The best wood for my project is the stuff I actually have.

@jdenslinger

4 жыл бұрын

:D

@vidia7400

4 жыл бұрын

That is accurate, a board in the hand is worth a lumber yard a hundred miles down the street

@avrumisolaimani8546

3 жыл бұрын

was that a direct quote from a rex krueger video

@donaldasayers

3 жыл бұрын

@@avrumisolaimani8546 Probably.

@TimothyRitzer

3 жыл бұрын

Or, potentially, the wood I can afford

The first half of the kzread.infoUgkx3ICSK6nSknaL_45CU2NmFSoXjarGMDiJ book is everything about wood: types, tools, finishes, setting up shop etc. The second half is all about doing projects for inside and outside of the home. The color pictures are helpful. After reading a dozen of these types of books, this is probably the best overall (layout, color photos, plans). Only detraction is that many of the projects use a table saw/router/planer, which are usually expensive and take up space, so the plans are less friendly to newcomers and the budget conscious. But I know I can use a drill, circular saw or a jigsaw to make the projects.

I love how the "Boxes" was a coffin @ 2:36

@charadremur333

4 жыл бұрын

At least It's not stone.

@luisasaenz5017

3 жыл бұрын

Bahahaha made me chuckle

@adamstewart5013

2 жыл бұрын

I legit rewind to make sure I didn’t hallucinate that XD

“Swamp ash” caught my inner child off guard.

I use softwood for almost everything i build. Its great and also becuase im poor.

@aloisth.5031

3 жыл бұрын

yea, ho doesnt

@baconsneeze

2 жыл бұрын

same! the only reason i would use hardwood is if I am going to use it to beat soft wood :D

@bcc5701

2 жыл бұрын

Yea looks like I found my advice

Everytime I think "I need Rex to make a video about X," he already has. Thanks big homie.

“Taste is a new thing I’m trying in my projects.” comedy gold, man.

It takes a real pair of buckeyes to tackle a subject like this on youtube. Best of luck to you sir.

Must be a eye of the beholder type thing, because I just LOVE how poplar looks; especially pieces that have a lot of different colors. Having one board that goes from white to yellow to green to purple to dark brown I think looks spectacular as a shelf, dresser top, etc!

@bryceanderson4864

2 жыл бұрын

Same!

@brentmoseley3176

2 жыл бұрын

Yep, agreed, I made a beautiful game table out of poplar and several other kinds of wood (walnut, ipe, curly maple, granadillo) and then applied an oil based poly. I specifically chose pieces of poplar that had no greenish tint, and an interesting grain pattern. The oil based poly gave it a warm, golden hue that I love!

@MegaSchew

2 жыл бұрын

i love popular as well...

@jjay8439

2 жыл бұрын

I love when poplar gets those purple,green,or dark streaks in it

@thesinfultictac5704

Жыл бұрын

My wife loves how it starts off purple. Its beautiful in that way

Local woods for me, pine, plywood... erm.. MDF?

@RexKrueger

4 жыл бұрын

No shame in pine. A fine wood.

@mikecurtin9831

4 жыл бұрын

I used to hate MDF, but there are applications where it's the material of choice. (Particularly speaker cabinets because it's acoustically dead, which is what you want.) Then I also realized that it's making good use of sawdust.

@fotopdo

4 жыл бұрын

Mike Curtin you might be interested in a video called “worlds 2nd best speakers”, the channel is tech ingredients. He does a test measure resonance in MDF and plywood, and they are similar, but the plywood is slightly better. His claim is that it’s a stiffness to weight ratio that is important, and if you double the plywood you will have the same weight as mdf with more than twice the stiffness... or less than half the resonance. This was new to me, I’m certainly not a physicist but it’s seems compelling.

@mikecurtin9831

4 жыл бұрын

@@fotopdo That's very interesting. I'll look into it. Thanks much.

@JosephLorentzen

4 жыл бұрын

@@mikecurtin9831 I find MDF furniture on the side of the road. Great practice material and good shop materail.

About 5 times while watching this video I thought 'hey I should like this video', only to scroll down & see that I already had

I live in South Wales where the only choice of wood is wet pine and dry pine 😂

This helped me a lot! Every wood I have access to turns out to be tough springy hardwood!

