Noah B Woodworks

A woodworking page for the free time foot soldier

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about

Hello there! My name is Noah Budd and I am a woodworker from southeast Michigan. I hail from a small set of towns in the Upper Peninsula called Houghton/Hancock. I lived there for 24 of my 31 years, and graduated from Michigan Tech in 2019 in audio production.

In my free time I am a dad first and hobbyist second. I make music, read books, smoke pipes, and kayak fish. I am a broadcast engineer in my professional life, working an early morning 3:30 – 11:30 am shift. The early bird has most definitely gotten a worm or two.

Thanks for stopping by my site and feel free to reach out to me on Instagram @noahbwoodworks or via the email found on the contact page

-Noah

    Woodworking on a Budget

    When I was living in DC with my girlfriend (now my wife) I craved woodworking like crazy. Before we moved to DC I worked in the scene shop for the university I was attending. We would work with sheet goods and 2x4s to build scenery for the plays that I would also have a hand in sound designing. It was one of my favorite jobs ever. Go in for 2-4 hours, get a cut list, make the cuts and continue building. It was stress relieving rather than stress inducing plus I was getting paid. During my last semester, I secretly used my time after work to build an electric guitar from scratch, alongside the big speaker set I was building for the transducer design class. I spent a ton of time in the shop that semester.

    I was unable to woodwork for around 3 years after that, and it was all I wanted to do. I would watch woodworking videos of my favorite makers and wish that I could be doing the same. I ended up cracking, and bought a cheap carving knife on Amazon that came with some small chunks of basswood. I would sit and carve on my couch over a tray, which actually worked quite well. That was while my wife and I had an unborn baby, so I carved a little toy for her while it was still safe to do so in the house.

    We moved back to Michigan shortly after. I started working with my grandpas old tools and a few of my own in the garage. My grandpa had this really cool hand driven miter saw that I used for a long time. It had a very dull blade so it took ages to cut the wood, but it was very square in the end. I bought the cheapest Stanley plane and worked hard to turn it into a good tool. I flattened the frog and learned to sharpen. I was able to get decent shavings out of that tool. I built my tool collection slowly and made a small set of projects those first few months for friends that I’d been away from for too long.

    I made my friend a whiskey cabinet from cherry wood, another friend a chess board, and another friend a beautiful walnut charcuterie board. These projects were the beginning of my woodworking journey, even though I had made a lot of stuff in my youth. I’ll always remember those projects as the start because they had meaningful purpose. I told my friends how much I appreciate them as our lives all went in completely different directions,

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