9 Essential Woodworking Joints - WOOD magazine

[Music] there are lots of ways you can join two boards together you can rely on a physical fastener like a screw or a nail you can use glue or you can cut joints that lock themselves together in this video I'm going to show you nine basic joints that we use all the time in the wood magazine shop knowing these joints you can build yourself bookcases cabinets doors drawers just about any type of project you'd like and the best thing is most of them are cut with a table saw or with a router or at the router table so let's get started let's first talk about one of the most basic joints one that probably everyone starts with it's a screw joint and this is simply a way that you can join two pieces I've pretty much a right angle if you screw through the thickness of one into another piece whether you're joining them face to face or the top of a cabinet down into the cabinet side or if you're going through a side of a cabinet into a shelf or a divider of some sort you can use a screw joint let's take a look at what what makes up a screw joint I've got one here that I've cut away and of course you've got the screw here here's the upright piece and the mating piece with a screw joint typically you will drill what's called a pilot hole that is a small hole that the screw feeds into it's just slightly smaller than the diameter of the screw so the threads bite in in the old days let's say you would also drill a shank hole in this piece here the shank hole allowed the screw to pass through without the threads biting in that way when the threads bite into the lower piece it really draws those two pieces tightly together nowadays at least in the woodshop we are using what are called production screws you need only drill a pilot hole through both pieces and then the tip of the screw has a little self tap and it pulls the pieces together or bores through and as the screw gets there it pulls those pieces together nice and tightly on this piece you can also see that the head of the screw it has this taper on it and the head is sitting just a little bit under the surface of the top piece here that area a little depression where the head of the screw sits is called a countersink and you can drill that in one of two ways I mean there are bore bits that bore the countersink or you can buy a bit such as this this has a tapered drill bit and then at the very tip you can see these little tapered teeth those will bore the counter sink and this collar around the top here stops the bit for instance from going any deeper than it has to so that you countersink is only as deep as it needs to be to set the screw head flush with a mating piece as you look at a piece of course if you've got screw joints all along here you may not like the appearance of that screw head so there are several ways you can hide that you can drill what's called a counter bore essentially a countersink that's deep enough to allow the head of the screw to recess below the surface then you can plug that counter bore in a variety of ways and here on this board I show you this is a how it would look from the surface we've got a screw set into a countersink then there are three types of ways you can hide the head of a screw these two here are endgrain plugs those are simply cut from a dowel we've got an oak dowel to match my oak wood here and then in the counter bore just stick in the dowel cut off a short length of it glue it in and then cut and sand it flush after the glue dries now I've got two of them here this one you can see neither one really makes much difference in how one is oriented at 90 degrees to the other but it really makes not much difference in how they're oriented because it's end grain so it's always gonna look a little bit different than the face grain on which the their-their applied another method you can hide counter bores with is to use where called button plugs now these are kind of mushroom shaped caps they come prepackaged you can buy them in packs of 25 and a hundred and probably even larger than that but these little plugs simply glue into the counterbore and you can see by their design they're meant to sit high so they can be used as a decorative element on your piece you can also see that to a degree you can sort of blend them in this one the grain runs the same direction as the facepiece this one I chose because it's got a little dark grain in it it's just kind of ugly looking compared to the face grain and it's sitting at an angle to the face grain so this one pops out quite a bit more than this one probably the easiest way and the best way to really blend in a plug is to cut your own out of stock similar to what you're building your project out of I'll show you how to do that in just a minute but you can see here here are two plugs that have been cut from face grain with a plug cutter this one again the grain is oriented at 90 degrees to the face grain so you can see your eye is kind of drawn to it it kind of pops out this top one i've oriented to run again the grain is parallel with the face grain of the project part so it blends in pretty well so if you're going to use screw joints you have to sometimes have to find a way to hide them and these are really your three options let's talk about how we can make the holes the counter bores and the plugs to to first make a screw joint and then also to hide your plugs let's say we're making a shallow box and this is going to be one side it'll be screwed through into the mating side here the piece that I'm going to drive the screws through I'm just clamped to my bench here I've got a scrap backer board here what that'll do is prevent the backside of that board from splitting out as a drill bit comes through I've also got it extended over the edge of my bench back here so that I don't drill into my workbench I'm gonna do this with just a couple of drill bits I'm gonna take this is a 3/8 inch bit I'm gonna drill the counterbore first but I need to know where to drill my piece is 3/4 of an inch thick so I to center my screws on that thickness that's 3/8 of an inch squares set at 3/8 and just drag it along here make a mark now if I want to be real precise I could also measure in from each edge still if they're the same distance in give it a nice uniform look so there's one spot there's the spot for my second screw I want to drill down just deep enough that the screw head will disappear below the surface don't overdo it now the nice thing about using a brad point bit like i had there is after you drilled the counter bore you end up with a nice little dimple down in the center of that counter bore that gives you the perfect place to register the drill bit for joining the pilot hole i'm drill a pilot hole i'm actually going to have to drill a pilot hole into the mating piece drilling screwing into em grain like this without a pilot hole is just asking to split your workpiece I like to do it I've put it on the in vise here match the pieces up clamp one in place line up the edges I'm going to change out my drill bit to my pilot hole size now again I've got a perfect spot to place my drill bit make sure things are straight up and down then drill in drill my second now with a screw joint you can't add glue if you want one thing is that your one mating surface here is n grain so n grain doesn't provide a real strong glue service but it does provide a little bit of extra adhesion if you want so if you want to add glue you certainly May and simply drive the screws in and there's our screw joint then I can cut plugs to cover those and I'll show you how to do that in just a minute now instead of messing around with two drill bits earlier I showed you this single bit where you've got a bit and a countersink in here by moving this collar up you can also bore deeper to create a counter bore so in one step you can drill the pilot hole the countersink and the counter bore okay now that's mounted it's it's set for a nice countersink but I wanted to pull this collar back so I can drill a counter border a allen key on each side here that secures it to that portion of the bit loosen those up I'm gonna slide those back and I don't want this counter bore to be more than half the depth of my workpiece I'm just gonna quick check you're not gonna be super precise but I'll make sure I'm not going too deep right tighten up the allen key on each side