Wooden models have a beautiful history that dates back to nearly four centuries ago. Perhaps their artistic and antique charm or the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction one gets from building wood models makes them even more popular today.
It’s challenging to find professional woodworking kits for beginners, as the tools needed for woodworking require a significant investment and usually include larger and more advanced tools.
However, if you or your child are dipping a toe into woodworking as a hobby but couldn’t be bothered with the laborious task of cutting meticulous curves and drilling holes with precision, a woodworking kit is what you need.
What are the best woodworking kits? The best woodworking kits are appropriate for the user’s skill level and age, made of durable and high-quality materials, and include all the tools necessary to create a finished and polished project. It may be a bonus to you if the model has moving parts and practical functionality.
The wood is usually already smoothed out, pre-cut to scale and shape, and drilled as per the requirements of the specific woodworking plan. All that’s left to execute the project is to join the parts using very basic tools and skills with the guidance of the woodworking plan enclosed.
This article is all about helping you find the best woodworking kit for beginners to start you off on the right foot and satisfy your creative construction needs.
What To Look For In A Woodworking Kit
Woodworking craft kits offer a friendlier and fun introduction to creating beautiful wooden projects quickly, regardless of age or experience.
As a beginner, a woodworking kit helps you grow your passion, intensify your interest, and build your self-confidence in wood projects before undertaking any actual woodworking class or investing in tools.
You don’t even need to be interested in woodworking to really enjoy a woodworking kit. Spending hours buried in crafts like this helps to alleviate stress and anxiety and is a fun pastime activity for the whole family to kill boredom and bond.
Now, there are enough woodworking craft kits available on the market to get you all confused on which one to purchase. But are they all the same? Not quite.
Every woodworking kit is designed with features for a specific user in mind. It is up to you to figure out which one is suitable for your needs, and this section will highlight the key considerations for you.
The following factors should act as your guide to shopping for the best woodworking kit.
Age Appropriateness and Skill Level
Woodworking kits may be designed specifically for kids, adults, or both. Woodworking kits for kids make a great educational and developmental gift for kids, enhancing coordination, memory, motor skills, and concentration.
Therefore, whether buying the kit for yourself or as a gift for someone else, you ought to check for the age-appropriateness or skill level indicated. Manufactures of the best woodworking kits will always indicate the recommended user age bracket on the package.
Working on a kid’s kit as an adult is child’s play. It’ll likely bring you no fulfillment, as there is no challenge. Similarly, tackling a kit for advanced woodworkers while you are a novice in wood crafting will leave you feeling dejected and defeated.
You’ll need to recognize the skills that the kit demands of its users. Some kits are full of interlocking parts, while others require the wood pieces to be screwed, glued, or nailed with a hammer. For locomotive models, one must be familiar with the concept of motors and gears to set the model in motion.
Tools and Supplies
The best woodworking kits come furnished with everything needed to complete the structure. The kit could be a hoard of tools and supplies including pencils, rulers, a hammer, screws, screwdrivers, nails, sanding paper, wax, paint, or just the bare minimum: wood blocks and some white wood glue.
The good news is, most tools needed are items likely residing in any home’s basic toolbox, and it should be no major deal breaker if not included in a kit. While most of the woodwork is almost always already done for you, it’s just great to have all the pieces and everything needed to put them together in one convenient bundle.
Quality of the Wood
You must scrutinize the description to ensure you are actually getting wooden pieces and not foam or plastic disguised as wood.
Maple, walnut, pine, applewood, birch, cherry, mahogany, and cedar make the best woodworking kits. Balsa wood is also a common option for crafts that are meant to be delicate and lightweight. However, it is much more brittle than other types of wood and can snap easily.
The quality of the craftsmanship is also pertinent. You want to check out for smoothness of the surface and edges, the accuracy of the dimensions, and holes if any line up perfectly.
Whenever any of the above elements is off, fitting the pieces demand extra effort. Sometimes further modification of the wood like sanding and shaving becomes necessary.
