Resistance is FEWTEL

"FEWTEL" is an acronym woodworkers use to remind themselves of the order in which they process wood from rough sawn lumber to finished parts.  Following this particular order will result in you handling the wood in the most efficient way, reducing tool setups, and minimizing the amount of time you spend shuffling lumber around the shop.

F: Flatten one FACE of a board.

A power jointer makes quick work of this.  If you're into the hand-tool-only approach, you're going to be using your Jack, Jointer/Try, and Smoothing planes.  I'll let Christopher Scwarz explain how to use each of those tools for this task.

E: Square one EDGE to the face you just flattened.

Again, a power jointer makes quick work of this, but a jointer/try plane doesn't take that much time or effort either.

W: Rip the Board to WIDTH.

Now that you have one square edge and one flat face, you can safely and accurately rip the board to width.  Rip cuts go with the grain, crosscuts go across the grain.  Most people use a table saw to do this.  Some people use a bandsaw, then having to clean up the edge because the bandsaw doesn't cut as smoothly as a table saw.  And some people do it by hand with a handsaw or panel saw.

T: Plane the Board to THICKNESS.

You've got 3 parallel / square surfaces so far.  Now you work on the as yet untouched / rough face of the board.  You can use a power planer which does this very quickly, or you can do it by hand, again with jack, jointer/try, and smoothing planes.

E: Square One END of the Board.

In order to cut the board to final length, you need to be able to measure from a straight edge.  If the end of your board is all crooked, you won't get a reliable measurement.  Squaring up the end before you measure is the way to go.  You can use a radial arm saw, table saw with miter fence, hand saw, or shooting board (or some combination of a few of them).

L: Cut the Board to Final LENGTH.

You've got 5 square/parallel surfaces.  One more to go.  Measure from your squarely cut end, mark the length, and cut precisely.  Make it nice with a shooting board if you want.  

Congratulations!  You just made a rectangular paralellepipedon.

"[...] the word “cuboid” is sometimes used to refer to a shape [...] in which each of the faces is a rectangle (and so each pair of adjacent faces meets in a right angle); this more restrictive type of cuboid is also known as a right cuboid, rectangular box, rectangular hexahedron, right rectangular prism, or rectangular parallelepiped." - Wikipedia

Why I Don't Follow the FEWTEL Method Exactly

I lack confidence, so I tend to leave extra wood at the cost of having to touch the boards more often.  The wood I purchased from Dunham Hardwoods was flattened on 2 faces, and jointed on 1 edge (S3S - Surfaced 3 Sides), so much of this work was already done for me.

After assigning parts to boards I find spots where I can crosscut a board without sacrificing any important parts.  I do this by hand with a crosscut panel saw.  I consider this cutting to rough length.

Then I rip those boards to rough width, leaving a little extra because I'll hand plane them down to final width and I want to leave a little extra in case I screw up.  I use the bandsaw for this and it leaves a ragged cut that needs to be jointed smooth.

I don't have to thickness these, so I just smooth them to remove the planer marks.

And finally, I square one end and cut to final length with my miter saw and shooting board. 

Not that many extra steps, and I feel more comfortable leaving some room for mistakes as I'm still in the learning stages.

The Search for a Better Lumber Mill

I’ve been really dissatisfied with the service at the lumber mill I’ve been going to since 2009. I’ve never really had a great experience there. Adequate at best. I think, perhaps, a lot of my feelings stem from the owner not being a woodworker, and it seems like he doesn’t really understand what I’m looking for in lumber for a furniture project. I’m willing to chalk it up to a personality difference and say “It’s not him, it’s me” and leave it at that. He’s an alright guy, and the prices there are good, but I want more than just good prices. I guess I’m looking for a partner that’s going to help bring my furniture projects to the next level.

So I’m about to start my next project and I don’t really want to purchase from the same mill as before. I spent an entire week researching alternatives around the area and online, reading forums and reviews of lumber mills around the country to find out where other furniture makers buy their wood.

