Comment by bardworx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bardworx | Hacker News Reader

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You probably know what you're doing but for a beginner, 2x4 isn't a good choice because:

1. 2x4 are not 2" x 4" and when you start, you make a lot of assumptions that land you in hot water.

2. A beginner will not know what does "green" vs. "klin" mean and will have a hard time getting anything to be straight.

3. Construction lumber is made for construction and not interior use because of many different factors.

I would highly recommend choosing poplar 1x8 boards (they will neither be perfectly 1 inch in thickness nor 8 inches in width but close). They are easy to work with because poplar is soft, even though it called a "hardwood". And the wood takes paint and stain very well.

Also, with poplar, your list of beginner tools will be spot on. You wouldn't even need much more and I'm confident that I can put together a good enough kit for under $250 by using only corded tools and an extension cord.

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.

I’ve been using 2x4s (1.5” by 3.5”) as a beginner, and I’m happy so far. They’re a very nice, convenient shape for a lot of things and aren’t very heavy and are very cheap.

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