Last week I shopped-around for a hardwood bookcase with nice joinery. I couldn't find what I wanted at any price, and even screwed-together wood laminate bookshelves were ridiculously expensive. I thought to myself "I could make a nice hardwood bookcase fairly cheaply; how hard could it be?" Based on my experience with other hobbies (particularly audiophile stuff) I know that by the time I buy the tools and learn the skills to do it myself those $1000 bookshelves will start to look pretty reasonably priced. But I'm due for a new hobby....
The last time I did any woodworking, I was twelve years old. I'm going into this knowing little about woodworking. I don't even own a saw. I'll makes notes about what I learn below. Hopefully, someone else will find my notes useful (and they'll act as reminders for me).
I'm discovering that there are a wide range of woodworking sub-hobbies like boat building and pen turning. The area that interest me most at this point is furniture making using hand tools. Specifically, I want to hand build a hardwood bookshelf using dovetail joints. (I'll build other stuff too.)
One piece of advise which struck me as particularly good is to only buy the tools you need when you're starting out. Here's the stuff I need to make a bookshelf with dovetail joints:
Rasps and files let you shape wood in ways that would be impossible or difficult with saws or chisels. They can be used to make organic curved shapes, for example.
Rasps are of various coursenesses; from most course to least: wood rasps, cabinent rasps (bastard, second, and smooth), and pattern maker's rasps. Files are less course than rasps. Files, from most to least coarse, are coarse, bastard, second, and smooth.
One surprisingly active and friendly woodworking forum is Lumberjocks.
Rockler is a woodworking specialty store, which happens to have a branch in my area. The staff has been pretty helpful to me.