Cutting Shims for Precise Work

hey thanks for checking out next-level carpentry today so I can explain why I say no to stubby shims and how I make mine with feather finance most purchase shims have stubby ends on them you've all seen them and those are fine for general carpentry work and a lot of window and door installation jobs but as most of you know I'm a pretty fussy guy like a professional chef demanding choice ingredients for his signature dishes I prefer my shims to have specific properties first off they have to have feather thin points on them like this this allows me to make very small precise adjustments for things like cabinet installations because the thin that tapered ends start out at a sixteenth of an inch or less I want my shims to be smooth and relatively not free to slide and adjust smoothly to not break easily in use and I want shims to have straight consistent grain so they cut and snap easily you need to be fast and easy to make to be practical to use without hesitation from concern for cost most importantly I need to make these quickly and safely after all there's no shim in the world that's worth the risk of injury are a trip to the ER right and I think the only OSHA approved shim cutting fixture is the one that's used in the shim making factory but I don't like the shims that they make so I'll show you how I do this potentially dangerous operation quickly and safely and well within my comfort zone for safe practices but I need to say if you choose to make your own shims you do so at your own risk to make the fixture I use for cutting shims I use quarter inch MDF this is melamine coated but veneer coated wood work equally well this piece is 10 inches by 16 inches and I want to lay it out for the shims I'm cutting which are going to be 12 inches long just start at the end of the sheet and mark 12 inches and that 12 inches long I want them to be 5/16 of an inch thick which is right there and I need the nots the edge of this melon mean so that all the shims come out precisely the same so I'm going to flush up this ruler here at the end swing it till I hit that little cross mark at 12 inches and 15 our five sixteenths draw a line just like that and I'll square it at the 12 inch mark so this is the exact size of my shims here and I need to cut that out quite accurately other shim cutting videos on YouTube generally use a bandsaw to cut out the notch to the shape of the shim but I don't like that because the bandsaw cuts going to be a little bit wavy so I'll show you a quicker more accurate way to do that I start out with another piece on the quarter inch material that's wider than my fixture this piece is extra wide but anything even just a little bit wider is good I trim off this auxiliary fence piece in the table saw to make sure both edges are perfectly parallel and then I leave the RIP fence at the setting I just used this width is arbitrary but in this case it happens to be 17 and a quarter inches now I use a couple of half inch long Brad's and set them with this magnetic tack amer and all I have to do is line up the edge of this overlay piece perfectly with the pencil mark on the fixture and tack it in place just like that then I take the fixture with this auxilary fence on it back to the table saw I've raised the blade so I can cut closer to the spot where I'll cut the keel off by hand and using the same RIP fence setting cut off a long edge of the wedge stopping just short where the heel is going to be for holding the shim and I'll cut that little bit out by hand and I think you'll admit that would be tough to beat for speed or accuracy now I just need to notch out this heel by hand so I'll separate the two pieces with a putty knife and then clamp it in a vise where I can make quick work of that knot with a small pull saw just like that with the shim nuts cut out I need to add a strip of this maple stock that's sized to fit my miter slot to the underside of the jig to guide it during use this piece needs to be perfectly parallel to the long edges of the fixture so I'll show you how I set that up I made this fixture piece exactly ten inches wide on purpose so I've set the RIP fence to ten inches so that just skims the teeth of the blade then I'll drop this maple strip in you can see how this fits in this miter slot it's flush with the top of the saw and it doesn't wiggle but it slides smoothly a bit of star bond CA glue is the quickest way I know to get these two pieces lined up and stuck together and make note that this miter slot bar is slightly longer than the fixture on both ends and it goes about here so I'm just going to spritz the backside of this melamine with the star bond accelerator right along that pencil line and I'll use their medium CA glue let's put some dabs on here hold everything in place now I just drop this piece on here holding it tight to the fence and pressing it down firmly to that miter slot bar and I can hold it for a few seconds till the glue react and tap it loose because I got a little overzealous with that CA glue once the Guide bar is lined up and stuck to the smella mean board I can flip it over and then use the small snappy bit to pilot and countersink four screws to