and now with just one bit I'm ready to drill a pilot hole the countersink and the counter bore so there's my pieces nice counter bores screw things together so there we go a good screw joint I've got my counter boys there and when it comes time to plug them I can again use these little mushroom buttons that'll fit in there or if I want to cut a piece of dowel plug to go in there and simple as putting it in there then just taking a pencil and making a mark on there to indicate how long a piece you need and you can cut that off and glue it in you want to be real precise here you want to make it a little long because after the glue dries you're going to cut it flush and sand it off so that's all there is for my end grain plug dab of glue and I like to put the glue into the counterbore you get less chance of getting squeezed out on the surface that way little dab there press that in place and you can see it extends above the surface a little bit exactly what I want so I can come back with a sanding block some sandpaper sand it flush help it blend in now the third way that I showed you earlier to cover the counterbore is by making a face grain plug and that's done with the drill press with a special bit called a plug cutter let's go to the drill press I'll show you how to do that so this is a 3/8 inch plug cutter we're using 3/8 because we drilled 3/8 inch counter bore these do come in other sizes you get quarter inch and 1/2 inch or whatever your needs are and you can use them in a handheld drill if you like I think you get a lot better results in a drill press because you're drilling straight down in and you don't end up going slightly off at an angle and it can be a pretty big bite to try to take with a handheld drill ok that's mounted in the drill press but before we start cutting plugs let's talk a little bit about that your selection of stock now here's the counter bore that we're gonna be filling you can see that's got you know a fairly straight grain on there I want to find a piece of scrap that's got a grain pattern and a color that matches that this piece for example not a real good choice because I've got a lot of Cathedral grain there straight grain on the piece I'm trying to match so I did find a piece that has much straighter grain you can say those two look very similar so when I get a plug cuff this straight of grain it's gonna blend much better with the face grain here using this is really very simple you put a fence below the bit and then bring the bit down and you want to set the stop so it goes about 2/3 of the way through the bit I've got a 3/4 inch thick piece here so I'm gonna go down about a little over 1/2 inch okay now when you're drilling plugs if you're gonna drill one you might as a make a whole bunch and that we can have a little bit of a stock on hand especially you've got a project that's gonna need a dozen or 50 plugs drill duel as many as you need at once you always gonna have a couple of roll off the pinch under the floor onto the floor so have an extra stock [Music] [Music] this can happen on occasion you may get two plugs that actually snap off while you're drilling them and they'll get stuck in the bit just if you have to take the bit out give a screwdriver whatever and all and pop those out of there then you can keep drilling [Music] okay so there's a blank full of plugs that's ready to be popped out occasionally you'll the bit will help you with popping them out but yes sometimes can't salvage ease the way the best way to get these out of the blank is you can sometimes just take a screwdriver reach in there and they might pop free like that there's a couple of plugs ready to go the other method is you can take this blank to advance off do a little Riesling and they'll fall right out so there is a handful of face grain plugs and those will fit right into the counter port now to glue these that's really just to put a little dab of glue on a piece of scrap and dab these in my paw if you don't need too much there and then just give it a twist in and again you want to look to orient the grain in line with the face grain of the workpiece now let that glue dry and when the glue is dry obvious you want to come back and trim this off you can do that with a chisel just working gently around all the way around to pop off the majority of that extra waste and then with a sanding block like we've done with our dowel to plug here you can just take a sanding block sand that down flush and they'll pretty much disappear next year we're going to talk about is called pocket screw joinery pocket hole joints if you look at this cutaway you can see where it gets its name there is a small pocket that is drilled into one piece an angled pocket and then a screw the flat head type wash your head is driven into that hole and it bites into the mating piece pulls things close and joins the two pieces together that's the cutaway you can see this is what it looks like when the joint is actually hole is drilled and the screw is driven that hole not real attractive so there are some ways to cover that up and we'll talk about that you know in a moment where might you use pocket hole screws well when you have a typical screw joint you're limited to the fact that you can only drill and drive a screw through the thickness of one of the work pieces with pocket hole screws you can do a want much wider or a variety of types of joinery here we've got two boards that are joined edge to edge here two boards are joined end to end these two we have a typical butt joint where you might have the top of a cabinet into the side of a cabinet or a divider of a cabinet got a screw their pocket hold joints are very versatile you use it for making face frames all types of joints and they're very simple to do what you need is a special jig and drill bit this is the jig and this is the drill bit what's special about this is you'll notice the little nose here at the end that's what drills the pilot hole into the mating piece you've got the shaft of it that drills the actual pocket hole itself and then at the top is a stop collar that limits the depth to which you're drilling so it takes me about as long to explain it as it does to show it so let me just drill one for you I've got a couple pieces of stock here clamp that into the jig and then drill a couple of holes there's my holes let's say I want to make a tea joint such as that put the mating piece right next to it and to hold it in position while I drive the screws you can get these clamps broad-faced clamps and clamp it to your bench and then with the another driver drive the screws home and just that quick we've got a nice strong joint pocket whole joints are very strong on an end grain to edge grain joint like this if you want to add glue you can you don't have to but you're not getting a whole lot of extra strength but if you want to glue a joint you can but one of the nice things about pocket whole joinery is that if you have a piece that you might want to take apart or you're just checking a fit you can easily back the screws out to disassemble apart it's not something you want to do repeatedly if you're building knockdown furniture for example may not be the best choice but you can temporarily a scientist embolus um thing and then come back and disassemble it at another time you have a couple of strategies for dealing with the actual pocket holes you can put them on parts of the furniture where they won't be seen for example on a face frame this is gonna be the face frame of a cabinet you'd see this face the pocket holes would be hidden on the backside you'll never see that likewise if I was building say a door this would be the rail pocket holes will be on the back when that door opens you're likely to see those holes and that's where plugs come in you can buy these in a variety of species so if you're building from oak they've got oak plugs you're building from cherry there's cherry plugs and walnut plugs pine also available a variety of species what you do with a plug is simply apply a little glue in there tap that plug in until it seats it's tap on the flat part here until it seats itself let the glue dry then come back and sand that flush it works pretty well here is the hole and here next to it is a hole with a plug that's been glued in and sanded flat now as I drilled these and drill the screws you noticed I've got two drills set up I