Most wood crafts are able to be stained or painted before or after building as well for a colorful or more polished finish. For the best paints for wood crafts, we have another article waiting for you.
Theme and Type of Model
Last but not least, consider the theme and type of woodwork plan. You can choose based on personal interest and how big a challenge you want to take.
Avian lovers, for example, will find birdhouses most appealing. Artsy woodworkers may prefer classic woodwork plans such as ships, clocks, and towers, while young builders will likely be interested in trucks, planes etc.
Theme preferences aside, every design comes with a degree of complexity in its assembly. There are two types of models: stationery and mechanical.
Mechanical woodworking kits are obviously more challenging. They take a significant amount of time to complete. Also, there’s the application of basic physics concepts to get the mechanical parts moving. Simple stationery plans make the best woodworking kits for beginners and anyone after cool desktop decor.
Whatever your choice, ensure a copy of the plan or instructions of some sort are enclosed or mailed to you for reference.
7 Best Woodworking Kits For Beginners
You most likely already have an idea of the kind of kit you need to buy, whether it’s for yourself or as a gift for someone else. So without further ado, let’s go straight to our recommendations for the best beginner woodworking kits:
| Rank | Product | Key Features |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | SparkJump Birdhouse Craft Kit | Tools included, durable cedar, insect-resistant |
| 2. | Lakeshore Build-It-Yourself Woodworking Kit | Includes nails, hammer, glue etc. |
| 3. | Kraftic Woodworking Kit - 39 Pcs | Birch wood, screwdriver & screws included |
| 4. | Desktop Wooden Model Kit Cafe | Interlocking parts, for adults and kids |
| 5. | Amy & Benton 3D Wooden Clock Model Kit | Interlocking, functional, easy assembly |
| 6. | Leonardo da Vinci Catapult Kit | Pine wood, clay and string included, functional |
| 7. | Kraftic Woodworking Building Kit - 80 Pcs | All tools included, several models |
1. SparkJump Birdhouse Craft Kit
If you’ve been thinking of hanging a birdhouse in your backyard or patio, you need this kit from SparkJump.
You’ll not only gain the satisfaction of attracting and watching birds but also a sense of accomplishment having built the house yourself.
The kit is packed with everything you need for the job; well, except a hammer. There are pre-cut, sanded, and shaped wooden slabs for the walls, shingles for the roof, windows, wood slices, and some extras.
The quality of the cedar wood is a major plus. And to ensure it lasts longer outdoors, it is treated to repel insects and rot. Also included in the kit are glue, nails for reinforcement, sanding paper, and screw pin-eye hooks to suspend the birdhouse.
It is a fairly easy-to-build woodworking kit for beginners, and the enclosed pictorial guide with step-by-step written instructions helps a great deal. Not to mention how cute the end birdhouse is. One could even decorate it further with stain or paint!
This is an excellent woodworking craft kit from a thoughtful manufacturer who even threw in bird seeds so you can get started already. We also loved that it is a local American brand based in Texas.
2. Lakeshore Build-It-Yourself Woodworking Kit
Are you after something a bit more challenging than stacking and slotting wooden pieces? This woodworking kit by Lakeshore may be right up your alley.
It offers a more hands-on woodworking experience using actual carpentry tools. With this kit, one has to sort the pieces, measure, mark, glue, and hammer in the nails to build a structure.
Designed for young aspiring woodworkers, the all-inclusive kit comes with smooth pre-cut and sized wooden pieces, a hammer, nails, glue, sandpaper, a ruler, and pencils, all packed in a handy, sturdy wooden box.
There are 80 plus pieces of pine wood in the kit, enough to cater to your creative ideas. But worry not if you don’t have any. The instructional manual contains at least 6 different models you can make out of the wood, including a coin bank, plane, bird feeder, train, nameplate, and envelop holder.
For the quality of components, variety of possible projects, and experience one can gain, this kit is worth every penny.
