Table Of Content

PRESENTS 61 PagES of ShoP-TESTEd ShoRTcuTS 149 besT T ricks of the Trade PLUS • Upgrade your Workbench • 4 Secrets to Silky Smooth Finishes • 10 Best Tricks for Tight Joints best tricks of the trade C o N t e N t S 10 Tricks for Tight Joints No matter how good a woodworker you are, your joints can stand some tightening. Here are our staff’s 10 favorite ways to eliminate gaps and add strength to your joinery. The Secret to great Table Legs Making legs that look good from all four sides is a simple matter of examining the end grain and making a couple extra cuts. We show you how. The 16 dumbest Mistakes Good woodworking is often a battle against our own mis- steps. Here are 16 of the most common problems, and how to fix them now and prevent them in the future. our Best Tricks of the Trade After reading hundreds of tricks we chose our 78 favorites from our last 25 years. Just don’t Tell the Missus Woodworkers often swipe the solutions to their workshop problems from the kitchen, bedroom or bathroom of their spouse. Here is our list of the best (and oddest) of that lot. Mag TiTle upgrade Your Workbench Every workbench can become more versatile by following these 10 simple oN the CoVaenrd quick, but highly effective tricks. Cover blurb a New angle on compound Miters Photo by Al PMArarkiSinhg this tricCky jooint oNn yotur teableN t S saw (or chop saw) doesn’t have to be a mathematical nightmare. Our simple chart m XakXes mafney acotumrmeo nT itle compound miters easyF etoat ufigreu rdee.scription text by Nick Engler by Author Name Secrets to a Silky Smooth finish To get a professional-quality finish, you need to learn the basic techniques for rubbing it out. We show you how to do it with a minimum of fuss, mess and extra materials. Strategies for Locating Lumber XX Our staff’s favorite tricks for finding good wood in unlikely places. Plus a glossary of the terms you need to know for your hunt. The Worst Tricks of the Trade We dig through our archives and pick the brains of readers to find the lamest tricks – the ones that never should have seen the light of day. XX PoPular WoodWorking Month 2004 1 0 T r i c k s f o r Tight Joints Some of our favorite ways to get seamless, rock-solid joinery. You’ve cut all the components for your next Because wood is – on a cellular level – similar by the Popular project and are putting everything together to a bunch of soda straws glued together, you can when you first notice it – a gap. A dark void compress it a little bit. Usually, compression is a Woodworking where there should be none. bad thing, such as when you drop a hammer on Don’t panic – it happens to us all. For whatever your work and it dents. But a bit of compression is Magazine reason, there are instances when your joints just good when dovetailing. don’t fit perfectly and you have to decide what to do: Here’s how it works: Cut the first half of your editors Do you scrap all the time, energy, money and hard joint as you usually would – I usually cut the tails work you’ve put into the project and start over, or first. Then use that first half to knife in the second do you just let there be a little gap and move on? half of the joint – in this case, the pins. Well, we have a third option. We put our heads Next, when you saw your pin lines, don’t saw together and came up with a list of the best tricks right up against the knife line you marked, as most to help you tighten your joints. These tips will help books tell you. Instead, saw slightly wide. How eliminate unsightly, embarrassing gaps and point wide? The whisker of a gnat would be a good place your joints in the right direction. to start. Here’s how I do it: After I knife in my joint lines, I run a pencil over each knife line and then compression Makes dovetails Tight erase the excess marks. Then I start my saw cut to Hand-cut dovetails are some of the most challeng- leave the entire knife line. ing joints to fit perfectly. Many woodworkers will Like all things pertaining to dovetails, this takes spend hundreds of dollars on router jigs or wood- practice. Cut sample joints to get a feel for it and use working classes to get an airtight fit. a magnifying glass at first to gauge your progress. If you decide to hand-cut your dovetails, there Once you cut your pins, use a knife to ease the are a few ways to make sure you get it right. inside edges of your tails, which will be inside the joint. When you join your two pieces, the too- tight pins will slightly compress the tails and the joint will be seamless. If you try to compress things too much, one of your boards will split as the two boards are knocked together. This compression works especially well with half-blind drawer joints where you are joining a secondary soft wood for the sides (such as pop- Wood compresses, lar) with a hardwood drawer front (such as oak), and you can use that because the soft wood compresses easily. But be to make your dovetails Pin cut wide careful: This trick doesn’t work when you are try- tighter. Cutting your Waste Pin ing to join two pieces of dense exotic wood, which pins just slightly wide will force them to doesn’t compress much at all. compress the tails. — Christopher Schwarz Al Parrish Photo by fake half-blinds for dovetail Joints Usually with most small-scale drawers you have Half-blind dovetails are trickier to cut than 1⁄2"-thick sides and a 3⁄4"-thick front. To do what through-dovetails, but they don’t have to be. I we’re suggesting, make your drawer front with 1⁄2"- picked up this trick from dovetailing maestro Rob thick stock, too. Then join the sides to the front Cosman, who has two excellent videos on dove- using through-dovetails. tails that are available from Lie-Nielsen Toolworks Then, using your band saw, resaw a piece of (800-327-2520 or lie-nielsen.com). 