A genius trick no one shows

so I need to turn these four boards that you see behind me into this so the purpose of this video is to show you exactly how I go about doing that but more importantly stick around to the end and I'll show you how I get perfectly flat panels at glue up every time first thing I like to do is take my boards these are all already milled down and I'm going to lay them up on the table and I want to see what orientation I want these boards just get the boards up onto the work surface once I have the boards and the orientation that I want what I'll do is I'll first check the seams this is my opportunity to make sure that my seams come together nice if I push them together and they disappear like it did there then I know I'm good I know I have good cuts on both same thing the seam is right here but as I push them together they line up perfectly and there's no rock this is a very important step in whether or not your panel is going to be flat you need to have 90 degree edges and if you don't you need to have alternate edges so if this is 89 this direction the other one needs to be 89 the other direction that's a whole other video all I'm looking for here make sure that my seams come together nice and tight next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to take a few minutes and identify any problems that I need to cut out this whole table is eight feet long right now or this whole top is eight feet long it only needs to be seven typically you're going to have a lot of defects at the ends of the boards so what I like to do is keep them the full length or oversize them Mark those out and then I know exactly where I need to cut and I can also adjust the other boards as necessary here I've brought you into the roughly the center of the table and now I'm going to show you things that I'm not really concerned about and that is this lip right here if you watch I can push that down so that means that this this board is bowed like this after sitting for a little while that's fine that is why we're going to use an alignment Aid and in this case I'm going to use a biscuit joiner and when I use the biscuit joiner and I put it together it'll bring it perfectly level with the other service so this kind of stuff I'm not super worried about whether you use a biscuit a domino a dowel anything that will help ensure that the two boards come together on the same plane they will all do the same thing in this application I'm not adding anything for strength for this tabletop panel instead I'm just making sure that the boards come together perfectly flush to allow me to get a nice flat table top as well as save me a bunch of time on the sanding this is another example of an area that I have a a defect on the underside I had some piece Breakaway while I was cutting it I want to make sure that that gets cut out so I don't have anything else really that is a problem on either this end or the other end so what I'm doing now is I'm going to draw a line and this is going to be my reference let's just say right here this is my reference line I'll tell you why I'm marking it in just a moment this is potentially where the end of my table will be after I make my final cut so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take my tape measure and before I said I need a total of seven feet out of this table this part right here doesn't need to be perfect this is all just a reference okay so seven feet is right down here as long as I have seven feet of total usable Lumber I'm good and now what I'm doing is I'm checking that other defect and I'm just going to go one or two inches past that Mark it's still going to be oversized I'm going to mark My Line This is the importance of this line right here so I know that I have the usable space that I need and again I said I'm using biscuits so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to lay a couple of these out and what I want to make sure is that I'm not putting them within a few inches of where I plan on cutting this table the reason for that is because if I put them here and let's just say I cut right on this 74 inch line it just happens to fall there I'm going to have an exposed biscuit so for this first row I'm just looking for a reasonably safe distance from my end so I know that will not be a problem it's always really crappy when you go to town on putting biscuits or dominoes and something you cut the end off and you see that exposed Domino or Tenon a couple extra minutes of layout will eliminate that for you completely I'll make my mark and then that is now my reference and I'm going to use my t-square here just to start laying out the locations and they don't need to be perfect just quick simple markings now for me I'm going to actually put one of these about every six inches or so why am I going every six inches it's really just a personal preference but what I can tell you is I'm a little bit more free with biscuits than I am dominoes right because it's a cost thing biscuits are far less expensive and the other reason is if I do have significant bowing the more that you have and the closer they are together the better of a job it's going to do in ensuring that everything is aligned and I'm not saying that you need to put one every two inches because that would be absolute Overkill but just think it through for me every six to eight inches put one of these and we're good to go now this next part is pretty self-explanatory use my biscuit joiner and cut out all the slots for all the biscuits and then we'll get to the next step good before I set these off to the side so I can go and get my assembly table all ready for glue up um one other thing that I want to do is make sure that I Mark the order in which the boards are starting from left to right I'll either use a number scheme or a letter scheme in this case I'll just use letters so this is a B C D I didn't want to bore everybody with the process that I go through for a glue up but just a couple helpful tips right take a couple extra minutes to lay out some of this craft butcher paper just tape it down to the surface and then the other thing that I would highly encourage is use some tape or wax or something your clamps I prefer parallel clamps for just about all applications but this will just stop the glue from getting on it and then making it not work over time ask me how I know that so when I'm setting up these clamps what I'm going to do is I'm going to go in Under and Over configuration and this is not something that I've always done however the trick that I'm going to show you actually makes it make a lot more sense because you're going to be able to see what I'm talking about now this is a seven foot long table top again my whole setup is right around eight feet so I'm only going to use seven clamps for this application I'm going to do four on the bottom and I'm going to do three on the top so what I'm doing now is just getting my bottom clamps in place just kind of evenly spaced and now I can go ahead and get my boards up here I have a total of four boards so I'm going to do this on two