3. Kraftic Woodworking Building Kit – 80 Pcs
If you thought the previous Kraftic kit was impressive, then you might like its bigger brother too. You get twice as many wooden pieces for double the joy of construction.
This kit has 80 pieces of wood for 6 different woodworking projects. Each piece is skillfully cut, sanded, and bored.
Anyone inexperienced with woodwork can quickly learn the building basics using glue, screws, and the nails.
All these supplies and tools are bundled in the kit; screws, hammer, nails, ruler, pencil, sandpaper, and glue.
You might try to decipher the enclosed instructional guide, though it could use some major improvements. Also, the wood components are not numbered so one has to be really keen as most pieces nearly look the same. Other than the minor drawbacks, it is one of the best woodworking kits for an amateur builder.
4. Desktop Wooden Model Kit Cafe
A tab and slot construction kind of kit is the best woodworking kit for beginners who are inexperienced in basic woodwork. You simply interlock the parts into one another.
The woodwork plan is a beautiful miniature wooden cafe with a deck, more like a cabin that looks stunning once complete and displayed on your desktop.
There are lots of intricate pre-cut pieces to keep you fascinated for hours. You have to be cautious when separating the pieces from the board and slotting them, as they are very delicate.
Assembling the kit is such a breeze as it comes with a guide. While they are translated from Korean and a bit hard to decipher, the pictures are extremely detailed, straightforward, very logical, and easy to understand.
Included in the kit is plenty of glue, which you might not even need much of, as the pieces fit into their slots perfectly with excellent tension. Still, some parts like the window frames, rails, and chimney do need reinforcement.
The complete structure is about 7” long, 5.5” wide, and 7.4” high and is an absolute beauty. But if you’d like to add some character to it, the unfinished wood is paintable and stainable. Though, you may want to paint first before assembly, as it is easier to paint the flat pieces separately.
5. Amy & Benton 3D Wooden Puzzle Clock Model Kit
Amy & Benton’s no-glue, no-tools kit is the perfect choice for anyone who wants to make small wooden constructs without the hassle of fastening screws, hammering nails, or gluing parts and having to wait for them to dry.
The kit contains 41 punch-out pieces of high-density fiberboard wood carefully cut and curved to slot into each other with the snuggest fitting.
This low to medium-level difficulty kit is a no-brainer. The included instructions sheet, video, and well-numbered pieces make for an easy and quick assembly.
The complete model is a sturdy, silent running tower desk clock with gorgeous twirls measuring approximately 3” by 7” by 13” inches. I
f the idea of building a functional wooden clock that also serves as beautiful décor appeals to you, this is the best woodworking kit for you.
6. Leonardo da Vinci Catapult Kit
Mechanical woodworking kits can be difficult for many beginners but not this wooden catapult. It is a decent mechanical model perfect for all ages to enjoy.
You get pine wood pieces cut, shaped, and drilled, ready to be fitted together, glued, and strung. Glue and strings are provided but you could use your own if they do the job better. There’s clay too for molding miniature cannonballs.
Although it doesn’t enhance hard skills like hammering nails and driving screws in, you have to really think out the pieces and how they connect and work, which is the real challenge. Luckily the included chart has building guidelines laid out clearly.
The fun part of all is that the catapult actually launches, so you can have immense fun throwing things around in a mini battlefield with friends and family.
7. Kraftic Woodworking Kit for Kids and Adults – 39 Pcs
Our next pick, which also provides some actual woodworking skills stretch, is this kit from Kraftic suitable for kids and adults.
The 39 piece kit can be constructed into three different structures, a toy hummer, an excavator, and a bird feeder for triple the fun. These are not just glue-together parts but rather need to be joined by screws.
The real birch wood pieces are readily cut, sanded, and drilled. Ample screws and a screwdriver are provided too.
To take the frustration of guesswork away from you, the pieces are packaged into three different bags, one for each of the models. A picture illustration of how the pieces connect is available to makes things much easier.
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