The materials for these exercises may be of any easily worked soft wood. Probably white pine is the best. Basswood and whitewood or yellow poplar are also suitable. Black walnut and mahogany are good but expensive. Maple, oak, and ash are too hard. Chestnut and hard or yellow pine have a grain which is unsuitable for joinery.

Always examine your material for defects and plan your work so that the defects will be cut out or covered up. Notice carefully the difference in texture of different pieces and the different parts of the same piece.

You will not work enough pieces nor pieces large enough to give you very definite information, but if you will observe each piece carefully you will gather a fund of information which will aid you very much later on. Your principal study will be to learn how to discover the way of the grain, and how to plane and cut joints smoothly in cross grained pieces. This you will learn by experiment. Some pieces cannot be worked smoothly either way, but will generally work much smoother in one direction than in the opposite direction.

Notice also that certain parts of a piece require a much sharper tool than do other parts. Learn to distinguish pieces that will work easily and smoothly so that you can select the proper stock for fine work and also use pieces for rough jobs which will not work smoothly. You must learn to make these selections without testing them with the tools.