hold the pieces together I recently got these carbide tipped snappy bits to replace the old high speed steel ones I've had for many years and these things are amazing they've got a different drill bit design that cuts really fast and efficiently and that cardboard is razor-sharp and gets right into this melamine and now I can use a few half-inch buy number six countersunk head Phillips screws to hold this together forever and always I got my snappy countersink holes too deep I got a little overzealous with that but these screws didn't come out the bottom the reason I add screws to this is because CA glue and melamine are pretty brittle and if I bump the fixture while I'm using it it could easily knock that guide bar off but with the glue and the screws that things there for good I'll use a sharp putty knife to clean up the little extra glue that squeezed out and make sure the screw heads aren't sticking out the bottom is maple so it'll slide nicely in that miter slot and now this fixture can be used either with or without the RIP fence for cutting consistently precise shims as long as I feel like doing it make my shim cutting fixture a little more user-friendly I want to put a handle on it I see some YouTube channels where a block of wood gets screwed on to the fixture somehow but this is next-level carpentry so we're gonna do a little better than that basically what I'm doing is taking one of my favorite push sticks there's a link to a video left to show how to make these but I just take a modified one of these with the heel cut off looks like this and I want to attach it to the fixture so that I can use it with my fingers as far from the blade as possible and this is how I do that i want this handle about two inches from the back and centered up on this piece so i can just mark it out ten inches wide five four and five eighths to five and three eighths will be centered like that I also added a center mark at five inches so I can drill a few holes in there this parts pretty familiar so if you're paying attention you can just skip this with a little activator on the bottom of the handle a few dabs of glue here just line up the handle with my pencil marks and press it in place till the glue cures which takes just a few seconds like that now I can just chase those holes through with that snappy countersink bit and here I'll use number seven by three quarter-inch countersunk Phillips screws to hold the handle to the fixture I make sure that those countersinks are deep enough so that the screw heads are recessed and don't scratch my table-saw table and this middle one is a little bit shallow so I'll back it out keeping the countersink Andry drive it and that is good to go once I've got a sturdy handle attached the knots cut and the guide bar in place I could actually start cutting shims with this fixture just by putting a block of wood in here and cutting them off but when I go in to shim production mode I'm gonna make literally hundreds of shims and I want to add some safety measures so that I can cut these shims quickly and efficiently without getting my fingers too close when this piece gets small and I don't want to throw away the small piece because of what I invested in this piece of clear cedar wood so I'll show you the safety measures that I add next the first safety measure I want to add is going to be a sort of an auxilary fence to help support the edge of the shims as they're cut off I'm just taking a straightedge block it to buy and I'll scribe it so that it matches the height of the shim stock I'm making for this patch of shims and I'll rip that block off on the table saw and then I'll attach the block to the fixture with the end of the block exactly lined up with the heel of the shim like that third verse same as the first two [Music] next I want to attach this small piece of half-inch Russian birch plywood to the end of that fence to act as a stop block for pushing the shim through and all my extensions are out on a job site so I've got this ridiculous set up to run a snappy bit in the end so that I could use a two inch square drive screw to hold that stop block in place something like that so you can see how that auxilary fence and this little stop block will help guide the wheat workpiece pass the blade more safely and keep my hands away from that spinning finger amputation device but since I want to get shims out of this entire width of a block at some point that's it's going to be a pretty small work piece and I don't want my fingers in here close to the blade so I'll add one more safety measure which is kind of a hold down block that attaches to this fence and extends out over the workpiece I use the 3/4 inch Forstner bit and a 1 inch core box bit in drill press to put nice finger indents in the working end of my little hole down block that would have been a little smoother if I clamped that block down but this will work fine then I just position this hold down block oh let's say two and a half inches from the end use a snappy bit to countersink a couple holes and drive in a couple of inch and a half square drive screws to hold that hold down block in place and now a little finger pressure out here will keep the jig