prefer to use a corded drill for drilling the holes that requires a lot of power and frankly a cordless drill may not last very long you find yourself swapping batteries out quite a bit if you've got a lock a lot of pocket holes to drill so a corded drill has the power and the endurance to drill a lot of holes then you can use your cordless drill for driving the screws into the pieces you can find these jigs that are manufactured by a number of companies and you can find them a lot of the home centers lumber yards and especially woodworking catalogs one of the most basic joints in woodworking is simple edge to edge glue joints it's the way you can make wide panels like this one if you try to find a single board of quarter sawn oak that's as wide as this good luck this is actually is three separate boards of narrower widths that have been glued at their edges to make this wider panel now when woodworkers first get started and they're hearing about joining two boards edge to edge with nothing but glue in between and they're a little bit skeptical how can glue be strong enough to hold boards together like that well let me give you a little demonstration that hopefully will illustrate how strong modern glues actually are this is three pieces of poplar I've glued together you can see that I've left the glue squeeze out there on the joint so you can see I didn't cheat and use too much glue or too little glue this is about a properly glued joint mostly if I can break this and see if this breaks the wood or if it breaks the glue joint now take a look at that so I think that pretty clearly demonstrates the strength of the glue joint compared to the actual strength of the wood this split right along the grain of the wood the glue joint is fully intact right down here at the very tip you can see that the wood did peel away but it's still attached to the mating piece the glue joint did not fail the wood failed that's what you're going to hear a lot is glue joints are stronger than the wood they bond so have no fear when your edge gluing boards when you are edge gluing boards there's a couple things that you need to know about number one is unless there's glue on the surface of the boards you don't get any adhesion that may sound rather simple but here's what I mean by that if you look at these two boards you can see between them I've got a pretty good gap going right there now you can put glue along there but the glue doesn't touch both boards those two boards don't touch there so the glue is not going to create a strong bond what you need is a true surface on each board so it you get a nice tight joint line like you saw on these other two panels and there's a couple of ways you can create that one way the simplest way perhaps is simply to go to the table saw and rip a clean edge on each board so let's do that okay over here the table saw let's say I want to join these two boards just like that I'm gonna mark these just we can keep them straight as the process goes through here I'm gonna call this board number one and this board number two now this is the edge at which they'll mate so I want to rip each of those edges I'm just gonna mark that again just swing keep it straight you can see clearly what I'm doing what I want to do is to rip one with this good face up and rip the other one with the good face down the reason for that is if my blade isn't perfectly ninety degrees those two angles will offset each other so when the board comes together the angles offset and the panel will stay flat so let's rip the first one a good 40 tooth blade you need a very sharp blade to get the best edge possible so a good 40 tooth multi-purpose blade or a there are what they call glue line rip blades perfect for this job now when I bring those two boards together you can see I've got a nice clean joint line from one end to the other and sitting here on my cast iron surface of the table saw you can see that those two boards lay flat okay I've got the edges prepared the next thing is to do the glue up now the first question we have when you're ready to do a glue up is if you've never done it before how much glue do you use well enough it's one of those things after you done it a couple times you know start with a beat about like that then just use a spreader or a brush you like and I prefer using fingers that's always there I know where it is spread it so you get a thin even coat along the full edge of full face of that edge I'm gonna go from one face to the other end and cover it with a even coat of glue then simply lay it down on your clamps lay the meeting face down and the next question is how much clamping pressure do I need begin the answer just like the glue just enough all you need is a enough to bring those boards together firmly and if you've applied glue as I just showed you you'll see a thin bead start to pop up along your joint line that's another sign although we can tell if you've got the proper amount of glue we've got just a thin little bead of glue popping up along that joint line then I can take my square or any kind of straightedge checkol on there make sure the boards aren't bowing up or bowing down sometimes clamps will tend to force those up that's staying nice and flat on both ends if by chance you're having a little trouble getting that joint line to a line just take a clamp such as this and clamp all on that joint line to bring those into alignment that'll keep the panel a lot flusher and save you planing and surfacing after the glue dries so that's one method for making edges for Ed's gluing panels using a table saw and a nice sharp blade to get your true edges there's also a special machine called a jointer that you can add to your shop very useful and its job is to make jointed edges let's take a litter the jointer is kind of a specialized tool but it's perfect for making really clean edges for joining things up it consists of an in feed table here an outfeed table here then under this red guard we've got the cutter head that rotates to use the jointer I'm gonna do some one two what I did on the table saw I want my pieces to line up like this so I'll number this one number one this one number two then what I'll do is I'll join one with the number facing out one with the number facing in that'll again will offset any variation for ninety degrees in the fence so let's joint start by applying light pressure to keep the edge of the board on the infeed table after about six inches of the board passes onto the outfeed table shift pressure to that end of the board you can hear the cutter head cutting at each end of the board but not in the middle with each pass the edge gets flatter until the full length of the board is being jointed to nice clean edges when they come together joint line practically disappears then you can go ahead and glue this up just as we did with the other panel it's been about 20 minutes since we first glued up this panel so I want to come back to it and give you another tip on your glue ups glue is starting to set up by this time you want to leave the glue up in the clamps for at least an hour even longer if you can however we talked about the little bit of glue squeeze-out that occurs along this joint line you want to get rid of that before it cures too hard back on this panel we broke I left that beat in place and it glue dries it gets very hard and not only does it get hard but it can also if you try to take it off at this stage it can peel up little wood fibers because again the glue is stronger than the wood so it's better to come back to your glue up at this point you can see those little beads they're just getting to be kind of jelly like you can press on them they feel a bit like pudding bring a chisel along and just gently scrape those off get rid of them before they turn into those hard beads later on again about 20 minutes is what you want to wait until you see those little beads appear there's that face when I turn it over and work on the other face - now wreak lamp that let that sit for oh I'm gonna give it another hour hour and a half before I remove the clamps and that panel will be ready to go miter joints are a nice way that you can join two boards and really hide all the endgrain you've got two 45-degree cuts that come together to form a 90 degree angle for example this is a plywood shelf for a project to hide those plywood edges we've mitered two