10 Woodworking Tips You Need to Know Before Your Next Project! - #20

I finally finished my custom walk-in closet makeover! My goodness, it took a long time, but I learned some things along the way that made a huge difference in how my project turned out and how much time it took. If you're getting into woodworking, here are some helpful tips that I learned or thought were most important in this DIY closet journey. Do you have a favorite woodworking tips? Email it to me: serena@thriftdiving.com. Remember to follow me on Instagram @ThriftDiving to stay connected!

Projects Mentioned

• I Built My Own Custom Walk-in Closet! (YouTube) - PART 2
• Building My Own Closet (YouTube) - PART 1
• How to Remove Wallpaper and Repair the Drywall (YouTube)

Links and Products Mentioned (may include affiliate links)

• Pony Jorgensen clamps
• Framing square
• Right angle clamps
• Edge banding
• Edge banding trimmer
• Wood conditioner by ECOS Paints (eco-friendly)
• General Finishes High Performance Top Coat Satin 
• Ariat clothing - Save 10% off your first order 
• My favorite Ariat composite toe boots and favorites
• My favorite tape measure
• Festool Domino

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Transcript

Hey, what's up. I'm Serena Appiah from ThriftDiving.Com, which is a podcast, a blog and a YouTube channel that helps you decorate, improve, and maintain your home yourself with paint, power tools and thrift stores and not sacrifice your entire budget, the environment, or your style. Welcome to Episode 20 of the Thrift Diving Podcast.

Today, I had originally planned to walk back through all the other episodes and pull out those gems, those nuggets of information, and actually let you know the action that I took around each of those important pieces of information, changes that I've made things that I've done differently.

Unfortunately, this was a busy week and completely didn't realize, hey, Serena, you're not done your closet. So I didn't get to those things. I will do that for next week. But this week, I think what we should do is talk about this closet. If you have not seen this closet, and I know I've talked . About it multiple times, but if you're new and you've never heard me before, I have been building this walk-in closet organizer from scratch, literally with my own two hands. I didn't have any help.

I designed it myself. I did everything myself. Well, I started it I want to say October 2019. Whew. Gosh. And I just literally finished it yesterday and I posted it. Now, it didn't take me 20 months to actually build it. There was a lot of stopping and a lot of starting, and I would say consistently this portion that I finished yesterday, I would say it took me a solid two months of working on it every day. And there was some days when I, literally just spent all day learning how to use one of the new tools. So, you know, if I were to build it today, it'd probably take me half as much time, but projects always go like that. So for today, what I wanted to do is actually walk through 10 woodworking tips that I learned from working on this project.

And I was telling you in a recent episode, whenever you're doing a project, literally the best thing that you can do when you're done the project is to take a moment to reflect on what went well. What did you learn? What things could be changed? I don't know, maybe document that in some kind of way. For me, I usually document it in a video or a blog post, but I'm thinking of actually starting a notebook .

 You know, when I'm building this again, I don't have to go and recreate everything. I can just look inside of this notebook and say, oh, that's how you build drawers. Okay. That's right. And you save yourself a lot of time, a lot of research, a lot of struggle.

So let's jump into this. Now, this project is on my YouTube channel. It's not on my blog yet. So if you want to see it, you can go to  Thrift Diving, just type in Thrift Diving on YouTube. If you're not subscribed, please do subscribe, and check out the video. It's a little long.

My projects, my videos tend to be a little long and I know some people will leave a comment and say, oh, you talk too much on the video, but I don't like to put videos out that just entertain you. It's really not just about entertaining you. It's really about teaching you something. Sometimes I'm giving you tips in those videos.

Sometimes I'm telling you what I did wrong because if I did it wrong and you listen to that, it sticks with you and you'll learn by my mistakes. So I put it all out there in the video. So watch the video. You can come back and listen to this, but let's talk about these 10 woodworking tips that I learned and what went well and what actually needed to be changed for the next time.

