How to Build a Side Table | Beginner Woodworking Project

this video is sponsored by Massive products what I like about pocket all joinery is if you can build something like this which is very easy you can build most anything because the same principles apply and so we're going to build or recreate this table it's extremely easy and I have plans available if you need step-by-step instructions so first thing we're going to do is I've cut some one befores down at eight inches long these are just common Spruce one before so you can find them at most any home store and that's what this is made out of I built this table probably four or five years ago super sturdy and it'll last very long time cut these parts out you can use whatever you got circular saw miter saw doesn't really matter just gonna cut them all out make sure your legs are exactly the same length or as close to it as you can get one important thing to note on pocket old Joiner really any joinery but you see this giant knot right there we do not want to try to drill through that and create a pocket hole joint there so make sure you cut around those cut that off you can use whatever is left but don't drill into or screw into knots that's just going to cause splitting so we got four two legs at 24 and a half inches long we've got four one before us at eight inches long once you have those cut out the first thing you're going to do is we're going to be making these four pieces this is going to be super simple we're going to drill pocket holes on each side of this board using our mask of pocket old jig I've set the depth at three quarters of an inch now if you've got a thinner material going into a thicker material like this one before it's going into the two by two you need to set the pocket hole jig on the thinner material that you're drilling from and the reason for that is this I drilled this one at an inch and a half I drilled this one at the three quarter inch setting so this setting would be if we were using a like a 2x2 or 2x4 and this setting is if we're using three quarters material like this one before as you can see if you use an inch and a quarter screw set at the three quarter inch depth it's going to drive right into the center of your board if this was our leg and this was our apron just like this and I attached it just like that flush if we drove that screw in there from the back side it's going to crack through or break through the front of that board and we do not want that so when you're using thinner material into thicker set it on the thinner materials size in this case three quarters of an inch I'm using pocket old jig I purchased this one myself and the reason I like this jig is because it is an all metal construction it's super solid nothing on this is going to break over time the only plastic pieces are this turret where you set your bit and also the dust collection attachment other than that everything else is super solid metal construction it has a hardened steel drill guide that's going to never wear out you're going to be able to use this for years and years to come this kit comes with a drill bit and the stop so you don't have to worry about buying an extra bit yet it comes with a driver bit it comes with the set guide and some extra screws but what I like about this kit is it does have these extensions on here that help support your work if you're working on longer stock and that's really nice when you have large sheets of plywood or even long two bites they can also be flipped around and be used as stop blocks for repeatable pocket holes one of the most important things about pocket old jointer is proper setup of The Jig now it's extremely easy to do you just need to know what your what you you're looking for this is a tuba two and what most people commonly refer to as a 2x2 It's actually an inch and a half by an inch and a half Square give or take on the back of the masker you'll notice a scale on each side you've got millimeters on one side if you're in that line of work and then you've got an imperial on the other I use the Imperial side all you have to do is we know that this board is one and a half inches thick all we're going to do is set that guide to match the thickness of that board so we're going to move it up to an inch and a half until those lines align up and then we'll tighten down the thumb screws super easy if you're using three quarter inch thick material you would just line up the line to three quarter inches that's the very first thing you're going to set up next you're going to use this included drill guide turret and set in that hole that says drill depth now you'll notice this turret has markings and measurements on there it directly relates to whatever setting you have here so we have an inch and a half we're going to set our drill bit on one and a half inches so you're just going to insert the drill bit turn the turret until it says inch and a half you want to make sure that this stop collar is loose once it touches that inch and a half all you do is tighten up this bolt with the included Allen key that is your setting for inch and a half Lumber if you were doing three quarter you do the exact same thing just depends on what thickness you're drilling into if you'd like to pick up your own mask of pocket old jig I'll put a link in the description below you can go check them out for yourself they come highly recommended by me most shopbacks are not going to connect directly to that now I can turn this shop back on and it will hold the suction will hold it in place sometimes unless the thing moves and then it breaks the suction it moves you can get an adapter this is from whitworx I'll drop a link in the description and very inexpensive but a great way to add connectivity to the dust collection there one feature I Love About The maska Jig Is this clamp it's an all metal clamp and it's super secure and the way you adjust that super simple this just twists it's a bolt that's going down into there you can loosen or tighten that and you don't want it super tight so that you have to really push down but you want it tight enough that he just barely clicks once you get that you can just move that lock nut and then every time you use the same size material you're gonna be able to clamp that down over and over and speaking of clamping on a one before you're just going to Center this up so that the same amount sticking out on each side once that's clamped down we can drill two holes flip it over drill another two holes and do all four pieces the same way what I like to look for on pieces like this is there's a kind of an ugly knot there if you flip it over it looks fine so we're going to drill the pocket holes on the Bad Side Bad Side get it and I'll look at all of them the same way and figure out which side is the better looking side and then we'll drill it on the off plug inside [Music] [Applause] [Music] now we have four legs we have the four top aprons now we need to work on the bottom four aprons all I'm going to do is take a piece of the one before and rip one and a half inch strips out of that one before you'll get two per one before you're also going to make those eight inches now these are going to be a little bit thinner if you don't have a table saw you could purchase these one by twos at your local home store and all they are is an inch and a half wide by three quarter inch thick so you'll see that they'll fit right there we're gonna drill two pocket holes on each one just like this one now when drilling these pocket holes you want to make sure you set it in a little bit you don't want them too close to that edge you can see how they are here about three quarters of an inch in from each side and you can do