pieces of edging come together nicely at a 90 degree corner here and he wraps the shelf and hides that plywood edging makes the whole thing a little more attractive cutting a couple of miter joints like that really not too much of a problem when you get into more traditional miter we're using strictly miters for joinery you're making a frame you've got four Maya turns one problem with miter joints they do have the advantage of hiding the end grain but on the other side you're pretty much gluing and grain to end grain there so you don't have a terribly strong joint so you need to come up with some way to reinforce that joint I'm going to show you four methods for that in just a moment first let's talk about cutting the miters themselves you have to be very precise when you're cutting for miters you've actually got eight cuts here two on each piece and each cut has to be dead-on because if you're off say 1/4 of 1 degree 8 times by the time you get to that last corner that's a total of 2 degrees you'll end up with a gap here so let's go to the table saw and I'll show you how to set things up and test your cuts first to end up with gap free corners before you're ready to glue up a frame to cut accurate miters you need a miter gauge it's always a good idea to put a auxilary face on your miter gauge for a couple of reasons extend it past the blade and that a little extension will help push the waste past the blade it also backs up the cut so that the backside of the workpiece where the blade is exiting it reduces tear out so if you've got that because you have zero clearance cut there you'll get much cleaner cuts the first thing I'm going to do here I've got my miter gauge set for 45 degrees and I want to make one cut right through my auxiliary fence [Music] now that cut shows me exactly where the blades gonna cut so that also helps me when it comes time to align my pieces I've got four test pieces here they're the same length and I've gotten the same width I'm just gonna start my Turing one end of each one and then we'll come back and miter the opposite ends and we'll show you how to assemble a frame to test if you've got a exact 45 degrees set up on your miter gauge okay so there is one and mitered now I need to miter the opposite end and it's also important that in this case I want a square frame all four pieces are going to end up the same length that's where this comes in it's this particular miter gauge comes with its own stop block built on you can just as easily make a stop block by taking a piece of scrap and clamping it right to the face of your auxiliary fence so I'm going to flip this down turn my piece around and adjust this so I'm making a cut on the opposite end the important thing to remember of course is that your miters face each other so there I'm cut so I'm just taking off as little as possible going right through the corner on my cuts so I'll cut each of these four pieces assemble our frame now for a quick assembly I think it's easy just to go ahead and do this right up against the RIP fence on the table saw gives you one solid surface to work with put one there two three and now I can check my four corners to up against the RIP fence are nice and tight this third one down here's a nice and tight up there we've got a pretty good gap and it looks like things are splaying this way so we need to take just a little bit off the heel of each one of these cuts the inside corner reach one of these miters there's gonna be a very small adjustment cuz again eight cuts and I want to take essentially 1/8 to that error off each miter now make an adjustment that fine I could try adjusting the miter gauge but there's a simpler way and I think even if it allows you to fine-tune better just take a business card or a playing card and put it behind the the piece toward the end that needs to be touched up a little bit now I want to move the piece out this way to increase that angle so I'm gonna put the business card right back there and get a piece of tape just to hold it in place so it doesn't move during my eight different cuts my first cut and move the stop in just a little bit so I've gonna shave just a little bit off that make one cut on each end of all four pieces move the stop in just a little bit more and chop the other end so let's do that we'll check our kit with one end of each piece cut I move the stop in slightly before cutting the opposite end of each piece there we've got a pretty good fit with one business card adjustment I think we've got things dialed in where we want and we are ready to start cutting the actual pieces for our frame okay so here are the four pieces for my frame and I'm going to glue them up using a band clamp these are very handy when you come time to glue up for mitered pieces you try to hold for minor pieces you cut and saw a little bit of that the saw you try to hold all four corners at once they slide a little bit on each other a band clamp like this will grab each corner and pull them all toward the center gets the joints nice and tight keeps things from slipping around gluing it up not too difficult just a dab of glue on each miter in like when your edge joining boards you want to make sure that glue covers the full surface I put some brown paper down on top of my bench top to make sure I don't get any glue on the bench and or even worse glue the frame to the bench top and I've got the four pieces in approximate position just tug on that band to cinch things up and tighten this screw down to pinch the band and now a twist of the handle to help tighten things up further you're gonna have to slide pieces against each other make sure the inside and outside corners are aligned and do work quickly I can feel the glue already starting to grab on this one okay inside and outside corners all aligned and don't have to get too herculean on our effort here for the band clamp just enough to keep those corners closed and I can see that the frame is also lying nice and flat on the bench it doesn't have any twist to it that's good so now with like any other glue up allow that to dry for at least an hour preferably longer before I remove the clamps as I mentioned minor joints are really at an inherently weak joint you've got end grain to end grain so it's best to if you have a frame to to reinforce those miter joints if you can and as I said there's gonna be four ways to do that that I'll show you our first is pretty simple using good old wire nails now you don't want to take these and just grab the hammer start driving these home your end up splitting your frame instead put a drill bit in your drill and drill pilot holes for the nails [Music] so there's one method now obviously the nails may not be the most attractive option another way you can do the same thing of the mechanical fastener isn't quite as obvious is with a pin nailer this is I believe a 22 gauge runs off the compressed air and just a couple of quick shots you're gonna have to look closely the heads of those pins are very very small so they're very difficult to see which is the idea so there's two four other our four methods our third involves putting a a gusset across the corner we'll take a such a little bite out of this corner not like that and then glue in a piece of wood to reinforce that corner getting a lot of face grain to face grain glue surface now you can make that is called a gusset you can put that gusset across the back of the frame so it's hidden or you can treat it as an accent a design accent perhaps glue in a contrasting species and put it on the front of the frame so I'm gonna do that I'm going to put it in on the front of the frame and we'll do is a go to the table saw cut a shallow groove across here to accept that gusset this is the stock I'm going to use for the gussets gonna be some maple that will contrast I think nicely with the mahogany especially when I get a finish on it so I need to cut a gap there a recess in the corner of the frame that's actually just a little bit less than the thickness of my gusset so let me just use this as a gauge right next to the blade to set my blade height on the top of the blade just below the top of mine doesn't material lock the blade height in place and that's taken care of I want to make that cut so it's just I want to leave it about 1/4 inch or so from the inside corner of the frame so now I need to position that using my stop block on