My woodworking journey started when I was quoted $2500 to fix my porch railings. $1000 in materials, $1000 in tools mix in youtube tutorials and patience and now I'm hooked. The sliding compound mitre saw was the life changing tool for me. It was what was holding me back all these years from doing my own projects. I was always outsourcing this type of work for simply the cutting of lumber and thought I could do better than what I paid for. My railings turned out really well and mercifully passed the wife approval test.
YES! This is why it's SO important to keep this sort of stuff in schools.
Sliding compound miter saw is a magic tool.
Now just wait until you get a MIG welder and a bandsaw, you'll be UNSTOPPABLE and the world will suddenly look a whole lot different!
Sidenote: I'm the program director at a nonprofit where I teach/create curriculum. One of the workshops that I love teaching is a week long where we teach the following skills to a group of 12 kids:
Welding: learn to run a mig welder well enough to make art, furniture etc. Welding is easier than you think!
Woodworking: learn how to use a miter saw, and make 2x4s into smaller pieces and then reassemble them into larger pieces of different shapes!
Arduino programming: make lights blink on and off in exactly the way you want them to, and learn some C++ and core programming concepts in the process.
Laser cutting: learn how to take things out of your imagination and create beautiful things on the laser. Lasers always blow peoples' minds at how cool the the things they can make are, and how easy it is to use them.
These specific skills mean that these teenagers leave with a totally shifted perspective on the world around them. The experience you had realizing that the railing you wanted to fix was actually something that you can interact with and modify is what we're doing for these kids, but doing it with: things made of bits (computing), things made of wood, things made of metal, and things made on a computer (CNC). I'm really passionate about it. If you know of a group of kids that would enjoy this type of workshop, please email me!
It really is sad that most schools have discontinued these programs. I have a cousin who makes knives. When I visited his shop in Ohio last year, he commented that a lot of the workbenches and tools that he had in his shop were bought at auctions from schools getting rid of their shop programs. It’s a shame.
My high school was the regional hub for vocational training, so we had an entire wing devoted to these things. There was even a small restaurant and I remember one of the capstone projects for the year was actually building a house. Fortunately it has continued to be well-funded.
Unfortunately, an honors-level academic load meant there was no time in the schedule to take many of these classes.
35 years ago I had to argue quite a bit with my high school advisor to be allowed to take drafting. She was adamant that a “college bound” student shouldn’t take shop classes. I use things I learned in that class to this day (it was all hand drafting but there was an Apple II sitting in the corner with a primitive CAD program that I was allowed to play with towards the end of the semester)
Hah, my Engineering School in college required drafting courses (one dedicated hand drafting course, one dedicated CAD course) as low level requirements for every major, including Industrial, Chemistry, and Computer engineering students that didn't always know how/where it would come in handy (but there are indeed lessons applicable to everything). It's a general knowledge communication skill, even if you aren't communicating mechanical diagrams, there are still plenty of carry-over to all the other sorts of diagrams we all see in every field.
This is uncanny. I have the same exact story from 25 years ago.
Before freshman year, I had to sit down with my guidance councilor to select my electives. I chose Spanish and Drafting. She said both of those were a "bad fit for an honors student"; that I should take French and Art instead.
I acquiesced, not too happy about it but also trusting she knew what was better.
A few weeks later I got my schedule. Apparently French was booked up so I got Spanish. But still had to go to Art class.
I dropped that a week later and switched to drafting, which I did all four years of high school. The first two years were technical drawing and the next two were architectural drafting. This is when I convinced the teacher to let me fire up the 386s in the back of the room. They all had Generic CADD[0] on them, which remains one of my favorite CAD programs of all time. Simple, but wicked fast with two-key commands for everything. (i.e. "ZB" for zoom to box, "C3" for a 3-point circle, etc.)
My only saving grace there was that my dad was a Land Surveyor and made heavy use of AutoCAD. We had the full digitizer tablet and access to a color plotter.
I didn't care so much for the 2D stuff, but over time I taught myself a lot about modeling stuff in 3D. I blew people away in drama club one year when I showed up with a rendering of the auditorium, stage, and lighting locations for one of the plays.
