solid oak, $200 worth of wood. Now, this was during the beginning of the pandemic when wood prices were through the roof, but still, I bet I could get the same oak table for $150 or less.
  - peter422 4y ago
    Are you buying rough lumber? There is some arbitrage as certain species of wood are cheaper if you are closer to where they come from (for example Douglas fir is cheaper on the west coast vs pine on the east coast), and for a small item it can be built where the wood is cheapest and shipped from there. However, I think it’s not likely to make that large of a difference. Wholesale lumber prices aren’t that far off from what a hobbyist pays if you go to the same places.
    - saalweachter 4y ago
      Auctions for new and used wood are a great place for bargain. I built my workbench out of $5 of scrap wood by buying a homemade platform that had been used for judging volleyball games, because no one else wanted a volleyball judging platform and I was willing to break it apart and cart away a couple hundred pounds of lumber. I recently purchased a good quantity of rough cut maple, locust and oak for around 10-25 cents a board foot from another auction because the owner of the woodshop in question was retiring and everything must go.
  - pcthrowaway 4y ago
    This seems true to me (as a non-woodworker whose ex-partner got really into it), but what she explained to me was that her own furniture would be higher quality and also made the way she wants it (which you can't really put a price on) You can definitely pick up used solid wood furniture for cheaper than building it yourself (especially if you consider the opportunity cost of your time), but you might not get exactly what you want.
TheRealWatson 4y ago
So many hobbies are expensive. I know I'm not competing with mass-produced pieces. It's like never dining in a nice restaurant because there are so many fast-food chains out there.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  So many hobbies are just various themes of consumerism. Like a hobby of buying watches/pens/keyboards/etc. There are a huge number of cheap/free hobbies though.
lowbloodsugar 4y ago
I spent $400 on a drill press!
larkinrichards 4y ago
I joke with my friend: “I can build it myself for more!” And true, some projects cost more than buying it from a store… but the experience is worth it, and usually the end product is better than what you can get from a store.
shreyshnaccount 4y ago
hosts my own git instance
bigDinosaur 4y ago
You can guarantee whatever quality you want, though, which is nice. You'll know for sure whether corners were cut or material substituted, and if you do do that you'll know it was done as an explicit trade-off that you made.
- rhn_mk1 4y ago
  > You can guarantee whatever quality you want For some people, this comes with a condition: "as long as it's terrible" ;)
Arcanum-XIII 4y ago
Try working with metal - lot of tool are needed, and you always need one more. All of my wood working tool together cost the same as ONE tool for metal working. So the end product may cost a bit on the material side, but cost way more with tooling factored in. And most of the tools I have are 30 to 50 years old :D
- neverartful 4y ago
  I'm guessing you're referring to machinist tools like milling machines and lathes? Machinist tools are quite expensive, but other types of metalworking (welding, brazing, blacksmithing) can be done with much more modest budgets.
- HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
  That's what machine shop auctions are for ;-)
bergenty 4y ago
You gotta find logs (which you can get at firewood places or haul off people’s downed trees) for very cheap/free and then saw your own slabs. The dimensional lumber at stores is incredibly expensive. You have to have a jointer and a planer for this to work though.
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  So in summary, “Why would I buy $500 of wood planks when I can build them myself for $2000 of tools and logs?”, got it.
  - vbezhenar 4y ago
    Hand tools can be pretty cheap if you're not after some luxury brands. They won't be as nice, I guess, but they'll do the work.
    - neverartful 4y ago
      Agreed. I believe that used quality tools can often be found for a reasonable price. This is especially true if you don't mind doing some cleanup/repair on them.
  - bergenty 4y ago
    Well the $2000 is a one time investment. You can probably make furniture for the next 20 years with those same machines.
- thrwyoilarticle 4y ago
  Shouldn't a downed tree take months-years to dry out before it's suitable for working?
  - Intermernet 4y ago
