Ever think you “had” a skill, only to realize what you had was the bare rudiments?
That’s sort of what’s been happening to me with woodworking.
I know how to use power tools. I know how to screw two piece of wood together – or nail, even – without making a mess of things. I can put moulding around a window with reasonable mitered joints. I can make a raised bed with no trouble at all. I can use most power tools pretty well.
Gutting and redoing a house (or making furniture, which is the next step) requires so much more than that.
Skills I need to get a handle on to finish the foyer:
* I need to learn how to use a Kreg Jig (link) to make pocket holes. This is for the overhead bin’s frame, for invisible joins.
(The overhead bin is a storage unit I’m building over the coat-hanging rod)
* I need to learn how to work with a slab of maple (1″-plus thick, 4′ long), how to square it, and how to fill the crack with resin (video link)
* I need to learn how to build a face frame for the bin, and how to hinge the door (the slab of maple, probably in two parts) so that it hangs evenly and looks nice.
When that’s all done, the next skill up is learning to use a router. Because routers are cool.
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Maybe a woodworking class? Not sure.
I’m pretty sure the foyer stuff I can manage by trial-and-error, as soon as I get over the fear of trials and errors. The finer stuff, though, yes, a woodworking class might be a good idea.
Ahahaha yes. Woodworking being one of them. My dad was good at quite a range of woodworking — I watched him do everything from frame and finish a wall to build a very nice china cabinet with stained glass doors — but I only watched, so I have an idea of how things go but don’t really know how to do it myself. :-/ (On a smaller scale, I feel like that about knitting currently, too. I know how this should work, and can make some of it go, but some of it is clearly not working right …)
Yeah, I was like that about a lot of things. Most of the home things, too. Cooking. Fire-making. etc.
I will third the class idea. My sister took one in college, and made a number of very nice tables. Her partner grew up with a father who built houses and who apprenticed and earned on the job.