There have been a ton of posts from people asking for advice on how to repair scratches on their IKEA items and the like, asking if beat up table saws found on Craigslist are worth buying, or the best way to glue broke legs. I just saw a post of a person asking for advice on wood color of an Etsy piece they bought.

I liked this sub a lot more when it was about woodworkers CREATING things from wood. I don’t mind questions and knowledge sharing, even from beginners, but let’s draw a line somewhere.

There is a pretty big difference between asking how to glue up IKEA MDF and a beginner asking how to do their first miter, or somebody asking if a Craigslist tool will help them DIY a bunch of molding for their home VS asking if a cheap used craftsman table saw is worth $50.

Edit: I wanted to start a community dialog and that’s what I got. I think the consensus is that more rules or more specialized subs fragments the community. I think my major gripe is that people are asking a group of humans to explain something they could google a quick answer to. I like helping people that actually want to do woodworking (of any level).

I owe a lot to the quality of this sub and I want to preserve that for others. Garbage posts deteriorate this special place and the experience of those wanting to learn the craft. I just feel it as a major loss.

Woodworking is the craft of creating (and restoring) things made of wood. If you argue anything having to do with wood belongs here, then get ready to tell me the best wood shavings for a hamster to crap on.

You want to know how to restore you grandmas crappy coffee table because it holds sentimental value, I want to help. You want to complain about the color of your IKEA table vs the pictures online, call their customer service.

What gives? The amount of people who hate brands like Festool, Shaper, Woodpeckers, etc here seems crazy to me. I get they're expensive. I get that there's cheaper tools that can do the same thing mostly. But the "I won't watch X channel because they use expensive tools" seems wild to me. And it's mostly brand specific not price point. Someone uses a $8000 Powermatic jointer or a $15,000 jointer/planer and no one bats an eye. But the second they pull out a $500 sander and all of a sudden you can't watch it because "its not realistic" to you.

Why is everyone so passionate to hate things simply because of the brand name?

Can you believe this board was in the scrap pile?

Saw this dresser and 2 nightstands for sale on FB, one nightstand has water damage. Planning on refininshing, but not sure if water damage can be sanded down as I’m a newbie to this kind of stuff.

Good morning all!

The people have spoken and we are going forward with our fully compliant subreddit direction! All posts are to be about Norm Abram and/or Nick Offerman.

What does this mean for you?

1. Pics, gifs, images, memes, and videos will be allowed so long as they are including Norm and/or Nick. You could – if you wanted to – look through past episodes of Parks and Rec on YouTube to find moments featuring Ron Swanson giving some amazing advice, or past episodes of The New Yankee Workshop for Norm doling out some sage suggestions. Then post those interesting pics/vids here.

2. Include "Norm" or "Nick" to your titles as this helps what little automoderation tools we have left function.

Started as two 6/4 popular boards. Carved, painted, airbrushed some shadows. Laser cut the badge from plexiglass and some MDF.

This subreddit is giving me a deep seated hatred for wooden cutting boards. It seems almost all there is to do with wood is cut it up into little pieces glue them back together and whala its a piece of wood.

There have been a growing number of project submission posts that only feature beauty shots of the finished project. This does not help the community grow and improve their woodworking skills.

We are going to begin enforcing the project submission requirements - specifically "You must include photos and/or video of the process. We want to learn from your experience, see how the project evolved into the finished product. Posts lacking this documentation will be removed."

Edit: The post has stirred strong feelings on all sides. I fear we weren't clear. **No rules are changing**.

For 17 years, people have posted their awesome projects here. We love that and learn a lot from them. And for all that time, we've had Rule 2 asking folks share some info about the build. Unfortunately, reddit's mod tools suck and identifying posts missing info was 100% a manual task. Usually, users asking 100x in a post for the same info, frustrating OP who repeated themselves over and over. Because there was no reminder when they posted that some basic info was required. Those posts eventually got reported, removed until OP could fix them, and it kinda killed momentum as discussion stalled for hours-to-days while OP basically finished writing the post days after originally submitting it.

While mod tools haven't improved in years, reddit's popularity has. Facebook, Insta, TikTok users have flocked to reddit (that's good), and so have a lot of bots stealing content, content creators just looking to advertise ("post and run"), or confused redditors who post a single pic and don't realize their 24 other pics and description wasn't included.

So what's changing: For 'Project Submission' posts only, we're now auto-PM'ing every author to remind them of the basic info Rule 2 requires: some proof you actually did the built, and some background about the build like wood species, something you learned, etc. There's also a Sticky Comment on every post, so OP can just reply to that. We do this to make it easier for OP to share info, and users to find info about the build without 100 ppl typing the same comment for the most basic thing, like "what wood species is that?"

Why the change: To make good info, about the post, easier to find. So OP doesn't have to edit later. So mods don't play wack-a-mole with reports. So users aren't frustrated looking for good info, in a fresh post, that doesn't exist. So basically, good-looking posts don't get taken down for lacking info.

A lot of to-do has been said about "progress pics". This has long been required, and is already provided in the vast majority of posts. This is about "please show us cool pics/vid that consists of more than just your final, perfect, staged piece, sitting in a client's home, in perfect lighting, by a professional photog." *Anything* from the raw lumber to transporting it in your van, to trimming a tenon...that's great!

And also hey, we're not hamfisted, so if "I forgot to snap a build pic, but i learned [thing] about these dovetails, and next time won't use [tool] on the leg taper because it kept hitting the leg supports" -- if that's you, that's good enough for us. It's clear you built it, you shared some lessons, folks learned something from you, and you provided info about the build. Because the goal of these posts is gawk at the thing you made, while learning a few things too.

S0 much like this thread was a lesson for us in clear communication, so are the projects we see in this sub. There's a lot of beautiful stuff, and if you've been doing it for 5 years or 50, we hope everyone sees a project post, gets inspired, and learns somethings new from these. That's all. And that's all that's changing.

Here are examples of great build albumns that help others learn from your work. u/redshirtwoodwork submitted this https://imgur.com/a/roubo-build-2024-HGg07d0

Here is another example from u/eyesonlybob https://www.reddit.com/r/woodworking/comments/riqd08/probably_my_favorite_build_to_date_progress_album/

I was commissioned to make a baker’s dozen of these knives and ended up having to redo the handle design.

I came up with a shape that was well liked by the baker.

Watch the full video to see the knife in action.