Woodworking Vs. Carpentry: What's The Difference?

Sometimes, the line between woodworking and carpentry can overlap depending on the project at hand, especially from a DIY or handyperson standpoint. Consider building a playhouse or fort for your children, nieces and nephews, or a client. If you act as a general manager on the project, after the concrete work for the foundation is finished, you would hire a carpenter to do the framing. 

When they finished working you could have a mostly finished exterior shell complete with siding, windows, and doors, but probably not a finished roof as that's the roofer's job. Inside, you'd have a subfloor ready for carpet or vinyl flooring and bare wall studs waiting for the drywall crew. Once the interior walls and flooring were complete, woodworkers would come in to build cabinets, custom shelves, and tables. However, most DIYers and handypeople wear all of the hats required for such a project.

In general terms, carpentry focuses on the construction of wooden structures such as framing walls, building trusses, sheathing exterior walls and roofs, installing subfloors, and installing windows and doors using a set of tools useful for carpentry jobs. Woodworking, on the other hand, is typically more precise, often requires more specialized woodworking tools (even for the at-home woodworker), and results in smaller, more decorative wooden objects than does carpentry.

A carpenter can complete most carpentry jobs with the simplest of tools. Before pneumatic nailers, battery powered saws, and cordless drills, most houses were built by people swinging hammers and the fanciest equipment on the job site was a table saw.

Whether a carpenter chose to use a framing hammer or a claw hammer, other tools were commonly present in the toolbelt they wore. The traditional carpenter's tool belt is most often made of leather or canvas and has pouches for the required nails or screws to complete the job. There's also a hook for the hammer, a metal tab or fitted pocket for a tape measure, and a tight pocket or two for carpenter's pencils.

With the advent of pneumatic and cordless tools, the carpenter's tool kit has evolved somewhat. While many carpenters still carry the traditional tools, most have added at least one of the many brands of framing nailers and a few cordless power tools to their collections.

One major difference between carpentry and woodworking is that carpentry most often involves large site-built structures, while woodworking typically takes place inside a woodworker's shop. The centerpiece of the woodworking shop is the workbench, and few projects make a bigger statement than using your tools to build a custom workbench.

Woodworkers and carpenters alike will often use tape measures, circular saws, and cordless drills, but a woodworker's toolkit contains much more. Fortunately, many woodworking tools worth investing in are priced under $100. These will typically include hand tools such as a chisel set, a hand plane, a drawknife, precision squares, and clamps. In addition, some power woodworking tools also fall into that price range, such as, an orbital sander and a palm router.

Other handy woodworking tools include table saws, miter saws, and a wood lathe. While these tools can be on the more expensive side, especially when adding in all of the accessories that take them beyond just being functional, they are the pieces that separate woodworking from carpentry.