my miter gauge I'm just gonna kind of eyeball this one the measurement isn't critical like to look at that there so I'm going to bring a stop block up and lock that in place the reason for the stop block is if I was doing this on all four corners I could then just rotate the frame there and make a cut there for the next gusset I'm all set let's start making our cut if I was gusseting all four corners I'd make the shoulder cut on each one before moving the stop block back repeated passes over the blade remove the remaining waste out to the corner now this would go a lot faster with a dado blade but I wanted to show you that it can be done without one too so there's my groove cut in here for my gusset it's got a little cleanup to do do that back over the bench of the sanding block looking pretty good take a look okay that's a pretty good fit that's just a smidge above the surface of the frame I can easily sand that flush after I get the gusset glued in place here I need to do now is mark the length of the piece of my gusset is just about there a little over long take that to the table saw cut that off we'll come back and glue it in [Music] you can glue your gusset in and just about any Green orientation you please if you want to again create an accent with the grain orientation of the frame this one I'm going to go ahead and just glue it in so the you know I think I like it actually running the same direction as the mahogany so some blue in the recess here rub it around my trusty glue spreader put that in position clamp it so I took a moment there to cut down and sand that gusset flush she's nice and flush to the outside faces and it gives if you look at just the one corner there gives a nice accent you can imagine that any other four corners be a nice accent for the frame now the fourth method for reinforcing a mitre is the spline as I mentioned I'm gonna can do it on this corner here and I've marked this one just so I don't cut into the nails that I put in previously a spline is think of the gusset only you're gonna put it into the middle of the thickness of these two pieces I'm gonna use the same material I used for my gusset and to get that in there I obviously need to cut a slot right through the center of the thickness of these frame pieces we'll do that over the table saw with a special slit here's the sled and it's really fairly simple just a piece of MDF here and I've got two other narrow pieces of MDF that are glued on here at a ninety degree angle to each other and they're each at 45 degrees to the table this is going to be a cradle that carries the frame pass the blade to make that cut we have to do a little bit of setup first first I want to know how deep to make that cut this particular spline I'm gonna go about 3/4 of an inch deep all right now I'm just going to rest this in the cradle here bring it up next to the blade and raise the blade so it's the highest tooth just touches that line I need to lock the height adjustment so the blade doesn't drift downward next I have to adjust this so that I can position that cut right in the center to do that I know my frame is three quarters of an inch thick so I'm going to set the blade just a little more than three-eighths of an inch to one side bring the rip fence up this rides against the RIP fence so just the RIP fence so that the edge of the jig is just a little over a quarter of an inch from the tooth and that'll give me a gap that's probably just under a quarter inch but I'll widen this with some small adjustments as we go now before I make a cut of my frame I'm gonna make a test cut just make a slot through the jig itself so I can double-check my rip fence placement [Music] yep think that's where I want to start so I'm ready to start making slots in the frame [Music] here just a little bit narrow I'm gonna make an adjustment recut the slot and we should be right on the money [Music] [Music] [Music] okay I'm at the point where I've got a very very close fit so close that I don't think I want to make that fine of an adjustment on my table-saw what I'm gonna do instead is sand this spline just a little bit to get the perfect fit [Music] there we go nice fit there now I'm gonna do is just going to cut off a small piece of this supply material glue it in here and then after the glue dries like we did with the gusset we'll trim and sand it flush with the edges can you take this same concept of splines for other types of joinery as well for example here's two boards joined end to end there's a slot in each and we've used a hard board spline in this case to do glue you can take two boards fasten them into end here's an edge to edge joint where you're taking narrower boards making a wider panel by cutting matching slots and putting a spline in between spline joints can also be used when you're building cabinets if you have for example a butt joint like this where a shelf would join a cabinet side or the top of a cabinet would join the side you can again slot these pieces add a spline if that will reinforce the joint here where you're putting end grain to face grain a spline would be a good idea to add some face grain gluing surface to that to that joint now to do a spline joint like this you need to cut matching slots in each piece and there are several ways to do that you can get a variety of slot cutting bits these come in different widths you can use these either in a handheld router or two router table I'll show you how to do each of those you can also cut those slots on the table saw and we'll discuss that too first let's go with a handheld router it's gonna set up a router mat here to keep my pieces from sliding around take a couple of these boards and we'll cut matching slots in the edges so we can edge join them like we did these two like I just put the piece on the bench just extending a little bit over the edge there so my router bits gonna clear I've got my router bit adjusted so this cuts a slot that is just slightly off center of the thickness of this piece what I'll do is I'll route a slot with on one face flip it over and do the same we'll get up with a end up with a centered slot and see if that fits our spline stock terrific that fits like a glove we ready to cut the slots in the meeting piece there we go nice friction fit there amazing piece goes on you can see how nicely that's aligned on both faces you can't even feel that seam across there working with a slot cutter bit and a handheld router works especially well if you've got larger pieces and you can't really work with them at that easily my preference though is if I can I just assumed mount that slot cutter bit in the router table I'll show you how to do that I've positioned the router table fence so it aligns with the bearing of the bit that way the piece moves smoothly past a bit while the bit cuts at full depth a push pad grips the stock and moves it safely past the bit and keeps your fingers a safe distance away flipping the piece over for a second pass centers the slot on the thickness [Music] slots can also be cut on the table saw first set the blade height then position the RIP fence to cut just slightly off-center then make a pass with each face against the RIP fence to create the centered slot [Music] now if you want to groove the end of a workpiece at the table saw you want to stand it on end this can be a little dicey that the tall piece can kind of rock a little bit as you walk it along the RIP fence so instead make yourself a little saddle jig like this one this is just some MDF it's real simple to make the first thing you do is cut a piece that's exactly as wide as your rip fence you cut two pieces that go on either side and then glue them together right around your rip fence so you have a nice sliding fit then glue an upright on the back here make sure this is 90 degrees to the saw table and now this extra height here and this stop back here gives you extra support so that when you're pushing this across the saw table you're gonna have a much stable or workpiece but you do have to consider the thickness of this and reset the fence to make your slot cut [Music] they've got a nice groove and into that work piece made it safely with our jig that kept things from rocking back and forth to slot the end of a workpiece at the router table back it up with a wide scrap this provides a broad stable surface against the fence so the piece does wobble