5 Pro Secrets for the Best Box Beams

hi and welcome to next level carpentry I just finished cleaning glue squeeze-out from box beam number 11 out of a set of 12 that I'm doing for a job and I'm shooting this intro section after the end of the process of about to show you four five professional secrets that I use for building the best box beans I started shooting this video earlier this afternoon but the intro segment disappeared somehow but I've gone through the whole process and come full circle back to where the beam will be working on in this video is now complete and ready to stand in this forest of these other beams so I'll use this rough segue to jump in to the video where I started it earlier this afternoon let's go to work there's some stuff about a project like this that are just a natural given as far as millwork and woodworking goes but the first given is that to get this sort of end result you need wood that's flat straight and smooth to start off with I bought all this stuff random width and four quarter thick it's all been flattened and thickness planed down to a consistent width and then I mill the edges straight and true the next given that I'm not going to go into here is that the better you can do at matching up the grain for the corners where the beams join together the more convincing the end result will be that's a subject for a video in itself I'll show you a quick example of what I think looks good and what I think looks wrong but the grain selection and matching process on a project like this is an important part of the overall quality of the end result with these beams there's 12 beams in all that means 36 separate pieces of wood so I had the full 36 pieces to sort and sift and come up with the best match for East peace depending on where it goes in the project and where the view angle is for those pieces and the last given for a project like this to get professional results is to have accurate and sharp equipment to work with sharp table saw blade and the ability to accurately set angles same thing with the jointer the knives need to be sharpened not nicked tense needs to be true and all that setup needs to be reliable so that you can focus on getting a good end result and not fussing with equipment so if all that as a background I'm going to get in to the five secrets for building the best box beams I made this mock-up as a proof of concept to get all the particulars right and to figure out this full wedge tenon joinery for this faux mortise and tenon joint and then I've glued up these ten segments so far I've got two left and I'm going to go over these five secrets as I work through the final steps in gluing up the last two beams the first secret I want to talk about today is the need and necessity for nearly perfect miters on the corners of these beams even though these get textured and knocked down it's not going to be very convincing if there's a seam running along the corners of all these beams I'm going to put a link to a video up here that shows the process I use for getting those perfect miters I did it on some newel posts a while back but basically it involves starting out with a piece of wood that is consistent in thickness and width I then cut a miter on a table saw with a setting that leaves a small flat spot right at what would normally be the sharp point of the miter that way the width of the board is consistent and the miter cut is consistent and then the final step is to plane the miter on the jointer at just a touch over 45 degrees like forty five and a quarter degrees so that when the miter comes together the long points touch and it actually compresses slightly under the clamps so that that corner joint is sealed up and nearly invisible [Music] and these three pieces have all been prepared to the same stage and together they'll make up beam segment 1b I'll talk a little bit about matching up woodgrain here like I said there's 12 beams with three pieces each so there's 36 pieces of wood with that quantity and that size of beans I have to do some glue up this 10 inch wide bottom as 2 pieces that I selected for their compatibility but it's also beneficial to get a good grain match up where the corners of the beams come together like this the better the match the more convincing the final look is and even though these get heavily textured and stained I'd like to do the best job I can about matching up the actual grain features of the wood itself and this is not the final set up I've got a big knot here dark wood next to light wood that kind of shows up I put the mitre on this edge of this piece but you can see that now I hope you can see that even the fit of this mitered side to this one is better than this grain to that use the other side of the beam and that's a pretty decent match with the tones of the wood etc but my final choice of this was this there's some knots on the edge of this wood it's far from perfect but it's a lot better than other options the tone of the wood is about the same and then the match from this side tones and the grain of the wood are a very respectable match you can see the angle of the grain as across as this joint continues through the joint and for the southern I actually found grain that we use back and forth across the seam for a rather convincing grain pattern on the corner the other knots and features of the wood are similar from board to board and it's not too much of a stretch to think that all these characteristics would be found on an actual solid white oak beam and I flipped these pieces around so you can see the orientation triangle that I use for lining up these pieces once I've decided on the final grain match these three pieces make up beam number one B as you can see on these triangles and then the other B on here just reminds me which edge of these pieces gets a bevel on them for final assembly I don't want to have this all figured out and lined up and then bevel the wrong edge of one of these narrow pieces I think I said before I'm not going to go through all the steps for getting these perfect miters but we'll just refer to that other video where I go through the process of using a table saw and a