Badger Workshop is UK-based https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSQRZgy9lvGsLrWn6sFHZHw
Nick Zammeti is UK-based https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3-0S7vXfwYY2jj5EkMpymA
Rag N Bone Brown is UK-based https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVyE_6jEtVZGmYGXtUOL5FQ
Ishitani Furniture is Japanese https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7FkqjV8SU5I8FCHXQSQe9Q
Giaco Whatever (some woodworking) is Italian https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYH-XXUE2QDaWKvABsWJh8w
Cactus! Workshop is from Spain: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCupK5wJGXHDemXmHFMCMtHA
Lignum is based in Croatia https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfSdejZFhw0rrDFlj9McyNA
Marius Hornberger is German https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn7lavsPdVGV0qmEEBT6NyA
Laura Kampf is German https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRix1GJvSBNDpEFY561eSzw
Ollari's is based in Hungary https://www.youtube.com/user/Sepirabbit
I'm in the US, but I find a tend to like european woodworking channels better.
And my feeling is that Europeans in general don't insist on staining everything like Americans do. Or maybe it's just us in Scandinavia that actually think the bright natural color of birch, but even pine, is quite beautiful.
Paul Sellers definitely understands that many UK woodworkers are in their garage or garden shed and keeps that in mind for his projects, and uses predominantly hand tools. I'm not saying I don't like the North American channels, and Matthias is a true hacker as well as a woodworker, but it's a different world.
Just to add my own recommendation: Alain Vaillancourt does some excellent stuff, from his vast workshop located somewhere in the New World:
No affiliation. I just found him a couple weeks ago and have been really enjoying it.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzHueSosfT92NUVmhrz7Hjw
It's a guy in South Africa with a small workshop. The main point of his videos is designing space-saving tool mounts and storage for his shop. He uses cheap tools—and lots of plywood—to make some clever stuff.
It's not a channel for seeing furniture made, but it's interesting nonetheless.
I ended up using stain for this current project as the room called for dark wood, but the only two real-wood options for skirting boards in the UK are pine or oak, which are both light woods, so I opted to stain pine for it.
And thank you! Someone at work mentioned his videos recently and I completely forgot the name.
Also, not youtube, but https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/ is a great uk online resource, including this thread https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/timber-yards-wip-add-you... on sourcing timber
From my standpoint as a woodworker, everybody's money's equally green and if somebody wants a piece stained something garish, it doesn't cost me any more than if they want it in a natural color. Although, as a mentor of mine once said: "You don't have to sign everything you build".
I'll let you know if that perspective changes if I ever have so much work coming in that I have to turn jobs down :-)
There's quite a lot of non-US/CA woodworking channels out there, though.
Paska Makes, Australia
Woodshop Junkies, South Africa
Paoson Woodworking, Spain
JSK-koubou, Japan
Laura Kampf, Germany
Crimson Guitars, UK (Mostly luthier projects, but Ben does some crazy stuff that I think woodworkers could find inspirational in general)
Dekay's Crafts, Korea
Get Hands Dirty, Portugal
Resin Timber, Lithuania
I've seen plenty of others - these are just some of the ones that I subscribe to.
Paska Makes https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNyGbxoEo6CQvaRVEvItxkA
Woodshop Junkies https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzHueSosfT92NUVmhrz7Hjw
Paoson Woodworking https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4PI8VEr1ZaKn4TBcXoy3qg
JSK-koubou https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCez62GvvsH05IunJJsRuvuQ
Laura Kampf https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRix1GJvSBNDpEFY561eSzw
Crimson Guitars https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdD1Cqxr8aINzWs1agg3tEQ
Dekay's Crafts https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYVugiFOe-aoh7FXtAuiGxw
Get Hands Dirty https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCETeXD_3awsQv-9rSdCYXQQ
Resin Timber https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCZ2m-mgto7R-4uEgROP2pQ
Damn that man for working so incredibly neat and tidy. No stains on his virginal birch-ply, ever — not even a smudge. Sawdust seems to bend to his will, and all cuts and holes drilled are surely accurate to the micrometer.
His workspace is as clean as an operating theatre.
Yeah… That's not ever going to happen in my shed.
His recent router table build is also awesome - I'm planning on purchasing a copy of the plans and building it when I get a bit more free time.
https://www.woodcraft.com/blog_entries/stain-or-dye#:~:text=....
You can make your own wood conditioner by mixing 70% varnish with 30% mineral spirits or a 60/40 of Denatured alcohol and shellac.
You only need a conditioner if you are staining a soft, sap wood such as American yellow pine. We have a pine here called slash pine that is similar in properties to your pine, but it is virtually extinct. It does not need pre-stain conditioning because it is a harder pine, and it was mostly harvested from old growth forests.
Point being it is really not, the specific wood, it is the characteristics of the wood, mainly hardness, porousness, sapling harvest or heartwood harvest and oiliness.
If you have a soft, pours, sap wood harvested, with little oil content it is going to need conditioning. If you have something like Ipe, hard as a rock, oily and a tight grain, you will not need it and most likely need a dye to actually stain it.