I took am automotive technology class in highschool and my teacher was amazing at teaching students the art diagnostics and troubleshooting. The skills I learned from that teacher did far more to get me where I am today in my career (started out at the bottom ring of IT Support and have since moved up through Sysadmin roles and now in the dev process automation game) than any other class.
Ha! I was the only one taking AP-level everything and electronics and power mechanics as my electives!
The shop teacher was so grateful that he finally had someone super-interested in more advanced topics that I got to do extra projects he'd had on his wish list for years. One of my favorite high school memories and experiences.
Unfortunately I think a lot of kids would shy away from doing this today as it can hurt your GPA -- because of weighting, an A in an AP class is worth more then an A in a shop class.
So if a school is mostly focused on college-bound students, it's kind of natural that these programs have fallen away.
I'm old enough that I did basic shop stuff in middle school -- soldering, bandsaw, even a table saw. No way that would fly today.
Colleges don't care about weighted GPAs, only unweighted. Of course, they'd prefer if you take more advanced courses but they'd rather see that you perform well in the courses that you do take rather than struggle in courses that are too hard for you.
You touch on one of my frustrations with high school. In most schools, tracking means that you either take APs or you take classes that teach hands on skills. As if someone with a BA will never need to know how her car works.
It seems pretty obvious it died down as a result of the shift to knowledge economy. It would reverse if manufacturing & the trades resurged in importance.
If you are in the US and live near a Woodcraft store, many of them have dedicated training rooms with regular clubs and class schedules. 100% woodworking, but still valuable knowledge and experience. I know there's a pandemic on right now, but when we get back to mostly normal I suspect they will start their classes back up again.
See if your neighborhood adult school has any classes. I have taken a woodworking class in local adult school. Courses were done in the workshop of a high-school.
This is a really honorable and amazing occupation you've found for yourself and I'm glad folks like you are out there changing people's perspectives and lives. Do you have any resources you'd recommend for learning welding? That's been a skillset that I've wanted to pick up for awhile.
Just buy a welder. Seriously. The machine I learned to weld on was a lincoln 140, and the machines we have at our space are miller 210s (which are LUXURY imo).
There are probably thousands of videos on youtube that will show you how to use it, but here's the thing: if you use it wrong, who cares? You really can trial and error your way to it.
A $99 Harbor Freight stick welder, a cheap grinder, plus mask, gloves, long-sleeve shirt and what-not. Then go to a local metal supply place and ask if you can buy some scraps to practice welding---I ended up with a box of pieces of 1/4" steel plate for free. Technically, I should take them back to recycle when I am done, but I'm too ashamed of the horrible welds I did on them. I still can't scratch-start worth a damn.
Just be sure to watch some videos or read up on on how to do it safely.
I learned to weld when I was a kid, I was raised on a citrus farm by my grandparents and when you grow up on a farm you are by virtue a farm hand. My grandfather was past the age of "I want to learn new stuff" and a lot of modern parts for machinery where starting to be produced in aluminum, so my grandfather bought a TIG machine and I was told figure it out (I also learned how to rebuild automatic transmissions due to him not wanting to learn them). Anyways back then they did not really have spool guns for MIG machines so pretty much if you wanted to repair aluminum you needed a AC TIG machine or a DC TIG and had to run pure helium. We got an AC machine because helium is a lot more expensive than argon. Anyways I ended up becoming proficient at TIG welding really quick and honestly there is more involved (rods, gas, torches, etc) but after doing TIG/MIG/Stick I think TIG is the easiest process to actually learn the manual process of welding. To me it is far more natural than using a MIG torch or holding a stick clamp and using your finger to try to guide the stick due to the fact that stick requires some serious gloves to keep the heat at bay whereas TIG you can use very light kidskin gloves. The torch to me is the big part of where TIG shines as it is the most similar to using a pencil to draw. Learning to feed the rod takes some time, but it's not critical, with a TIG peddle you can slow down the weld to allow you time to synchronize feeding the rod. Finally TIG produces the superior weld in both strength and aesthetics the problem with it, is it is the slowest form of welding so it is frowned upon for production welding unless it is absolutely necessary such as welding exotic metals. That being said, I think it is a great process for hobbyist as it allows the most control over the process and provides the person welding with the ability to weld the greatest amount of different metals. I would not discount learning TIG if a person is interested in learning welding, especially if their interest lies in doing metal art or jewelry.
