Quick Skills for Busy Woodworkers: Elevate Your Craft in 10 Minutes

You can do real woodworking even if you're short on time. Here are some ideas.

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Wood Work for Humans Tool List (affiliate):
*Cutting*
(Winner of the affordable dovetail-saw shootout.)
(Needs tune-up to work well.)
(Works out of the box)
(My favorite affordable new chisels.)
(I use these to make the DIY specialty planes, but I also like them for general work.)

*Sharpening*

*Marking and Measuring*
(For marking and the built-in awl).
(Excellent, inexpensive marking knife.)

*Drilling*

*Work-Holding*

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0:00 Intro
2:00 Crosscuts
3:33 Splitting
6:26 Miters
8:24 Joinery Plane
10:37 Shooting
11:54 Dovetails
14:30 Outro

#woodworkingtips #woodworkforhumans

[nagranoth_]

It's actually better practicing sawing directly next to a line. It's going to be a very rare joint where you want to split a line (or use a line, accurate joinery tends to be knifed); most of the time you want your saw next to the line on the waste wood, so you don't change the dimensions of the remaining wood. Added advantage; cutting next to the line you get a much better indication of your accuracy. If you saw away the line this only means the line fitted within the kerf, it doesn't mean the kerf exactly followed the line, and inaccuracy gets worse the bigger the difference in width between the line and your kerf. Sawing next to the line you can see exactly whether you followed it: it should remain completely with no wood left between the line and the kerf.

[mailleweaver]

Don't forget maintenance tasks, either... those little things you don't have time for in the middle of a project, seem too unimportant to worry about most of the time, or seem too big to do all at once and so tend to not get done. Some examples: clean behind things, oil some tools that don't get used very often, organize your drill bits, gather up some tools that have been left scattered from previous projects, put away some of the clutter that tends to collect on flat surfaces, sweep around the edges of the room, clean the rust off of a tool that has been neglected, sharpen something, clean one shelf, question the layout of your shop, change that one burned out light bulb or buzzing ballast, start a shopping list of the things you mean to get when you're at the hardware store for something else but keep forgetting. All of these things will make your more useful chunks of time more efficient and/or more pleasant.
This could also be extended to chores outside of the shop. Do bits and pieces of the things that keep you out of the shop so you don't have to "waste" a whole day or a whole weekend doing random little chores all over instead of doing what you want to in the shop.

[billmccabe]

Being disabled, I can stand in my shop 10-15 minutes, usually at the max time frame. Pre-planning my shop time, and constantly incorporating practice in my actions makes my time become productive, and fun.
Sage advice, and I do share some of my small triumphs, it helps the time fly...

[brucecomerford]

What a wonderful video. I usually get up a bit early in the morning and do 30-40 minutes in my shed, practising skills and slowly building my workbench. When I get home after work, the rest of the night is spent looking after my disabled daughter. I grab my sanity time wherever I can.

[joseescoto]

I have a 2 month old baby and a new woodworker. I greatly appreciate this video

[pitsnipe]

Some of my favorite times in the shop is just fooling around with my planes and chisels making shavings.

[dave-qhqr]

Rex this is one of your BEST videos. You’re right we are all busy but the 10-15 min break from that business brings much mental peace. Practice makes perfect! Thanks for all you do to make us DIY’er’s better.

[skippylippy]

This video puts the FUN in woodworking. Thank you REX! 💯 👍
I often go to the shop for just 15 minutes and "play".
Sometimes I play with my chisels, or a hand plane, or a hand saw. I make shavings and chips! 💥

[theeddorian]

This a really useful discussion. A trick my grandfather taught me about crosscutting was to use the saw plate as a mirror. In that mirror, the reflection makes the saw appear sort of transparent and the board seems to visible on both sides of the saw. You want the edge of the board to appear to extend without an angle in it from one side of the plate through the other. You keep that apparent line straight while starting the cut. As you and other woodworkers point out, once the cut is well started it tends to stay straight and in the plane you started it in. I was told this when I was quite young. I did not understand how it worked until I took geometry in high school.

[keeganaldrich]

This man is the bald Bob Ross of wood working, I love it. Subscribed. Thank you Rex for the valuable tips, and insight as well as the educational entertainment.

[jonoabroad]

I'm building Richard Macguire's Escher Bench and the joints are embarrassing and it's taken longer than a pyramid. I'm proud of it and it is making me appreciate the time I have and how much I can accomplish in the time I have available.

Your videos are an incredible source of inspiration and entertainment - the handle short still makes me laugh.

This is all a way to say this was an awesome video, right up there with your plane restoration set that gave me the confidence to clean up a set of second hand planes and start using them.

Thank you.

[dwainlambrigger]

One of your best videos recently. I am a weekly viewer and found this video amazingly satisfying. I am excited to get out in the shop more because of this video than many I have seen recently. Well done, and thanks.

[coreygrua]

Oh…my FAVORITE teacher! Some help with basics and valuable time. Thanks!

[FearsomeWarrior]

Seeing the Florip saw brought out the emotions. Cancer sucks.

I think about all I want to do on my drive home from work. When I get home all I want to do is sit down. When people have a negative reaction to the suggestion of a four day work week I wonder if they enjoy working 45-65 hours a week and prefer not seeing their family.

[phlosen]

15:20 as a father of three with a full time job, i usually dont have much time for woodworking. However, i have a space where i can just leave my stuff and nobody will be bothered. So i just go there, plane a board for 15 minutes and then make dinner.
Sure it takes weeks to make any notable progress in my endgrain cutting board, but i am in no rush :)

[radicallyforjesus]

I have spent the last couple of years tinkering and learning a ton off of another local woodworkers scrap pile. I went 2x and got scraps from him. That yielded me hardwood scraps which I had never bought hardwood at all. I was too terrified of the cost v error potential.

I have since learned to carve with a trim router on those scraps and make some decent signs. I have been practicing box joints, rabbets, etc. Box joint practice ends up making useful cell phone stands too. lol One day I want to try dovetails but I am not there yet. I will get there eventually.

For a long time I had a lot of fear of messing up. Embracing scrap practice was the thing I needed. I was too mentally hung up on not wasting purchased wood. But those scraps have helped me learn so much. I still have a long way to go. I am a homeschool Mom with little bits of time so this video resonates.

For my birthday in Feb my husband is going to take me to one of the hardwood dealers here. I now have a small planer and jointer so I want to get some rough lumber and finally perhaps create my own scraps. Lol

And hello from down in Wayne County!

[eloscuro]

About a year ago, I actually had a scrap of time like this. For my day job, I needed a docking station for 2 laptops with 2 monitors. All of the stations sold on Amazon were for 1 laptop with 2 monitors. So I had to modify it and move the center supports inwards so both laptops on each side would fit. This involved drilling large precise holes in particle board. Fortunately (thanks to you), I had a tool in which I had practiced on that was ideal - the bit brace. I carefully drilled those holes required to move the center supports, making sure I didn't blow anything out.
But I also needed some additional holes in the sides for USB cable routing. And these holes were partial with the bottom being open so the cables could be run though them. Any power drill would have ripped that open side out, but the bit brace cut them perfectly. And I was done in 15 minutes, ready for my zoom meeting.

[cdnbean]

so many times that I only have 15-30 minutes and I don't bother going to the shop because I feel it's just not enough time to do anything... THANK you for changing my mind!!

[loganbender]

"Incompetence is the path to mastery"

[davidwilliams]

@13:45 "no music, no podcast". Get in the zone. Appreciate the wood, the tool and yourself as you create and learn during that scrap of time.