Wood – How to get rid of bumps and other damage

As far as books, I highly recommend The Complete Book of Woodworking: http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Book-Woodworking-Detailed/dp/1890621366/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335885982&sr=8-1. It's easy to follow even for the uninitiated. It goes over the major tools, what they are used for, and has excellent instructions on some starter and intermediate projects. There are even some workbench projects toward the end, one of which is made only from plywood and 2x4 lumber. I made it with a jigsaw and really uneven cuts, and it's held together well for about a year (it's usable for everything except hand planing). I'm also a software engineer by trade and learn well from books, so I spent a good few months obsessing over this book in my apartment before buying a house and really getting started.

For video instruction, The Wood Whisperer is one of my favorites; he gets into what tools are used for, how to set them up and tune them, and has some videos dedicated to safety. He's also very technical and comes from a science background, so the engineer in me relates well with him. He doesn't leave out many details. Fine Woodworking is also very good and for $5 a month you can get access to a ton of video content.

http://www.thewoodwhisperer.com

http://www.finewoodworking.com

SawmillCreek and WoodworkingTalk are nice forums to search through for tips and discussions about what tools are best used for what projects.

http://www.sawmillcreek.org

http://www.woodworkingtalk.com

Most of these will discuss fine woodworking, furniture making, and detailed joinery, which you may or may not be interested in. All of them, however, will give you information you want about tool usage. It may be more detail than what you're interested in for the projects you describe, but if anything you'll be over-prepared.

This should be a good starter project, here are a few tips I've picked up over the years:

• Even pressure treated wood will deteriorate over time if it's exposed or in direct contact with the ground/moisture. Do what you can to protect it from the elements and get it raised off of the soil. Use a moisture barrier between wood and concrete.
• Take care to perfectly level the area you are locating this.
• Make sure your cuts are straight, preferably using a square to mark your lines.
• Measure twice, cut once.
• Look for the direction that the wood bows, mark the bowed up side on the wood, and layout all the wood with the bowed side up. You don't want the floor to be wavy or to have a dip in the center for water/dirt to collect.
• Assemble the sub-assembles first, driving your nails/screws from the side of the joists into the spacers.
• Make sure all connections stay perfectly vertical since they lose their strength when they start to tip over. You can use a clamp to get leverage and untwist a warped joist, but if the warp is too significant, I'd cut it into pieces for the short spacers.
• Pre-drill when you are within 2" of the end of a board and going in from the side (e.g. all of the sub-assembly nails/screws and the 4 corners). Other than that, you can avoid pre-drilling, but it may help you keep a straight line if this is your first build.
• Metal brackets to hang the joists will give you a stronger connection. They should include directions for the type of fasteners, which will likely be shorter but very thick nails.
• Nails will have more shear strength, but screws will be less likely to pull out. If you have a sub-floor going on top of this, securing everything together, then I'd go with nails. I'd be lying if I didn't say I'd put in at least a few deck screws in each corner.
• 3 1/2" is a good length for any nails/screws. That gets roughly half of the fastener in each piece of lumber. When in doubt, get a longer/thicker fastener.
• Any untreated nails or screws will react with the chemicals in pressure treated lumber and quickly corrode. Hot dipped galvanized nails or treated deck screws should be ok, but check the label on the box to be sure it will work with the chemicals in your lumber.
• For each joint, a 2x4 would take 2 nails, a 2x6 would take 3, etc. Stay about 1" away from the edge of the board and space the nails about 1 1/2" - 2" apart.