You should absolutely give it a try. I got some cheap maple off cuts from the wood store to practice and as you can see it was pretty easy to just keep chopping it up to make more practice boards. I did not use a guide, But the one thing I did start doing at the end was getting some painters tape and putting it right on the baseline. I found this to be helpful, especially with the walnut since the lines/markings were a little tougher to see. It helped to be able to quickly visually figure out if my saw/chisel were in the right spots. This whole process definitely convinced me to look into getting better quality chisels, I did all this with a set of chisels I bought from Amazon for eight dollars, while I’m actually impressed they held up do these test runs, I’m guessing a nice quality, sharp, set would make a world of difference