Where i live, we have 'native timber' that a lot of old houses are built from. I think we eventually decided it was hickory. That stuff will destroy any power driven edge you try to run through it; circular saws, reciprocating saw, even a spade bit is useless after a couple of holes. Its also freakishly heavy. We reclaimed some to make a 3'x6'x2" workbench top that has to weigh 150-200lbs. The really amazing thing is it was all hand cut in the mid-19th century, or for the larger pieces, flattened with nothing but an axe.

@RexKrueger

4 жыл бұрын

It was probably worked green. Many woods are easy when green and then rock hard when dry. Hickory is famous for this.

I know I'm four years late to the party, but I live in Canton, and I just discovered American Hophornbeam, my buddy had some he had to cut down in his yard and I grabbed a log. I made a mallet out of it this weekend, and holy cow... it's crazy how rock hard it is. It's also called ironwood, and I can see why.

I love the Alton Brown approach to woodworking!

@TwinPhoenix666

3 жыл бұрын

I hadn't realized this but, you're exactly right. Totally explains why I could watch either/both of them on repeat for years and never grow tired of it. Rex Krueger: the Alton Brown of woodworking. I love it!!

"Taste is a new thing I'm trying" Well I guess you look into that while I go through my piles of pallet wood

@RexKrueger

4 жыл бұрын

No shame in the pallet game.

@keithmarlowe5569

4 жыл бұрын

Plumbing supply stores are a trove of really good wood that just need a little processing. I don't know what species they use but it seems hard to me. The bundles of pipe are banded together with pieces of wood on top and bottom with a groove for the band. Rip off the groove on table saw. You can use as is or glue together. I use 3 or 4 dabs of two part epoxy and wood glue, that way I can unclamp in 10 minutes, which is twice the cure time of the epoxy, and it will hold while the wood glue fully cures. I think you can get these at Lowes and Home Depot as well; pretty sure all bundles of pipe are banded the same way.

@honey5bucket

4 жыл бұрын

US made pallets use domestic woods. And so do the pallets from other countries. Except they use THEIR domestic woods. If there is a shop/store in your area that imports merchandise from overseas, ask the manager if you can get some of the shipping pallets their imports come on.

@eejuice

3 жыл бұрын

@@RexKrueger Oh, I'm not so sure about that... Pallet wood ruined a brand new set of knives on my jointer. I planed one of the pallet's stringers down - most assuredly a thing of heavy, hard exotic beauty from a distant land - only to discover when truing up a clean soft piece of spruce a week later that a 2-inch-wide streak of roughness was longtitudunally polluting the purity of the freshly milled softwood. I kicked myself because only 2 weeks prior, I had watched Colin Kenecht's vid on avoiding pallet wood. The unseen crap and corruption invisibly pressed into the wood's surface turned out to be devastating to the jointer's knives. I'd even gone to the trouble of scanning it with a metal detector beforehand! Once burnt, twice shy. No more pallet wood for this cat.

@brunsy1990

3 жыл бұрын

@@honey5bucket another thing on international shipping, the pallets are required to be kiln dried, Domestic pallets with a flame stamp marking in the US indicate they have been through a kiln. This is to ensure there are no live bugs or surviving eggs in the wood. Any sort of supply house is worth the trip to ask about their pallets. I've gotten stacks of oak 3x4 rough cut lumber that was used to ship commercial refrigeration units.

Hi Rex it’s me Sumo, your channel has gone really well & I remember the times we were both at 100 subscribers & trying our best, congrats brother for your success on KZread 🤠👍

@RexKrueger

4 жыл бұрын

You're very kind to say so! I see some fine growth in your channel too and A LOT of content in the last 18 months. Give yourself some credit, too!

Rex Krueger MD!!!!!!! now I definitely watch that show we're Rex fixes people's problems with tools

That was a very helpful video. I have not seen wood selection justified in those ways before. "Put a sock in it!" That is a reasonable defense against us nit-picking your advice. Jesse, the Samurai Carpenter, had a longer, less family-friendly response to destructive criticism.

