7 Ways to Fix Common Woodworking Mistakes

so I took a class from a very very famous furniture designer and I was asking him about mistakes and he said to me he said Jonathan I still make major screw-ups on every project and then a bunch of little ones in woodworking is not about being perfect it's about learning how to fix your mistakes and recently we've started going over my mistakes at the end of projects and it seems like you guys have really enjoyed that so I want to put together a video where we talk about how to fix common woodworking mistakes and the few things you should always know in general about mistakes first it's not a mistake it's a feature remember that also don't tell everybody I see new woodworkers do this all time they'll finish a great project they'll show me it and then go oh I screwed up right here I did this this is that and don't tell anybody nobody ever notices you're a way better woodworker than 98% of the people on the planet as soon as you start woodworking so don't point out your mistakes remember it's a feature and let me show you how to fix some common errors ok so here's some of the most important tools in fixing you could fix most mistakes with this stuff and I'm going to show you how I use these things here in a minute but number one is CA glue witches oh god Cyril Akron aid I'm gonna say that way wrong CA glue we'll call it CA glue wood glue wood filler this is by far this was a recommendation by Marc Spagnuolo from the Wood Whisperer timber me I will link all this stuff down in the description and in the pin comment but this stuff is ridiculously great the color match is wonderful its water-based so it never goes bad even if it gets a little dry you can add a teeny a little bit of water it dries ultra fast it's dry in like a minute or two this stuff is really good a good putty knife also great for fixing dents is an iron and then blue tape is usually mandatory for fixing so let me show you different kinds of mistakes and how we use these things so one of the things that can happen is you're moving wood around your shop and using it as you can get dings and scratches in it that you can't stand out because they're just a little too deep so well you know what I'll do is I'll take my putty knife here put a little scratch in there and again using this timber mate wood finish that I talked about here you just take it and you want to spread it across the scratch using the edge of the putty knife so that it doesn't create a lot of buildup and it's just right on the surface and this stuff is great because it dries really really fast you'll see when it goes from dark to light here you can already see it's starting to get light right here and once it dries you just take some fine grit sandpaper you can do it on your random orbital or hand sand it if you haven't done any of your finished sanding yet hand sanding is a great way to go so now you can see those scratches which were right here and right here I cannot see them from head on if I look at it in the light you can kind of see it but once you get finish on that nobody will ever ever ever see that and maple is an extreme example because it's so light colored that it is easier to see the filler but you know with all these different colors and everything you can always blend this in and if you have a strange colored wood that you don't have a match for you can always mix two different fillers together because they're water-based and try and create a custom color so wood filler is a great great thing anything that is deeper than you can sand or wider than glue will take up then wood filler is always a great option ok another thing that can happen is you get chip out or tear out either let's say these were dovetails and you were finishing it up or this is a nice clean square board you know that's professionally been milled and you're cleaning it up and then this happens and you get a corner chip now if that had come all the way off you want to find that's a good reason for keeping your workspace clean and swept on a regular basis is if that had fallen to the floor you want to save it because that is now the perfect shape to fill it but you know let's say here we just have a crack that is super easy to fix now let's say you need to fix it now because you're working you can use CA glue and activator or if you have time to let it sit wood glue is also a phenomenal option but let's say we need to we're cutting dovetails right now we need to fill this so what we're going to do you know one of the things to know about CA glue it has phenomenal pulling strength it is very strong this way but it has terrible shear strength which means any twisting movement is not going to be very strong at all and so when you do this what you're going to do is put glue in here and then you're going to spray your activator on here what happens a lot of times is you're holding this with your finger and finger gets stuck and you go to pull it off and you end up pulling your piece off anyways but because this has terrible shear strength all you have to do to get your finger off is just turn then they'll break the the bond without ripping your piece off so what we're gonna do is we'll just peel that out just a little bit I'm just gonna hold it which will be our clamping pressure spray a little activator on it and you see it dries and also that my finger is stuck to it so all I have to do to keep from breaking my piece is just twist my finger and that was a great little tip I learned I can't remember I learned that but it makes a massive difference the twisting of your finger so you don't pull off your piece then just you know any cutting tool a hand plane or a chisel in fact let's get this cleaned up here so you can see there you go you see where'd that crack go it's completely going just cannot see it at all so see a glue or wood glue what I would do is put the wood glue in there and then take some blue tape and blue tape has a little bit of stretch to it it's not a ton but it's enough to create clamping pressure so I would attach it to the other side like this and just pull it tight as I can over that and then set that off to dry for an hour okay let's say that that happened as well but you lost the piece and this is a trick from Marc Spagnuolo again the Wood Whisperer has a great video on fixing mistakes as well so you should go check that out link that below so let's say we lost the piece here this is just a really simple fix you're going to take your hand plane and you just want to make that flat so there we go we've created a flat surface here and then I'm just going to take a cut off from the same board gonna put a little CA glue on this spray some activator on my piece here and just take it and hold it so now you can see men that worked so good look at that that was a huge chunk on that corner nobody will ever see that especially after just like a little bit of sanding look at that perfect fix okay now here's a technique that I always preach and always use as well which is gaps in joinery so let's say that we were cutting dovetails and we had a gap in our joinery now