Designing and Building Your Own Solid Hardwood Furniture

Designing your own solid wood furniture can be a really rewarding experience or it can be the most frustrating @#%*&^# experience of your @#%*&^# life. It all depends on your approach. Here are a few tips to help your experience along.

#1 Avoid Home Depot like it were swine flu

Home Depot gives rough carpentry a bad name. Most power tools are underpowered for hardwoods and will leave you with burn marks or other gouges that will take a lot of time at the end sanding them out. Sanding will be the worst part of building your furniture (unless you're some sort of freak). If you don't have all of the tools you need consider signing up for a woodworking class at your local college. Most are nicely equipped and have a teacher that sort of knows what he or she is doing to help.

#2 If you have never designed furniture stick with the basics

Furniture designing can look great in a rough drawing but can quickly (after about 40 hours of work) turn into a beautiful piece of firewood. Find a design online. I'm not saying buy some plan off the internet because frankly most of them are UGLY. Do a search for fine wood furniture on Google and save some designs you like for later. Here are a few sites with nice furniture:

http://www.elcumbre.com
http://www.thosmoser.com
http://www.lumberjocks.com

#3 Do a design sketch

Now I guarantee that I am worse at drawing than you are. If you don't believe me email me and I will give you the phone number to my old art teacher, she'll vouch for me. The good news is you don't have to draw. Download Google Sketchup. It's a free design program that is easy to learn and will let you see the design in 3d before building some ugly monstrosity. Next find a website with standard furniture measurements and check them against your design. You don't want to make a table only to find out your legs wont fit under the table with the chairs you have.

#4 Use high quality supplies

Don't scrimp on your hardware and supplies. Cheap sandpaper is cheap. Tight Bond II glue is cheap (yes it is) smear it on thick, it's cheap insurance. Buy wood from a reputable lumber yard. Make sure it has been kiln dried. If you can't afford the wood you really want wait and save. You could be spending a LONG time with this project and the rest of your life with the finished project, don't settle on something you don't really want because its $50 cheaper.

#5 If you think you have sanded enough KEEP SANDING

Those spots that haven't been sanded enough really show up when that finish goes on. And no, your wife won't believe you were going for a more rustic look. Sand until you are sure all of your piece is smooth. Start with a rough grit like 80 and work your way up to 320, your efforts will pay off.

#6 Avoid Home Depot like it were swine flu

Your finish is what is most seen on you furniture and even expensive finish isn't that expensive. And yes Minwax does suck. A real nice product that looks great and is easy to apply is called Waterlox. It is available at most woodworking stores or online. It will only run you about $20 and will last you a few projects.

Well here are some of my tips learned by experience. Don't be like me and do things the hard way and your experience will be a lot nicer. TRUST ME.