I would also recommend people look at China Mart welders for hobbyist use and possibly a multi-function machine, you get a lot of bang for your buck and there are some decent ones I personally have an Avortec AV6X, the welder is designed in the US, manufactured in China, quality controlled in the US and warrantied by the US company. It is a multi-function welder that does, TIG/MIG/Stick/Plasma and runs a 100% duty cycle. A similar offering from Lincoln on Miller would be upwards of 8k, I paid 2K for my welder. That being said, it is overkill for a hobbyist, one can get a decent AC TIG for under $600 and a combo AC TIG/Stick/Plasma for about $750. DC TIG machines can be had for a little over $200 but you have to run helium to do aluminum and they will not do stainless steel, titanium or any other exotic alloys which pretty much relegates them to common mild steel, but that is pretty much the same as MIG unless you spring for a spool gun to do aluminum on a MIG. Stick can do a variety of metals but it is really only good for industrial in the field welding as weld quality is the poorest out of the three and aesthetics are certainly the worst. One is not going to show off their stick welds, that is for sure.
Also for those looking into it, Miller has an app and website:
It takes all the guess work out of the welding process, you put in the process, the metal, the thickness and the type of weld (butt, lap joint, etc) and it spits out:
rod, gas flow, power settings, electrode, Torch Cup Orifice Diameter for TIG.
Wire size, gas flow, power settings, spool rate for MIG
rod, power settings for Stick.
Honestly this is 80% of learning to weld and nowadays you don't even have to go look it up in a book, you just put in the parameters and it spits out the variables you need. Basically all you have to do is learn manual process of welding.
Also follow up tip, welded metal does not look hot but it can be very hot far away from the weld. When learning try to not pick it up with you hands, use a welder clamp or some grips. Assume all metal is hot, but when learning you are inevitably going to pick one up, we all did it, we all do it. You learn quick to not trust that metal is not hot.
And another tip, for those of you that do look to get a machine if you are in the US don't buy a 120v welder, they will do the job for really thin metal but about the time you get the hang of welding you will say to your self I should have bought a 240v machine. You pretty much outgrow a 120v machine the moment you grasp the process. Don't get me wrong, they have their place like fixing panels on cars but they are very limiting on the thickness of metal you can weld.
Why specifically MIG and not something like flux core? Also, what resources do you recommend for learning to weld? I wish I could take a class on this but all I see is like two year old programs for becoming a certified welder and I am just looking to do it for random odd jobs.
Not OP, but I learned MIG at my local community college about 15 years ago. It was mostly pipe-fitters getting certified in the class and I was able work on whatever projects I wanted. I started with stick, then went to MIG, and then did a follow on class where I told them I just wanted to do Oxy-Ace. I think now they offer a more variety of classes, for people who want to do art and such.
If I recall, flux core is dirtier, and having a tank of argon on your cart isn't too expensive for a shielding gas. I lived in a studio and luckily my neighbors were cool with me running a chops saw.
I got a cheap stick welder and some plate and played around until I could kinda do it. Then I fixed my mailbox. It looks horrible, but it doesn't move anymore.
Most MIG machines can run flux-core wire without any problems. Gas-shielded welding (MIG/TIG) produces cleaner welds with less slag that needs to be cleaned off, but doesn't work outside with any wind.
Depending on your location, you may have a local makerspace, tool library, or similar; oftentimes places like that will have beginner classes on the cheap. Granted, that may all be on hold presently for Covid-19, but could be a nice thing to bookmark for later.
Edit: as an example from my own locale, the Denver (Colorado, USA) Tool Library typically has a beginner's welding class for $150: https://denvertoollibrary.org/upcoming/welding-101-fjbkt-k4g..., though they've suspended all in-person classes while the pandemic rages.
