When you go to a lumber store, there are some pretty looking boards there, begging to be turned into gorgeous furniture. Maple. Walnut. Cherry. And, many of these boards come with some pretty steep prices – six, seven, eight or even more dollars a board foot. Often times, though, there’s another pile somewhere in the back of softwood boards.

Domestic conifer. You know… pine.

Many times, woodworkers start out with white or yellow pine while building their first projects, but ‘graduate’ to working with hardwoods as their skills improve. But, there’s little doubt that there have been many pine furniture masterpieces built by skilled woodorkers.

Today, tell us what you think about pine as a wood for building furniture.

What time is it?  You bet your sweet patootie, it’s Get Woodworking Week!

Remember, this week, woodworking bloggers and other woodworking websites are coming together to encourage new – or potentially new – woodworkers to get off the sidelines and get into the shop. I’ll be posting all week, and I’ll be collecting blog posts from around the wood-wide-web.

If we’re going to talk about beginning woodworkers, let’s start at the start. For this week’s poll, tell us how long you have been woodworking. Are you an old hand at the craft, or are you using this week’s event to get into the craft?  If you are just a beginner, be sure to leave a comment by looking at the bottom of this article.  We definitely want to hear from you!

In most woodworking shops, things kinda happen around the table saw or, in the case of hand-tool shops, the workbench. Those are some critical components you can find in most shops, but there is another tool a lot of woodworkers rely on – the band saw.

That leads to this week’s question. Not every shop has a band saw. So, how does the band saw rank in your shop? Is it a critical piece of shop equipment, a nice to have or a waste of space?

Finishing can be such a tricky part of woodworking.  Will the piece be subject to a lot of handling? How easy do you want the clean up? Will the piece be exposed to water? Will it be handled by infants or very young children?

And then there is the application method. For most woodworkers, we got started brushing finishes found in the local home improvement center. But, as our skills evolved, we found so many other ways to apply the different finishes we experienced.

Today, let us know what your favorite method of finish application is – regardless of the finish material being used.

So, yesterday I got some woodworking done. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the kind of woodworking I could do at the workbench. Instead, it took the shape of helping to install about 150 feet of privacy fence in my yard and my neighbor’s yard.

After about five hours of digging post holes, lifting fence panels and screwing them into place, a neighbor noticed I had left a bit of a gap between panels and asked, “Gosh, Tom, as a woodworker, I expected you would be into absolute precision and making this perfect.”

This week’s question was a natural follow up to that… have you found that your skills and precision in building woodworking projects translating into improving your skills in other DIY applications such as carpentry?

Over the years, I have accumulated some extra boards of project lumber. Some sweet walnut boards from a mill that was going out of business. Some awesome tiger maple boards my friends at Bell Forest Products sent me. A few extra cherry boards I bought because the mistakes I thought I was going to make didn’t happen.

While having extra wood on hand is awesome… you do have something you have to consider – how on earth will you store those extra boards?

This week, tell us how you store your extra boards… or, even if you have extra boards to begin with!

With these holidays falling on Sunday, this is the second week for posting my quick poll early….

I resolve to get back on to my regular schedule come the new year!

Speaking of resolutions… This week, let us know if any of your New Year’s resolutions include woodworking.  Maybe learning a new skill. Maybe tackling that tough project you’ve been putting off. Heck, maybe even taking up the craft for the first time!

And, if you want to share what you are resolving to do, let us know!