10 Quick Woodworking Tips | Paul Sellers

I have been working with wood for 55 years and I give my top tips every week I go on Instagram give a top tip each week every Tuesday and people are growing through that little bit of knowledge it's very fast very punchy and you get the tip so I've put together these top 10 tips out of my chosen last year to show you what I'm really doing and if you join us you can continue getting those top tips it's wonderful go to Instagram and join Paul sellers when you were in school and you learn to use a hand plane you were taught to hold the back hand the back handle here the front handle here and just push it into the wood but sometimes you're pushing against the grain as I was then because the grain is rising against you instead of altering your body turn the plane around and just pull it towards you until you get that beautiful clear surface and you've kept your whole body stance just the same no problem get used to the entire when you use a marking gauge the traditional way is to set the distance you want and place the pin on the surface and score a mark in the surface of the wooden sometimes we don't want that we don't want something as permanent as that take your gauge set the distance you want measure it and then take the pencil against the end of the gauge and pull it and you've got a nice crisp line to work sometimes when you've got to drive a nail in the end of a piece of wood if you drive that nail just on its own without pre-drilling it there's a good chance the end of that wood will split so what we do is we take a pair of pliers and cut the head off the nail just about any nail will work cut the head off took it into the drill driver like that cinch it tight and then you can drill a hole anywhere you like in here that's gone all the way through take your other piece of wood underneath and then drive you now and this fits perfectly into that hole and it won't split the wood it's perfect it's a perfect solution [Music] sometimes you've got to put an arch onto a piece of wood maybe the underside of a table top or a chair seat rail or something like that this is what I would do I've got this piece of wood in the vise take a stick between the jaws of the clamp and start cinching it and as you turn the Tommy bar here just push the wood out until you got a shape that you like like there mark a position on the piece of wood so I want here and here and then put the arch onto the piece of wood see how it looks on the piece turn it if you need to and we can mark your arch and you'll have a nice arch on there if you've got a stanley or a record or any other make of spokeshave and you want to set it what I found really helpful is if I set one side really flush here and then this side as heavy as I want that way I don't have to adjust the spokeshave when I'm doing something like a round over I take my spokeshave place it on the wood here I've got the coarse side and here I've got the fine side so I go here to get my heavy coats like this and then I move to this side to take my refining cuts here and I can move equally in between anywhere in that to get a thicker or thinner shaving according to what I want to take off sometimes when we're working with wood we might want to drive a screw or a nail even into a piece of wood and the head of the screw or the nail looks very ugly we can pre-drill a hole as I have in this case pre-drill a hole and then you can put a plug in there that will cover the head of whatever you sunk into there and getting the right amount of glue onto it can be a trick especially if you've got dozens of them to do so what you do is you put glue onto a scrap of wood take the plug and just run that plug turn it around like that and it'll run just the mind to glue onto your plug place it into the recess the hole you've board and then drive it home leave it to dry and then you compare it playing it or saw that to flush and it's going to make a concealed hiding of this grip here's a trick that you may not have seen before because I use a knife against the edge of must deal rule like this constantly what happens is it creates a very fine burr on this edge and if I'm away on a job and I've got a ding in a piece of wood and I don't have a scraper with me I can take the edge of the ruler and I can use it to take shavings off my wood just like that and it's a perfect way of getting that dig out of a piece of wood I love that trick I've used it all the time this is one of my favorite hammers I've been using one for years and people often ask me what the purpose of this flat square edge at the top is well when you're driving a big nail you hold it between your fingers like that you just use the one face it's no problem when you get to these little rinky-dink nails half an inch or less and you've got big fingers what you do is you put the pin right between your fingers and you use the hammer like that just to start it then you can turn over and flip it so it's just to start the nail that's the only reason for it when you need some glue spatulas I like to have my spatulas on hand and I might need several of them in the middle of a glue up and I don't want to start making them when I'm in the middle of that gluing go so here's what I do before I start just cut down till you stop go all the way across the piece of wood one side to the other and then you cut them below your cut line like that then you can leave them on the bench and when you need a spatula you split off what you need very simple so now I can put my glue on spread it nice and evenly and I've got them to hand when you've just bought a new dovetail saw tenon saw anything like that and you start sawing with the work and you're working with it it starts biting on the wood as soon as you offer it to the wood its biting into the surf it's not doing what you want it to do take my tip and take off the tip watch here you just take a smooth file flat file and on the first tooth take a pass and then you'd hit three or four or five more teeth take those down then when you start the saw in the wood those first teeth barely cut at all but watch here it just glides into the wood every time there's no stumbling at the start you'll love that little tip this the first half dozen teeth so there you have it those are my 10 top tips from this last year I'm going to keep going with it but please join me on Instagram join me there with all your fellow woodworking enthusiasts and we'll keep going keep making these tips and you're going to grow in your woodworking [Music]

Channel: Paul Sellers

Views: 494,102

Rating: 4.9483356 out of 5

Keywords: hand tools, paul sellers, woodworking, DIY, workshop, joiner, carpenter, craftsman, crafts, furniture, joinery, Tips, Spokeshave, Plane, woodworking tips, easy woodworking tips

Id: mP0DgxIb-xs

Length: 8min 22sec (502 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 22 2019