If you come across a piece of furniture that is of less use as is then a guitar then fine but I would not go out looking at furniture with the thought of runing it into a guitar. Most are not solid wood, cut wrong, not straight grained and with little runout as John said. But there is always those exceptions. A set of lower grade wood is a good place to start and find out what tools you really need along with learning the methods that can be used to build an instrument. I like to recommend that someone start by building a tenor or baritone ukulele to start.
As far as wood, my first guitar top was a quartered cedar fence board and the back and sides were non-quartered pine that a lumber supplier sliced off of pine boards for a project. I made a simple drum sander (under $50, many plans online) and still use it, one of my more used tools. For power tools I have done most of my work on a metal bandsaw, a bandsaw is not necessary but really convenient. I would say get a laminate trimmer router as a minimum. You could us it as a thicknesser using a router sled, use it for your truss rod slot, doing your binding, rosette. You could get away with a drill press as a thickness sander with the sanding drums you can stick in them or even make your own. You can do the same operations with different tools given a jig.
I made a small nylon guitar built out of a spruce fence board and a 2x4 as an experiment on how to do a minimal build. A kid wanted to build himself a guitar and said it would cost $800 in tools to do it. I showed that a person could get away with mainly hand tools if they really had to. I cut the wood with a hand saw and thicknessed it with a block plane. Not easy but doable. Afterward the kid said he had more tools available than I used and went ahead and started his guitar. The biggest hurdle is to resaw wood, after that hand tools are useable and power tools just makes it easier, or easier to screw up.
I have one body I need to finish which is made of birch from a pallet. I was walking down the street and came across a table leg, turned out to be mahogany, probably will go with the body. I have found decent wood for guitar tops at Home Depot, I have used the same spruce/pine as back and sides. Mot all that softer or less dense as Spanish Cedar, made necks out of straight grained 2x4's. Pretty unorthodox as related to what normally is build with but shows that a reasonable instrument can be built out of almost anything.
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Fred
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