“Taste is a new thing I’m trying.” Ha, ha! I feel ya, buddy!

@LiviuGelea

4 жыл бұрын

best

Very interesting video sir, I think I have told you I am 48 I have been working with wood for the majority of my life. Watching this video, it made me realize, I have spent the majority of my life working with basically the cheapest or easiest, wood I can get in my area, Pine being the cheapest and easiest to get then up in price, popular, oak, and cedar and this past year, I was able to buy a black walnut tree, I milled myself and Hickory i cut myself.So like you, I have mostly used woods in my area I can get easy enough, find as scrap to repurpose etc. But watching this video makes me want to get some soft maple, cherry etc. Thanks for sharing this video with us,. Thanks again for such a fun video about a lot of different types of woods. You did an excellent job and this like you mentioned wasn't an easy task to make, you made it look easy and did a great job. Have a blessed week sir. dale

I love working with African hardwoods like Wenge. Unfortunately, my wallet and tools beg to differ.

You knocked it out of the park on this on, Rex. Great video. Thank you.

@RexKrueger

4 жыл бұрын

Thanks for saying so!

That drywall mud trick just changed my life.

In my local we got that Bubblegum Cherry, that Ash Wednesday, that Jamaican Maple. I don't know what Poplar is, but we got all the Purple you need this side of Cali. I don't know what it's like on a plane, but you can grind it and i've been told it makes a great Vice.

@RexKrueger

4 жыл бұрын

That could have been a stupid comment, but it turned out quite clever. The only thing you missed was a reference to trees.

@cannaroe1213

4 жыл бұрын

​@@RexKrueger Haha, oh snap! How on earth did I forget trees! 🌳🌲 🌴 Well so long as you have the fantastic, interesting and very informative videos Rex, I got the stupid comments! This is KZread after all... where we all have to pitch in and work together - for the greater wood! 💪

I've been a subscriber of yours for a little while now (I think since around the $2 plane iron vid) and I gotta say, your unique, no-nonsense style of videos that are jam-packed with useful, practical information are so awesome, and you've only gotten better and better as the months progressed. I really appreciate how you make everything very practical-minded and beginner-friendly - if only you were around when I was trying to get started with woodworking!!

@RexKrueger

4 жыл бұрын

Thanks very much! You just summarized exactly what I'm after.

Poplar is also good for mimicking other woods. Use a light reddish/brown dye, for example, to mimic aged cherry.

@michaelwelch442

4 жыл бұрын

Larry Brown that wood sure is pop-a-lar

@bradenpolley8286

3 жыл бұрын

It’s the poor man’s cherry as they say

@justinayers3589

2 жыл бұрын

@@bradenpolley8286 i thought alder was poor mans cherry

I've been sick for the past two days and have just found your channel. I really appreciate the practical and straightforward approach you take. It's been a pleasure going through the woodworking for humans series as well!

@gilbertbanks2551

3 жыл бұрын

After getting this stuff few days ago, I could hardly put it down afterwards [Link Here== *TopFineWoodworking. Com* ]. There are lots of colorful pictures, with detailed descriptions of every step in the project. You will never miss your way using this plan. It was more than I expected.?

I appreciate your informative tone. You're a very personable guy and I laughed when you poked your head out under the bench, but I appreciate your restraint from making too many tangents or jokes about how poplar is popular to work with... Another great video, thank you!

@FearsomeWarrior

4 жыл бұрын

I think many of us under appreciate Rex’s ability to put this much monologue/narrative/information and we pay attention. Maybe attributed by the way he talks. Wonder how much effort he consciously puts into making his lines come out clear and understandable.

Woods I’ve been around most of my life...Sitka Spruce, Yellow Cedar, White Paper Birch, Diamond Willow.

I like Poplar for things I'm going to paint: it's generally pretty cheap, and when it's painted you don't care how it looks

I don't know if it grows in my area, but hedge is the densest wood I have worked with and it has a very bright yellow color that might be good for some projects(UV makes it go darker) so if you haven't tried it I suggest finding a peice or two.

Those are the best kind of boxes to make every one is dying to get one!!!