Here are the results of my investigations:

Talarico Hardwoods near Philly has, very likely, the absolute best, rarest, old-growth, highly figured Quartersawn White Oak, period, and it's priced accordingly.

Hearne Hardwoods, also near Philly, is where a lot of fine furniture makers get their lumber as they specialize in full flitches (all the boards are from the same tree, kept in their original positions within the tree, organized, catalogued, etc etc etc.)  That, and he has a super wide selection of almost any wood you can think of.

Irion Lumber in Northern Pennsylvania specializes in the woods used in 18th century furniture.

Bell Forest Products has a widespread reputation for being an excellent online lumber seller with a very wide selection and good service, but I find their website a little confusing and I'm not in the habit of buying one board at a time.

Steve Wall Lumber Co. in North Carolina has most often the lowest prices of the 16 mills I looked at for 50% of the species I care about.  Not too shabby!

C.R. Muterspaw in Ohio has a wide selection, an excellent online reputation, they hand-select the boards for your order checking for flaws, color-matching, grain patterns, etc, and they have really good prices.

And Dunham Hardwoods out in Iowa has the best prices on Quartersawn White Oak, they hand-select the boards for your order, checking for flaws, color-matching, grain patterns, etc, and they surface plane down to near-final thickness and joint one edge at no extra charge.

So for the entryway bench & mirror project I chose to give Dunham Hardwoods a try.  Sent them an email and within a few hours Zach Dunham replied, answering my initial data gathering questions. We exchanged 3 or 4 more emails and each time he replied in a timely manner with a fully detailed response, answering every question I had.

Here are the highlights:

• his father, his brother and he own the business and have been doing it for 30 years
• they are woodworkers themselves, so they understand what woodworkers are looking for
• they throw away 10% of their inventory that is technically up to grade and acceptable for sale, but since they wouldn’t want to use it for their own projects, they don’t sell it to their customers
• they touch every board that comes in
• they hand-select boards for your order trying to match color as much as possible.
• if you order quartersawn white oak, he won’t put a board into your pile that has little to no ray flake
• if you ask, he’ll pick out the widest boards he’s got (again, at no extra charge)
• they surface plane every board down to final thickness and joint one edge for no extra charge. This is not hit-or-miss planing. It’s full final thickness planing where it just needs to be finish sanded or hit with a smoothing plane and you’re good to go. 
• You have the option of hit-or-miss planing or rough-cut lumber by walking into their retail store, but for mail orders there’s no price drop for buying rough-cut lumber because Dunham won’t be able to see the boards as well and there’s an increased chance that the customer won’t like what they see and want to return the wood.
• To date, they’ve never had a return.
• He spent 10 minutes on the phone with me going over my cut list asking me at what lengths I’d like him to cut the 10’ boards, 11’ boards, and 12’ boards across the thicknesses I needed to make sure that he didn’t cut them too short for the parts of my project, but also to try to stay under the 5’ mark to avoid the $7.50 UPS surcharge for over-long packages. Again, for no extra cost.

Here’s the amazing part… all of this is $3 more than what it would have cost me to get lower quality, rough cut, ordered-sight-unseen lumber from the mill I’ve been going to…..and that’s after shipping it right to my doorstep!

I compared Dunham Hardwoods along with 14 other lumber mills, getting quotes from all of them. It’s an amazing value, especially when you consider that you’re getting S3S lumber.

So I placed an order for 55bf and received it within 5 days.  Each bundle was carefully wrapped with the ends cushioned with extra cardboard and tape holding the cushions in place. There was no damage from shipping, and the boards look awesome!  The poplar is wider than I expected (in a good way), and clean and check-free. Nice! The Quartersawn White Oak has prettier and more dynamic grain than I’ve ever seen in person before.

Summary

• personable, family-run business
• high level of care and attention even with a small order
• careful hand selection of boards, rough length, widths to serve your woodworking project
• quick and reasonable shipping
• low costs, high quality lumber, beautiful figure, no significant flaws
• every step of the way I’ve been given the royal treatment.

I’ll be buying from Dunham Hardwoods again.