1⁄4"-thick veneer from a piece of really nice figured Essentially, you first build a drawer with the wood. Make it a little larger than the finished size easier through-dovetails and then glue a 1⁄4"-thick of your drawer front. Then glue that veneer to the piece of veneer over the drawer front, making them drawer front, let the glue dry and trim it flush. look like half-blind dovetails. This makes excellent half-blind dovetails and allows you to stretch your supply of nicely figured woods for your drawer fronts. — CS deeper Mortises close gaps It’s easy to get gaps when using a traditional mortise-and-tenon joint. Luckily, it’s also straightfor- ward to get rid of them. If you make your mortises exactly as deep as your tenons are long, you’re asking for trouble. By doing this, you haven’t created a place for any excess glue to go, so it will be forced out of the joint. And if there is even a little bit of gunk at the bottom of your mortise, the joint won’t close tightly no matter what you do to it with your mallet. To fix this, make your mortises 1⁄16" deeper than Through-dovetails are easier to cut than half-blinds. To make life easier (and to stretch your your tenons are long. This trick will save you time stock of valuable wood) cut through-dovetails when joining your sides and drawer fronts. because you don’t have to clean up the bottoms of Then add 1⁄4"-thick veneer to the drawer front. your mortises as much, and it will prevent glue from squeezing out if you use too much in the joint. — CS Paring Your Tenon Shoulders Before you assemble your joints, you should always clamp them up without glue. That way, you can Veneered front Tenon Mortise is 1⁄16" deeper Use your workbench as than tenon is long part of your clamping Bottom of mortise setup when applying the veneer to the drawer. This setup helps spread pressure evenly across this Making your mortise a little deeper prevents large surface. gaps at the shoulders. Pare here der plane removes just a couple thousandths of an inch in a pass. This allows you to sneak up on a bril- liant fit with only five or six swipes of the plane. It takes about 10 seconds per joint. Be sure to remove the same amount of material ...but not here from each face cheek of the tenon by taking the same number of passes on each side of the tenon. Shoulder planes are available new from Lie- Nielsen, Clifton, Veritas and some other custom Pare the shoulder all around the tenon to help eliminate gaps in this joint. Be sure not to cut the edge of the plane-makers, such as Shepherd Tool. You also can shoulder, or you’ll make your gap worse instead of better. find them at flea markets or on eBay. — CS disassemble everything and fine-tune your joints add Rabbets to dado Joints if you find ugly gaps at this stage. But what if you Dados are deceivingly simple: You just cut a trench can’t track down the problem? We’ve found that in your work that is exactly the same width as the tuning up the shoulder of the joint will help you thickness of its mating piece. fix a variety of problems and make sure you don’t The problem is getting the dado sized exactly hurt the strength of the joint. right so you don’t have an ugly gap at the front of First, clamp the tenon in your bench’s vise with your joint or along the trench where the boards the tenon pointing straight up. With a sharp chisel, meet. Of course, to precisely size your dados you can pare away the inside of the shoulder without cutting use shims in your dado stack, buy undersized router the outside of the shoulder that shows, as shown above. Pare away about 1⁄32" all the way around and then test the fit again. To get your tenons This should help you solve problems where your a couple of swipes on each fitting perfectly, shoulders are angled a bit because of miscutting. cheek will tweak your tenons learn to use a shoulder plane. This handy It also helps out when the tenon’s mating surface tool will fit your ten- isn’t perfectly square – it’s quite common to sand ons in an extraor- or plane that area so it’s bellied a bit. dinarily controlled — CS manner. Tighten Mortise-and-tenon Joints with a Shoulder Plane A common problem with a mortise-and-tenon joint is that it’s easy to make the joint too tight (so it won’t go together) or too loose (where it will fall apart under a little stress). Even expertly machined joints have this prob- Dados are a pain to lem because it’s tough to hold all your parts with get sized just right. exactly the same pressure as you cut them on your So don’t bother siz- table saw or router table. A 1⁄128" difference can ing the dado to the