7 Ways to be a Better Woodworker

last sunday we released the video on the glass coffee table build and it just came out gorgeous and i had an extra level of fun on that project because it was very challenging for me because i was doing these things that i had not done before i had to set up new jigs i had to think about all of these compound angled pieces of joinery that all kind of come together as one and if you watch that video you see i made a lot of mistakes but they were easily overcome because you know over the years as a woodworker i've developed some skills that help me think about building in sort of a more advanced way and that sort of got me thinking about you know what kind of information could i impart on you guys that really helps you develop those skills because there's lots of tips and tricks videos out there i've got some of them myself but nobody ever talks about the skills that you need to actually grow as a woodworker because those tips and tricks are great there's lots of things that i still use today that i've seen in those videos but nobody talks about the things you should work on to become an overall better woodworker so i've developed a list of seven things that i think are important and i want to share those with you why they're important what they help you develop and if you have anything that you want to share the comments is a great section to do that you know people really discuss great ideas down there i'll have a list of links to everything i talk about so that way you can get more information if it's a area that you want to expand on let me get started here with number one all right so this first one's a little bit of a longer one because it covers sort of a broad topic but i think it's the most important which is fixing your mistakes and thinking about different ways to do things now i have a great video be linked down below called seven common woodworking mistakes and how to fix them but more importantly knowing how to fix mistakes gives you a lot of confidence to just try stuff and overcome obstacles now when i was building that glass table these are my test pieces which is a great example of another thing you should do is always cut extra you know i still screw up on every single project but i know how to fix it i have the confidence to fix it so we just blow right through the mistakes and recover from them and keep moving now these are the the test pieces i did and it's great to do them as you're going knowing you may need them because you can either use them as a test piece or if you need to sub them in to your project you can easily do that without having to go back and re-mill a new piece of lumber and rip it down to size and cut your joinery and one of the biggest mistakes i made on that project was i glued up my table before tapering the legs now tapering the legs on that sled i built a couple weeks ago the cat's multi-sled would have been so easy we could have just put on that sled ripped it down table saw i would have been done with the legs for both tables in five minutes but i cut myself i got distracted and we just glued up the project and now i have a triangle table that doesn't sit flat on anything and i got to figure out how to taper the legs so i ended up having to make templates you know which took me a little while and then i ended up having to do this weird clamping thing with the router where we clamped the table on these two sawhorses further out routed the end of the leg and then we had to move it over here and route the top and then the middle and do it in three steps it took gosh took three hours of the day i believe point being is that i knew there would be another way to do it so i sat down i said okay i made this error which you know a few years ago i probably would have been like oh this project's screwed up i can't fix it i can't do it or i would have found some crazy way to do it that might not have been safe but you know now i sat down and i thought about i said okay let's come up with a simple way to do this and get it done so let's talk about the next one next thing i want to talk about that is a great thing to always have in your mind when you're woodworking is taking small bites i think one of the biggest mistakes i see people make is they try and hog out huge amounts of material with underpowered tools you need to think about the tool you have and how to best use it now when i was making the glass table this is how we cut the bridle joints in the joinery and you can see i was this is the exact setup i was using it's a little bit over a quarter inch and i was taking full depth passes but this is a five horsepower saw and if you saw how i was doing i was going incredibly slow now that was a big bite even for this massive saw and one of the mistakes i made early on that sort of taught me this was i tried i've seen people resaw on the table saw sometimes they do it so there's less you're taking less material with your bandsaw which is a great move because bandsaws are typically very underpowered and when you try and resaw you're removing a huge amount of material so sometimes i've seen people resaw it slightly with the table saw first and then go over the band saw and do it which really helps take the stress off the bandsaw same thing with routers now this was the leg blank that i used for that glass table and i ended up having to route it out like i was talking about with the router but you saw on there that i went to the sander and took off a huge amount of material first because a router is not capable of just ripping through this you need to make sure that you're working within the capacity of your tools and just because you have a bit that's two inches long doesn't mean you can just take two inches of material just because your 10 inch table saw blade will come up two and three eighths of an inch does not mean you should make that full pass so what i like to do is i live by like a quarter inch rule so if i'm resawing on the table saw i'll do a quarter inch at a time flip the board over do a quarter inch with a router a quarter inch is probably way more than you should a quarter inch is probably way more than you should ever be taking so uh if i have to i'll get a hand plane and take off material or i'll use a saw use a skill saw on a track but the point being is that you know injuries can happen when you try and take off too much material you know if you go to a jointer it's possible to take off a quarter inch on a pass but that's insane there's no way you should ever be doing that i never take more than a 16th on my jointer and it's you know two and a half horsepower jointer so point being you will be better at woodworking if you focus on small bites there'll be less burning less edge damage less chance of injury and you'll be able to focus on the task at hand and when you take off a small amount of material it's it's much easier to get the work done that you want to get done all right let's move over to the bench and talk about the next uh hold on i