I ran out of blocks of wood...

Howdy, so I do some woodworking on the side as a hobby but want to be better. My family that I've done projects don't care about it being off but I do and it drives me nuts. One thing I have a problem with is straight cuts. I can cut the same board no matter the size and end up with 4 different sizes all just a 16th to an eighth off. What can I do to help insure I get the same length cut over and over again?

Started out this morning to restore this antique file cabinet that my wife got from her mother's place. Restoration is going to mostly consist of re-veneering the top, which was stained mahogany. Part of the veneer had peeled off, due to water damage from cold glasses. Of course, modern veneer is thinner, so I couldn't just patch it at the seam, I've got to replace the entire top. The normal way of peeling off old veneer is to heat it with a heat gun. Unfortunately, mine died about 10 seconds into the project. So, I'm peeling of the old veneer with a chisel. It turns out that the heat gun might not have worked anyway, as the veneer is actually the face veneer of hardwood plywood. You might ask "Why?" I'm using a chisel to take this layer of veneer off, rather than using something faster, like a power plane or a belt sander. The reason is control. I can control the depth of cut very accurately with a chisel, even if it is slower. If I try to use either of those power tools, I'd likely end up with gouges at their edge of cut, which I would then have to repair. So, sometimes, the slow way ends up being the best way.

What are some skill-sharpening exercises I could do when I’m in between projects?

Learned something new today, as I try to every day. The two mitered corners shown in this picture are two sides of the same corner, splined along the outer edges with walnut. I used the same piece of walnut for both, cutting two adjacent pieces. But as you can see, they look quite different. No finish has been applied, so it's not the finish. The difference is that the one on the right has been sanded to level the spline key with the wood (please forgive the gaps) and the one on the left has been pared with a really sharp paring chisel. In the sanded one, the sawdust from sanding filled the darker parts of the grain, making them less pronounced. That didn't happen with the one that I pared, as there was no sawdust to fill the grain. So, if you want your finished piece to really show off the grain, plane, scrape with a cabinet scraper or pare it with a chisel, rather than sanding. it's more work and requires more skill, but gives great results.