Basic Carpentry Tutorial

Techniques, tips and tricks of the trade

If you are DIYer or just new to carpentry you'll want to know some basic carpentry techniques, tips, tricks of the trade and ideas. I've injured myself badly several times since starting my apprenticeship (mainly when rushing to finish) including having shot myself with a nailgun and planing a chunk of my finger off. I've damaged materials too. So, hopefully the information in this section will save you time, wasted materials and maybe even prevent some self inflicted injuries!

Carpentry terms

Familiarise yourself with the carpentry terms that you'll be hearing or look up those you may of heard but don't know the meaning of. Click here for a huge list of common carpentry terms and their meanings.

Basic carpentry techniques

Scribing is pretty much the art of cutting something in for a tight fit. You won't always be able to cut and have timber fit first time. Sometimes surfaces are irregular, out of level, out of square etc. Scribing is one of the skills required all the time and that takes a minute to learn, but a lifetime to master. Internal skirting board angles are scribed too. When joining timber at an internal angle, instead of mitering one piece is cut in tight and the other is scribed to the exact shape of the first.

One method of joining two pieces of timber at an angle is bu mitring them. If the corner is a perfect 90° this is fairly simple, by cutting both pieces at 45-. It's not always as straight forward as that though, click the link above for loads of help getting perfectly tight mitre joints.

Another measuring tool is the tape measure. Tape measures come in either imperial, metric or both. Click the link above for more information about reading and using tape measures.

Basic carpentry maths and formulas

You'll need to know how to check for square, how to calculate square areas and bisect angles amongst others. Click here for a list of commonly used carpentry formulas each with explanations you can understand!

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