material. Cut make or break this finicky joint. the dado under- Your tenons should slide into your mortises sized and then cut a with hand pressure only. The fit should be firm but matching rabbet on not forced. To get that every single time, I make its mate. all my tenons so they are slightly oversized. Usu- ally I shoot for a tenon that fits a bit too tightly but would go together with a mallet. Then I get ready for a dry assembly and use my shoulder plane to tune up each joint. A good shoul- bits or cut your joint in a couple of passes. always a few thousandths of an inch less than the Another option is to cut a rabbet on the mat- width you require. To cut a slightly undersized 3⁄4"- ing piece. Using a rabbet requires an extra machin- wide dado, I merely install all the chippers for a ery setup, but it’s worth the trouble. Cut your dado 3⁄4" dado. This has always worked, regardless of the so its width is 1⁄8" undersized. For example, if you brand of dado stack (Forrest, Freud and others). were planning on making a 3⁄4"-wide dado, make Then I just plane down the mating piece on a 5⁄8"-wide dado instead. both sides to sneak up on a perfect fit. Make sure Then cut an 1⁄8"-deep rabbet on your mating you set your plane to make the finest shaving pos- piece that allows the two pieces to nest together. sible, and this should work for you. You can easily tweak the size of the rabbet to get — CS the joint fitting just right. — Steve Shanesy Stop Bridging Your Screws When using Butt Joints use a hand Plane for dados There definitely are ways to improve your butt joints Another way to get perfect dados is with the help if you find gaps appearing. Screws and biscuits – of a smoothing plane. If you can sharpen and set used correctly – can make the joint tighter and up a plane, this approach is for you. more durable if you know how to use them. First, cut your dado so it is slightly undersized. While dovetails and mortise-and-tenon joints I’ve found that the dado made by dado stacks is are excellent options, we know that a lot of woodworkers use screws to simply pull butt joints tight. There’s nothing wrong with that, but using the A sharp and tuned smoothing correct screws and techniques will ensure that plane can reduce your thickness your joint actually is tight. in small increments, allowing you to sneak up on a seamless Lots of woodworkers are using sheet-metal dado joint. screws and drywall screws to assemble projects. These fasteners will work, but there’s a reason woodworking screws exist. The thread-free part of a wood screw shank (under the screw head) allows the threads to bite into the second wood piece, while the first piece (the one being attached) is able to pull tight against it. If there are threads over the entire length of the screw shank, the threads will bite into the wood in the attaching piece and will stop the first piece from seating tight when the screw head reaches the wood surface. This is something called “bridg- Biscuits keep the shelf aligned ing,” and you’ll never get a tight joint. vertically and the pocket-hole Using a standard wood screw with a partially- screws help clamp the middle threaded shank will solve a bridging problem, or of the panel. Add some glue, you can make sure the clearance hole in the attach- cinch the screws down tight and ing piece is large enough to keep the threads from you’re done – it’s that easy. And catching in the wood. Either way, your joint will here’s the best part: No clamps are required. end up tight and solid. — David Thiel Improve Butt Joints with Pocket-hole Screws, Biscuits We like pocket-hole screws to build utility cabi- nets and frames because no other joint is as fast or requires as little clamping. But there is one downside with pocket-hole clearance hole countersink Pilot hole When taping your miters, lay the parts face up so the mitered edges are touching. Then tape the joint with clear packing tape. screws when you are joining a shelf, top or bottom The trick to a tight butt joint is to a side. It can be quite difficult to hold the shelf drilling a proper clearance hole before you drive in a sheet- in perfect position as you drive the screws home. Next fold the assembly and use tape to hold it square metal screw. The clearance If the piece shifts even the slightest bit, you’ll have until the glue sets. hole prevents the threads from a shelf that is cockeyed with an ugly, obvious gap catching in the top piece. on one side – not a good thing. To get around this, we combine biscuits and – and it is a signature of contemporary furniture pocket-hole screws to get the best of both worlds. design. But accomplishing this joint without an The extra time needed to add the biscuits is very ugly gap somewhere along that miter is another minimal. First, cut your biscuit slots in your shelf story. Many people spend lots of money on corner and side piece. Then cut the pocket holes in the clamps and clamping jigs. Or they construct con- underside of the shelf. voluted cauls. My solution is tape. Yes, tape. Put glue and biscuits in the biscuit slots and put I was shown this technique of cutting straight the shelf in place. Then you can drive the pocket- and clean joints and