Best Woodworking Tips And Tricks - The Good Stuff (2020)

hi i'm rob cosman welcome to my shop one of the advantages of woodworking for a long time you eventually figure out ways to fix things y'all sometimes call them hacks well i'm going to show you a collection of some of my favorite these may really help you at just the perfect time stay with us i'm rob cosman and welcome to my shop we make it our job to help take your woodworking to the next level if you're new and you haven't subscribed please do so hit the notification bell so you'll receive alerts when we release a new video and anytime we use a special tool we always leave a description down below alright let's get to work if you would work you need clamps in fact it's often been said you can't have too many my favorites are these bessie they're called f-clamps and what i like about them is they're just so convenient they've got a nice swivel on that head it has a tendency to keep itself nice and flat it's solid so it doesn't leave a mark the downside is and you'll gain you'll learn this as you get older it's very tough to get a lot of grip and strength on that smooth handle so if you've ever played hockey or seen it you'll notice that the top end of the stick always has a method of tape used to improve your grip so i said why not do that with this so let me show you i'd almost call this the best hack of all take hockey stick tape make one wrap around the handle and strip it down oh maybe 10 inches or so and give it a spin and in doing that it's going to turn into a cord then what you're going to do is wrap that cord in a circular pattern around the handle and then come back and cover it from one end to the other it off right there and now you can actually get some torque on that thing and some good grip i do it on all of mine works fantastic this next hack was shared with me by a couple of fellow woodworkers and it is a good one if you've watched me cut dovetails you've seen me cut that little rabbit or rebate on the inside edge of the tail board i use my lee nielsen skew block plane and i love what this does when it comes time to transfer tails onto pins that little rebate catches the inside edge and perfectly aligns the two pieces now if you don't have a skew block plane or if you're in a situation where you can't afford to make that cut such as drawer making where it would change the outside dimension what you can do i prefer to use automotive painters tape one of the reasons i like it is it's a little bit thicker it actually measures five thousandths of an inch put about four layers on there and it's stickier than regular painters tape now before i do this i'm gonna trim off the excess take my marking gauge with that same setting and take a couple of passes to cut all the way through that tape then peel it off on the side that actually makes contact with the pins tail sorry now when you set that on there it'll do the same thing and help align those two pieces after you're done you can simply go in and peel that off and no never know the difference there you go i was once told if you enjoy flying model airplanes you better like rebuilding them and the parallel to woodworking is if you do woodworking long enough you're going to have to going to be able to fix mistakes dents are the worst let me show you a great hack for that i've got a piece of walnut and now there's a dent in it so there it is right there what are you going to do to get rid of it well depending on how severe it is take a little bit of water it doesn't have to be carbonated if there's a lighten up dent i would just use a damp cloth but i'm going to put some water right in the dent and i'm going to take a clean cloth you want to make sure it's clean you don't want any marks left on there i'm going to put a little extra water in the cloth and with a nice hot iron which i've had in this shop for over 30 years really steam that now i'm moving the iron around so that i'm not taking all the heat out of one spot a lot of pressure still a little bit moist let's see what that looks like okay there was our dent actually i can feel feel a little bit of a depression like a little more a little more water on that i might have hit it too hard i've got that setting on high sometimes you may have to fold the cloth in half you don't want to burn the wood okay now let's take a few passes with the plane and see what that does the idea is to completely eliminate it now i realize you can't take off too much material all right so we took off enough to get rid of the ink and there's no evidence of a bump that is slick this hack everybody needs to know about get yourself an iron and always have it handy if you're joining boards using pipe clamps pipe clamps have been around a long time and they're in relatively inexpensive and very effective however here's a problem that i discovered the more you tighten it the more it has a tendency to pull on one side so it wants to cup your boards like that as a result of additional force so here's what i found take a piece of three quarter inch dowel and split it on your band saw seems to be the safest way to do it then we want a nice smooth surface here to protect the wood we're going to be joining so using your shooting board and a hand plane let's go in and smooth up that surface you need two one for each side all right now taking some painters tape just put that piece of dowel on the edge now the shape of the dowel will act to center the force from the clamp and suppose send it right down through the middle of the board and this will keep that joint from popping one way the other of course you always want to stagger your clamps as well but i found this great for putting that force right down through the middle and if your dowel is long enough and wide enough and nice and smooth it also serves to protect the edge from the rough clamps there's a good hack for you we've been talking a lot lately about making small boxes and if you plan to dovetail them and you're talking about dovetailing in narrow stock it can be difficult to get those cuts across the end of the tail board perfectly perpendicular and that is critical i'll show you a good hack take a thicker piece of thin straw pardon me soft wood in this case it's a piece of pine put it in behind now when you lay out your dovetails what you're going to do i'll just do this real quick below now what i'm doing is i'm running my my lines all the way across that second piece or that back up piece and it's going to give me a lot of extra reference for my saw i'll just put these angled lines on here real quick ideally if you had a piece of basswood or something really soft so that you almost don't even notice it when you're sawing through it but yet you have it there to help align your saw i always want that piece standing plumb seems like a lot of extra work but if you want to get these right and you haven't quite nailed it so by using that piece i've got all kinds of reference for my saw to and ensure that that those cuts on that tail board are indeed perpendicular if you've got a good sharp dovetail saw you can blast through that hardly even noticing the extra thickness great hack as simple as it is the flat miter is sometimes one of the most difficult joints to get right now you can do a lot by using a shooting board to get it perfect 45s but i found this clamping method or this hack to be fantastic for pulling that joint nice and tight i'm going to show you a couple of variations of it so here we have two pieces of stock that are what