please summarize this transcript bullet summary

what if you could go back in time and start your woodworking Journey over what would you do differently I know what I would do and this isn't some don't buy this tool or that tool video no this is the good stuff and to help better explain myself I'm going to build an actual beginner project using actual beginner tools so you don't have to look at my goofy face the entire time I'm going to start by rough cutting parts to build my coffee table base from these boards and I truly believe that buying wood is one of the most confusing topics out there for beginners and something that I really struggled with when I was starting out now not all wood is wood oh that's not right not all wood is equal meaning a 2x4 that's sold at Home Depot used to frame a wall is much different than this Cherry I'm working with they're both really good at doing their respective jobs but just okay at doing the others and beginner John would spend all his time working with a Southern yellow pine 2x4 that was filled with knots and flat saw green wondering why it didn't look like something I saw online or in a magazine the point of this point isn't to tell you you can't build with construction grade Lumber you certainly can however it's going to look like construction grade Lumber unless you know a couple tricks that I completely whiffed on if a big box door is your only option buy the widest possible wood you can like a 2x10 or a 2x12 that way you can be selective about what parts you use like the vertical grain portion found on the sides not the center part of the board which tends to look really ugly and is quite unstable plus you can work around big knots bonus points because the box door Lumber is cheap and will afford you the opportunity to mess up up at a discount which you will certainly do that was a long drawn out way of covering my ass for the people who want to suffer with construction grade Lumber to tell you if I could go back in time I would build those beginner Furniture projects out of hardwood you can get cheap Hardwoods like red oak popler Alder soft maple depending on where you live even this Cherry is reasonably affordable and not only is it easier to work with and actually dry unlike framing Lumber it doesn't cost you much more and your finished product will look significantly better and we will talk all about staining and finishing later on I have all the rough Parts ready to go for the coffee table base but because this design has a bit of pizzazz with the angled legs everything gets a little more complicated but that's okay in fact it's a good thing since I'm trying to do this build with bare bones tools I need to make a jig that will help me make repeatable angled Cuts with a circular saw AKA what a miter saw does like that one behind me that I'm neglecting to suffer for your enjoyment if you've watched my videos for any length of time you've heard me mention this but accuracy is overrated repeatability is how you create a better finished product when I was starting out I would have sat here and obsessed with trying to cut all these parts to exactly 10° but the reality is it doesn't matter as long as it's pretty close and all the parts match you're in the clear I'll get all the way up on my high horse later in the video when we have a brutally honest conversation about tools but there are very few things you can't build with a circular saw a router and a drill it just might take you a while the easiest way to get more out of those basic tools and speed up the process is to build jigs yet beginners rarely think about how to incorporate jigs into their build process and the more experienced Woodworkers obsess about it rightfully so I know was the last thing on Noob John's mind but I wish it was one of the first the last piece of the puzzle to completing the base is getting these slats from these boards behind me now cross cutting 13 identical boards with a circular saw is certainly possible but it's going to require a decent amount of time and likely some refinement to speed up the process and make it repeatable I made this Crosscut jig which essentially turns my circular saw into the illegitimate love child of a sliding miter saw a table saw and a track saw my next piece of advice would be to ask for help when you need it the easiest way to get help when you're starting out as plans yes you could sit here trying to model this coffee table based on something you saw online but I think that leads you down a rabbit hole too early in the journey someone has already gone through the trouble of figuring it out let them show you actually getting in the shop and making something is far more important at this stage than conducting the entire orchestra that can come later on and if you're saying what about these plans can I get some I want an awesome looking coffee table short answer yes long wondering how good of a job this jig actually does I would say dead- on balls accurate probably good enough me and the two shop supervisors have all the parts cut to size which means we can start to assemble this all together right wrong unless you're building something very basic like a cutting board waiting to sand these parts until they've become a coffee table will be an absolute pain so I'm taking care of that now rather than later and I know beginners get so wrapped up in the cutting gluing and screwing things together aspect of woodworking that they tend to forget about planning ahead I know that wasn't even a thought for me but I encourage you to slow down think through every step of a build before you actually begin even sanding order of oper operations is such an important aspect to building furniture and training yourself early on to come up with a plan will help you avoid headaches that create a lot of frustration and wasted time now comes the fun part I need to drill two pocket holes on both ends of these slats and then I can screw them into my bottom stretcher General pocket hole tip keep those suckers away from the edges of boards especially