need my whiskey i mean my coffee oh sorry i didn't see you guys there uh the next one that's so dumb but we don't have our dumb jokes on this channel so next one is make a plan one of the best things i ever did for myself as a woodworker was learn how to use fusion there's a great class that i'll link below that is just for woodworkers first one i've ever found for woodworkers and i thought i was good at fusion but then i took that class and it like upped my game by a million percent and the reason why that's so great is making a plan makes all the difference and if you don't want to learn cad that's fine you can just draw on a notebook and i wanted to give you an example of that when i came up with the sled idea i always keep a notebook with me i drew it out and i said okay how does this work and i started with just a terrible pen drawing and that eventually became what you saw in the video is the free plans that are available on my website for the sled and there's a couple more pages but it allows you to visualize and work out the problems before you ever cut a piece of wood and that is instrumental in success is having a plan because if it's just in your head and you're trying to get it done it's a very inefficient way to build when you draw it it helps you work through some of the issues you may run into or difficulties in different types of joinery or angles and things like that and think about how you're going to cut them the other thing that's great especially when you're doing furniture like this is the small table base from the glass table it allows you to visualize it and one of the things i could tell when i printed this up was that the the legs needed a really big taper and otherwise it was going to look so blocky and sort of angley and and not is anglia work and not really aesthetically pleasing so i was able to look at that and say oh my gosh this really needs a big taper and then you know i didn't have to even draw that right then i just knew when i got to that part of the project i should cut a very large taper i ended up drawing it later before i did it just because i had to make those templates but point being is that it's something that i saw and was like okay that's something that we need to fix before we ever start building so make a plan i highly suggest learning cad i'll link that class down below if you're getting into cnc too he has a cam cad computer assisted drawing and then cam is computer assisted manufacturing he has a class for both that's just for woodworkers and it really makes a big difference and honestly sketchup's great but it's very rudimentary compared to what you can do with fusion so a little bit more of a learning curve with fusion but i highly recommend it because there's so much more you can do and so much more planning and execution that can happen before you ever start building let's stay here and talk about the next one as you'll hear me say in all of my joints of the week's video there's a reason we practice joinery and this sort of tip is about practice in general and that the devil is in the details now when i do all of these joints of the week that you see behind you i don't do them just for show i do them because it makes me better there's not been anything i've ever done in my woodworking than that joint of the week series that has improved my woodworking more and the reason is is you have to get good at hand tools now you hear people say practice makes perfect but i like to say perfect practice makes you better and so that involves sort of learning watching videos from there's lots of great people on youtube who make instructional videos watching those videos maybe take some notes so that way when you go out into the shop you can practice the steps and the techniques that they use to get really good at and the reason that makes such a difference in your woodworking is that when you get towards the end of a project or especially in fixing mistakes there's lots of times where hand tools really really help because there's little things like for example the legs in my entry table you'll see on there that i chamfered the legs with a hand plane in a really you know i was 45 degrees on the corner and then i drew a line and i i tapered the leg inward using a hand plane and it made it was so subtle that anybody who walked into my house would never say like oh i love the taper and the inside portion of those legs but when you look at it visually the legs have this narrowing at the bottom that makes so much of a difference aesthetically things like just breaking corners i'll show you here in this b-roll clip you know the difference between a sharp corner and one that's just been hit a couple times with a hand plane or a piece of sandpaper makes a world of difference so get out in the garage and practice things the great thing about these joints of the week is it's like three dollars in lumber and the only thing that you lose is a little bit of your time but you have everything to gain because when you're finishing up a project all those little fine little accoutrements or however the heck you say that word make a big difference so you want to practice and really get good at your hand tools and your sharpening because those are the skills that make a real difference in the final aesthetic of your piece let's come into the bench and talk about the next one all right the next one i want to talk about is measuring marking getting things square if there's any area in your shop you should not cheap out it's on your combo squares and measuring devices i have a great video called superior accuracy and woodworking where i go into extreme depth on all of my measuring and marking tricks but what i think is most important is that you get a good combo square and learn how to use it i have a great video all about combo squares as well as where to get these two here they're blems so they're like half the price they're just as accurate as like the hundred dollar twelve inch squares you see like from sterit or mitutoyo in fact this is a minute toil you can see it's been scratched out but it makes a big difference when you know your stuff is square another thing that is really important is you always use the same measuring device throughout a project you have a combo square and a tape measure now these are both common tools you'll use for measuring but check them against each other make sure they're the same a great example of this is when sean boyd used to be next door he had this one tape measure brand that he really liked and he had four of them and one day just out of curiosity we took them all and measured out to 12 inches and marked it and they all were slightly off from each other now he would keep those all in a line and just kind of grab them randomly throughout projects clean up at the end of the day and then come back the next day but one of the things that happens in woodworking is you know a small air of like a 30 second isn't probably going to make a big difference but you get compounding