this is an extreme example usually your gaps are tighter than that but what I like to do is sawdust and glue it's a great trick and it's almost certain to match the color of what you're doing it doesn't need to be structural so you're gonna try and match the color now where do you get to sawdust from if you haven't saved it from when you're cutting dovetails here's my favorite trick so first thing is you need the bag on your sander and you want to make sure it's really clean so what I do is I take a vacuum and I vacuum it out then I take some 80 grit sandpaper and grab an offcut from the project and just sand it for about another 20 seconds then you just take the bag off your sander and careful so you don't lose any and just take it and now that we have perfectly colored ultra fine sand us for making your own wood filler so then all you do in your joinery gaps and we're pretending this is a dovetail when you do your glue up make sure you've clamped it up so that you've wiped away any squeeze out there is and then the glues gonna be right at the surface and you just take this really fine sawdust you just take it and rub it across your joints and because this stuff is so fine it's really gonna look really really good and using the sander makes such a difference so give this quick sanding and put a little finish on it you can see what a great job this does so you can see and that's probably way bigger than any dovetail gap you're gonna have it doesn't make it go away but that is the full kerf of a saw blade so that's a pretty big gap and it's just about invisible and it certainly is going to be invisible to anybody who's not looking for it so sawdust and glue great trick in fact I use it in every single dovetail every single piece of joinery I ever cut I always rub a little sawdust and glue in there not because I think it's a bad joint but because hey why not fill any teeny little imperfections before I find them and after it's too late once I've done the glue up so here's a great trick that I love which is you know you've got this finished work piece that you've worked so hard on and you've shaped it on it stuff and you drop a tool on it or you bang it against something so let's say we get a dent in it and check out how big this dent is you can see that's a big chunk that would really make me angry especially on a finished piece now there's a simple solution to this you just take a damp rag and an iron I'm just gonna pass it over it a few times so check it out now so that's where it was and it is just completely gone I mean this is such a great trick I've loved this trick for years and you just see there's just nothing left of it okay here's another great little quick fix especially this is something that feels like it's just a dire situation but it's not so let's say you go to do a panel glue up and you have a gap and this is a big panel it's right in the middle of your you know whatever it is tabled piece of furniture and you just can't get it to close well very simply you want the show sides so these are both the face pointing up and you know fold them towards each other now you can do this on a jointer the machine a jointer as well or you can take a hand plane and you want to make sure that they are flush together so they're completely the same height you can use some double stick tape to really ensure and if you're doing this with a jointer machine you would just run this whole piece on the jointer you could do them one at a time just make sure that the show side on one was facing the fence and the underside on the other was facing the fence but you can just take your hand plane and I'm gonna exaggerate this a little bit to show you how great this trick works is I'm gonna tilt my hand plane to about 10 degrees now watch this and if you can see on the camera these are at a pretty crazy angle to 90 degrees look at that you can see massive massive angle here now what's great when we take these out and go back to our panel glue up watch this gap boom completely gone and you saw that crazy angle I did like I don't even know what that angle is but now we have a perfect glue up and it's just a matter of jointing them with opposite faces facing either the fence on your jointer or the show faces facing away from each other and using a hand plane and I could have done that 10 degrees over here and 10 degrees over here and that's still gonna butt up perfectly when you go to do your glue up okay now we all know the horror of this Yuri saw a board or you mill a board and you come back the next day and it is cupped like this and I'm sort of simulating it here with these clamps just because I did not have a board currently that I could find that was cupped in my shop the reason that this happens is the when you have a board and the outside is dry the inside is going to be wetter than the outside unless it's been sitting in your shop for a couple years and it's had so much time to activate but this happens to me on ten-year-old boards already saw them and they'll cup a little bit and if you don't have the ability to fix it or it's too thin here's a great little trick that I like to use so to counteract this because when you resaw or mil you're releasing all this moisture on one side of the board it's going to cut that way so there's a way to counteract that once it's cupped and it's not coming back get the other side wet you can get it real wet and you know really kind of get water on it and then what you're gonna do is you're gonna put something flat and heavy on top of it on a flat surface and you want to make sure that you put calls on it because if you completely cover it up it can create some mold or mildew overnight so you just want to put a few calls on it put something heavy like a toolbox or something on a flat surface and it should overnight it's not always it's not always a guarantee but if you get it real wet it should overnight flatten itself back out the other problem is you lose your safety glasses and then you find out somebody else is wearing them give me those so those are some great tips for fixing common mistakes guys if you have any that I didn't mention that you want others to know about please leave them in the comments the comment sections on cats Moses woodworking videos are awesome so head down there leave a comment subscribe if you're new here like this video do not smash the like whatever people ask you to do do that stay safe in the shop guys and have a wonderful day [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Jonathan Katz-Moses

Views: 201,675

Rating: 4.9257922 out of 5

Keywords: woodworking, mistakes, woodworking tips, woodworking project, beginner woodworking mistakes, how to fix woodworking mistakes, woodworking class, woodworking plans, woodworking projects, fixing mistakes, common mistakes, easy woodworking, 3 common mistakes, 3 most common mistakes, mistake, basic skills and tools common woodworking mistakes and how to fix them, woodworking hacks, woodworking videos, woodworking tricks

Id: 9SAXVTnMEEM

Length: 13min 32sec (812 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 01 2019