WoodTreks - A Wood Working Video Blog

October 31, 2011 11:32 AM

WoodTreks is a well-produced video blog about traditional woodworking with hand tools. Many of the videos are aimed at the beginner.

Some highlights include an introductory series on hand planes, one of the foundational tools of woodworking by hand:

• An Introduction to Five Top Plane Types
• How to Use a Hand Plane
• How to Tune Up a Hand Plane
• Common Mistakes Using a Hand Plane

Other great videos:

• Hide Glues: Background, Selection, and How to Prepare Them
• How to Evaluate and Select Wood At a Lumberyard
• For the more advanced woodworker: Making and Applying Decorative String Inlay

Or if you'd just like to see a master craftsman do something well:

• How to Hand Cut Precision Dovetails: The Pins (Part 1 of 2)
• How To Hand Cut Precision Dovetails: The Tails (Part 2 of 2)

posted by jedicus (21 comments total)

This is fantastic. I'm just getting into making stuff with wood, so this will be a joy to check out. Thanks!
posted by koeselitz at 11:44 AM on October 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

These look very cool, thanks for the link. Avoid the Paul Timberman instructional videos, he doesn't know nearly enough.
posted by phirleh at 11:47 AM on October 31, 2011

awesome! Woodworking has been my latest Thing, I'm psyched about this. We've been making our projects with power tools, but I love going to the big real hardware store and looking at all the serious hand tools—tiny Japanese saws, beautiful hand augurs and planes, all that good stuff. I dream of cutting dovetails someday.

I feel like there is an interesting conversation to have around hand tools vs. powered tools in many crafts. As a fairly serious handknitter, I regard machine knitting as a completely different skillset that produces different results. As a machine sewer and quilter, people who piece and quilt by hand seem to live in an entirely separate world from me. How much do assisted tools help or hinder craftsmanship and creativity? How much handwork does it take for a product to be "authentic"? For what value of authentic? Is the value in MAKING stuff, or in making STUFF?

Anyway, this is an awesome resource. Thanks!
posted by peachfuzz at 11:52 AM on October 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

This chair's practically caning itself.
posted by AugieAugustus at 11:54 AM on October 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

RE: hide glues, like rabbit's skin: Today, these glues have mostly been replaced by synthetic glues, but for all of the world’s modern advances, there still remain many valuable uses for animal glues including antique restorations, furniture construction, marquetry, and luthierie (guitar, violin & other instrument making).

Rabbit's skin glue is used is violin making not just because it can be cracked open for repairs. It has a lower "creep" than any modern glue. Meaning if you attach something and leave it under tension, over years, decades, centuries, all of your modern epoxies will slide more than it will.
posted by StickyCarpet at 11:56 AM on October 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

Such a terrific post, thank you. Slightly related but a bit more rustic, I'm absolutely obsessed with the NaturalBushcraft videos on youtube. You haven't lived until you've watched a seven minute video of a man carving a bowl with a hatchet. Twice.
posted by villanelles at dawn at 11:57 AM on October 31, 2011

Love this. When a tree knocked took down the powerline at my cabin, requiring repairs so costly that I just can't do it right now or anytime soon, I started reacquainting myself with non-powered tools in the process of making the neverending repairs to the rest of the place. Bit and brace, hand-cranked drills, ryoba saws and other lovely tools started finding their way into my regular arsenal, helped along by the fact that forty-something me has a hell of a lot more patience and focus that twenty-something or thirty-something me.

In that mode, I've been lusting after a Jointmaker saw. There's something so pleasant about working with machinery screaming in your ears.
posted by sonascope at 11:59 AM on October 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

Such a terrific post, thank you. Slightly related but a bit more rustic, I'm absolutely obsessed with the NaturalBushcraft videos on youtube. You haven't lived until you've watched a seven minute video of a man carving a bowl with a hatchet. Twice.

N'thing that these videos are great. I spent a decent chunk of this weekend carving a little bowl out of a chunk of scrap birch I found in a the woodpile. Next up--a wooden spoon (a ladle actually)....
posted by Chrischris at 12:15 PM on October 31, 2011

I'm still at the woodchips, paperweights, and bloody fingers stage but I have high hopes for the future.
posted by villanelles at dawn at 12:18 PM on October 31, 2011

Another good woodworking video site is the Wood Whisperer, with new videos coming out regularly.

I ran across WoodTreks recently, and after perusing the video library was slightly disappointed that no new videos had been posted in over a year.
posted by FissionChips at 1:01 PM on October 31, 2011

After seeing the video of the Jointmaker saw, I wanted one too. Lovely. Maybe being the daugher of a precision machinist has something to do with it.
posted by apartment dweller at 1:06 PM on October 31, 2011

This is perfect. I've been thinking about buying a hand plane even though I don't know what I'll do with it.
posted by Drab_Parts at 1:38 PM on October 31, 2011

Keith Cruickshank's workshop looks cleaner than my kitchen.
posted by Drab_Parts at 1:40 PM on October 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

My husband is a big galoot. I will have to show this to him.
posted by Lucinda at 1:47 PM on October 31, 2011

A bunch of eucalyptus and oak trees got pruned outside my office. I collected a bunch of branches and got a mora frost laminated wood carving knife.


That was three weeks ago. I already whittled handles for my beer taps, got a set of carving bits for my Dremel, and have a wish list of over one thousand dollars worth of hand tools.

My advice: if you want to have a normal life cose the browser and go buy some mass produced plastic things.
posted by Ayn Rand and God at 2:19 PM on October 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

Ayn Rand and God, it certainly can be an expensive hobby to get into. What has saved my bank account is buying used hand tools on ebay, at a cost of 10-30% of new tools. As a bonus, antique tools generally are built better and have stood the test of time. Expensive power tools are quite unnecessary for most hobbyist projects large and small.
posted by FissionChips at 3:39 PM on October 31, 2011

These look great!

And as a quick tip, from an ex-boatbuilder: Unless you are ripping lumber, you can make most one-off things things as fast with proper sharp hand tools as you can with powertools, and it's much more pleasant.
posted by gofargogo at 4:20 PM on October 31, 2011 [2 favorites]

In that mode, I've been lusting after a Jointmaker saw yt . There's something so pleasant about working with machinery screaming in your ears.

SWEET MOTHER OF GOD, sonascope!!! I MUST HAVE THIS DELICIOUS THING!

It's like the Nauglamir of the wood elves...
posted by IAmBroom at 4:42 PM on October 31, 2011

The resident seven year old has been asking for over a year now to start woodwork. His dad is the one handy with the tools (said dad has made much of our furniture, just decided we needed it, designed it and made it from scratch. He's that kind of guy) so we have said once we are in a period where we have at least one clear morning a week we will start making stuff. So this post (and other suggestions in the comments) are brilliant. Thanks so much for sharing it.
posted by Megami at 1:37 AM on November 1, 2011

Speaking of traditional woodworking tools, consider the Moroccan Bow Lathe.

This is a lovely post! Thanks for the inspirations...
posted by kinnakeet at 5:32 AM on November 1, 2011 [2 favorites]

Another terrific web reference for woodworking - with free videos - is Marc Spagnuolo's thewoodwhisperer.com.

He often gives three or four ways to do each step, so if you don't own the factory/mass production tool, or the commercial/professional tool, you can use the home-shop sized tool, or a hack to get around the process entirely.

Marc's focus is more on powertools, but in the spirit of "here's how to do it with other tools", almost every video also shows the hand tool equivalent. Awesome.
posted by talldean at 10:56 AM on November 1, 2011