Okay. Tip number one. The thickness of plywood is something that I. guess I knew about this. Like, for example, if you go to Home Depot or Lowe's. If they tell you a board is a two by four, well, what's a two by four. So you're thinking, oh, it's two inches by four inches, right? Not quite. It's actually one and a half by three and a half.

So if you're new to woodworking or to DIY, a lot of times you don't realize that the actual dimension is different than I think they call it the nominal dimension. I don't have the labels correct here, I don't think. But you know, a two by four is not two by four. It's actually one and a half inches thick by three and a half inches thick.

And when you've been in, I'm going to say business for a little while or doing projects, you figure that out probably because of a mistake that you made. I've done projects before, this was early on, I bought a piece of wood. I think I wanted it to be like a 1" x 12" so I was hoping that it was 12 inches. I needed it to be 12 inches and it, the project ended up working out totally fine. So when you buy a two by four, a one by four, a one by four is not really one inches. It's, uh, I believe it's three quarters of an inch thick. And it's not four inches it's I think it's three and a half.

Yeah. Three and a half, but there is a chart and I will leave a link down below where you could click on that and see what all of the real actual dimensions are for lumber. But here's the thing. Just with one by fours and two by fours and all of these things, the thickness of plywood made a big difference in this project.

Let me tell you what happened. So when I was designing this in SketchUp, right, I was using three quarter inch plywood. Well, here's the thing. Three quarter inch plywood is not really three-quarter inch plywood. It's actually more like, I think some people say it's 11/16, , Some people use 23/32.

And if you look at that in terms of a decimal, it's a little shy of 0.75. So that can make a big difference when you're building something and you're thinking, okay, well, I'm using three quarter inch plywood, and I need a piece to span from this side to this side, okay.

I'll make that piece, let's say 10 inches. Well, if you're calculating the thickness of the wood incorrectly, you're going to have a little bit of a gap. And there were some parts of this project where there were small gaps that drove me crazy and they were small. They were maybe like one 16th of an inch. And you think that's so small, but when you're trying to put something together, and there's a gap and it's not closing, you're like, what did I do wrong? How could I have cut this? When I measured this board, I knew that it was 10 inches. Why is it not fitting into this space? So one of the things that I was building with this project was drawers. And for these drawers, now, if you've ever looked at a drawer, when you pull it out, most times it's going to have half inch plywood on the sides.

And for the bottom, it's going to be 1/4" plywood. Well, here's what I realized. One quarter inch plywood is actually one quarter inch thickness of plywood, but only during certain circumstances. And that would be if you buy a large sheet. So, you know, if you go into the lumber department, there are sections where you can buy a huge 4' x 8' sheet of plywood.

Let's say a 1/4" plywood. Let's say you're going to be making tons of drawers, quarter inch plywood. Well, that quarter inch plywood is actually one quarter inch. Now, if you're making drawers with that, a lot of times you're using a router with a quarter inch router bit, right, in order to create that little groove right along the bottom of those drawers so that you can just slide it,

the quarter inch, bottom of your drawer. Well, when I was building this, I could not get that quarter inch plywood to fit in the quarter inch routed groove of the drawers. And I'm banging this thing in with the mallet. And I'm like, why is this so thick? I mean, if you think about it, you've got a quarter inch bit, and you've got a quarter inch sheet of plywood and the two are exactly the same size.

So in order to get that to fit, you got to bang it in there.   Well with one of the drawers, I messed up one of the drawers and so I needed to go get some more quarter inch plywood. Well, they didn't have four by eight sheets because you know, this pandemic has just made it so difficult to even get materials.