Stephens 8x6 Workshop - tiny space, clever projects. At the real ale end of woodworking https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8SLw_zYEappZL5rROwvZ1w/vid...
Peter Millard - cabinet making in a tiny workshop, some good meta content on the reality of being a YT woodworker https://www.youtube.com/user/petermillard1/videos
Pask Makes - Australian but totally transferrable to UK materials, lots of reinvented basics https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNyGbxoEo6CQvaRVEvItxkA/vid...
Charlie DIYte - general DIY with plenty of carpentry, good for beginners and those with few tools https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7x7wk8yeN2ZEJCo6BgP2ag/vid...
Ishitani Furniture - Japanese but essential inspiration and meditation https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7FkqjV8SU5I8FCHXQSQe9Q/vid...
Sampson Boat Co - UK boatbuilder in US, any woodworking list on YouTube should have this at or near the top, relevant or otherwise it's astonishing https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg-_lYeV8hBnDSay7nmphUA
“Yeah, here I'm making a simple spice rack out of some purple heart and cocobolo I just had lying around.”
I'm pretty pleased already if I can get my hands on a few scant planks of walnut at a passable price here in the Netherlands.
Every sawmill/timber merchant/whatever near me basically sells fences and roof trusses.
For example: Home Depot (which is a national chain of home improvement stores) generally stocks pine, red oak, some yellow poplar (which is not actually a poplar, but I digress), and sometimes something they'll call mahogany (which almost certainly isn't Swietenia anything) . That is about as good as you'll find unless you go somewhere that specializes in hardwood lumber. Unfortunately, some of those don't do retail sales.
For US readers in the northeast, Highland Hardwoods and Northland Forest Products both do retail sales. Northland is more focused on North American wood, though they stock FSC certified mahogany. They're about 10 minutes from each other about an hour and 15 minutes from Boston (usual traffic caveats apply), where I suspect a lot of people from HN at this time are located.
On the other hand, I always see Europeans complaining that American houses are made out of wood and aren't designed to last like good concrete or brick European houses... Well now you know why. No need to double the cost of materials for most houses.
Smaller pieces will typically cost less at the lumber yard, and it also makes it easier to work with salvaged wood -- you no longer need to find big pieces to salvage, you can salvage a lot of little pieces and build them up.
Also note that salvage isn't just dumpster diving -- at auctions and sales you can find large things people made for particular purposes that no one wants, and break them down for raw materials. I've picked up a couple hundred dollars of dimensional lumber for a $5 bid before because it was in the form of a 9 foot tall viewing platform for refereeing volleyball games.
I do actually have that rare privilege of having a "workshop" space (a solid shed), but as I'm in Wales it is of course up some extremely slippery stone steps, currently leaking quite dramatically, and full of crap I've chucked out of the house but can't take to the tip during lockdown measures.
"A wood conditioner is basically a wood finish reduced to a very thin consistency."
Sounds like a money-making product to use on very porous wood that has water-damage (rotted?) or has been repeatedly treated with solvents, leaving only weak wood fibers. I usually replace such wood.
There are also products for "rejuvenating" rotted wood:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rejuvenate+rotted+wood&t=opera&ia=...
I suppose these have their place but I have been lucky enough to not need them.
YT: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcO75TzblV9-_WqgXX1mNxg/vid...
If you're working with oaks or hardwoods, I agree with you.
And Matt Eastly: https://mattestlea.com/ https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCxWzA3ZlYEOLr1JkKH0ZMyg
Our options here generally seem to be pine or oak, from normal stores. At more specialist stores you might be able to pick up some stuff like sycamore and walnut, but it's a bit hit-and-miss as to what dimensions are available.
It’s great for framing but I’ve been hesitant to use it for my beginner woodworking stuff.
She also prefers rollerball or gel ink pens to regular ballpoints. As they require less pressure, that's likely helping.
I like working with pine, particularly because it's cheap enough that you can make mistakes when learning and not feel too bad. But it is much more variable than other woods, I find, and the species vary by country.
Matt is from the UK. His vid on applying OSMO finish was a lifesaver for me.
Nothing against the Americans/Canadians etc, but this is one area where regional differences make a pretty huge difference in terms of wood and products available. If, like me, you're in the UK and looking for vaguely specific details regarding woodwork online, you're going to find an awful lot of American content and very little local stuff (a blog opportunity there perhaps).
A good recent example of this effect for me was when I was looking up pine stains. You will find constant references to something called "pre-stain conditioner" online; this basically doesn't exist in the UK. Everyone online is insistent that you need it, and you can just about buy it here (it's expensive), but it turns out it's pretty irrelevant. In the UK our pine is typically a different variety, and so therefore has a different composition, and our terminology is different here too; wood stain in the UK is, I think, "wood dye" in the USA? Please correct me if you know better :)
For reference I use this stain: https://www.wood-finishes-direct.com/product/manns-pine-wood..., which makes no mention of pre-stain conditioner, and I've had very good results with it so far.