taping them together when I hole screws home. Why do we like this method so worked in a large production cabinet shop where much? Well, there are three reasons: time was money. I’ve used this technique on mitered • The biscuits hold the shelf in place as you joints that were 10' long and it worked flawlessly. It drive the screws so it cannot shift and your case also works great for gluing compound miters. will be perfectly square. To cut a clean miter using your table saw, set the • The pocket-hole screws hold the shelf and side blade to 45° and clamp an accessory fence to your pieces together as the glue dries. This is especially saw’s rip fence. The accessory fence should be made helpful with the middle part of the shelf, which using a softer wood, such as poplar or pine. A harder is difficult to clamp if you use only biscuits. The wood will ruin the sharp tip of your miter. Raise the pocket-hole screws pull the pieces together across blade while it is spinning until it kisses the acces- the shelf without a single clamp. sory fence. Now you can cut your miters. • If you are a cheapskate, you can remove the The real trick to dead-on miters is how you glue screws once the glue is dry and reuse them. them. As shown in the photos above, tape the out- — CS side of the joint together, spread glue on the joint and then fold the parts to assemble things. Band The Best Way to clamp Miters in casework clamps or more tape will hold the parts tightly Joining your cabinet’s sides and face frame with together as they dry. PWM a miter is a classy way to dress up an ordinary box — Jim Stack T h e s e c r e T T o Great Table Legs it’s all in the way they Making legs for a table is more compli- face of the leg you look at, the growth rings inter- cated than most imagine. When I built sect that face at 45°, so the leg looks the same no look from the end. my first Shaker table I cut the legs from matter where you are standing in the room. a slab of 8/4 cherry. Everything looked great until I If you select the boards for your project’s legs applied the finish. Two of the legs looked good, but carefully before construction, you can purchase the others stuck out like a sore thumb. The front wood with the growth rings at about a 45° angle to and back faces of the legs looked different than the the faces of your board. Sometimes called “bastard sides. I had just learned the difference between flat- grain,” you’ll usually find this pattern near the long by Christopher sawn and quartersawn figure. edges of wide boards. If you can’t find this pattern in the wood at the lumberyard, you can purchase Schwarz The End Tells the Story stock that is thicker than what you need and saw To understand this important point, take a look at it to create bastard grain. Comments or questions? Contact the photos below, left. The key to understanding Chris at 513-531-2690 ext. 11407 this puzzle is in the end grain of your legs. If you creating Bastard grain or [email protected]. look at the photos of the flatsawn leg, the growth The first step is to trim your board so the face grain rings run left-to-right through the leg. On two sides is as straight as possible – angled grain looks odd on of the leg, the tree’s growth rings are parallel to the a leg. Use a yardstick to mark a straight line that is face – known as flatsawn or tangential grain. On parallel to the grain lines and near an edge of your the other two sides of that leg, the growth rings board. Band saw to that line, clean up the cut on the intersect the face of the leg at a 90° angle – known jointer and rip the board as wide as possible. as quartersawn or radial grain. To help visualize the growth-ring pattern on the Flatsawn and quartersawn grain look different. end grain, make a cardboard template that has a We expect the four surfaces to appear the same. hole cut in it that matches the thickness and width After all, they are the same size and are from the of your legs, plus 1⁄8" on all four sides. same piece of wood. If they don’t look the same, it’s Place the template on the end grain and rotate distracting, especially on a piece of furniture. it until the growth rings run from corner to corner. The trick to getting around this problem is either Mark this shape on the end, and use a sliding T- Bastard-grain flatsawn to select your lumber carefully before cutting or bevel to measure this angle and then set your table leg leg to cut it in a special way. In essence, you want the saw’s blade to the same angle. Rip the board to this growth rings to travel at a 45° angle from corner line and square up the stock using your jointer and to corner (or an angle that’s close to that). If you table saw. Finally, use your planer to reduce the leg grain looks one face study the photos you’ll see why. No matter which to its finished thickness. PWM the same shows flat- from all sawn grain four sides A template helps you visualize the correct growth- ring orientation for the legs. Turn the template until The other shows the growth rings 13⁄8" square quartersawn run from corner to cutout grain corner. Mark that Set your table saw’s blade to match the angle marked on on the end grain. your wood. Rip this edge off the leg.