On splitting wood: Viking longboats we basically made with wood wedges and axes only. It's really interesting to look at Scandinavian wood working with all their specialist axes.

You make awesome content. Im a chef. I spend more hours on the road and at work than I spend in my shop. I like power tools, tech, and big builds, but I play your vids when Im not in my shop. I always find something new and how to apply it to what Im doing. In turn, my minutes in the shop have become so much more productive. Youre not doing it for the keyboard nitpicking warriors. Youre doing it for us, and for that I thank you for your time and passion for sharing knowledge. Big thanks from smalltown midwest, USA.

2:36 "boxes" and by boxes, he means coffins! Hahaha

My choices for timber are mostly dictated by what I can get. Locally, I am limited to pine, jarrah, merbau, meranti, and Tassie oak/Victorian ash(which are actually eucalypts). If I take a 30 minute drive I could get a few more species, but anything comparatively "fancy" like cherry or walnut that I see a lot of US woodworkers using, are either only available as veneers, or I could mail order small pieces. For decorative stuff, if I want dark wood I use jarrah, if I want lighter I go Tassie oak or meranti. For cheap stuff I use pine.

@wrongtown

4 жыл бұрын

Yeah I reckon if he could get hold of some Jarrah he'd love it for wedges 😉 Nice dark colour but much tougher stuff.

I love how poplar looks I think it's very pretty

By far the best treatment of the subject.

Ever tried Black Locust? My family land in Indiana is thick w it. Not usually available commercially because of its naturally slender trunk (max

I made a whole canoe out of $11 poplar plywood. The worst wood you could possibly use for it but after some fiberglass cloth and resin, the canoe worked perfectly fine. Saved myself so much money. (It was my first ever wood working project so I didn’t want to spend a lot of money then mess up)

Most of the native timbers which are easy to find here in Australia are usually very hard and very tough.

@RexKrueger

4 жыл бұрын

That's what I hear. You Aussies have it rough.

You said you get the people the disagree with you, so here I am. No biggie really its just that I have to disagree with your statement about how poplar doesnt stain well. Ive been a cabinet maker and finisher for 39 years and absolutely love working with poplar. Its easily machined, sands beautifully, its nearly always dead straight and flat, very few knots, (if thats what you're looking for) and in my opinion stains and finishes perfectly. Choosing the right pieces, you can nearly mimic walnut. I love it!

Very well done. And funny to see how many times you found it impossible to say “ring porous”.

I can't bnelieve I hadn't watched this one yet. Not much in terms of new info, but I do love your opinion on the matter. Also, most of the wooden components in my tools are made out of purpleheart. Mallets are either that, Ipe (yup yup) or bulletwood ... with purpleheart inserts (always) . It's how people recognize my tools in the shop ^^

I've really learned to love poplar. It is very workable, but durable. Frankly, I think it is beautiful. I love the exaggerated marbling. I buy it in advance and keep my shop stocked with it, so the stuff I'm using is always already browned. When I shop for wood, I dig through and try to find the "ugliest" wood that I can, tell it that it's beautiful, and take it home with me.

Using danish/tunge oil brings out the green in poplar which a lot of people don't like, but I've had a few customers REQUEST poplar BECAUSE of that. Another "category 4" wood that is readily available in N America is Osage Orange (hedge/bodark). It's used for fence posts because of it's strength and durability. It changes color over time, starting out a striking yellow-brown similar to yellow heart and the turns to amber, medium brown (like walnut - not black walnut), and then back to a dark amber.

I live in South Africa. We share a river with Zimbabwe and on the banks of this river (ans its tributaries) grows my two favourite woods. Zambezi Teak, which is actually not teak at all and my all time favourite wood Pink Ivory. Pink Ivory is pretty much affordable in SA as we have our own side of the river where ours and the other trees fleeing Zimbabwe grows so you can consider it a local wood 🤣 Have you ever worked with Pink Ivory and if so did you also start seeing birdseye maple and snakewood to seem soft all of a sudden? I also like Knysna Stinkwood which is an acacia wood which I think is comparable to maple when it comes to workability but has more of a oak type color. If you love wood then I love you, Lekker

I feel like the example piece at the end went a long way to explaining the selection process and making it accessible for an international audience. We don't have the same woods here but the intended properties for each member are still going to be the same and learning that is far more useful than a crib sheet of woods I don't have access to.