The ideal age is 13+ for that class. There have been some really bright kids that are younger who have done it, but that is the right age for the kids to get the most out of it.
I enjoy woodworking quite a bit, but before anyone gets any misconceptions, cost savings is NOT a reason to get into it. Unless you need very specific custom dimensions, IKEA can sell a piece of furniture significantly cheaper than I can get raw materials (even if my time is valued at zero).
I saw my rotting railings as a way to fund a new hobby. Since that project I've built a gate, a few planter boxes, fence repairs, a table with the scrap wood and a few other minor things. Enjoyment aside, my cost savings including the value of my vocational time would be reason enough but like you said I have specific cases that can't be bought off a shelf.
It is also difficult to get skilled labour to perform small jobs where I live so it is almost a necessity at this time.
Well made furniture can be pretty difficult to make. I'd guess for the average skilled person it probably takes a half dozen projects and lots of research before you start making pretty decent furniture, so keep that in mind!
On top of that, designing good looking furniture takes much more skill and time. Sometimes ya just don't have the knack either.
That being said, it's still super satisfying to make furniture, even if it gets cracks from expansion, has all kinds of weird defects, or doesn't look all that great!
Not necessarily in ways that matter. If I use equivalent materials (MDF), it's still more expensive for me. If I use good plywood (which is usually the right choice) or solid wood (which despite common perception is the wrong choice for almost anything involving large flat panels), it may be more durable but becomes significantly more expensive.
IKEA stuff may not last centuries, but it often lasts fine for its intended use. I have a number of cheap IKEA Kallax-style bookshelves around my house. They're made of cardboard, hopes, and dreams, but have held up to all the loads I've thrown at them for years and even survived a couple of apartment/house moves (admittedly, the big one would probably not survive another move). How many people ACTUALLY want to keep the same piece of furniture with the same dimensions and styling forever? How many people who want to actually manage to in the face of new residences, combining furniture with roommates/partners, etc.?
IKEA is only one example. The same arguments apply for other brands, including some "real" furniture. I'm in the middle of building a queen-sized Murphy Bed. All said and done, my material costs are approaching $2000 (without a mattress) and I've spent several weeks worth of evenings on it. It's been a challenging project, and I don't regret it, but economically it would ABSOLUTELY have been better to buy one.
> is the wrong choice for almost anything involving large flat panels
This is not at all a common or majority opinion among the fine woodworking community. There certainly are advantages to engineered wood products, but the shortcomings of wood as an organic material (it moves with respect to humidity, regardless of what you coat it with) can be overcome through successful furniture design.
Also, IKEA is not the comparison for my DIY projects. I compare quite favorably in cost to Thomas Moser, West Elm, etc.
It's difficult to generalize, given that they have an absolutely huge inventory, but the IKEA pieces I own (Two tables, two sets of cabinets) have held up for a decade, and are likely to hold up for at least two more.
The key to IKEA furniture, I have found, is to place it where you want it and never move it. I have Billy bookcases that have lasted 15 years while being FULLY loaded. I also have had to replace my son's Billy cases as we've rearranged and updated his bedroom multiple times over the years. He doesn't abuse them, they just don't like be moved in and out the room,even empty, for painting or other projects.
Wood's expensive. High quality exotic wood can be very expensive. Someone making their first pieces of furniture will likely (should) be using MDF or pine, same as an Ikea item, but will still be paying more just for the materials than the finished item.
You are totally right about furniture, though if you enjoy it; it can certainly be worth while. With practice you can save money over higher end places like Crate and Barrel or Pottery Barn that might have more interesting design than Ikea. Any furniture you build should be because you enjoy the process, saving money can be elusive.
For things like the railing the original poster mentioned, that really falls under home improvement. For those things which are generally site built by a carpenter, you can absolutely save money even factoring in a few tools.
Depends on the item. IKEA is known for it’s cheap and flimsy particle board furniture, but it also sells solid hardwood furniture that is quite solid and well built.
