Woodworking is a lifelong hobby in which you’ll likely progress a great deal through the decades. If you’re interested in taking the hobby a bit more seriously, it’s important that you constantly work toward increasing your education, skills and training.

With this in mind, here’s some information from a lumber yard in Houston that all woodworkers will find helpful:

Always wear ear protection: Power tools can do a lot of damage to your hearing over time if you do not wear the proper protection. You should get at least a couple pairs of muffs to keep in your shop that can easily fit over hats and safety glasses. That way you’ll be covered, as will anyone you have helping you out in your shop.
Keep stocked with the essentials: There are certain items you can never have too much of in your shop. This includes painter’s tape, orange-based hand cleaner, first aid supplies, various grades of sandpaper, pencils and double-sided tape.
Get organized: You’ll find working in your shop to be a much less stressful process if you take some time to get yourself organized. Label your drawers and make it easy to access the items inside them. Have a special place for your project plans and tool manuals so you can go back and easily reference them at any time.
Prevent splintering and tear-out: Occasional splinters occur while you’re working with wood, but it should still be relatively easy to avoid whenever using a drill, table saw or router. Make prevention steps part of your routine, and take your time while using the tools, and you shouldn’t have many problems.
You can never have enough clamps: The more woodworking you do, the more you’ll realize just how much you can benefit from having a large selection of clamps in a wide variety of sizes. Whether you’re making large furniture or small boxes, having plenty of clamps on hand will make your glue-ups significantly easier.
Understand how humidity affects wood: Even the driest wood can change its shape a little bit due to absorption of moisture. Therefore, it’s important to plan for this in certain applications, where fits that are too tight might result in the wood cracking or breaking. It can also be helpful to only use kiln-dried wood for your projects.
Keep your tools sharp: Any tool you use with a blade should be kept sharp. Not only does this keep it operating at peak performance, but it also enhances its safety—dull blades are dangerous. This goes for all saw blades (on both hand saws and power saws), planes and chisels.
Keep clean: Try to keep your shop clean as much as you can. Vacuum and sweep up sawdust after jobs, clean your tools and keep things generally tidy. This will help you stay organized and also keep your tools in better operating condition if they don’t have a constantly present layer of sawdust over them.

For more information for woodworkers, contact a lumber yard in Houston.