jointer to make these extremely sharp and excellent miters using a jointer to make the final pass on a miter like this leaves an extremely sharp edge you need to use caution when working around this if you happen to slide your hand down one of these edges it's gonna slice you like a Ginsu knife but the end result is an extremely sharp and accurate miter that when glued is virtually invisible in the final product the second secret I use to making the best box beams misuse biscuits for the miters using a plate joiner for this allows perfect line up of the miter Plus adds some strength to the final joint I prefer this to doing a rabbited joint that leaves grain showing from one piece of wood on both sides of the joint that's a giveaway and I prefer to do them this way some people may prefer to use a lock mitre for a joint like this to me it's an awful lot of extra trouble it makes parts of that joint extremely fragile during the fabrication and glue up process and a lock miter joint could actually show up in a deep distress mark like this where I've really got to get a corner of this beam for effect I might get extra edges showing up in here if I was to widdle something this far down using a lock miter joint I prefer a straight bevel other benefits of using a plate joiner and biscuits is that it's extremely accurate in lining up these edges during the glue up process plus they're very easy to use and line up I just orient these pieces the way they're gonna finally glued up and just do a quick layout for this get spacing I've gone four inches in from each end and then it works out if I spaced them 13 inches in between 13 26 39 15:26 and i can just approximate these on the other side because it's not a production layout but a custom layout and one thing I really like about the plate joiner is that the alignment across the joint this way has a lot of tolerance so I just a big fat mark scrub down here is plenty good other joining methods like dowels in particular this joint has to be perfectly accurate on each location and a combination of all the locations but a biscuit joiner allows an incredible amount of flexibility while still providing an incredible amount of consistent accuracy my shops set up so that I can hold these pieces vertically in a vise so that the biscuit joiner indexes easily on that razor-sharp Meyer edge I'm wearing Smurf gloves during this process to protect my hands from these sharp corners and to keep a firm grip on this plate joiner the design of this plate joiner is pretty unique you probably will never see another one of these but the takeaway here is to make sure that you're indexing off the sharp miter in each case and that the plate joiner is inserting the plate perpendicular to the face of the mitre you'll notice that I've set the slot well back from the sharp edge it's not centered up in this face it's down towards to heel and the reason for that is I don't want a biscuit to show up if I'm distressing the edge of the beam when it's finished just make sure I'm lining up the center of the biscuit with the center of my mark positioning plate joiner flat on the mitered surface and making a full plunge depth cut and I guess I should mention I'm using the size 20 biscuits they're the biggest ones I can get and provide the most strength and ease of alignment for the joint and yes this is a dusty messy process without dust collection hooked up to my biscuit joiner but hey it's a woodshop and every woodshop I've ever been in gets a bit dusty then it's just a matter of rinse lather repeat on the other three edges on the other two pieces and that is all there is to secret number two for using biscuits in the miters for these box beams and that leads us to secret number three which is what these dados and these blocks of wood with pocket screws in them are for making secret number three the use of spreaders in the assembly and construction of these beams that allows extreme clamping pressure and precise alignment of all these parts as the beams are assembled and gives them durability during transport finishing and installation the framework for attaching these beams to the ceiling will be made out of two by fours and an inch and a half thick this piece gets screwed to the ceiling and the beam gets screwed to this piece during installation that's why I set this dado to inches down from the top of the beam so there'll be no interference between the two the dedos are exactly three quarters of an inch wide which is the thickness of these pieces and the thickness of these spreader blocks the data is 1/8 inch deep to give adequate purchase for the blocks on their studio and also makes calculating the block lengths easy at an inch and 1/4 less than the total width of the beam I haven't found it necessary to put a pocket hole screw in each end of this block one end is plenty and will ultimately allow the slightest bit of flex in the beam as its installed these beams are a little over 7 feet long four blocks is plenty to support them and putting them four inches in from each end and about two feet in between this measurement isn't critical but even spacing is always nice at this stage I just screw one spreader block and each layout location and I'm running the screw in from the top of the beam in case it ever needs to be removed and that completes secret number three which is the spreader blocks and now we can move into secret number four which really isn't so much of a secret as a preference but my secret weapon number four is tight bond three would glue the bigger part of secret number four then glue itself is process and application of the glue and the sequence this is going to be hard to video because I've got to get everything all glued up and clamped before the glue sets so I hope you can get the idea of what I'm showing if the camera work is a bit lacking alright so type on glue a fresh bottle is a little bit runny ER which makes it nice for getting all this stuff glued together the other thing is the shop is pretty cool it's really cold outside but it's cool it here because I've got the furnace shut off so I don't have warm air blowing down on this glue and causing it to skin