Woodworking is the skill of making items from wood, and includes cabinetry, furniture making, wood carving, joinery, carpentry, and woodturning.
Lumber is wood that has been processed into uniform and useful sizes, including beams and planks or boards. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing. Lumber has many uses beyond home building. Lumber is sometimes referred to as timber in England, Australia, and New Zealand, while in most parts of the world the term timber refers specifically to unprocessed wood fiber, such as cut logs or standing trees that have yet to be cut.
Joinery is a part of woodworking that involves joining pieces of wood, engineered lumber, or synthetic substitutes, to produce more complex items. Some woodworking joints employ mechanical fasteners, bindings, or adhesives, while others use only wood elements.
Tongue and groove is a method of fitting similar objects together, edge to edge, used mainly with wood, in flooring, parquetry, panelling, and similar constructions. Tongue and groove joints allow two flat pieces to be joined strongly together to make a single flat surface. Before plywood became common, tongue and groove boards were also used for sheathing buildings and to construct concrete formwork.
A hand plane is a tool for shaping wood using muscle power to force the cutting blade over the wood surface. Some rotary power planers are motorized power tools used for the same types of larger tasks, but are unsuitable for fine-scale planing, where a miniature hand plane is used.
Firewood is any wooden material that is gathered and used for fuel. Generally, firewood is not heavily processed and is in some sort of recognizable log or branch form, compared to other forms of wood fuel like pellets. Firewood can be seasoned and heat treated (dry) or unseasoned (fresh/wet). It is generally classified as either hardwood or softwood.
Woodturning is the craft of using a wood lathe with hand-held tools to cut a shape that is symmetrical around the axis of rotation. Like the potter's wheel, the wood lathe is a mechanism that can generate a variety of forms. The operator is known as a turner, and the skills needed to use the tools were traditionally known as turnery. In pre-industrial England, these skills were sufficiently difficult to be known as "the mysteries of the turners' guild." The skills to use the tools by hand, without a fixed point of contact with the wood, distinguish woodturning and the wood lathe from the machinist's lathe, or metal-working lathe.
A log house, or log building, is a structure built with horizontal logs interlocked at the corners by notching. Logs may be round, squared or hewn to other shapes, either handcrafted or milled. The term "log cabin" generally refers to a smaller, more rustic log house, such as a hunting cabin in the woods, that may or may not have electricity or plumbing.
A pole lathe, also known as a springpole lathe, is a wood-turning lathe that uses the resilience of a long pole as a return spring for a treadle. Pressing the treadle pulls on a cord that is wrapped around the piece of wood or billet being turned. The other end of the cord reaches up to the end of a long springy pole. As the action is reciprocating, the work rotates in one direction and then back the other way. Cutting is only carried out on the down stroke of the treadle, the spring of the pole only being sufficient to return the treadle to the raised position ready for the next down stroke. Bungee cords are sometimes used as a modern replacement for springpoles. A bungee cord can function within a smaller space but the pole lathe still rotates in two directions and cutting is only possible on the downstroke.
Wood glue is an adhesive used to tightly bond pieces of wood together. Many substances have been used as glues. Traditionally animal proteins like casein from milk or collagen from animal hides and bones were boiled down to make early glues. They worked by solidifying as they dried. Later, glues were made from plant starches like flour or potato starch. When combined with water and heated, the starch gelatinizes and forms a sticky paste as it dries. Plant-based glues were common for books and paper products, though they can break down more easily over time compared to animal-based glues. Modern wood glues are largely synthetic, made from petroleum-derived plastics like polyvinyl acetate (PVA). PVA glues are moisture resistant while also being flexible when dry. Epoxy resins are also popular for their strength and water resistance. Some resins used in producing composite wood products contain formaldehyde. As of 2021, “the wood panel industry uses almost 95% of synthetic petroleum-derived thermosetting adhesives, mainly based on urea, phenol, and melamine, among others”.
Wood drying reduces the moisture content of wood before its use. When the drying is done in a kiln, the product is known as kiln-dried timber or lumber, whereas air drying is the more traditional method.
The Woodwright's Shop is an American traditional woodworking show hosted by master carpenter Roy Underhill and airing on television network PBS. It is one of the longest running how-to shows on PBS, with thirty-five 13-episode seasons produced. Since its debut in 1979, the show has aired over 400 episodes. The first two seasons were broadcast only on public TV in North Carolina; the season numbering was restarted when the show went national in 1981. It is filmed at the UNC-TV studios in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.
This glossary of woodworking lists a number of specialized terms and concepts used in woodworking, carpentry, and related disciplines.
Bodging is a traditional woodturning craft, using green (unseasoned) wood to make chair legs and other cylindrical parts of chairs. The work was done close to where a tree was felled. The itinerant craftsman who made the chair legs was known as a bodger or chair-bodger.
Rubberwood is a light-colored medium-density tropical hardwood obtained from the Pará rubber tree, usually from trees grown in rubber plantations. Rubberwood is commonly advertised as an "environmentally friendly" wood, as it makes use of plantation trees that have already served a useful function.
Green wood is wood that has been recently cut and therefore has not had an opportunity to season (dry) by evaporation of the internal moisture. Green wood contains more moisture than seasoned wood, which has been dried through passage of time or by forced drying in kilns. Green wood is considered to have 100% moisture content relative to air-dried or seasoned wood, which is considered to be 20%.
Moisture meters are used to measure the percentage of water in a given substance. This information can be used to determine if the material is ready for use, unexpectedly wet or dry, or otherwise in need of further inspection. Wood and paper products are very sensitive to their moisture content. Physical properties are strongly affected by moisture content and high moisture content for a period of time may progressively degrade a material.
A timber roof truss is a structural framework of timbers designed to bridge the space above a room and to provide support for a roof. Trusses usually occur at regular intervals, linked by longitudinal timbers such as purlins. The space between each truss is known as a bay.
Steam bending is a woodworking technique where wood is exposed to steam to make it pliable. Heat and moisture from steam can soften wood fibres enough so they can be bent and stretched, and when cooled down they will hold their new shape.
A stool is a raised seat commonly supported by three or four legs, but with neither armrests nor a backrest, and typically built to accommodate one occupant. As some of the earliest forms of seat, stools are sometimes called backless chairs despite how some modern stools have backrests. Folding stools can be collapsed into a flat, compact form typically by rotating the seat in parallel with fold-up legs.