Useful info. It's strange how little North American wood seems to get shipped across to Europe, so it's nice to hear a bit more about the characteristics & differences of some. Two of my favourite woods are yew & olive. Yew can be astoundingly pretty if you find some character grade stuff & it's highly resistant, so great for anything that'll be spending time outdoors. Olive finishes like a dream & is my favourite for adding accents (followed closely by black walnut), but it can take a toll on the edges of cutting tools.

My new experiment for wedged tenons when I want them accented but want something other than walnut: Grab some brass shim stock and rough it up with light sandpaper. Cut with scissors to width and wrap around your wedge. Hammer it home and then flush cut and sand as usual. I used 5 minute expoxy because I'm skeptical about how wood glue will hold. You end up with some little streaks of brass that accent your wedge that are subtle but interesting.

lovely work!

This was great! Thanks!

I love your bench made from 5 woods. An excellent choice of woods and an even better example of joinery.

@RexKrueger

4 жыл бұрын

thank you!

Very useful video! Thank you!

I enjoy ebony for my tenon wedges, kinda a pain, but damn its beautiful.

I just made a Green Egg Grill Cart out of Hickory, which is the first time I used this species. I used pocket holes to join the base. The Kreg pocket screws are self-tapping and shouldn't require pre-drilling. But I quickly learned that pre-drilling was necessary after I snapped 4 screws out of the first 8 I screwed in. I also snapped 3 drill bits during this project. The hickory looks amazing, though! I will use it again in the future, but will definitely take the time to pre-drill everything.

@RexKrueger

4 жыл бұрын

Hickory is like iron. Lasts a long time.

Thank you! That was very helpful!!

Very helpful! Thanks!

Great video! I learned so much

Thanks for the knowledge Rex

Great video! Really useful info. Thanks!

I've seen this video before. I just dismissed the super hard and super dense message. Just started woodworking, I was working with cherry and walnut. Decided I was gonna do a project with bloodwood. After rewatching this video.. that message hit me right in the face.

Thank you again for sharing. Great content

I guess I am an oddball. I LOVE Poplar. I make all kinds of projects from it. The more color variation in it the better. I made our kitchen cabinets out of it and they get all kinds of compliments. I go to the big box store specifically looking for the poplar that has dark brown, green and even red coloring. As far as I am concerned, it doesn't get any better!

@bumstudios8817

4 жыл бұрын

But what if you want something everyone else isn't using. What is not poplar?

@RexKrueger

4 жыл бұрын

I'm a fan, too. You just need to pick it for the project.

Thank you for yet another great video :)

great video, very informative, thanks

I really love your videos. I have learned tons thanks to you. Keep up the great work.

love the way you communicate.. thank you

Champion effort Rex! Keep up the good work

Excellent video. Thank you.

You sir have inspired me. Love your wife's work out bench. I'm in the middle of a desk build and i made the top out of red oak and trying to decide what to build the rest of the desk out of. You've given me food for thought. Thank you

Lots of great information in this tutorial! Thanks for sharing this.

This is one of my fav videos of yours, well done

Awesome introduction to the world of wood! Thank U

This was a really well done video, good job!

Thank you for the recommend o. The book .

One of the most direct and informative videos I've seen in almost 30 years online. Great job!

@RexKrueger

4 жыл бұрын

Thank you!

@richardwebb2348

4 жыл бұрын

Adrian 1138 - Try to get out more!

Great video. I did learnt a lot about woods. Thanks for sharing

Great vid❤️

Thank you for making this video I enjoyed it very much and learned from it too!!

very useful video ! thanks !

@2:35 "boxes" HAHA!

Great video very educational, thanks for sharing 👊😎🤙

I recently discovered how much I love working with poplar while making swedish butter knives (red oak) & bread boards (poplar). I don't care what anyone says, it's good to ME!

@oldschoolsmart

4 жыл бұрын

Poplar works LIKE butter on the wood lathe, if you have one. Another great place to use dyes instead of stains.