over the next thing is I'm not using any of these glue bottle deals I'm just using the glue and a application method to get good consistent application and results and there's also the sequence I probably already mentioned that first off I apply a little bit of glue in the biscuit slot and then what the biscuit with glue slide it into place I keep a small plastic mallet on hand if the biscuit fits tight and I need to tap it in place this all needs to happen quite quickly I'll do a quick close up of the glue being applied and then back the camera off again so you can see the overall process I like the flat applicator tip of the tight pond to glue bottle because I can apply just a slight wipe of glue it's going to get on both sides and the bottom of that biscuits lot and I just smear a little bit on both faces and that one edge of the biscuit and slide it into place that's what I'll do on the rest of all the biscuits on the two side pieces I'm just letting the camera roll as I quickly go through that glue up process for these biscuits and the rest of the miter slots in the I'd pieces if you've worked with biscuits before you know that it's important that they're sitting evenly down in the joint so they're not sticking up one side or the other and I'm making sure that any flakes of wood are left over from the biscuit cutting process that they're out of the way and don't get jammed up in the joint I chose to put biscuits in the side pieces rather than in the edges of the main bottom piece I don't really know why but it's been working out very well for the assembly sequence I'm in trouble because I forgot to plow one biscuit in this piece it's something that happens because I'm shooting video and that would have turned up if I would have dry fit these pieces but I didn't I'm just thankful I didn't go get all diligent put that tool away take an extra three minutes take that last piece in and I'll set this piece aside another part of the secret is the application of glue along the rest of the joint again this is a fresh bottle of glue and a clean flat tip and I just realized I had knocked the microphone receiving unit out of position on the camera so I lost a bunch of audio but the next step once the biscuits are in place and the edges of the bottom are glued up I'm just setting this bottom piece top of a block that's approximately the height of the beam so now the glue that's on these miters are starting to run down that miter angle which is a good thing because the next step is to add a full-length bead of glue on the side piece that's right at the sharp point of the miter and wiping the tip clean using my finger as a guide and laying this flat bead of glue hope you can see that right at the tip of that long point because I want this mitre to seal up tight so that it doesn't show in the finished beam and this would be infinitely easier with a cameraman at this point the biscuits serve to line up the joint as it comes together LOC mitre would be probably pretty tough to do by myself and as it is that mitre comes together wonderfully I've pre-cut these pieces to length so I can use those plastic mallet to line that up perfectly and then I'll bump this joint together to prime it and you'll see that little bit of glue pop out of the edge and that little bead of glue that pops up tells me that the finished joint will seal up nicely now I'll glue up the sharp point of this other piece which is handy to do because it's on these journeyman sawhorses nice smooth consistent fast even bead of fresh glue on that edge looks just like that and this glue is running down so it's wetting the very sharp point of that mitre which is key for getting a nice tight mitre joint these spreader bars actually make a pretty nice handle and that temporary block helps hold everything in position so I can slip this side into place the first beam didn't know this well I had a lot of experience on those other ten beam sections to help you develop the process here's that beautiful getting that all the way along I want to make sure the end is perfectly lined up and that plastic mallet on this white oak lets me wrap pretty hard without damaging the wood this is perfectly flush so that basically wraps up secret number three and four which is the biscuits and the tight bond glue and leads us directly into the most important secret of this whole process secret number five is mural band clamps I did a thorough review of these clamps in another video using them for different applications I've discovered this is an absolutely perfect application for these clamps I've got them pre adjusted for the size to wrap around these beans and basically I slip three jaws on the wood and let this third to this fourth jaw dangle so that I can slide it along the beam to the location where the spreader is inside I've got three jaws in position when I get it slid down on the beam I'll pull the fourth jaw out and around to fit around the corner of the beam again this is lined up on the outside where the spreader is inside and I hope you can see inside the beam here to where the spreader is and with the spreader screwed in one dado and just left loose on the other side at this stage I can just tap the spreader up into position so it indexes itself in that groove in the second side of the beam as its glued up and you'll see as I apply the clamping pressure with these Merril band clamps that it simultaneously pulls that spreader bar into the dado and pulls that miter just absolutely snug and tight once the pressure breaks the initial tack of that glue fujas glue out or a perfectly fit and glued miter apply a second Merrill clamp to this end of the beam and I'm using these pivoting jaws you can slip these out and use just metal on metal but the pivoting jaws give some space to the clamp so it doesn't get smeared up with glue that squeezes out of that joint there's three jaws in place and wiggle the fourth one into position after I have to back off the screw tension a little bit position those jaws here we go these clamps are about four inches in lined up with the spreader on the inside which is probably the most important of the five secrets for getting