So they didn't have any. But if you notice in the lumber department, they actually have some precut sheets that are a little smaller, like two feet by four feet. So I said, okay, cool. I'll get some of these, you know, quarter in sheets and this'll work. Well, guess what? Those sheets are actually thinner than the 4' x 8'sheets. So the lesson that I learned here is not all quarter-inch plywood is the same thickness. Some are actually really quarter inch and make it a very difficult fit, if you're using that to do your drawers versus buying the smaller sheets, which are a little thinner. So if you think about it, if you're using your router with a quarter inch router bit, and you're putting a groove on the bottom of your drawer, the sides, and the backs of your drawer,

that piece of plywood, that's just a little thinner than one quarter inch, it just slides in. The second set of doors that I was making, that's what I was using, the one that was slightly smaller and that baby just slid right in. And I thought, oh my gosh, I made this so difficult using this other quarter inch plywood.

I had no idea that I'm trying to fit, this thick piece into this quarter inch-- so anyway, what I am trying to let you know is that when you are doing projects, make sure you really know the thickness of the material that you're using, because trying to fit one quarter inch into a quarter inch groove to make drawers,

it just, I mean, it worked, but it was very difficult to get it in there. And there were times when I was banging it with them. And started to split the wood where I done the groove with the router bit. So that's one thing to know. Make sure that you understand the dimensions of your lumber. Don't go by what's on the description at the hardware store.

Then you can plan accordingly whenever you're building anything, whether it's something big or whether it's something small. 

So that was tip number one. Tip number two, a woodworking tip that I learned with this project is that you need a ton of clamps.

My goodness. The clamps that I have are various sizes and it worked for me, but because I was building something large, I needed a large clamp. So some of the parts that I was putting together, like the shoe shelf that was adjustable, I mean, this was a huge piece. It had to have been, gosh, four or five feet. I didn't have a clamp that was that long. So as I was putting on the top and the bottom, I couldn't clamp them up. And so no amount of banging on that with a mallet was getting it to be a nice tight joint. And so some of the joints, I had with this closet makeover, we're not quite as tight as I wanted them to be, just because I didn't have the right clamps.

Now, when I started ordering clamps, my husband's like, you don't need any more clamps. Look at all those clamps you got in the garage. You don't need any more clamps. Well, I'm here to tell you, yes, you do. If you are just getting into woodworking, invest in some clamps. Now the brand that I really, really like is.

I love Pony Jorgensen, and I will leave links down below for them.  They're good quality, but they have a nice big rubber head on them. So when you're trying to clamp something and get a little bit more surface area, it's very easy to clamp.

So those are my “go to”s. I will leave links down below to those but have a variety of clamps. You will need some small ones. And I think I've got some that are, gosh, probably three or four inches, like for just real small projects, but you're going to need some big ones. And so after this project I ordered like two huge ones.

I think it'll clamp up to like eight feet or something. When they came in the mail, my husband's like, what did you order? You don't need those. And I said, yes, I do. I need two big clamps because if I ever do another big project, I need to make sure that this thing is tight. So whenever you're gluing, you know, whether you're using a pocket hole or you're using the domino.

I use the Festool domino for this project, the closet makeover, you still want to glue it and you still want to clamp it. 

All right. So that brings me to the next point. And this is kind of related to the point that I just made about the clamps. You definitely want to check for square. This is something that I kind of failed at early on in the project.

I don't know why I wasn't thinking about this, but whenever you're putting something together, you're gluing something, you're using a pocket hole in order to join it together, you still want to clamp it, but before you clamp it, have yourself a right angle, so you can use like a framing square, I'll leave links down below for these, you can use a framing square, a roofing square, anything that is a right angle.

So that as you're clamping, you can make sure this thing is exactly at a right angle. So I got myself into a little problem with the closet because there was a section of the adjustable shoe shelf, actually, I think this happened with both of the adjustable shelves. I was applying the center panel, well I was attaching the two brackets.

It's kind of hard to talk through this, but basically just imagine here, I'm trying to glue something together. And in my mind, I thought, well, I put it together. It has to be at a right angle. So I'll go ahead and glue it, clamp it. Once it's dry, take it off and it'll be ready when I'm ready to proceed with the next step, which is putting on the sides to make this adjustable shoe shelf.