@bumstudios8817

4 жыл бұрын

Sweedish butter..... yum

@gnarthdarkanen7464

4 жыл бұрын

I'm not even much of a fan of green in general... I like to consider it a "trim color" (personal)... BUT I really don't get what so many have against Poplar. For one, there isn't THAT much green in most of it... occasionally at best. Every wood has a grain texture to it... so that's a non-argument. SO it doesn't play nice with stain... I've had WONDERFUL results fairly consistently with just using dark stain and scrubbing like hell. If you push enough with a chunk of terricloth, you can stain poplar. Lots of people are mystified by my work with poplar and "antique walnut" or "dark walnut" stains... NOT the stupid hybridized "stain plus poly" products. Unilaterally, in my experience (beyond poplar, for the record) those suck... They simply aren't worth the time and effort... and it's a huge scam, just to deplete you of more money for some false hope that you can get "the same or better results" than if you just stained it properly, let it dry, and then poly-coated, clear-coated, or sprayed it with friggin' lacquer... PROPERLY. In any case... I agree with you. Poplar's always been a perfectly good wood. If you reserve that "greenish tinted" stuff for more appropriate opportunities, it can be useful too... and sometimes, it's a good mental exercise to CREATE the opportunity to use the "weird stuff" saved back. (because I've been lazy and am now running out of space...lolz) ;o)

@bumstudios8817

4 жыл бұрын

@@gnarthdarkanen7464 do you use the prestain stuff? I have had good results with that on pine that normally doesn't stain well

@gnarthdarkanen7464

4 жыл бұрын

@@bumstudios8817 Honestly? Not yet... I might have to check it out though. I have "boiled and sunned" pieces before, when I was confident stain wasn't going to go well... It's a little hit and miss, but for the cheap... it's more hit than miss in my experience. BUT if you get decent (or better) results with the prestain products... I'm willing to go see it. Back when I started (probably 90's ish) and I wasn't so serious about it ... I'd try almost anything... and there were some products that came with "scary consequences"... I don't recall ever trying a prestain though... BUT the glues have definitely improved since then... Thanks for the tip! ;o)

"Its just a bench." "Its made of wood." Weeell, with that one glorious piece of utility furniture you've explained the whole of this video. This isn't just, 'use the best wood for your project,' its more about including wood choices into the design. I think many makers get intimidated with thoughts of solid wood [sticking to ply or MDF] they feel it means more skill than they have, or 'serious' carpentry. You've gone a long way to dispel that in this video and I for one look forward to using good woods to make better project, cheers Rex. [p.s. as you asked, I'm enjoying my pull saw, its a different discipline and thats good, as I'm not always in the mood to drag my tablesaw out into the yard for a couple of crosscuts. Its actually 'enjoyable'.]

@RexKrueger

4 жыл бұрын

I really think that making one or two cuts on a power saw is a huge waste of time. A good hand saw is such a time-saver.

Thanks for the education.

I really like that work out bench. It's beautiful, in so many ways!

Thank you for some great ideas.!!

Excellent and realistic approach!

WOW that was a great overview thanks!! Now I understand it a little better.

Nice guitars Rex! Beautiful

@Rex Krueger would you consider making a video about wood purchasing for beginners? I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed.

@RexKrueger

4 жыл бұрын

That one's tough because it varries depending on where you live. I want to, but it's difficult.

@Asdayasman

4 жыл бұрын

@@RexKrueger How do we learn to learn in our area, then? I'm so stupid I don't even know the questions to ask.

Man dude, you are so good at this stuff!! Thank you for these great vids! Inspiring me to make more and more things.

thank you Rex

Perfect Rex. Perfect. Excellent video. Very practical. Like woodworking always has been!

Rex thank you so much for all the videos you put out. I'm a new woodworker and absolutely LOVING the hobby/ craft of it and videos like yours truly help me out and make me feel not so overwhelmed.

Simple, to the point and, most importantly, functional! Wood selection is a huge topic as you said and I really like how present it in terms of practicallity. Love your videos!

Good job well thought out and explained😎😎😎😎