and it also prevents tear out on the back edge where the bit exits [Music] biscuit joints share some of the characteristics of a slot and spline joint here in this cutaway biscuit joint you can see what a biscuit joint really is there's two semicircular grooves that are cut in the mating pieces and then this little oval football shaped thing is the actual biscuit and it's glued into the slot and that gets plenty of face grain to face grain gluing surface on those two boards you can see a little better here in this miter joint what it what it really looks like you've got two matching slots cut in mating pieces and then the biscuit is glued into that slot the two pieces are assembled and once the glue dries you have a nice solid bond there now biscuits do add a little bit of mechanical strength to a joint but I think they're really primarily better used as alignment aids on a joint like this one where again we have end grain meeting edge grain you do increase the strength of that joint significantly by adding the face grain to face grain of a biscuit same thing with a mitre you have an end grain to end grain joint primarily a by a miter that a biscuit there can help that miter joint increase the strength of that miter joint significantly if you're going to be doing joints that are edge grain to edge grain already a very strong glue joint adding biscuits that really doesn't increase the strength that significantly but in that case it does help keep that joint aligned so that when you're gluing things up it doesn't slip up and down biscuits are very easy to cut they they go very quickly you can also join boards in a variety of combinations whether you're doing something like for a face frame where you dead end if you're doing a shelf into a cabinet side where you've got again end into edge they're very versatile joints they are cut with a biscuit joiner special tool it has a fence on the motor and look closely as you plunge the motor forward you can see the little circular blade that exposes itself down along the bottom of the fence that blade of course is what cuts that semicircular slot let me show you how this works let's say I want to make an edge to edge joint with these two boards here I want the ends to align perfectly to start being a biscuit joint I just decided what are all my biscuits I want one there and I want one there just make lines across that joint line it doesn't really matter where they are just don't want to put too many in and you don't want too few so on the boards that long but two seams rot right take one board turn around we just going to clamp this to the bench so it doesn't slide on me there's a mark centered on the fence line that mark with the mark you made on the edge of the board pull the trigger and plunge the tool in same thing over here move my clamp down just a bit line that mark with that pull just that quickly that board is done let's do the mate now the slots I cut were for the largest biscuits which are number 20 I'm gonna put a biscuit in each one just to test our fit that's ready for glue up now one thing you'll notice about biscuit joints even married tonight I mentioned I want these boards to be perfectly flush on the ends I've got a little bit of play there so I can slide them back and forth so it's a very forgiving joint to to glue up just a matter of putting a little bit of glue in each slot and then clamping the pieces together let that dry now this is an edge edge joined you should probably put extra glue on there but I just want to demonstrate the biscuit joinery for this this purpose now if you want to take a couple of pieces and join them in in a tea such as you're putting a shelf or a divider in a cabinet process is very similar we're gonna put one biscuit right in the middle or about in the middle just make a mark there and there are no measuring needed the piece that's going to be the Shelf we're gonna mark where that goes right along there take this one clamp it to the bench and make the slot in the end okay now to do the mating slot in the middle you can adjust the fence so it's up like that again use my mark Ally in the fence right along my line there's a mark on the base there that I line with the mark on the workpiece I'm gonna take my when I just cut here but the edge is flush help it square up the tool to the mark and make the cut the number 20 biscuit in there see how well things line up right on the pencil mark so now with some glue in that joint that's gonna be a nice reinforcement for a end grain to face grain joint ok let's talk a little bit more in detail about biscuits and biscuit joinery there are three sizes of biscuits you've got a zero a 10 and a 20 is 0 10 into 20 and they get bigger with the bigger numbers you can see the zero compared to 20 quite a bit difference in length that brings us to a point that you need to consider is the width of your workpiece when you're cutting biscuits here in this miter joint I have a number zero biscuit it fits fine in this miter joint slot doesn't cut through the ends now however if I were to try to cut a zero slot in the end of this two inch wide workpiece you can see that the biscuit itself is almost as wide as the workpiece if I were to cut a slot that wide in there those slots would show there so you must have a piece at least two and a quarter inches wide for a zero biscuit and progressively wider for you to the larger sizes another tip going back to our edge glued panel where I glued in the biscuits you do not want to start gluing up biscuits and then immediately sand the panel after it's after that glue is still dry you're still wet you want to wait at least overnight to allow the glue to dry and here's why when you add the glue to the biscuits these biscuits are compressed beech some of that water and the glue causes the biscuits to swell slightly and that race is just an ever so slight bump in the joint at your at your on your on your panel you can start sanding that while that's raised then as the glue evaporates and the glue dries the water evaporates you're going to have a little depression there where you sanded that's going to shrink back down so if you're gonna use biscuits for edge blowing joints glue in the biscuits allow the assembly to dry for at least eight hours just let it sit overnight then come back the next day and then do your sanding you won't have any trouble that way a rabbit joint is really the simplest of the mechanical joints a rabbit and that's spelled with an ET on the end not an IT like a little critter in your backyard a rabbit is simply a cut made along the edge or the end of a workpiece that accepts a mating piece here in this little mock-up cabinet the top has a rabbet along each end and those rabbits hit the sides perfectly there's a little bit of mechanical strength in that these shoulders on the rabbit help resist a little bit of racking if the cabinet gets knock side-to-side and of course the resistance to downward pressure there too so in addition to typically you know fastening a cabinet top onto its sides you can also rabbit the back of a cabinet to inset the panel for the back on this drawer we've got a real simple drawer front made with the rabbit in the drawer front that accepts the drawer sides nice thing about rabbits is they are very simple to cut and you can do them with a variety of tools you can do with a handheld router you can do it on the router table and you can do it on the table saw and I'll walk you through all those we'll start with the handheld router this router I've got a special bits called a rabbeting bit you can see it's got the cutter on it and what's special about it is it's got this bearing down here this bearing rides against the edge of the workpiece and the different ammeter of the bearing and the cutting edge of the bit is the width of the rabbit so you can change out bearings by bits with different sized brains so you can cut rabbits of different widths let me show you how this works it's really pretty simple [Music] I can see that half-inch rabbeting bit makes a perfect fit for a meeting piece of half-inch MDF next method is to use if you don't have a ravening bit like that you have a straight bit in your bid cabinet a straight bit can also be used to route a rabbet along the edge of a workpiece the one thing you'll need to do though is add a way to guide the route I'm going to change out the bit so