    2 years seems to work well where I live, but it depends on type of wood, recent weather, where you live, where you store it and many other things. I have a bunch of timber in various states of readiness for a bunch of different projects. It's a slow start, but once you've been doing it for a couple of years you will generally have something you can work with.
Freak_NL 4y ago
It starts like that, but experience builds and in the end you get to ‘making cool stuff out of scrap wood and discarded furniture picked up from the road side and maybe €10 in hardware’, ‘repairing a rotted window sill for €50 in hard wood’ (a fraction of the cost of getting someone to do it for you), and ‘building the perfect built-in closet that only you could do knowing the house and your wishes’. And then there's just the efficiency of having a little workshop where you fix stuff in a jiffy and hardly notice the amount of things that get their lifespan doubled. Good for your bank account as well the environment. Oh, and seeing your children grow up with the idea that their parents just make/fix stuff, and that repairing things is the natural way to go about life. My three year old son regularly takes his portable toy kitchen, his toy tools, and starts 'repairing' it. That's priceless.
- stewx 4y ago
  The problem is, if you own a "nice" house, you need very good skills to do many DIY home improvements, for them to actually look good enough to match the house. Otherwise, you are reducing the resale value of your house with shoddy-looking work. If I owned an old cottage or something like that, I would be quite comfortable doing DIY work on it. It's a little bit like doing DIY auto repairs on a brand-new Acura TSX vs. a 2002 Honda Civic. The stakes are different.
  - mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
    Disagree. Cookie cutter newer houses which may look "nice" and have "nice" values (probably inflated) don't have the craftsmanship you are describing. I think its quite the opposite. If you owned an old cottage with exposed hardwood trim, stained glass window, exposed hardwood stairs with a carpet runner, and custom built-ins it would be much harder to DIY improvements. That type of older house may also have older plumbing, older electrical, and possibly plaster walls, all of which will require more care and knowledge to DIY things than new electrical, plumbing or drywall. Take for instance fixing a piece of trim that is an exposed hardwood vs. fixing a piece of trim that could be PVC/composite and some-shade-of-white. You can caulk over mistakes with white trim vs. trying to do a miter on exposed hardwood trim with not-square walls.
wccrawford 4y ago
I think it depends on the final quality and lumber used, too, though. Pre-pandemic, I built my own cabinets in my garage with cabinet-grade plywood and Ikea butcherblock counters. I over-bought the wood by about 50% (because of a stupid mistake) and bought a really expensive track saw, and I still saved like 25-50% compared to buying the cabinets pre-made with the features I wanted. Even cheap cabinets would still have been slightly more expensive than DIY. Granted, my cabinets are not perfect and I wouldn't put them in someone's kitchen, but they are more than good enough for what I need them for and both me and the wife are happy with them.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
I don't think that is the case. Not for quality furniture. When I build furniture there is no MDF or masonite anywhere in the build, no veneer, no staples (or pin nails) ... usually no fasteners at all. And as had been pointed out in this thread — it is the exact height, width, depth that I want, with the features I want and the wood and finish that I want. Started out building MAME cabinets, BTW, ha ha.
NegativeLatency 4y ago
That’s how you end up with a bandsaw mill
thomassharoon 4y ago
Yeah, buying all the tools can get expensive pretty quickly, not to mention how overwhelming the choices in tools are. If you are just starting out, I'd recommend starting with just the core tools [1] and a block plane. [1] https://www.lie-nielsen.com/nodes/4219/home-education-getting-started https://www.lie-nielsen.com/nodes/4219/home-education-gettin...
forsakenkraken 4y ago
It's expensive? I really don't get that. That solid hardwood dresser that you build yourself, could easily last 100 years. The ikea stuff won't last a fraction of that. You shouldn't compare a store bought dresser with something you make yourself. Also if you don't want the expense, there's plenty of small things you can make with a handful of tools. Whittling and carving is quite cheap and very satisfying.