Well, I didn't properly check for square. So when it came time for me to put the sides on, they were not lining up properly. So there were some adjustments that I had to make with this closet.

Thankfully, it wasn't such an egregious mistake, but even just a little bit, let's say 1/16"  'or, you know, 1/8". I mean, at one point I think one of  my sides was off by 3/8" of an inch.  That's a pretty significant amount of space that is off. So always, always use a right angle, use something that will allow you to make sure that before that glue sets and dries, you were clamping that baby at 90 degrees.

I think there's even tools that you can use to clamp it at a 90-degree angle so that you know for sure it's at a 90 degree. Yes. In fact, I know there are, so I will leave some links down below to some of those clamps. I think I even have some of those clamps, but for some reason I didn't use them. See? Lessons learned. So that's tip number three, always glue with the right angle and lots of clamps. 

So tip number four is to always trim the raw edge of your wood before you start building. Now, this is something that I guess if you've been in woodworking for a while, you kind of already know, but because I've not done a lot of woodworking projects, I didn't know this.

So the very first closet organizer that I'd built, back in fall of 2020, I didn't do any of that. I just use the factory edge of the 4' x 8'sheets of plywood. And if you look at a sheet of plywood, even though the edges are right angles, you know, they're straight, they're pretty rough. So if you're building your project using that rough edge, and then you get to the point in your project where you want to apply edge banding.

And if you don't know, for those of you that don't know, edge banding it's a really thin strip of veneer that has a glue back on it and all you do is you apply it to the raw edges of your wood to prevent that from showing when you're building things and you just apply it with a hot iron, it's typically a little wider than the edge of your wood.

And then once it's dry and it's. . Then it's stiff, you'll use like a utility knife or, something to trim it. They actually do have edge band trimmers. Some of them work well, some of them don't. I typically just use a utility knife. You know, a razor and it works pretty well.  The problem is, is if you cover those raw edges and they're rough the edge, bandings not going to look very good.

You're not going to get a good finish. And this is actually something that happened to me with the first one that I built. Like I said, fall of 2020. When I got my new tools, when I bought into the Festool line, I watched a lot of their videos, figuring out how to use these tools and the guy who was doing the instructional videos, he said, you have to make sure that you remove one eighth of an inch, or, I mean, you can remove one quarter of an inch, but one eighth of an inch is fine as well, but you have to remove those edges. And of course, it's very easy to do if you're using a track saw you just have to make sure that it's a nice straight line.

So definitely do that. Never build with the raw edges as part of your project. Trim those off first and then take your final measurements so that all your corners, all your edges will be nice, straight, flat. And when you apply the edge banding, it's going to look good and it won't look sloppy. So that is tip number four. 

Tip number five. This is one, that I think will save you a lot of time and a lot of headache. So when you're building something and you're using sheets of plywood, most of the time, if you're just buying your wood from the home improvement store, Home Depot, Lowe's, whatever, you're going to be using wood that is raw unfinished plywood.

Now, before you assemble everything, what I found was helpful is to apply the finish before you start to assemble. And the reason why I did this is because I can't imagine building this big closet structure, this big wardrobe organizer, and then have to go in there and apply the topcoat.

The topcoat would run. Like that's just not a good way to do it. So my tip would be to finish as much as you can before you actually start building. But here's the thing, wood glue doesn't stick very well to finished surfaces. Like if you were staining, see for me, I didn't stain. I did, just,  two or three layers of topcoat.

But if you were staining your project, wood glue doesn't work very well on stained parts.  Self you're finishing your project first with topcoat, with wood stain, you want to make sure that you're putting a little bit of tape, painter's tape on those areas that you know are going to be glued together so that your project, it's not going to be compromised because the glue is going over the finish.