we'll get set up for that I've mounted a 3/4 inch straight bit in the router now and when you're routing a rabbit with a straight bit you need some way to guide the router so that it just doesn't go dancing all across the panel ruining the cut with a rabbeting bit you had the advantage of a built-in bearing that rides against the edge of the panel with a straight bit there's no such thing so we need a way to guide that bearing guide that bit rather and this simple jig is a very handy item to have in your shop this is just a couple pieces of MDF once the top pieces of fence the bottom pieces of base glue and screw the fence to the base you want to make the fence about a little wide so you can have enough room to four clamps back here without interfering with the base of the router and the width of the base is determined by the distance from the cutting edge of the bit to the edge of your router base two and a half inches in this case so when I made this jig I made it so it extended a little more than two and a half inches past the fence call it two and five-eighths then I took the router in my router bit in my router and I trim that edge so now I know exactly where that 3/4 inch bit is gonna cut when I run the base of the router along that fence one other advantage to using a straight bit to cut a rabbet is that you can cut a rabbet that is actually narrower than the bit even this is a 3/4 inch bit I'm gonna cut a rabbet that fits 3/4 inch plywood it's called 3/4 inch plywood but it's always just a skosh under so if you want to rabbet that fits that perfectly you can do that with this method use the piece that's going to fit into the rabbet as a gauge align it with the edge of the panel and then just bring the jig right up to the other side check along the cut when you've got the jiggle line you want to just clamp it in place double-check that looks very good and I'm ready to rout this rabbit [Music] so there is a rabbit that perfectly fits that 3/4 inch plywood panel now you can also use the rabbeting bit and a straight bit on the router table I'll show you that to cut a rabbet with a straight bit set the height of the bit for the depth of the rabbit then measure from the outside edge of the bit to the fence to set the width of the rabbit then lock the fence in place then just run the workpiece along the fence to cut the rabbit [Music] when using a rabbeting bit on the router table again set the bit height for the depth of the rabbit then set the bearing flush with the fence faces [Music] you can also cut a rabbit narrower than the rabbeting bit by simply moving the fence to bury more of the bit to kind of wrap it on the table saw you could use just a standard blade and make a whole bunch of repeat cuts across the blade that works it does tend to leave a lot of score marks for each time the blade went past you might have a score mark a better way to do it is to get yourself a dado blade this is a six-inch dado blade and it consists of a kind of a miniature a six inch in diameter chipper it goes on the outside there's actually two of these when you fit them into the saw and then there's a series of chippers that go between the two outside blades and by stacking these together on the arbor you come up with a much wider blade makes a wider cut so by changing the number of chippers in there you can vary the width of your cut I've got this set up kind of just an arbitrary number about about five-eighths inch wide and I'll show you why I'm not too concerned about the actual width of the blade here in just a moment get this snug down with a dado blade you're gonna need a insert that has enough room for the blade to extend through now that I've got that set the next thing to consider is the width of my rabbit in this case I'm going to take a piece of half-inch MDF and make a rabbet that seats that MDF right in the edge of this plywood panel I'm gonna use the MDF itself as a gauge to set the width of my blade to the fence and unless I've got an auxiliary fence clamped my rip fence and here's why I need to raise the blade into that fence to bury part of it so I'm only exposing exactly one half-inch I'm gonna lower the blade bring it over so that auxilary fence just covers the outside chipper I think cut into it [Music] quick check I've got looks good set my blade height for the depth of the rabbit 3/8 of an inch now I'm going to position the RIP fence so exactly matches the width of the MDF just put the MDF next to there and use my fingers is a very sensitive gauge you can tap the fence over until the outside of that tooth is perfectly flush with the face of the MDF feels like that it's perfect okay now with the width set my height set I'm ready to make a rabbet in my panel [Music] there you can see that half-inch MDF fits perfectly in that rabbit and user flush now I can even cut a wider rabbit without changing my setup too much without changing the blade simply by moving the fence over a little bit to expose more blade or if I need a narrower rabbit push the fence toward the blade you do want to be careful though that if you've got a blade that's about three-quarters of an inch in width and your auxiliary fence is also 3/4 of an inch in width you're not getting too close to your metal fence and you cut into it a rabbit is a cut on the edge of a board or a panel a data or a groove is a cut made in the middle of a panel for example on our mock-up cabinet here I've got a shelf that is housed in a dado and dedos and grooves can be used as we've done here to put an internal component into the side of a cabinet add a vertical divider a shelf you can also see it on this drawer we've got a back that's inset so ways so when you pull out the drawer you see the back and in here you realize you need to stop before you pull it all the way out that back is housed in a dado and even the bottom of this drawer isn't a groove the cut made on the interior of the board now first let's talk about the difference in dedos and grooves they look similar but it's a just a little bit of semantics here the groove is a cut in the middle of that runs with the grain a dado is a cut in the middle of a panel or board that runs across the grain data runs across the grain groove runs with the grants of you're reading through plans and working on building a project and they refer to a data or a groove that gives you a clue as to which direction that cut is made relative to the grain like a rabbit you can cut dedos and grooves in a variety of ways using the router at the router table and at the table saw we'll start with a handheld router two kind of data or a groove you can use a straight bit in your router I've got a half inch straight bit mounted here I'm going to be cutting a dado and a groove that will fit 3/4 inch plywood I want to make a groove in this panel first I've got my position for the panel laid out here what I've done is a mark one side of the groove at each end and I made an X that's indicate the waste area that's the area where I want the groove to fall I've got two of the jig that I used for routing rabbits one is going to go on each side of my layout line to essentially trap the router base and route the groove to the desired width the first thing to do is to take one of these and clamp it right along my layout line in the instance I cut these jigs to size using the bit that I have in that router I know exactly where that bit is going to cut right along the edge of the jig so this defines one side of that groove now to set the second one I've got this scrap that's cut off from the panel that's going to go in here but it up against the first jig put the second jig in place make sure it's firm against there and now clamp the second jig to the panel so I think you can see now that where the router bit cuts it's going to be right along the edges of the jig give me a groove exactly as wide as that panel [Music] see how well that fits like a glove another nice thing about cutting dedos and grooves with a router is that you can create stopped dedos well that means is we've got a groove or dado that goes only partway across the piece it doesn't cut from one edge to the other that gives you the benefit of not having to figure out how to hide the edge that cut through the front with a handheld router it's easy to make that cut stop where you want and then square up the end of the cut with a chisel you can do the same