A few weeks ago, I wrote about the time my daughter and I spent in the shop building a model of a mosque for her school project.

Back to learning about woodworking.

I asked my daughter if she wanted to write about what she learned in one of my weekly columns, and she agreed; here are her thoughts:

I learned a lot of things while working with my dad in his shop. All are good to know and some are more important than others.

I learned that the difference between western saws and Japanese saws is that the western saw cuts on the push stroke and the Japanese saw cuts on the pull stroke. Western saw blades need to be thicker so they don’t break, but Japanese blades are in tension and they can be thinner. I find Japanese saws work a bit easier than western saws.

I learned that plywood is a type of board made from thin layers of overlapping wood. The grain of each layer goes in a different direction. You can use plywood to make a stable part because solid wood sometimes cracks along its grain. Because there are so many layers and the layers go different ways, this tends to keep the part from cracking.

I learned glue sometimes sinks into wood. While I was making a model of a mosque with my dad, we started to glue it together. To me it looked like my dad was putting too much glue on and just rubbing it around. It looked like it was useless and a waste of glue. But when I asked him about this, he explained to me that sometimes glue sinks into wood and it’s not sticky once it sinks in. You sometimes have to add glue in layers so the final layer doesn’t sink in and it actually sticks. This is especially true on end grain and the edges of plywood.

The assembly of a project can be tricky. We had to think about how to assemble my mosque; even my dad wasn’t sure how to assemble it at first. If you’re making a cube or a simpler shape, then it will be easy to assemble, but what we were making wasn’t a normal shape. Eventually we figured it out but we both had to work together to get it done.

You need lots of clamps. We used a ton of clamps to assemble the mosque. My dad has so many different shapes and sizes of clamps. Some are better suited to specific tasks, and we had to choose the right ones for my project.

Sawdust can make you sneeze a ton. I sneezed so much it was actually pretty funny. My dad usually wears a dust mask in the shop. We only spent a bit of time in the shop so I didn’t wear one, but if I were to spend more time in the shop I should wear one.

Sometimes the tools you make are better than the tools you buy. I noticed that my dad has a bunch of tools he made himself and it was cool to see. He used a push stick he made quite often.

I don’t feel the need to learn about machines. My dad asked me if I wanted to know about or use a bunch of machines and I just didn’t feel the need to. He told me that some people don’t like machines. They would rather work on things with their hands.