A lot of times these projects, they take time to think through. And I, I really felt that that is what took so long with this project is because I had to think through  every single step. Am I going to do C before A cause if I do C before A. .That could throw me off and cause me to create waste, and then I have to go buy more wood.

So that's what took so long is thinking through each step and another option is to buy pre-finished plywood. Now you can't buy that at Home Depot or Lowe's. I actually had seen it at the local Woodcraft.  Woodcraft is an amazing woodworking store. They have them all over the United States. There's one here in Rockville, very close to my house, you know, 20 minutes from my house here in Maryland.

And the guy had said, oh, well, yeah, we have finished plywood. When I looked at it, oh, my gosh, it felt so smooth. Like everything was just amazing. And I thought to myself, if I do this project again, if I ever do another project where I plan to keep it natural, I am going to buy pre-finished plywood. I want to say that it was about twice as much per panel.

So when I bought my wood for this closet, it was June 2020.  That's what's crazy. That's how long it was since I bought that wood and it was sitting in the garage for quite a while before I got started. But at that time, each four by eight sheet of maple plywood was about with taxes, probably about $55. And for the sheet of finished plywood, it was about a hundred dollars. So it was almost well, pretty much twice as much, but the amount of time that you save, I mean, yeah, the finishing, that was what took a long time, but again, it was easier to finish those pieces before then to assemble it and then have to finish it.

And here's the thing too. You have to make sure that you have enough space because there were times when. You know, I was laying things on the floor trying to put a coat of topcoat. I'd have them on the work bench. I'd have it,  all over the garage. And there just wasn't enough space to do everything at one time.

So I'd have to wait until that dried, flip it over, do the other side. So it was a lot of work. And I think if you can afford to do the pre-finished pieces,  just do pre-finished, if you can afford it. It will increase your costs, but it will actually make the job much easier. 

All right. The next step, I think we're on step five is to prep the wood properly. And this is actually similar to finishing, the pieces before you assemble.  But I want to talk about actually prepping the wood and why that's important. So finishing the wood, yes, that's finishing,  but prepping the wood. And what I mean by that is, and I just talked a little bit about the wood condition.

There are some species of wood that if you don't properly prepare them with wood conditioner, the stain doesn't look good. It looks blotchy.  I believe pine is one of those. I believe maple is one of those. And I feel like I should know what all the woods are that require wood conditioner, but I don't. If you Google it, whatever wood you're using, it will tell you whether or not you need to use a wood conditioner, but here's the importance of it.

A wood conditioner is sort of like when you're applying makeup to your face, it's like the foundation. So everything that you put on top of that foundation will be smooth, will be even, and that's what wood conditioner does. It fills in and creates a nice even layer on that wood so that there's not some parts that suck up the stain quicker than other parts that typically is going to leave your wood blotchy.

So wood conditioner is something that if you're using a certain type of wood, definitely pine and definitely maple. Again, research the other wood that you might be using. I don't think Oak needs a wood conditioner. It might, but I know with Oak, people like the stain, going into those deep crevices of Oak to give it that, that look that Oak is,  famous for, right.

Prepping your wood, putting a little bit of wood conditioner first is key, but let me tell you how I refinished mine. So the first thing that I would do is for each piece of wood, I mentioned in one of the steps is that I would trim one eighth of an inch to a one quarter of an inch from the raw edge sides. Then I would take my orbital sander very lightly with, let's say 220 grit sandpaper, just enough to knock off the little burrs and little rough edges. And I would go over the plywood with that. Next, I would wipe off the dust ply apply one coat of wood conditioner and the wood conditioner that I used.

I will leave a link down below. I really like it. It's a water-base wood conditioner. The company is called ECOS paint, E C O S. They're not one of my sponsors. It's just a company that I discovered that makes no VOC products, like everything is water-based even their stains, which I literally just ordered some for a project that I'm starting today.