I have a $99 table and 4 chairs that i bought from them something like 8 or 9 years ago. Still holding up very well, though I can see how some of their other stuff wouldn't do so well.
Miter saw (even without sliding) was transformative for me as well. A cheap table saw complements it nicely (I then splurged and got a CNC router, too, which opens up a wide range of techniques). AFter that I ended up playing with chisels, which I always thought were very primitive, but you can do a surprising amount of nice work with just a chisel and a hand saw.
I'm a computer programmer but I expect that more and more of my hobby time is going to be making things by hand. It's really a job, after struggling with some stupid code, to just go design something on paper, make a few cuts, and see it work in reality.
That’s the exact reason I (as a programmer) want to start doing some wood work, there’s something about creating tangible stuff that web programming just doesn’t fulfill.
You talk about the table saw as a complement. I thought it was a must have, legit question, how do you make precise long cuts without a table saw?
A track saw is a great option for long straight cuts. As with any tool you can find inexpensive to very expensive options. The cheapest option is to use a straight edge with a normal handheld circular saw. Next up are jigs that attach to a circular saw. Finally there are the true track saws. For the budget friendly end, look at the options from Kreg, on the high end, Festool.
A tracksaw will generally perform better than 99% of the tablesaws out there for breaking down sheet goods. And will be far safer as well (kickback is a bitch).
If you're interested in making furniture you should check out Lost Art Press' Anarchist's Design Book. It describes making "vernacular" furniture, i.e., not fancy but sturdy and durable furniture.
I'm in my early 40s now and had never done any woodworking a single day in my life and never even had really used any type power tool other than maybe a drill.
Early in the lockdown, my wife and I decided to completely redo our backyard, We were initially going to hire someone to do it, but after receiving bids for $20k+, we chose to tackle it on our own.
My first project for the new backyard were two simple cedar planter boxes. Fast forward five months and I've made more planter boxes, a deck, some steps, acoustic panels to hang in my studio, and a custom desk for my daughter.
I've found that while the end results are far from perfect, they're still pretty great. Even after figuring in purchasing a few power tools (including a sliding compound mitre saw like you mentioned) we still have spent way less money than had we hired someone to do the same work.
I'm really looking forward to my future projects. My only regret is not taking this up sooner!
So, this is a stupid question, but do you mind explaining what are the benefits of using planter boxes vs just planting directly in the ground? We're getting into gardening a bit during the pandemic as well and I'm trying to understand why planter boxes have become so popular. Thank you!
There are probably other reasons people use them, but a few reasons why planter boxes can be the right choice:
(1) If you live in an area with very poor soil conditions, it may take years and lots of hard work to get your soil usable for the things you want to plant. Or you can grab planting soil that meets your requirements upfront and dump it into some planter boxes.
(2) They look nice, and some people are going for that look in their garden.
(3) Not needing to kneel so much, which can be a game changer for people with eg knee problems.
4) Not having to actually dig to plant. The work involved in buying soil and dumping in a planter box usually pales in comparison to digging a hole a couple-to-few feet deep, wide, and long.
Like probably many people here I had my first computer (running DOS) at an early age.
I've never shied away from DIY projects but didn't truly feel comfortable that I'd do them well until I started building up my tool collection.
Equipped with the right tools and youtube as you mentioned, there's usually nothing complicated about it and it's a lot of fun to go from virtual to physical creation.
Just bought myself a new 12" dual bevel sliding miter saw. Such an amazing upgrade from my cheap 7.5" single bevel sliding miter saw I had. I didn't want to spend $450 on it, but damn I'm glad I did.
I used this justification to buy a really good router. I would love to have a drill press and a spindle sander; there's some things you just need one to accomplish well.
Always get the best tool you can afford! During the lockdown, I got a new DeWalt table saw with a proper rack-and-pinion fence. It can make the most accurate cuts and is an absolute joy to use! Worth every penny and then some! I've already used it for a number of projects.
Another detracting factor in the ventilator value calculus is the number of doctors and nurses infected while treating intubated patients. It is very difficult to contain the contamination when removing tubes as the patient always coughs. I'm not sure ventilators save net lives.