defterGoose 4y ago

This is what I hate about modern society. There are altogether too many voices urging the same thing: "Why would you do something to augment your experience of reality if it's inefficient?"

ehnto 4y ago
The internet also makes it see like a consensus exists when in reality it is a tiny sample of the world. I am also constantly surprised by how many people give advice on a topic they have never actually partaken in, so this consensus may not even be borne of the real world.
- oblio 4y ago
  > I am also constantly surprised by how many people give advice on a topic they have never actually partaken in, so this consensus may not even be borne of the real world. Hey, that's why I'm on the internet. I could hardly talk about woodworking to actual carpenters in real life, could I?

pubby 4y ago

I've managed to do it on a budget. Tools can be bought used and wood can be scavenged from the curb or dumpsters. Both have a large time investment to find, so the trick is to do it passively. I take a lot of walks, and when I see a nice piece of free wood, I take it home and make stuff from it.

peter422 4y ago

While it is true you can often buy IKEA furniture for less than the wood would cost you, for any “real” furniture made out of real wood, anything you build will be far, far cheaper than what you can buy. Of course that is valuing labor at $0 and cost of tools at $0. If you are making something like cabinet doors that are mostly labor and not much wood, you can easily make them for one fifth the cost of what you’d pay from ikea… but tons of labor!

johnwheeler 4y ago
No way! I built myself an oak side table. Solid oak, $200 worth of wood. Now, this was during the beginning of the pandemic when wood prices were through the roof, but still, I bet I could get the same oak table for $150 or less.
- peter422 4y ago
  Are you buying rough lumber? There is some arbitrage as certain species of wood are cheaper if you are closer to where they come from (for example Douglas fir is cheaper on the west coast vs pine on the east coast), and for a small item it can be built where the wood is cheapest and shipped from there. However, I think it’s not likely to make that large of a difference. Wholesale lumber prices aren’t that far off from what a hobbyist pays if you go to the same places.
  - saalweachter 4y ago
    Auctions for new and used wood are a great place for bargain. I built my workbench out of $5 of scrap wood by buying a homemade platform that had been used for judging volleyball games, because no one else wanted a volleyball judging platform and I was willing to break it apart and cart away a couple hundred pounds of lumber. I recently purchased a good quantity of rough cut maple, locust and oak for around 10-25 cents a board foot from another auction because the owner of the woodshop in question was retiring and everything must go.
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  This seems true to me (as a non-woodworker whose ex-partner got really into it), but what she explained to me was that her own furniture would be higher quality and also made the way she wants it (which you can't really put a price on) You can definitely pick up used solid wood furniture for cheaper than building it yourself (especially if you consider the opportunity cost of your time), but you might not get exactly what you want.

TheRealWatson 4y ago

So many hobbies are expensive. I know I'm not competing with mass-produced pieces. It's like never dining in a nice restaurant because there are so many fast-food chains out there.

Gigachad 4y ago
So many hobbies are just various themes of consumerism. Like a hobby of buying watches/pens/keyboards/etc. There are a huge number of cheap/free hobbies though.

lowbloodsugar 4y ago

I spent $400 on a drill press!

larkinrichards 4y ago

I joke with my friend: “I can build it myself for more!” And true, some projects cost more than buying it from a store… but the experience is worth it, and usually the end product is better than what you can get from a store.

shreyshnaccount 4y ago

hosts my own git instance

bigDinosaur 4y ago

You can guarantee whatever quality you want, though, which is nice. You'll know for sure whether corners were cut or material substituted, and if you do do that you'll know it was done as an explicit trade-off that you made.

rhn_mk1 4y ago
> You can guarantee whatever quality you want For some people, this comes with a condition: "as long as it's terrible" ;)

Arcanum-XIII 4y ago

Try working with metal - lot of tool are needed, and you always need one more. All of my wood working tool together cost the same as ONE tool for metal working. So the end product may cost a bit on the material side, but cost way more with tooling factored in. And most of the tools I have are 30 to 50 years old :D

neverartful 4y ago
I'm guessing you're referring to machinist tools like milling machines and lathes? Machinist tools are quite expensive, but other types of metalworking (welding, brazing, blacksmithing) can be done with much more modest budgets.
HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
That's what machine shop auctions are for ;-)

bergenty 4y ago

You gotta find logs (which you can get at firewood places or haul off people’s downed trees) for very cheap/free and then saw your own slabs. The dimensional lumber at stores is incredibly expensive. You have to have a jointer and a planer for this to work though.

iLoveOncall 4y ago
So in summary, “Why would I buy $500 of wood planks when I can build them myself for $2000 of tools and logs?”, got it.
- vbezhenar 4y ago
  Hand tools can be pretty cheap if you're not after some luxury brands. They won't be as nice, I guess, but they'll do the work.
  - neverartful 4y ago
    Agreed. I believe that used quality tools can often be found for a reasonable price. This is especially true if you don't mind doing some cleanup/repair on them.
- bergenty 4y ago
  Well the $2000 is a one time investment. You can probably make furniture for the next 20 years with those same machines.
thrwyoilarticle 4y ago
Shouldn't a downed tree take months-years to dry out before it's suitable for working?
- Intermernet 4y ago
  2 years seems to work well where I live, but it depends on type of wood, recent weather, where you live, where you store it and many other things. I have a bunch of timber in various states of readiness for a bunch of different projects. It's a slow start, but once you've been doing it for a couple of years you will generally have something you can work with.