I am stripping and refinishing a drafting table that I got from the thrift store years ago. I'll tell you more about that later, but they make paints, but they also make stains that, are just very good for the environment they're not toxic or anything. So I would use that wood conditioner apply one coat and leave it for just one to three minutes.

And you wipe off the excess. You don't want to leave that on there. You wipe off the excess and within 30 minutes it's dry. But when you go back to feel it after it's dried, it's going to feel real rough. You'll feel like if you were to look at it under a microscope, because it's a water base that tends to raise the grain and you'll feel that it'll feel kind of prickly underneath your fingers.

So then what I would do is take the orbital sander again with maybe 220 grit sandpaper, something fine. And I would  run it over and you'll feel how smooth it is. So I would start with that. And then I would add one coat of the topcoat. And I'll tell you which one I like, I love General Finishes High Performance. Topcoat or whatever. I love it in the satin. I'll leave a link down below. So I'll do one coat of that. Let that dry. When I come back, it feels kind of gritty. So I'd take my sander with the same 220 grit sandpaper, go over that once, wipe all the dust away and then I would apply another coat.

Now, if there are some surfaces that I know I'm going to be touching, like in this closet makeover, the little desk area that I knew I wanted it to be super smooth. So I would actually put three coats of the topcoat, sanding in between. And then the final coat, just leave it. No other sanding. And it would be amazing.

I would still get some bubbles and it would still feel, you know, you can still see the bubble. So I'm,  working on my topcoat skills. I'm not a master refinisher at all, but by doing that in this kind of way, doing  the sanding, the trimming, the wood conditioner, I would say my pieces of plywood felt pretty smooth.

I was happy with it. So that's my tip. Don't skip the wood preparation because I noticed that there were some pieces that I wouldn't even sand down. I skipped the preconditioner and just did like a one or two layers of topcoat. Those feel different. They don't feel as smooth. So definitely get into the habit of finishing your pieces.

Prep work is key. It's pretty key to get a good result on your wood. 

Okay. Tip number. I believe I'm at six, I think. I don't remember anyway, is to get good at math. Woodworking is really all about math. And I think there's a lot of tape measures that give you pretty good readings and you don't have to guess.

You don't have to count the little ticks in between the one and the two, but even if you have a good tape measure that will show you exactly what it is. Oh, that's 10 and three eights. You still need to know how to add 10 and three eights, plus the thickness of the plywood, which is what like 11 sixteenths.

So if you're adding 10 and three eights  and 11 sixteens, you got to be able to do some math there. That's one of the big things that I realized is that, if you don't know how to add, you better have a good calculator. And a lot of times the calculators on our phone, they're just going to give us things in decimals and that's not really going to help us.

Like we need to be able to add 10 and three eights plus 11 sixteenths. You know, you have to turn the eight into a 16 and then the S the three turns into a six. You know what I'm saying? Like you have to be able to convert and get,  like denominators in order to be able to add when you're working with these fractions.

 When I found that the math was most important is when I was trying to work on the drawer. So I'd built this dresser with four huge drawers and I wanted the drawer handles to be right in the middle. I didn't want one to be over a little bit to the left or to look weird. So I needed to take the measurements of the dresser drawer, figure out where the middle was, the center, look at how wide the handle was, the pull, and figure out where exactly does this need to go. So if you look at my video that I just posted on YouTube, you'll see a part in there where I wrote down a ton of math,  trying to figure out okay,

where precisely does that first point have to go. And there was another time that I thought math was really, really important with when I was adhering things to the wall,  when you're putting built-ins in, like in a closet or you're doing cabinets, you have to attach it to the studs. Now the studs are 16 inches on center.

Hopefully you got a stud finder. You got to use a stud finder in order to find the center of that stud. This thing has to be mounted or it could fall. 

But when you're putting in a closet organizer and just imagine you have a back, right, you've got a quarter inch back, it's kind of hard to see where the studs are. I mean, even if you've located them before you installed this, you have to figure out where that stud is once you can't see that marking on the wall.