separate sides I'm going to do two over here and I'm going to do two over on this side now the way that I'm placing these boards is going to be the first two edges going together so this is going to go into this I'm going to glue both surfaces I then like to add a liberal amount of glue to all of my pieces spread it all out go through and put in the biscuits and move to the next step once I have the two pieces glued and the biscuits are in then I can go ahead and take the board flip it up on both sides and get these two pieces joined together this is where I might take just a little maneuvering based on how far you're off your board was to begin with now those are pretty good I could do the other side and lastly I'll do the exact same thing to my two bigger halves and then we'll get everything put together one thing I would like to highlight is I find if you put the glue in like an S pattern all the way down it's far easier to spread evenly and it's much faster now the stressful part is done which is the main part of the glue up now what we're going to do is I'm going to go ahead and put this down you'll notice I don't have any closed gaps yet doesn't matter right I've worked quick enough to wear the glue has not set yet obviously you want to be fast in a situation like this especially depending on the type of glue that you're using I have a tendency to use pretty much tight Bond three all the time so now what I want to do is I want to get the biscuits aligned just like that I'm aligned on this end now I'm just going to work my way down this is where everything is going to make sense you've always heard don't over tile your clamps don't over tighten your clamps in this video I'm going to show you what happens visually when you over tighten your clamps I just said don't over tighten your clamps a whole bunch right now what you're going to see me do is over tighten the clamps because right now what I want to do is I want to get these boards together and I'm not going to go all the way tight I'm just watching to see that they go together I have a gap down here and I want to see these seams closed and they're getting there okay go to the middle the pressure on my clamps right now at this point does not matter I am trying to get all of those boards together I want to see that squeeze out so I'm tightening hard and as you can see I've got squeeze out nice even squeeze out pretty much everywhere there's a couple of places that it could be better still got a ways to go here I'm going to tighten this down and now it's starting to get some squeeze out right here tighten that down okay it's getting there this is the last one here go ahead and get this together and see you can see the squeeze out just coming out real easy there so by the time you get to the last one it should be pretty good okay I see squeeze out all across here I've still got a little bit of a gap right there and as I kind of push the boards together I can see some of that glue coming out but that means I need some clamping pressure in the middle so what I'm going to do now since I've already gotten these all the way together I'm going to loosen these there's still pressure they're just not crazy tight so now I'm going to put the clamps on the opposite direction the three across the top I still have a spot right here that's kind of fighting me a little bit and guess what it's directly in between those two clamps well I want these about every 12 inches or so so now I have that clamp in place go ahead and start tightening this down and that we'll pull that last section together and I'm looking for the squeeze out and now I see it so I can go ahead and back off the pressure on that clamp a little bit do the same thing to the middle and then to the other end before I get to the the secret to having perfectly flat glue UPS a simple simple secret I'm going to go ahead and clean up all of this glue because I don't want it to get on the thing that I'm about to show you and what I like to do is just use this old spare card scraper that I have for a couple of reasons one it'll show you where your high spots are and what I mean by that is if you look right here you can see there's a very thin film of glue and it's because right here it's just ever so slightly proud but if you look right here it's perfectly flush because it scraped the glue off perfectly so here is the genius trick to ensure you have perfectly flat glue ups and that you have the proper amount of pressure in the clamps cannot stress that enough this is where people fail they sit here and they wrench it down as tight as it will go because they think that they need that Force what you need is for the two glue surfaces to meet together and have a slight bit of pressure and that's it so what I've done is I've tightened it way down if you look at that you can see it is not flat now as I start to loosen this so I have a little bit of a rock I have now eliminated The Rock in this straight edge I now have a flat surface and I have the proper amount of pressure on this particular clamp I know that this is straight and all I'm going to do from this point is go clamp by clamp and make sure see this right here slight Rock I can just sight down the side of it now I have no more rock I have a perfectly flat surface let me bring you in close to give you a perfect representation now that you're in close you'll be able to see that there is a bow in this board meaning the center is high because I can close that Gap by rocking this straight edge so you'll watch as I start to loosen this this clamp is way over tightened as I start to loosen this it's going to close that Gap and now I no longer have any Rock in this panel none I am flat all the way across I still have pressure on the clamps on the boards and it is plenty to hold it until the glue dries so there's a lot of great uses for a straight edge and this is one of them why because it's going to visually show you which clamps need to be adjusted over tightening clamps is a problem that so many people have me included so using this straight edge and this isn't even an expensive straight edge it's like 50 bucks it's made of aluminum and it's about 38 inches long I think it's 968 millimeters but it's a UGK straight edge it works great I use it for all kinds of things but now I use it to visually see how flat the panels are that I'm gluing up I can lay it on top of the surface and I can watch as I close that Gap or create that Gap or whatever the case is by simply laying this on and checking each clamp as I go down the board hopefully you guys found that helpful I'll leave links to some of the things that I talked about in the video description below other than that thanks for watching thank you

Channel: Bent's Woodworking & More

Views: 145,542

Keywords: woodworking, woodworking tips, woodworking tips and tricks, how to, woodworking how to, woodworking channel, instruction, Jason bent, bents woodworking, woodworking tools, beginner woodworking, woodworking for beginners

Id: w7l1_d2GtuA

Length: 14min 46sec (886 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 13 2023