Woodworking: All About Wood
What you'll learn
- This woodworking course provides many important tips & to help you choose the right material for your project.
- The difference between various woods to help you understand what you are working with.
- How to incorporate wood defects into your project.
Requirements
- There are not any course requirements or prerequisites for this class.
Description
As woodworkers, we use a variety of materials in our craft: Solid wood in the form of hardwoods and softwoods; domestic and imported woods; plywood; MDF; melamine; multi-ply plywood, and more.
Like choosing the right tool for the job, it’s important to choose the correct material. That’s why we created this course in conjunction with Woodworkers Guild of America. We want to help you better understand the material you’re working with, and educate you about materials you may not be familiar with.
In addition to understanding material, it’s also important to understand what happens behind the scenes. How are trees converted to lumber? How are hardwoods ordered? What’s the difference between particle board, MDF and plywood?
Woodworkers Guild of American instructor, George Vondriska will comprehensively cover the following in this course:
Man-made materials (plywood, MDF, particle board, melamine, multi-ply, grades)
Where to buy quality materials
Milling lumber (plain sawing, quarter sawing, air drying, kiln drying)
Using construction grade lumber
Hardwood, softwood, and what those names mean
Mastering board foot calculations
Hardwood grading (firsts and seconds, select and better, #1 common)
Paying for machining (surface two sides; straight line one edge)
Veneers
Incorporating defects into your projects (wane, spalting, blue stain, insect holes)
Exotic/imported woods
Having this information at your fingertips will make you a more educated consumer, help you save money on your projects, and ensure that you’re choosing the best material for the job at hand.
Who this course is for:
- Woodworkers wanting get a better understanding of the material they are working with and how to best use it.
Instructor
Formally trained as a Technology Education teacher, George Vondriska has been teaching woodworking since 1986, and has been the Managing Editor of Woodworkers Guild of America since 2007. In addition to teaching classes at his own Vondriska Woodworks School, George teaches at woodworking shows across the country and has taught woodworking for the Peace Corps/Swaziland, Andersen Window, Northwest Airlines, and the Pentagon. George has had numerous magazine articles published, from tool reviews to shop improvement projects.