I hope I'm not losing you here, but here's what I do. So I will find the stud using the stud finder and I will measure over to the nearest member. So for example, if it's a corner, I'll measure, let's say it's from the corner, I don't know, let's say it's 16. I'm just going to use 16 inches. If it's 16 inches from the corner, for example,

so I know that when I put my built-ins into that corner, I have to account for the thickness of the plywood that's in that corner. So now I can't just blindly put my screw, my two-and-a-half-inch screw into the stud at 16, I have to do a measurement from the edge of that wood. So I have to take 16 and minus the thickness of the plywood.

So instead of 16, it would be, let's say 15 and a quarter, right. Just generally using round numbers. So when I'm putting my tape measure in there, measuring from the corner, I'm going to measure over 15 and a quarter. Because I know that plywood is accounting for about three quarters of an inch .

I would tell you definitely get yourself comfortable with adding fractions and knowing that you got to make your denominators  be common denominators. This is math. We all learned in elementary school, but a lot of us don't have to use it so we forget it. All right. I believe that was number seven.

 Number eight, always wear composite toed boots. There are people, there are bloggers. I'm pretty sure, because I know I I've got some friends that I've seen them working with tools and they are literally wearing sandals in the garage You can't do that. Not even sandals, but even just sneakers, they will always tell you, oh, wear close toed shoes. But it's more than close toed shoes.

It really is about making sure that you're protecting your toes. Because twice when I was working on this closet, I had on a pair of shoes that were not even sneakers. They were like some sort of slip ins. And I just wanted to go out and just work in them because they were comfortable. And then the other time I was wearing a pair of sneakers.

Well, both times I dropped something on my feet. The first time it was a piece of plywood and it was not a small piece of plywood. It was enough to leave a bruise on my foot. It hurt. And the second thing that I dropped was my tape measure. And those things are pretty heavy. Now that didn't leave a bruise, but it did hurt.

And you know, my sponsor for the closet makeover is a clothing company called Ariat, Ariat clothing. And one of the things that they had sent to me that I had picked out was a pair of composite toe boots. And I love these boots, but on these particular days, early on when building, I wasn't wearing the boots and I learned my lesson.

So now when I go into the garage to work, it's only boots. I don't wear anything else but boots that are going to protect my feet, because if I drop something on there, sometimes it may not be just a tape measure. It could be something even heavier and you do not want a broken toe. So protect yourself.

That's just basic safety, but you know, you may be thinking I can just go in there with sneakers. That's fine. No, get something that's a composite toe, hard toe. And that is going to protect you if anything falls on your feet. 

 Alright, my other tip, tip number nine is to by measuring tools that are accurate and always use the same one.

The reason why I say this is because at some point when I was working on this closet, I don't know where I put my tape measure. Like my nice, good, in fact, I have it sitting here right now. I always walk around with it on my hip. You never know when you want to measure something. And this is by Milwaukee.

It's a nice 25-foot auto-lock and I will leave a link down below. What I like is when you pull it out, it doesn't curl back in. It stops. So, you know, if you're trying to measure something, one handed it'll just lock. And then once you push the button, it'll go back in. Couldn't find it. So I started using this other one that I think it belonged to my grandfather years ago.

And when he passed away, it was one of the things that I took, but I didn't realize that the little hook was bent. So would that hook being bent, some of the measurements that I was taking were not correct. So there is a little trick that you can use in the trades, that I've seen people do before is instead of just hooking something on and then take you in your measurement from there. Sometimes  I will actually take just a random number. Let's say 10, and I will put 10 on the edge of whatever it is that I'm measuring. Let's say a piece of wood. And then I'll count up from 10, maybe the boards, you know, five and a half inches.

