ABSTRACT
Carpentry has been used by prop builders since at least the Ancient Greeks. With a carpentry project, prop builders want to break it down to all the individual pieces of wood and how they will all attach together. This chapter focuses on how to turn wood boards and sheet goods into those individual pieces. It presents cutting the pieces to the right length and width, making them thinner or thicker along the edge, cutting them at an angle, at a curve, cutting irregular shapes, and turning them. Cutting a board along the grain is called ripping. Cutting a board perpendicularly to the grain is called a crosscut. The table saw is one of the most common machines found in a prop shop, and is one of the most useful and versatile as well. A lathe is used to create pieces with axial symmetry. Making a piece on a lathe is called turning.