Parts like this that aren't very wide I marked the center point of the slat and the stretcher and I'm going to start middle out and each slot will get glue but I'm being very careful to keep it in the center so it doesn't squeeze out on the sides now I'm not sure it's possible to make a beginner woodworking video without broaching the topic of pocket holes and I remember how empowered I felt when I first learned about pocket holes I could easily secure two boards together it was amazing what I did a bad job of was knowing when to use them specifically don't use pocket holes in obvious locations like this or that that looks really bad I didn't even think about it honestly however on the underside of a coffee table that will never be seen A+ application let's zoom out a little more as a beginner you're likely going to go online and read forums and comments on YouTube videos and you'll see post after post from supposed experts who have been doing something a certain way for 50 years and they will tell you what a failure you are for using something like pocket holes and real Craftsmen don't need them you should only focus on traditional joinery I fell victim to that too for a bit if I could go back in time I would tell beginner John to stay away from those people and ignore them best you can Gatekeepers are just that Gatekeepers find resources you know are credible not Anonymous comment sections chromogens time for an off-the-cuff bonus tip because I was having some really painful flashbacks of my early woodworking days when I was assembling this base together I cannot stress to you how important it is to have a flat surface like this one now it doesn't need to be big and elaborate but I would make the argument that in a assembly table is one of the most important Tools in your shop and yes I said tools but for whatever reason they don't seem to be high on the priority list for beginners in terms of shop builds but I would move this one right to the top all right another bonus tip here shop supervisors just make everything more enjoyable and I know everybody has met Bingo before but about a year and a half ago Bingo said that she wanted a friend and because we have young kids oh there goes Bingo naturally we named this one Bluey Wars I work from home and spend more time with these two little creatures than just about any other being right now also side tangent I've always had big dogs these are my first little dogs I might be officially team small dog they are fantastic anyways since I spend so much time with these lovely ladies I'm pretty in tune with how they are doing Bingo is an absolute cow don't tell her I said that but the blue dog she's picky doesn't even eat treats just slowly grazes on whatever food is in her Bowl all day so I get an email from from that brutally honest conversation about tools now to make a tabletop you take thin boards like this one and then glue them together to make one wide piece as beginner one of the first lessons you will learn the hard way is boards don't really come very straight or flat when you buy them it's a bummer even more of a bummer there is no magic formula that two wavy boards become one straight board when you glue them together and since I'm only using barebone tools for this build my jointer and planer the two things that are designed to fix the straight and flat issues were off limits which means when I bought all this wood I paid extra to have it planed and ripped on all four sides known as S4s you can do the same thing are these boards perfect like I just jointed them absolutely not specialty tools don't exist to make people watching YouTube videos feel like they can't build the same thing they exist because they serve a purpose with that being said there are generally workarounds but I can't tell you how many hundreds of comments I've seen on my own videos saying I could build that if I had all those tools and 95% of what I show on this channel is a table saw miter saw and a router in my opinion that's a low barrier to entry I'm a golfer and if someone told me they wanted to take up golf I would tell them okay go buy some used clubs it's no different than woodworking you need tools to build things clubs to play golf I bought used tools starting out and built up a collection I had planned to demonstrate the exact point I was making by using my old and new plunge router but fittingly enough the old DeWalt died right as I started filming now I know less than nothing about tools but I think the brushes are going someone help me out in the comments section down below please however I think the point Still Remains that this was one of my first big boy tool purchases I paid around 75 bucks 8 years ago and it's more than paid for itself many times over since then I decided to upgrade and until today those two routers did the exact same thing one was just a fraction of the price of the other rest in peace dealt but if you're going to sit there and make excuses on why you can't start building because your shop doesn't look like what you see online you've already lost just go find a new hobby and this doesn't mean need to be a Sprint it's a marathon buy the tools as you need them based on the projects you're working on right now there no need to get everything at once otherwise you end up like me getting tools you really didn't need at the time and thought you would in the future but never did thankfully I already did the bulk of my sanding but before I prep for finish I like to break all the sharp edges and hit the show faces one last time with the sanding sponge working with the direction of the grain now picking back up what the woodworking might not be for you the I don't have all these tools people tend to also fall into the mindset that getting into woodworking will save you money like it's cheaper to buy a coffee table than build it sorry folks you could probably find oneoff examples but over time as you acquire more tools buy secondary items like screws glue and tape never mind your own time you quickly realize that thanks