 One of the things I get asked about quite a lot is cutting wood, how to cut it straight, what to cut it with, and the best types of wood to use for making miniature furniture. So I thought I'd just share with you a few tips which I hope will be of help. I want to start by talking about different types of wood. In my tutorials I always recommend four types of wood, bass wood, line wood, gelatong and a bash, and all of these can be cut with a basic craft knife. Out of the four gelatong, got a small sample piece here, is the best quality. It's got a closer or tighter grain and working down to a bash which has a wider grain and doesn't have that natural luster that the gelatong has. Although I find that when making 12 scale pieces or larger a bash works really well, it sounds well to a lovely smooth finish and also takes paint and varnish well. So overall a bash or less expensive wood can finish just as well as a more expensive better quality wood. Each of the woods I've mentioned available in sheet, dowel or strip form, and the sheet wood comes in 0.87 mil, 1.32 inch and that we would use as a veneer or for moldings. 1.5 which I use a lot, 1.16 inch, a 2.5, 3.32 inch, and a 3 mil 1.8 inch. They come in thicker pieces but you wouldn't be able to cut through anything thicker than a 3 mil 1.8 inch with a craft knife that then you'd have to move onto heavy duty tools, band soles and things like that. So I like to stick to up to 3 millimetre and we'll come to that when I get to the actual cutting section. There are of course other types of wood you could use but you want something that you can cut with a craft knife rather than the power tools. It's always a good idea to know what could be cut with a craft knife to check what we call the janker rating of a piece of wood and a janker test is a test that determines the hardness or density of a piece of wood and how they do it is by inserting a small steel ball into the wood at force which measures the pound's force. So for example, bolso wood, a piece here has a janker rating of 90 and the other wood size suggests around 430 or lower. Something like U, the wood of a U tree would be 1,520 so you wouldn't be able to cut that with a craft knife but it just shows you the differences in the density of the wood. There's a really good website actually that you can look at wooddatabase.com, I'll put it in the link below and that lists every type of wood and all the information that you'd possibly need to know about it along with the janker rating. So if you want to use anything other than I've suggested just check the janker rating and go for something between I don't know, 350 and 500 and anything up to 500 you would be able to cut with just a basic craft knife. I've got a piece of them hoggling here which is a lovely lovely wood but the rating is around sort of 900 to 1000 depending on whether the tree is from and that would just be too hard to cut with a craft knife and you can see it's got that lovely close grain and it's a really lovely good quality wood but you wouldn't be able to cut it with a craft knife. So if that's what you're looking for you'd need to go for something with a lower janker rating and also on the website you'll find information about allergies and the toxicity of different types of wood which is really useful to know and it is just things like certain woods such as a mesh can cause runny noses, itchy eyes if you get the dust near your eyes. So it's always advisable to wear glasses when you're sanding protective glasses and a dust mask as well or make sure you've got a really well ventilated room. This is the craft knife that I like to use and it's called a swan morten and it takes a size 10A surgical blade which just clips into place over the end. I'll just show you. I use pliers to remove it so you've just got this metal end and then the blade just clips over and then you just clip it into place holding the knife open like that and this will cut through woods of up to 3mm in thickness and woods of the density that I spoke about in the first part. I recommend you always put a new blade in at the start of a project so always have plenty of spare blades and if you're doing quite a large project with lots of pieces and you find that the knife begins to catch or drag along the wood as you're working that means that it's becoming blunt so then change it. These are available for most craft shops or just search Google for swan morten craft knife and that should find a local supplier for you. I find it's often the case that pieces of wood direct from the manufacturer are until we square. So the first thing to do before you even start cutting your pieces is to make sure that it's square and if not to square it off and to do that we use the lines on the cutting mat so line up one side so the top of that side is at the edge of the horizontal line there and then just lay your ruler across so it's in line with that top line there and then you can just trim off anything that's overhanging and that will just square the piece off and even if it's just a tiny mount it's worth doing because even sort of a fraction of an inch or a half a millimeter when you're working at scale can make a big difference to the piece. So general sort of tips for cutting wood always make sure you've got a nice sharp pencil, the sharper the better make a more accurate pencil mark and then take your ruler and make the measurement and there's no need to draw a line across so just a tiny mark at each edge of the wood like so is enough and then lay your ruler across which just below that pencil line and that will then allow for the thickness of your knife blade and then begin by making just a gentle light score and that will help keep the blade on track. So a nice light score and then I also cut into that end of the wood and then you'll find that as you're going along it doesn't split at that end and then you can just go across a few more times and this wood is 1.5 millimeter in thickness it's 1.16th of an inch so the thicker the wood becomes the more times you'll need to score across and with three millimeters you think you're not going to get through but just keep going and you will and then when you've cut the wood to measurement just sand off the edge you've just cut by going across the sandpaper in just one direction don't rock it back and forth or you'll