Handtool woodworking probably more than power tool requires a really sturdy workbench. There’s a bunch of different styles with different pros and cons. Rex Kruger on YouTube has some good videos on it. Working without a solid table and a good vise or two is a pain.

The main things you need to know about wood for now is that construction lumber is softwood, typically pine, spruce, or fir, and it has a relatively high moisture content (20%ish, if i remember right). As it dries, the shape tends to change, so you don’t want to use it right away after bringing it home, you want to let it come into an equilibrium with the amount of moisture in your air. They also have “furniture grade” pine, that is dried to probably around 5%. That is also sold as “common boards”. It actually feels harder, and that’s what you’d want to use for a lot of different things like trim that gets painted. Pine is tricky to stain. Then there’s hardwood, which like it sounds is usually harder, but in many ways can be easier to work with. The cheapest is poplar (which doesnt actually come from a poplar tree), which is fairly soft, and it doesn’t look super nice cause it is like a greenish purplish white, and people paint it usually. Red oak is probably the cheapest hardwood that you would stain, and it’s a good step up from poplar.

Well here’s the real skinny on wood itself, various species and types: I sincerely think you have to learn this by experience. Reading lists or articles about different species and their characteristics has nothing on building a spice rack out of pine, then building the same spice rack out of maple.