So I'll put the edge of the board at 10 and then that way I can get an accurate measurement to the 15 and a half. So I know that that board is five and a half. You don't necessarily have to use the edge and have that hook on the edge. If you have a piece here, like a metal piece that's bent or you feel like maybe you're not getting a good measurement, use the inside numbers and just started it, you know, started at one, but just make sure that you account for  that adjustment. But yeah, there are some videos that I've watched. where there was a guy testing, different accuracy of different tools when to measure things it's just wrong. 

Well it could be that maybe the tool that you're using is not really calibrated properly, but you might be switching between different tools and getting different measurements. Find one tool or two tools that you really like and use them consistently so you get accurate measurements and consistent measurements too. 

Okay. Number 10. Dry fit everything first. This is something that was very hard for me to do with the closet because I didn't have a lot of space. So dry fitting is when you cut all of your pieces or maybe not all of your pieces, but you're cutting your pieces and you're putting it together as you go without glue so that you know exactly how it's going to fit. So if something doesn't fit properly, it gives you time to make a new piece, make some adjustments and then see how it all comes together. Now for this project, I didn't use pocket holes. I actually used a domino. This is by Festool and it uses floating tenants.

So it's little pieces of wood that get hammered into this hole. You just use a mallet and you hammer it into the hole. And then you put it together.   It's kind of an expensive tool, but it's one that I liked to use for this project, because you didn't see any hardware on the outside and with pocket holes, you sometimes depending on where you place them, you can see the holes.

And I didn't want that for this part. But when you dry fit things together, sometimes it has to be so precise. And if you don't dry fit it together, you don't know what it's going to look like. So I tried to dry fit as much as I could. And, even when I was dry fitting things were still kind of falling apart.

Right?  I didn't have things clamped together and I didn't properly dry fit. Part of that again was because of space. But if you've got the space, if you're building something, put all your parts together. If there's something that's not fitting, see how you can fix it. Maybe you need to recut a piece and that's okay.

But at least it'll give you an idea before that glue starts to dry. Let me tell you, glue what glue is stronger than wood. And if you don't believe me, try gluing something together, let it thoroughly dry and then try to pull it apart. And if you have clamped it and that wood glue dries, and you try to pull it apart, it's probably likely that the wood is going to crack before that glue will uncrack.

And this is where I did do some dry fits, but I could have done a better job here. And if I had done that, I would have foreseen that some of my pieces were a little off. Even so, I was able to make it fit. I was able to make it work, but dry fitting is so, so, so important. 

So those are the 10 woodworking tips that for me, I discovered with working on my project. If you can take your time with whatever project that you're working on, listen to the tips that I put out there, do your research, test fit, you'll have success with your project. And I've said this before. You never know what mistakes are going to happen. Even if you take all the time in the world, you don't know what mistakes are going to happen, but that is how we learn. Like, I will look at some of the mistakes in my closet that I made, but I know that I won't do them again because now I know I learned, and I'm okay with that.

And I said this in one of my other podcast, you know, a lot of times when we're sharing our projects with people, we instantly want to point out all of the flaws before anybody else. We say, oh, I know there's a gap there and this thing's a little crooked. I've been trying not to do that with this project, even though I know they're there.

Other people may not know they're there. I know why they're there. I learned from those and next time I'm not going to make those mistakes. So try to do that with your projects. Don't point out all the flaws, you know, don't be waiting for other people to do it, because there's no need for it. You learn. And it's been a great project. 

And now I want to know from you, what tips have you learned about woodworking or even in this podcast, what did you learn about that you didn't know before you started listening to this podcast? Was there something that you learned that you didn't know? I want to hear about it.

Email me Serena@thriftdiving.Com. Unfortunately there's no other way to comment on these because I haven't put them on YouTube and I didn't make a blog post for this. So you have to email me and let me know what your answer is. What is a woodworking tip that you didn't know? Be sure to come back for Episode 21, because we are going to go through all the other episodes and talk about the things, the actions that we took based on the information that we learned, all the things we've talked about.

So come back again. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next week for Episode------ 21. .