working safely efficiently and smoothly so the last thing I need to do before going into full shim production mode is to swap out a thin curved blade for an ultra fit curved blade specifically dedicated for cutting shims I'm using this Bosch 24 - 7 and a quarter inch skill saw blade which is ultra thin kerf and great for ripping wood like this with a minimum of waste this blade happens to have a 5/8 inch Arbor which is exactly what is standard on my Delta unit cell and last but not least I'll switch out the zero clearance insert - one that matches this skinny skinny Bosh played and set the blade height so that it'll cut through the shin like that the first pass passed the blade will trim the end of this block ever so slightly put a small cut in the underside of this hold down block and trim off this stop block here so it's all custom sized to making these specific shins and now I'm all set for a test-drive there's 12 inch long nothing to 5/16 over 12 inch Jim cutting 16 I flipped the block over after each was cut to keep the workpiece relatively rectangular so that the shims come out straight bang instead of crossing [Music] partway through the process the jig start to get a little sticky running over the table saw so I took Johnson's paste wax and a rag and wipe down the bottom of the jig and the runner with the liberal coat of paste wax that helps it slide real smooth through the table saw but then when it's sliding smoother I'm using extra caution because I don't want to have a slip and an accident greased lightning so I think you can see how with a well designed fixture with built-in safety and convenience features I'm able to quickly cut identical shims there's 50 of them here they came out of one 2 by 12 12 inches long every shim has a feather thin end on one end for precise work and the 5/16 on the other end they wrap up in bundles so that I can store him and take him to the job site until next time again into shim cutting mode when chip heard that I made a new shim cutting fixture and had a whole stack of cedar blocks that I needed cut up in the shims he jumped right in and started sawing he's been at it a while and he's got a ways to go but I really appreciate all the work he's doing well he's sawing away over there I want to thank everybody for watching the video and ask that you consider subscribing the next level carpentry if you haven't already while you're at it give that thumbs-up button to poke and let YouTube know you like what you see here on this channel while that pile of shims is growing you'll end up at right at 400 shims from that stack of cedar most times I'll use just random scraps of wood from the job site but this time for the video I wanted to have a good stack to do all at the same time so I went that route it's been a few years since I made a pile of shims so this batch of 400 will last me for a couple of years but I wanted to get them made for the upcoming project I'm doing this winter and starting off on that project I need a bunch of these shims and when I get some videos produced from that job you'll see why and how I made a complete list of the tools and supplies I used in this video for making that jig and I included them in the video description below so you can check those out and I gave Jeff Bezos said Amazon a call and he said anything you buy through those links will be the same low online cost you're used to but he'll help support next level carpentry by sending just a teeny fraction of his trillions of dollars of profit to this channel for ad fees so I really appreciate it I appreciate everyone who's joined at the group at patreon becoming a patron and pledging to support the channel that helps offset the costs involved in producing videos like this that you can watch for free and offset income I'm not making out on a job site which is what I'd be doing if that wasn't shooting videos so that's really helpful and anyone that's interested in becoming a patron there's a link to patreon below and that would be great t-shirts like the ones chip and I are wearing are available at teespring if you're interested in that or maybe a next level carpentry logo mug for your desk or shop links to that are below also well chips really getting after it and he'd be making a pile of sawdust if it wasn't for the dust processor running over there but he's gonna be through that stack before too long so until next time and as always thanks for watching yo chip files looking good you want to like take a break over there he's not listening Jeff no chip want to cut it off call it a day no you're good he's not gonna stop til he's done and we got things to do so catch you later in 96 97 3 98 99 400 that's it for hundreds shims hey I'm done cutting shims where'd everybody go hello hey Matt where'd you go dude

Channel: Next Level Carpentry

Views: 163,176

Keywords: shim, shims, tapered, wedge, cedar, pine, composite, how to, make, cut, best, next level carpentry, fine homebuilding, jlc, saw, fixture, jig, setup, safe, fast, easy, bundle, set, doors, door, window, windows, cabinets, framing, carpentry, carpenter

Id: 0JTSxRnAJtA

Length: 19min 32sec (1172 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 10 2019