errors so if you're off a thirty second here a sixteenth there an eighth here suddenly at the end of the project it's super wonky won't go together your glue up won't work so it's important that you take a measuring device and stick with it and i think the most important thing is to ditch your pencil i only use pencil for rough cutting and here's why okay now here's why you want to ditch the pencil especially when you're doing joinery or final pieces and this is exactly why i designed my apron the way i did with my square here and my marking knife here because i'm right-handed there's also a left-handed version but you take your square out and then you can make a line and the way that you get there is you take your tape measure and let's say you wanted five inches you can go right to five inches you just leave your marking knife right there and then you take your square up to it and then you have a line and that's a terrible line then you have a line just like this and so you know that's exactly at five inches but when you look at like a pencil let's start with like a 0.5 mechanical pencil now not only do you have the lead but you also have this metal sheath around here so if you thought you were at five inches you may be off by a little bit and then if you do that in four different places suddenly you're off by like a whole sixteenth of an inch then if you look at it right next to the marking knife line you can see it's substantially wider which you may not think that makes a difference but it does then if you look at a carpenter's pencil you have even more of that problem because you have this angle where it's sharpened and that's going to push it away from the square too but look at the difference in the the size of the lead that's maybe four times wider than the mechanical pencil and 16 times wider than the marking knife so if you learn how to use a marking knife and again i talk about this in great detail in my video called superior accuracy and woodworking which will be linked again down below but it's important to get used to it also cool little tip that a lot of people don't know is at the bottom of all squares there's a little scribe that's very sharp so if you ever can't find your marking knife you can just pull the scribe out and give yourself a nice little mark let's head over to the table saw and talk about my next tip the next thing is jigs jigs jigs you should be making jigs here's some ones that i use very very regularly this is one we use to chamfer the dovetail jigs and this is one we've had for several years and we keep making new ones because you know we probably could hold it by the post and chamfer it on the router table but that wouldn't be safe or efficient so we can just lock them in here do it real fast jig can be as simple as like a magnet like this that goes on your cast iron table saw you use as a stop block with your miter gauge or i've got a cross cut sled here stop blocks are essential whether you get mine or make your own or just clamp a piece of wood to your jig it makes a huge difference repeatability repeatability repeatability is the name of the game in woodworking if you can't cut four legs at exactly the same length you need to step up your game got this mitering the spline jig which i use all the time for mitered corners this was a bridal joint jig that we used in the glass coffee table for angled bridal joints i've got a great video on making 90 degree bridal joints that we used for the infinity cube table you know from where i'm standing i can see one two three eleven other jigs that are just here that we use all the time so figure out how to make things repeatable if you have to do more than one of a cut a jig's probably going to be great for you so never just grab your miter gauge and say okay i'm going to measure to 12 inches on 11 different pieces and cut them here let's just get a stop block and make this easy and you know like i said it could be something as simple as this magnet jigs make a big difference in your woodworking and that's why you see tons of videos on them let's head over the bench and talk about the last one the last one is a simple one but i really think it's the most important woodworking is supposed to be fun your hobbies are supposed to be fun and i'll tell you from personal experience the job i have posting public content on youtube and instagram uh there's mean people people are mean to me every single day so you have to have a really thick skin but i know especially from even today somebody will say something that kind of nips it wanna you know an insecurity i have and it'll bug me all day but the point is do what you love there is no right way to do woodworking there is no gatekeeping that anybody can do that says that you shouldn't enjoy your hobby the way that you want to enjoy it and so that just means you should do what you love if you like epoxy tables great go do it if you like cutting dovetails great go do it but don't let anybody tell you that you're wrong for doing it the way that makes you happy so remember that we all make mistakes but it's just we're trying to have fun we're trying to do things that give us fulfillment and enjoyment and nothing is better than seeing something that you worked really hard on done and regardless of how it came out don't tell people about your mistakes because nobody's ever going to see those they're not going to notice that little piece of gap in your joinery they're just going to see that somebody they know spent hours of blood sweat and tears making something that they're so proud of so do what you love don't keep anybody let them enjoy their hobby the way they want to and you enjoy it the way that you want to and more most importantly be nice to people and build them up no matter what it is say you know what i'm proud of you for trying you know there was a day that i had never built a piece of furniture and then there is today and at some point i had to start and i was terrible when i started but i got better and better and better and i am now the gatos moises you see before you hear today but the reason that i think that is so important is i've enjoyed every step along the way and i learned something new every time i build something even today so guys thanks for watching if you want to support the channel head over to the cat's moses store pick up a dovetail jig an apron or a stop block stay safe in the shop

Channel: Jonathan Katz-Moses

Views: 181,536

Keywords: be a better woodworker, woodworking, wood, do it yourself, woodworking projects, woodworker, table saw, wood working, wood carving, woodworking tools, diy woodworking, woodworking project, tools, woodwork, easy woodworking, woodworking tips and tricks, diy, how to, furniture, tips and tricks, woodworking for beginners, woodworking techniques, woodworking plans, amazing techniques, woodworking easy, woodworking tips, techniques and skills, techniques

Id: gb7p6X3xCXs

Length: 18min 28sec (1108 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 21 2021