this done I orient these clamps so they are pretty much square to the corners so they're bringing even clamping pressure to handle the snug down so the band doesn't flip and I just love how these things work the pressures brought on you can hear it ping in and poppin MITRE sucks up and pushes the glue out and got nice glue squeeze-out on the surface I went over this in the video about the newel posts and explained that these miters are cut just a little sharper than 45 degrees like 45 and an eighth degree that leaves about a quarter of a degree space on the short points of those miters that way when I glue it up the long point touches and pushes the glue out as the clamping pressure is put on it smashes the joint like this actually flares it out just slightly until the short point of that joint pulls together that way there's plenty of internal pressure in that joint that holds it nice and tight and it won't expose a glue line as I carve away the edge for the weathered aged look of the beam secret 5a is that if extra clamps are needed in between because there's biscuits in there can add extra clamp pressure and tighten up the joint in between the spreaders and the band clamps for a nice tight fit all the way along I'll put another one right here on the end just because but a word of caution with just a single clamp like this it's possible to shift the joint to wear one mitre pulls up past the other one if that's happening we've got a compensate for it because that'll throw off the dimension of the beam movin putzing around here long enough explaining things for the video I got to get cracking and get the rest of this glued out before this sets up and I can't pull the mitre together but the process is the same why the Merrill clamp down where the spreader is pull the less joy in the place with a little clamp pressure on line up the clamps nicely or line up these blocks nicely a double check to make sure that the spreaders in place inside you might have been able to hear that snap into place and with a full shop and tight bond three glue there's enough time to talk about this whole process without having the glue set up to a point where it won't squeeze out of the joints anymore it's coming along quite nicely time for the clam double-checking to make sure the spreaders in position and then bring on the pressure his corners that glue is getting pretty pretty thick and slow all the time I've been gathering on about this process but the tension on these clamps is pretty serious this mitre just might take clamp pressure in two ways to close up the end finally getting a little bit of glue squeeze out there now I just clean up glue on the outside the beam with a short putty knife while it's still wet and frequent viewers are getting tired of hearing it but I'll never use water and rags for cleaning up glue sometimes I use sawdust to soak it up but for this assembly just a sharp putty knife and fast efficient movement there's plenty to get the job done because it's kind of funny with those mural band clamps clanging and dinging around so almost sounds like I got a grandfather clock in here oh it's 1:30 well I've got all the glue cleaned up on the outside I'll stand it up and clean out the inside of a beam and I know that cleaning out the inside of these beams is kind of an OCD thing but I do it because I can someday somebody will pull these beams down off the ceiling and think can you believe the guy that made these actually cleaned the glue out of the inside the beans I've tried to cut the scars to show it the edges of these blocks are sharp the bands are sharp if you hit them I've kind of nicked up my hands a few times cleaning out the beans know that this box beam has had a few hours for all the glue to set up I'll pull the clamps and do some cleanup work on the beam it's easy to unclamp and release these mehriban clamps I just turn the screw to loosen the band and then push one of the corner clamps so it disengages the wood plant just fall down I like to throw a quick squeeze clamp on the beam to hold it in place while I clean up the glue squeeze-out which is then just a quick scrape with a sharp putty knife and the only residual glue is that which was trapped underneath the pads of those clamps and after cleaning up both phases to where they meet at that corner I think it would be hard to argue that that isn't a great fit for the best box beams look as close as you want but there is absolutely no seam or joint visible on that corner and the best thing about using these five secrets for making these box beams is that it produces consistently accurate quality results like the one you see right there well I hope those five secrets give you some insight into how you can make better box beams by using them there's just a few simple tricks that make all the difference in the consistency and quality of the end result I'm shooting this outro segment on the heels of the intro segment so I don't know what the video in between the two is going to turn out like but if you like it I hope you'll hit the thumbs up button and consider subscribing to next-level carpentry if you haven't already at some point I'll post pictures of the finished product on the next-level carpentry page on Pinterest so you can see what these things look like when they're done but I hope to produce and upload this video much sooner than those pictures will get posted so I'm going to get the work shoe ting the rest of this video to get it put together and uploaded but for now I hope you found the secrets helpful and that you'll share them with your friends on Institute Inc it's something they'd benefit from but for now as always thanks for watching

Channel: Next Level Carpentry

Views: 64,373

Rating: 4.95679 out of 5

Keywords: box beam, boxbeam, box, beam, faux, antique, timber, timberframe, fake, false, hollow, miter, merle, clamp, biscuit, rustic, modern, farmhouse, farm, house, reclaimed, reclaim, repurpose, oak, lumber, barn, mortise, tenon, wedge, matt jackson, next level carpentry, fine woodworking, fine homebuilding, old

Id: -zzo74Agqf8

Length: 25min 59sec (1559 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 09 2019