looks to be two and a half inches wide yep now what i'm going to do i've already gone in and shot it so it fits nice and perfect nice and close i'm going to take about the midway point i'm going to line it up with this line which is approximately the midway point on that face right here and then i'm going to clamp it now what i've done is i've put some i've adhe adhered some sandpaper some cloth back sandpaper on there to prevent it from slipping line that up again i'll go in here and i'll take a clamp now you want to protect your piece of wood so if you need to you're going to put something in there but i'll clamp that one and i'll do the same thing on the opposite side line that up so that it's pulling right through the middle of the joint and then clamp that one on now i've got to put the handle on the opposite side now i want it on the top side now you go ahead and glue that and sometimes it pays to go in and put a couple of clamps here and here to hold that make make sure that that's properly aligned and then you simply clamp across the two pieces and as you pull that tight it'll pull that joint together and allow for perfect clamping or you can go in now and reinforce it if you do it with screws sometimes i've had to do it i've had splines in there and i still want to pull it tight so what i did in that case is i simply hollowed out the center to allow for the splines yet i still made contact on two outside edges of the joint so it's pulling the force right through here these clamps are keeping it from sliding and it ends up being the perfect miter joint if you're doing trim and you've got something on the inside edge that prevents you from being able to clamp against it now this is mdf this was window casing and you can actually get a sufficient glue joint from just mdf on the mdf don't need anything else fasten that to the wall you're all set but you can't clamp against this so in this case i may have modified my my uh jig i used self-adhesive sandpaper on here and again what i'm going to do is line that up so that the center line of that pad where the clamp is going to sit is going to meet somewhere right about in the middle of the joint now on this one i want a little more force so i'm using a c clamp now you need to protect your painted surface so you'd have a something in there to prevent that from marring the surface and then you do the same on the opposite side actually if you just measure like that that will give it to you now just grab a couple clamps i'll show you what i meant about lining up the joint here's how i would do this one i'm actually going to glue this one up apply glue to one side you always want to make sure you spread that now i've got a painted surface so that'll easily come off any squeeze out that is now i'm going to align these two pieces and then i'm going to use a couple of clamps with nice clean faces to go in there and hold them in place not too tight and then i'll come in with my longer clamp and simply pull that tight make sure that you're clamping in this case right through the center of it so you don't want to have your clamp sitting up here or down too low you want it right in the middle so the force is pulling that make sure these don't slide just loosen that a bit in case it allows it to move a small amount pull that tight let that sit for 20 minutes to a half hour take it off and you got a great glue joint you can scrape off whatever little bit you get left on there if you're building a case and it's a mitered corner and you've got to clamp it somehow i want to show you a great hack for that so i've got a couple pieces of plywood miter cuts on them now i want to i want more than just a butt joint here and uh i also need something to help with the alignment so i've cut a long spline in there with a plywood spline to match sorry i cut a long groove of the plywood spline to match and that'll go in there and help line those two pieces and also offer us more glue surface but there's my clamping my miter clamp and what i've done is i've taken what we used on the flat miter when we made a longer version of it i've glued sandpaper to one side to prevent it from sliding now we want to come in here and take the center of the joint which is essentially where that spline is and i want to go in the middle of the clamping pad so we kind of want to line those two pieces up not terribly critical but you don't want to you want to avoid pulling it either out open open or closed and if the force goes right through the middle you got a much better job of having that joint close the way you want now i'm going to reach in here with some fairly deep clamps now if your inside is going to be seen then you've got to put some kind of a pad on there to protect that now the handles are on the outside on this one i'm going to put them on the inside on this one and we'll just eyeball that to get it approximately in the same spot right about there now we glue this up put the spline in the groove make sure everything is flush now i want to clamp right across i'll have to come in from the underneath i'm going to get this now move this over i'm going to put three clamps on this one on the outside one on each of the outside edges and one in the middle so that over a little bit of course a little bit of squeeze out is exactly what you want then you know you've got the right amount of tension you're tight on the inside you're tight on the outside 30 minutes in the clamp take that off and you've got a perfect miter that's a great hack for doing case work this is a great hack for small boxes now we make saw boxes in our shop and we use a finger joint somewhat modified but if you can imagine going in and trying to glue all of those joints with traditional wood glue and a spatula and trying to line it all up almost would make it so that we couldn't do it profitably so instead i'm going to show you something even better so i'm going to put these two pieces together now we've got this joint just tight enough that's going to allow super glue to wick so this is thin cyan acrylic you can either do it from the inside or if it's a nice box you'll do it from the outside just put enough on there that it'll wick in and around the joint you don't need to use any accelerant let that dry and it'll be as strong as any wood glue joint would be and you'd have it yeah but also the best part is it allows you to assemble the box line it all up get everything perfectly square and then put the glue on let it sit for 20 minutes and you're good to go and we trust the we trust that joint in order to be able to ship our saws through the mail so it's a strong joint if you enjoy my method of work and like my style of teaching click on any one of these videos to help take your woodworking to the next level now i've always said better tools make the job so much easier if you click on the icon with the plain and the chisel it'll take you to our website introduce you to all of our tools that we actually manufacture right here as well as our workshops both in person and online good luck

Channel: RobCosman.com

Views: 226,373

Rating: 4.9479513 out of 5

Keywords: Best Woodworking Tips And Tricks, woodworking tips and tricks, woodworking tips and tricks for beginners, woodworking tips and tricks youtube, best woodworking tips, best woodworking tips for beginners, woodworking tips & tricks for beginners, tips, tricks, woodworking ideas, rob cosman

Id: ZYx1OaAdaVg

Length: 20min 25sec (1225 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 27 2020