same process using this jig we have to add one little piece though here and I'll show you how to do that just going to spin this around will cut a dado this time instead of a groove I'll lay up my groove about four and a half inches down on this side of line you can start clamping my pieces in place now before I clamp the other one in place I want to figure out where I want this dado to stop I'm gonna have it come in just two inches from the rabbit along the front edge here bringing my sample piece it's my spacer clamp these in place this is my stop block is simply going to be double-faced tape - between the two pieces of the jig to stop the bit before it reaches as it reaches that line so I'll put the router in place so I can see where the bit will reach to rotate the cutting edge of the bit so it just touches my line and right there is where I want to put my stop block so now when I route this groove this dado rather go up bump because the stop block and we'll have a stop data at that point [Music] now I have a stopped cut there however the corners of it are round because I'm using a round bit so I need to take this over to the bench and with a couple cuts from chisel square up that end so the plywood panel fits snug that in got my widest chisel here and I'm just using the edge of the dado as a registration surface for the back a couple light taps here same on the other side come back and just connect the dots with a narrow chisel in the data let's check the fit see it comes right up there to the end and it's a nice clean fit and inside the highs a temp cutting dedos and grooves on the table saw is best done with a dado blade you can use a single blade if you like if you don't have a data set it's just going to take a lot more passes to get the cut to the width that you need I've got a simple method here that should guarantee you that within making to test cuts you should be dead on the money to getting a groove or dado exactly as wide as you need it this is a piece that we are going to dado into this piece over here so I need to know how thick to make my dado stack to accept this so here's what we're going to do let's tack up a variety of the chippers blades until it's just a hair thinner than my piece now I'm gonna start inserting the shims here these are metal shims that come with the dataset allow you to make really small incremental adjustments I'm just gonna add a couple in there between a couple of chippers and what I'm after here is to make this full set just a tiny bit thicker than the thickness of this plywood I add one more in here when you add spacers try to stack them all between different sets of chippers don't put two or three shims between the same chippers and press that down to the arbor nut will compress that a little bit on the saw add one more this should do it for us there now I can feel that tooth is a little bit above the thickness of that plywood I'm gonna take this stack them out in the saw and make a test cut as you can see that's pretty loose in there but that was the intent we're gonna do now is take off the dado stack and start fitting shims in here to find the one that fits that gap there's our first gym fight your room there it's like all four of those shims can you come out so since all four of those shims get in the gap taking those out of the stack should give us a perfect fit [Music] that is a nice snug fit so now that I've got a perfect fit I can go ahead and cut the pieces cut these dedos in my project parts cut dedos and grooves on the router table by measuring from the fence to the cutting edge of the bit back up the workpiece with a scrap to stabilize it and prevent chip out on the back edge [Music] half lap joints are another very easy to cut joint very strong as well a half lap is simply a joint that is cut in two mating pieces it's you take away half the thickness of both and when they come together you have a lot of face grain to face gray and gluing so it's very strong you can cut half laps where the two boards join at the end you can cut a half lap in the middle or were two pieces cross like this a half lap does provide some mechanical strength especially when it's in partially captured like one of these two it resists twisting back and forth however the course does lift out so you will need to glue these pieces together half flaps are best cut with a dado blade on the table saw since we're going to be making a relatively wide cut here and again it's a good idea to have a dado blade setup in your table saw with isn't terribly important to make several passes over the blade so 3/4 inch somewhere in that neighborhood is a good starting point first thing to do is set up your miter gauge I've simply attached a auxilary face to the my miter gauge here a little double faced tape and that needs to extend just a little bit past the blade the purpose of that is to backup the cut so you don't get chip out on the back side next want to set the RIP fence to match the width of your workpiece so this is one of the pieces I'll be cutting a half lap in I want to align this so when it's up against the RIP fence this outside edge is aligned with the outside edge of the tooth on the dado blade okay and that feels just right now the next thing that said is the height of the blade I'm going to start with it just eyeballing somewhere below half thickness of this piece to check the blade height make a cut on just the end of each piece then check the fifth not quite there yet need to make a little adjustment up [Music] okay you can see how those two pieces slide right together that means my blade is said of exactly the right height and continue on cutting the full width of this joint [Music] there is a nice fit on a half lap joint that works well for cutting pieces across the end now I'm using the fence as a stop there to set the point where the shoulder the cut is made what if I'm cutting a half lap I needed in the middle like this in that case it's a matter of just you having a little fine touch I'm gonna use my mating piece to mark where it's supposed to go right there right there and then we're just highball that sneak up on the cut we're going to start inside the line at each edge and then work our way out until we have a nice fit [Music] there we go half lap cut right into the middle of the field okay we're just about ready to go up this half lap you can see that the dado blade that I was using leaves little tiny ridges across both faces of the half lap I want to clean that up just a little bit to get a better glue service sanding block makes quick work of that don't have to get overly aggressive on the sanding you don't want to change the overall depth too much so now I've got a much cleaner fit there gluing up half flaps they are really one of the easiest joints there is to glue up you need pretty much just one clamp at each joint place some glue on one face even it out so it covers the full face of the joint put the mating piece in place and clamp right at the middle of the joint if you have a half lap at the end like this double-check that it hasn't slipped in either direction so that it's a flush on all faces a half lap like this one you'll also want to check that hasn't slipped out this way a half lap T half lap like this will self register so once you've got that one clamped it's not going to slide around on you so there's nine different kinds of joints and a wide variety of applications for each of them from cabinets to frames to panels doors drawers boxes I'm kind of hard pressed to think of any application where you wouldn't be able to use at least one of these joints so get out in your shop and practice and I hope you'll visit us in the pages of wood Magazine or check us out online at Wood magazine.com for more project plans and techniques [Music] you [Music]

Channel: WOOD magazine

Views: 804,878

Rating: 4.7770004 out of 5

Keywords: WOOD magazine, woodworking, how-to, project, plan, technique, review, making, make, build, biscuit, spline, edge, dado, groove, screw, pocket, joint, joinery, glue, up, saw, router, table, rabbet, miter, mitered, half, lap, jointer, half-lap, pocket hole, biscuit joint, biscuit joiner, Screw joint, rabbet joint, dado joint, cabinet joints, miter joint, pocket screw, tablesaw, glue-up, woodworking joint

Id: pWohJHPdD8o

Length: 92min 22sec (5542 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 16 2019