Freak_NL 4y ago

It starts like that, but experience builds and in the end you get to ‘making cool stuff out of scrap wood and discarded furniture picked up from the road side and maybe €10 in hardware’, ‘repairing a rotted window sill for €50 in hard wood’ (a fraction of the cost of getting someone to do it for you), and ‘building the perfect built-in closet that only you could do knowing the house and your wishes’. And then there's just the efficiency of having a little workshop where you fix stuff in a jiffy and hardly notice the amount of things that get their lifespan doubled. Good for your bank account as well the environment. Oh, and seeing your children grow up with the idea that their parents just make/fix stuff, and that repairing things is the natural way to go about life. My three year old son regularly takes his portable toy kitchen, his toy tools, and starts 'repairing' it. That's priceless.

stewx 4y ago
The problem is, if you own a "nice" house, you need very good skills to do many DIY home improvements, for them to actually look good enough to match the house. Otherwise, you are reducing the resale value of your house with shoddy-looking work. If I owned an old cottage or something like that, I would be quite comfortable doing DIY work on it. It's a little bit like doing DIY auto repairs on a brand-new Acura TSX vs. a 2002 Honda Civic. The stakes are different.
- mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
  Disagree. Cookie cutter newer houses which may look "nice" and have "nice" values (probably inflated) don't have the craftsmanship you are describing. I think its quite the opposite. If you owned an old cottage with exposed hardwood trim, stained glass window, exposed hardwood stairs with a carpet runner, and custom built-ins it would be much harder to DIY improvements. That type of older house may also have older plumbing, older electrical, and possibly plaster walls, all of which will require more care and knowledge to DIY things than new electrical, plumbing or drywall. Take for instance fixing a piece of trim that is an exposed hardwood vs. fixing a piece of trim that could be PVC/composite and some-shade-of-white. You can caulk over mistakes with white trim vs. trying to do a miter on exposed hardwood trim with not-square walls.

wccrawford 4y ago

I think it depends on the final quality and lumber used, too, though. Pre-pandemic, I built my own cabinets in my garage with cabinet-grade plywood and Ikea butcherblock counters. I over-bought the wood by about 50% (because of a stupid mistake) and bought a really expensive track saw, and I still saved like 25-50% compared to buying the cabinets pre-made with the features I wanted. Even cheap cabinets would still have been slightly more expensive than DIY. Granted, my cabinets are not perfect and I wouldn't put them in someone's kitchen, but they are more than good enough for what I need them for and both me and the wife are happy with them.

JKCalhoun 4y ago

I don't think that is the case. Not for quality furniture. When I build furniture there is no MDF or masonite anywhere in the build, no veneer, no staples (or pin nails) ... usually no fasteners at all. And as had been pointed out in this thread — it is the exact height, width, depth that I want, with the features I want and the wood and finish that I want. Started out building MAME cabinets, BTW, ha ha.

NegativeLatency 4y ago

That’s how you end up with a bandsaw mill

thomassharoon 4y ago

Yeah, buying all the tools can get expensive pretty quickly, not to mention how overwhelming the choices in tools are. If you are just starting out, I'd recommend starting with just the core tools [1] and a block plane. [1] https://www.lie-nielsen.com/nodes/4219/home-education-getting-started https://www.lie-nielsen.com/nodes/4219/home-education-gettin...

forsakenkraken 4y ago

It's expensive? I really don't get that. That solid hardwood dresser that you build yourself, could easily last 100 years. The ikea stuff won't last a fraction of that. You shouldn't compare a store bought dresser with something you make yourself. Also if you don't want the expense, there's plenty of small things you can make with a handful of tools. Whittling and carving is quite cheap and very satisfying.