round off the edges and there's the piece and then I always stick to the rule that the longest edge should be in direction of the grain. In my cutting list I sometimes state otherwise and that's because this edge that's in line with the grain is always neater against the grain and I'm not sure you can see that on camera but you can see the inside of the grain and it doesn't sand as well and it's quite bubbly so if I'm doing something like a draw divide which is going to be deeper than it is higher I'll cut the shortest edge in the direction of the grain and then you just get a need to finish at the front of your piece of furniture and then you're ready to make your second cut so again you're just making a pencil mark at either the end of the wood and because now we're going in the direction of the grain is going to be a lot easier so again make the light cut and there just just a couple of cuts there and we're through. Now something not to do is to measure if you need several pieces of the same size always use the ruler to measure don't use the piece you've just done like this and either cut alongside it or draw your lines alongside it always always go back to your ruler because if this piece is out just slightly the next piece will be and the next piece and the next piece and then you've wasted quite a lot of wood so always go back to use in the ruler. Another tip is again if you're cutting several pieces of the same size don't measure them all out along the piece of wood so if you need to say several pieces that are 20 mill don't go along like that and then cut cut the first piece and then measure again because again the thickness of the blade will affect these measurements so once you've cut that piece off this is no longer 20 millimetres it's going to be slightly shorter and again there and again so each piece will be slightly out so always cut and then measure again if you're cutting from a piece of wood that is narrower than the thickness of your ruler the ruler will sort of tend to rock back and forth so just slot another piece of wood alongside the piece you're cutting like that and then that will just balance the ruler and then you can just cut without it rocking back and forth and something else I do is keep all the off cuts of wood just in a lunch box or something or an old biscuit tin I have a tin for each thickness of wood and these smaller pieces can just come in handy when you're doing drawers or smaller projects or mouldings try not to throw anything away. For example you're doing a piece like this which will be used as a shelf on a table and you need to cut out sections for the legs always cut against the grain first so if for example I'm cutting this out and I go in the direction of the grain first you can see there as I just remove the knife that split so if you cut against the grain first like so and then in the direction of the grain to remove the piece you will avoid that splitting. So finally I just want to talk about cutting, strip wood and dowel and I've got a couple of pieces here three mill and five mill that's one eighth of an inch and just under quarter of an inch and I just want to demonstrate that also although you can cut through the three millimeter with a craft knife I would advise not to and I'll show you why so firstly it does take quite a bit of pressure to get through like so and I don't know if you can see that on camera or not but it hasn't cut in a straight line it's left the end at an angle so that's why I advise not to do it even though you can sort of hack through it with a knife it is best to use the mortar block and saw so I'm going to demonstrate here with the five millimeter piece of strip wood so begin by measuring up your piece and you just need to make a pencil mark on one edge like that and then place it in your mortar block and I'm just obviously just cutting a straight line here the highest edge of the mortar block should be towards you so place it in so that the pencil line is just to the left of the the central groove there and again that's just a cater for the thickness of the saw blade so you're you're basically sawing just above that line or just next to it and then on which direction you're in so just hold it firmly into place as you saw and there we are I just went flying and there you've got a nice neat straight cut and that's the same as well with dowel always use your your mortar block and then if you find that the the saw blade is catching at the edge of the block just use a bit of candle wax and just wipe it there along the blade and this is just an old tea light candle that I've burnt out just wipe it along the blade on both sides and you'll then just find that that just passes through easier and another way to cut strip wood is by using one of these handheld cutters and this cuts at the angles as well so you can do my to join for things like picture frames etc. and again this this does cut up to five millimeters and probably more but I haven't tried anything thicker than five millimeters so you would just just to do it a straight cut you would measure up the piece and place it so that again the pencil line is just to the side of the line there you can see in the middle of the the might at all and you make sure it's straight against these pieces here as one of those either sides so if you line it up straight against that and then just cut through and it does take a little bit of pressure but quite easy to use as you can see there and then take them out always make sure you close this down and lock it and if like that it's probably because the blade's going a little bit blunt you've got a bit of a sort of frayed edge there you can just trim that off with your craft knife like that rather than sanding as again you might round the end so again these are available for most craft suppliers or just search Google or eBay for a handheld mighter cutter really nice and a little tool to have I hope you found some of those tips useful and that they're helping with your miniature builds if there's anything else you'd like to know do get in touch I'll put my email address below or you can contact me through Facebook thank you to everybody who has subscribed to the channel so far and if you haven't already done so please do as I've got lots of tutorials planned for you thank you for watching and hope to see you soon bye