to Modern manufacturing you can buy a bookcase much cheaper than building on your own so for anyone just getting started don't be like beginner John thinking you can make all the furniture in your own home and save thousands of dollars the benefit of learning this skill is being able to custom make exactly what you want at a higher quality typically not a cheaper price one more offthe cuff double bonus tip for you having something go catastrophically wrong during this build so I could make the point about overcoming obstacles would have been great for the video but I'm not in the business of Faking things but that doesn't mean I wasn't prepared behind me are some extra boards including a long piece to cut slats an extra leg and a nice wide one that I could have turned into whatever always have or cut extra pieces to size early on in the project so that you have them available when something inevitably goes wrong and I promise it will save you a lot of headaches and frustration all right time to apply some finish and believe it or not you're about to watch a YouTube video where someone doesn't apply a hard wax oil I've recently Fallen back in love with with these wipe on polyurethanes now you can make your own with a 50/50 blend of mineral spirits and something like Minwax or you can just buy something like this General Finishes armor seal which is already thinned out enough and you can wipe it right on there let's keep the golf analogies rolling to help make this next Point applying finish in woodworking is like putting and golf there's an old saying you drive for show you putt for dough meaning being able to make a five foot putt is way more important than smashing the ball like Tiger Woods unfortunately putting is really boring and most shitty golfers never spend any time practicing it's the same with finishing equally boring and beginners never even think about it but you can ruin 20 hours of hard work building a nice coffee table by doing a really bad job rushing the last 2 hours of finishing both on the tactile side with how it feels and Visually with Big Brush strokes and drips of finish on the edges all right so I think I made my point about finishing being important but the other big mistake people make is how they apply finish beginners newb John included are enamored with brushing on finishes bad idea when in doubt find finishes you can wipe on nice and thin like I'm doing with this polyurethane they are so much more forgiving and I'll show you the results in a minute but this application is super easy and gives you Flawless results you can also spray on finishes like rattle can lacquer but that gets expensive and you need the right space so focus on wipe on options starting out like poly Danish oils natural oils or even hard wax oils and the results will speak for themselves I promised earlier we would talk about staining and here is the massive mistake beginners again new Dr included always make it is very very difficult to make a pine 2x4 look like Walnut in fact to be blunt it'll look like crap if you want to easily stain your pieces to alter the color start with a wood close in tone to your desired final look great example same 2x4 bench here one with a lighter stain and one with a darker I mean there's a clear difference in the overall look so don't try to turn lightwoods to dark or dark to light even better don't stain your Woods at all and buy Hardwoods that match the tone you are looking for when finish is applied because the stain isn't actually finish it's just a bad die job like your '90s frosted tips as far as this piece I ended up applying three total coats and I sanded in between each one with 320 grit now after the final coat was dry I buffed the surface with a brown paper bag to remove the dust nibs you could also use four steel wool now it's sometimes tough to see on camera but check out how nice the quality of that finishes almost makes it look like you know what you're doing time to attach the top to the bottom or I guess the bottom to the top with screws and I'm not going to do a full dissertation on this but wood moves seasonally across the Grain and if you restrict that movement with fasteners you run the risk of the top cracking so we need the screws to be able to Pivot side to side thankfully this doesn't need to be complicated and simply requires drilling three different holes the first two holes will go into the stretcher starting with a forcer bit that is wide enough to allow the pan head room to wiggle side to side I'm using a 5/8 in bit I drilled down somewhere between a/4 to half an inch let's call it 38 that second hole gets drilled straight through the stretcher and you want to use a drill bit that's wider than your screw and you can even move it side to side and this hole enables the screw shank to move with the wood when the top starts doing the electric slide in the summer and fall now that I have those two done I laid my top face down I'm just going to Center this base before drilling my third and final hole and that is a simple pilot hole to keep the top from cracking when I drive in screws my final tip or thing that I got wrong is this your projects are not going to be perfect not when you're starting out not when you're more experienced never thankfully unless your friends are walking around with a tape measure and a square and if they are you need to find new friends but no one is ever going to notice the inevitable slight imperfections like this base being a little twisted and the top not being perfectly centered the best thing you can do above all these other tips is to just get out there and start building except that you will make what feels like catastrophic mistakes at the time even though I promise you they are not everyone's just going to be so impressed that you built a badass looking coffee table even though you might not actually need one we'll see you she is going to kill me when she finds out that I didn't finish the laundry room and I made this instead if I go missing you know where to start looking pray for me