This Online Group Is All About Appreciating Woodworking Skills, And Here Are Their 50 Best Posts

To find out more about the amazing r/Woodworking community on Reddit, Bored Panda reached out to its moderator Joseph, who goes by the handle u/joelav. Joseph told us that the subreddit was created in 2008 as “a place for woodworking redditors to get together and exchange ideas, techniques, advice, and projects.”

“It has grown from humble roots to a 2.7-million-member community,” the moderator said and added that on average, r/woodworking is visited 250,000 times daily, which makes it a powerful corner online to get some incredible wood inspiration.

Incredibly, there’s one key rule in the community and it’s that people are only allowed to share things they have made themselves. “This keeps our content original and organic,” Joseph explained. So every incredible piece of woodwork you see here is really made by someone’s hands in the group.

When asked about their favorite woodworking pieces, the moderator team has decided on a couple of great examples. First, it’s this “tricky but beautiful joinery,” then there’s this “very detailed post on building a bookcase.” Another great wood piece according to the mod team is this home office inspiration for all those Zoom meetings.

And for those who feel short on space but are working from home, this amazing old design brought to life again may give some inspiration. But the moderator team also stressed the fact that woodworking, no matter how cool it may be, is not really all “fun and games.” See this post as “a reminder for the shop that accidents happen.”

There are many types of woodwork and each is a craft on its own: from carving, whittling, and scroll-sawing to wood burning (pyrography) and construction-related woodwork. But there’s something about working the wood which makes it nostalgic and beautifully old-fashioned.

So is woodworking really a dying art? After all, many consumers are driven by price and not by quality, as it used to be. You won’t find long-lasting, high-quality wood in current home decorating styles where everything revolves around price and practicality.

On the other hand, there are my indicators that show that woodworking is in fact having a renaissance. First, sites like Etsy and Amazon Handmade are filled with woodworkers selling their incredible wooden pieces. Moreover, some sellers offer unique pieces for reasonable prices.

According to Scott Curry, the author of “Make from Wood” magazine that provides woodworking tips for woodworkers around the world, “On Etsy, I’ve found everything from large items like dining room tables down to a lady who carves amazing designs and scenery from single pencils!”

Scott also believes that just like online impact, local impact too has played one of the key roles in bringing woodwork into the spotlight. For example, "The number of local craft fairs has significantly increased in recent years if you live in a decent-sized city. Organizers have learned that there are nice profits to be made by organizing an event.”

Scott says that attending a local craft fair feels like walking through a real life Etsy store, where you find rows upon rows of woodworkers set up. “The turnout of both buyers and sellers would not be as big as it is without the growth in popularity within woodworking,” he concludes.