"stryped" wrote in message
ups.com...

Can you tell me what they
are and if they would be good for projects? They are varying widthe
between 6 inches and 10 inches. They are all 1inch thick. I am guessing
white oak but may be wrong.

Here are pictures I took:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/ashlee...bum?.dir=/7d65


Looks like oak. Tough to tell from the pictures, but I would guess red oak.

First thing I would like to make my mom and wife a
project in a book I boght.

It is always a good idea to build a project for the wife. It has a way of
freeing up some funds for new tools sometimes

It was a drawer that had a butcher block on
top of it. the drawer held you knives. I'd like to finish it the same
as my cabinets. (Can you tell me what type of wood my cabinets are?)

The cabinets pictured are red oak. However, you do not want to use red oak
as a surface for a butcher block as it is very porous and will absorb food
juices and become rancid over time. You want a closed pore type of wood
such as hard maple or walnut for a butcher block.

There are also larger projects I would like to do like a bookshelf and
an entertainment center and some cabinets for my garage.

One last thing. I have bought some woodworking books and one of them
said you can finish and true an edge of a board with a router and
table. Is this true and could this be use dinstead of having to buy a
jointer?


You can use a router with a straight bit that has a bearing on it (sometimes
called a pattern bit) with along with a straight edge to joint a board. I
am unsure about what they mean by table, maybe they are suggesting using a
table edge as the straightedge?

If I could offer some advise, check out the books by Tage Frid. There is a
book called "Tage Frid Teaches Woodworking" which is a two part unabridged
addition of a couple of his earlier books. He has a way of showing how to
do things in a very simple and do-able manner without major capital
investment and without a lot of unnecessary crap. He was a highly respected
woodworker and you won't find many who will disagree with his advice.

Frank