Is Ted’s Woodworking legit? What you actually get

Spend ten minutes looking for a picnic table plan online and an ad will offer you 16,000 of them. That number is the hook of Ted’s Woodworking, a downloadable plans library sold through ClickBank, and it is also why so many people stop and type the same question into Google before paying: is Ted’s Woodworking legit?

Our answer is yes, with an asterisk. Ted’s Woodworking plans are a real digital product you can download, print and build from, and the payment runs through ClickBank, a long-running retailer of digital goods with its own refund desk. The asterisk is the marketing. The plan count, the beginner promise and the polish of the files are all oversold, and you should buy it knowing exactly what it is and what it is not.

Disclosure: Let’s Check It Now may earn a commission or have a business relationship with brands mentioned in this article. This never changes what we recommend.

What you get when you pay

The seller promises more than 16,000 plans, each with step-by-step instructions, a cutting and materials list, and color schematics drawn from several angles. The pitch also says you do not need expensive machinery or years of experience. Those are the vendor’s claims. Nobody has counted the library on our behalf, and we would not repeat the number as fact.

What arrives is a large set of files, not a course and not an app. You browse by project type, from sheds and outdoor benches to toy chests, birdhouses and small shelves, then open a plan and print it. Several independent reviewers describe the files as coming in compressed folders that take some patience to sort, so set aside an evening to organize the downloads before you go looking for a specific project.

That is the honest shape of the product. It is a big digital binder of project drawings. If you expect a teacher, you will be disappointed. If you expect a binder, you will probably find something you want to build in the first hour.

The 16,000 figure deserves skepticism

This is where we push back hardest. Reviewers who have gone through the library say many of the plans are variations of the same project in different sizes, and some say a share of the files look like they came from older books and public sources. One automated site-scanning service goes further and claims the real count is under 2,500. It does not show its work, and we could not verify it either way. A caution about the reviews themselves: many of the pages ranking for this question are affiliate pages, so weigh their praise and their complaints the way you would weigh ours.

Here is why the dispute matters less than it sounds. Nobody builds 16,000 projects. A busy hobbyist might finish a few dozen pieces in a decade. A library with 500 clear, correctly dimensioned plans would serve almost anyone for life.

So the useful question is not how many plans there are. It is whether the ten you actually want are readable, accurate and sized for the tools you own. You can only judge that by opening them, which is the best argument for buying through a platform with a working refund route.

How the refund works through ClickBank

Ted’s Woodworking is sold through ClickBank, which takes the payment and handles refund requests instead of leaving them to the seller alone. According to ClickBank’s own support documentation, customers request refunds through its customer service site, CLKBank, and if the seller does not answer before the request ticket expires, typically within two business days, ClickBank completes the refund itself.

Third-party reviews of Ted’s Woodworking cite a 60-day refund window. Do not rely on a review for that. Check the exact period printed on your order receipt the day you buy and keep that email somewhere you will find it.

Some buyers complain online that getting their money back took more than one request. That is one more reason to file through CLKBank rather than writing to the seller, and to do it early in the window rather than on day 59.

Watch the checkout too. Reviewers mention optional upsells offered after the main purchase. The core library works without any of them.

How it compares with free and cheaper routes

Most people asking whether Ted’s Woodworking is legit are really asking whether they need to pay for plans at all. For a lot of first projects, you do not. Here is how the main options stack up.

Plan source	Cost	Best for	Weak spot
University extension plans	Free	First builds, garden and wildlife projects	Small selection, basic drawings
Public library woodworking books	Free with a library card	Learning joints and technique	Older styles, limited copies
YouTube build videos	Free	Seeing each cut done in real time	Rarely a complete cut list
Single plans from independent designers	Paid per plan	One specific piece of furniture	Cost adds up across projects
Ted’s Woodworking library	One-time digital purchase	Browsing many ideas, sheds and outdoor builds	Uneven quality, files hard to sort

Before you spend anything, try one free plan. Iowa State University Extension publishes a one-page Blue Bird Box plan as a free download, with a materials list and step-by-step construction instructions. It is the right size for a Saturday morning, a hand saw and a drill.

If you finish it and want more, you will also know what kind of plan format you like to read, which makes any paid library easier to judge.

Safety matters more than the plan count

No plan library will keep your fingers attached. The Consumer Product Safety Commission estimated about 67,300 medically treated table saw blade-contact injuries per year in a special study of 2007 and 2008 emergency department data, including roughly 11 amputations a day, according to the agency’s 2012 announcement. The same study put the injury cost at $2.36 billion in each of those two years.

Those numbers are the strongest case for starting with projects that need a circular saw, a jigsaw or hand tools before you ever buy a table saw because a drawing calls for one.

A good beginner plan tells you which cut to make with which tool. Many plans in big libraries assume you already own a full shop. That suits a weekend builder with five years of practice and frustrates someone with a cordless drill and a borrowed miter saw.

Who should buy it and who should skip it

We think the library makes sense for one kind of reader: someone who already owns basic tools, has built a few things, and wants a deep pile of ideas for sheds, garden furniture and small household pieces without paying per plan. For that person, the Ted’s Woodworking plans library is a reasonable one-time purchase, as long as you treat the 16,000 figure as marketing and use the refund window if the plans you open fall short.

It does not teach technique. There are no lessons on reading grain, sharpening a chisel or squaring a board, and it will not replace a community class or a patient neighbor with a garage shop.

If you have never cut a board, skip it for now. Start with free plans and a library book, and come back once you know which projects you keep wanting to build.

What we would skip

We would skip every checkout upsell until we had opened the main library and built at least one project from it.

We would skip any website selling Ted’s plans outside ClickBank’s checkout, since that removes the refund route entirely. If the payment page is not a ClickBank page, close the tab.

We would skip buying a table saw because a plan calls for one. A circular saw with a straightedge guide handles most of the cuts in a bench, a planter box or a small shed, and it is a far gentler first power tool.

And we would skip the idea that more plans means better plans. A plans library works like a shelf of cookbooks. You will come back to the same handful again and again, so the quality of those few matters more than the size of the shelf.

Where to start this weekend

If you are still deciding whether woodworking is for you at all, our piece on why woodworking is the calm, useful hobby people are rediscovering covers the low-cost way in. If your ambitions run toward bigger backyard projects, our look at a backyard power setup that cuts energy bills shows what a larger build involves.

Your next step is small. Download the free Iowa State bird box plan this week and build it before you pay for any library. If the build goes well and you find yourself sketching the next project, you will know exactly what to look for in the plans you buy.

Sources: Consumer Product Safety Commission, Iowa State University Extension, ClickBank support documentation.

Ted’s Woodworking: frequently asked questions