I think all the current measures are for the purpose of curve flattening. The volume under the curve (infected people) will be the same but it will be spread over a longer time period and hopefully avoid a spike of cases that will crush health care systems.
Unfortunately that math doesn't work. The US has roughly 100k ICU beds. Critical patients are spending about two weeks on a ventilator. Doing the math that means we can treat a maximum of 2 million patients this year.
Assuming half the country gets infected and the 20-30% hospitalization rate remains that's 35 million or so patients.
So best case we can treat about 5% of the cases. And that's if we let no other patients into the ICU. Which isnt practical because they run at ~80% capacity or more anyways. So really that number drops down to more like 1%.
The only option is to contain it or watch millions die.
The harm is that Facebook gains control over prediction markets that they then sell to the rich and powerful to nudge enough of the population to their points of view. These points of view are often not in the general public interest.
Agree here; Given the insane hours that people spend in FB, the feed becomes part of their reality and better nudges affect their outlook on the world, their spending decisions and their political directions.
Many Enterprises run critical legacy apps that depend on IE and it's ability to emulate lower versions. Many large orgs would require $100's of millions to rewrite all of them. No one will fund exercise that until the proverbial gun is point at them. 2029 sounds about right.
Many large orgs would require $100's of millions to rewrite all of them.
My org loaded Chrome on all of the machines for our internal web sites, but according to my logs, almost nobody uses it. They're just too used to clicking on the (e), I guess.
Your org should replace the (e) with a shortcut to Chrome—but with the name and icon changed to match Internet Explorer. Much easier than retraining all the monkeys.
...and accelerate the concentration of wealth and power to the point where the top 10% are starting to complain about the top 1%. Moving into developing nations is just the system expanding to extract what little surplus value they create.
I'm not sure the criteria for determining an 'average' pilot but if becoming a test pilot is a big incentive for trying to be the best you can wouldn't this drag the average pilot quality down?
I think trying to think of pilots as being good or bad on some abstract scale is almost certainly an oversimplification.
The reality is probably more like for developers, some of the best developers in terms of achievements are not people you'd want to work with on a daily basis. In the same way that an F1 driver wouldn't necessarily be the world's best bus driver.
A principle in software is to never write the most complicated code you possibly can, because maintenance is harder than writing, and if you could only just barely write it in the first place, you won't be able to maintain it.
The principle for pilots is similar.
As to skills assessments, you're right, it's difficult. But you can use some general proxies. Certification pilots should be drawn from a standard pool, not a test-pilot pool. Some sense of performance on some standardised battery of qualification flights or simulator check-flights might be used, with scoring based on success or performance in identifying and addressing conditions encountered.
The fact that a precise quantity cannot be confidently stated doesn't mean that no quantity or range can be given.
And for the sake of the certification pilots, I'm assuming check-out flights would either be in simulators or with a more qualified check pilot assisting.
I think the point that I was trying to make is that a test pilot probably has attributes / skills which make them well qualified as test pilots but perhaps wouldn't make them particularly good line pilots and vice versa.
An ideal test pilots should excel in stick and rudder skills and have the ability to work around mechanical / system problems.
For a line pilot attributes like organisational skills and planning, interpersonal skills and meteorology skills are much more valuable.
Good points, though I'd argue that for a certification flight, you still want to both emphasize conventional operational training and activities and a minimum set of qualifications for those.
There has been a bit of pain aside from the flimsy monetary damages. To date Equifax had to manage numerous lawsuits from municipal, state and federal jurisdictions. They were investigated by FTC, SEC, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, UK Financial Conduct Authority, UK Information Commissioner’s Office (privacy regulator) and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. Equifax had to attend congressional hearings conducted by the House Financial Services Committee, the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Digital Commerce & Consumer Protection and the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Communications. The outcome aside from monetary penalties also should factor substantial reputation damages, costs of increased regulation at both the state and federal levels, CEO Richard Smith retirement, issuance of a public apology and the IRS suspended its contract with Equifax. Further lawsuits, hearings and regulation will continue to tax Equifax.
