When it comes to carpentry or woodworking of any kind, there are many benefits. Woodworking is a great stress reliever and is a useful trade to know. From learning how to understand the wood to learning the different techniques to create a masterpiece, there are several skills involved in the process. These skills take years to master, but they are worth it. Wood is the most useful building material; it can be used for almost anything. Want to build a table? Wood. A chair? Wood. A shelf, maybe a countertop, or cabinets? All can be built with wood. Though wood paired with other materials such as metal or epoxy and resin compliments any project and leads to a more masterful creation. The best thing about woodworking is that not only is it fun, but it’s an art that is able to be used to fulfill a need, unlike other types of art. Wood Types The first step in woodworking is understanding the different wood types. This is a difficult skill to learn but is very important. With many projects, you will want to know whether the wood needed is hardwood or softwood. Softwood is wood from gymnosperm trees. Examples of these are conifers and umbrellas. Pine is the most commonly used type of softwood. Many projects can be done with pinewood. In fact, as you become a more experienced woodworker, you might use it for the secondary wood in a lot of projects which will be explained later on. Hardwood comes from dicot trees. Typically, hardwood trees are found in the tropical forests, but they are not exclusive to that climate. The most common type of hardwood that people think of is oak. The hardwoods found in tropical environments are typically very expensive but are beautiful in any project. Hardwoods are used as primary wood in woodworking projects. There is also a type of wood called plywood. Plywood is wood pieces placed on top of each other in rotating angles and glued together. It is often used as a secondary wood as well. Plywood can be used for many types of woodworking projects and is a good type of wood to use when learning basic skills such as using a table saw or learning how to make any basic joints such as a box joint. Primary versus Secondary Primary wood, the wood that is seen on the project is always the nicest wood used in any piece. To explain, I will use a drawer as an example.

If you look in the picture labeled you can see that the main wood, which is most likely a red oak, is used for the face of the drawers. Then the arrow points to the inside of the drawer where they use soft maple, and the other arrow points to the birch plywood which they say is used to the dust panel between each drawer and the bottoms of the drawers. In this example, there are two types of secondary wood. The soft maple and the birch plywood. These are considered secondary, because they are just used for structure, and are not always seen. The primary wood is the red oak because it is not only for the structure of the drawers, but it is used to make the drawers look amazing. The purpose of secondary wood is to save money. Hardwood is very expensive, whereas softwoods are much cheaper, and plywood is very inexpensive.