that just by visually looking at where the pocket hole will land on your board and then it's clamping it in place the reason you do that is if you put it too close to the outside they'll cause splintering and breaking the wood especially on soft Woods I like to assemble all of my pocket old furniture upside down for a few reasons number one if we're assembling this upside down then you're always certain that you get these pieces turned correctly so the facing the bottom you can't see them from the top and then also it just gives you access to your screw holes and things like that better so that's what we got going on here I've set two legs up I've got that middle apron and we're fixing to attach these now one awesome way to level up your pocket old projects to make them stand out and not look Plain Jane is to add just a little touch that's all it takes as little touches like this inset that piece about a quarter inch just like we did on this table if you inset that just a quarter inch it's going to give it some definition and detail if you put it out there flat then it just gives it a totally different look and this that's kind of stuff just it just sets it apart from most things that beginners make so it's a good way to just kind of set yourself apart in your local area now if you like the flat look you can certainly do that as well now when using pocket holes to make a some furniture always use wood glue this is tight Bond three it doesn't take a lot just it's going to help with the strength of it though I made a mark one quarter inch in from the end just to keep me a reference light clamping pressure will help you keep everything nice and sturdy when you drive those screws another tip with pocket hole jointer because the screws are being driven at an angle if you don't clamp this in place a lot of times this piece will have a tendency to push forward because of that pressure going this way so clamping it is almost essential most pocket all sets including this one come with a six inch square drive bit and you want to use a drill now I've been guilty of using a impact before but these actually work a little better because that makes sure you don't over drive the screw and you'll want to turn down the torque or the numbers on your drill that's what that is how strong you're driving the screw you want to drop that down so that we don't strip those screws out one mistake a lot of people make on pocket on screws is they'll set it on the bit and then just drive it you need to make sure that screw goes into that pre-drilled hole you'll be able to tell because it'll seat in there almost partially or almost halfway of that pocket Kettle once it's there you can drive it home [Applause] once it tightens up stop you've got this joint is tight you can see there's no Gap there there's no reason to keep driving a lot of times I'll just take the screw by hand and put put it into that pre-drill hole and then get them seated before I even put the screwdriver up there if you're building Furniture just make sure everything's flush right here on the top and that grind you here is because we've set this Chuck and it's not going to allow it to drive any further if you needed more driving force you can obviously just increase the number now installing the bottom rail this is just one of those lump twos and we've got it set at three inches high got some wood glue on there it's a little too tight for us to get this big driver in there one of these is so handy to have it's just a right angle drill attachment very inexpensive and easy to use you're just going to put your bit on that end and then tighten it into your drill there this is going to let you get into some very tight spaces just like this the main thing when you're driving those screws especially when they're so close together on a smaller piece of wood is don't overdrive them you don't want to split this wood and there's really no reason to overdrive those once they catch and that joint is tight and you got a little bit of glue on there that's all you need basically what I've done is create two leg assemblies now two individual assemblies one with a bottom rail one with the top now it doesn't really matter at this point how wide this table is you can make it as wide as you want when you start assembling it and you put these other two top aprons on you want to go ahead and set the back one in place just to give it some support when you start clamping stuff and screwing stuff up here if you don't then the table will start kind of flaring out on you so I like to do that you can put a little clamp back there just to hold it while you attach the front piece we're going to attach those exact same way we're going to use that right angle bit and then we're also going to use glue at each joint what I love about pocket hole joinery is we could put a top on this and call it done at this point you don't have to put a bottom shelf on there we've got these two braces on there which will be perfectly fine for such a small table but I like to add that bottom shelf it gives a little something extra then we put that top on there also using pocket holes super simple one very important thing when you're adding a bottom shelf like this we're going to have these four pieces all the way around you want to make sure those two corners or Each corner lines up exact or is it close to exact as you can get it so what you're going to do is make sure the top lines up they should be the same thickness if you cut them out of the same board but just make sure that corner lines up so it's actually right on the corner of that leg on each side especially as you're driving those screws in that's going to ensure that when you put your shelf in everything's going to look right if you don't want to add a bottom shelf you can just leave it like this or just cut two pieces of one before at eight inches long which is what we did here and it should slide right in there if you cut them the same length and we'll just split the difference here and get everything equaled up on the gaps there when attaching the the Shelf boards on there you can use a clamp like this just a regular squeeze clamp that'll hold that piece nice and flat it does get in the way of the screws a little bit so I like to use a face clamp and maska has their own face clamps and it works extremely well these little paddles will reference to the boards and keep everything nice and flush while you drive those screws one thing worth mentioning here is when you're driving those screws if you over drive those in other words you don't have your drill set properly or using an impact because they're coming in at that angle if you're not careful they will break through on that apron that's that's why it's important to set the torque lower on your drill so pocket holding a top onto a table is usually a big No-No a lot of people will say you got to account for wood movement and stuff like that while that's true in most cases in something like this it's so small the wood movement is going to be so minimal it really doesn't matter in my opinion it's just light pocket hole in that in the bottom there is literally nowhere for the wood to move it's not going anywhere it's not going to break it's not going to bust like I said this table here is probably five or six years old never had an issue with it same thing with the top we're going to take a piece of two Bob material two by eights work better here but since I bought two by sixes I'm just going to make a top out of two by sixes we'll rip a couple of pieces down and put those on top if you don't have a way to rip them down I would suggest buying the a2x8 and cutting two 13 inch pieces and then you can stick them on top like I'm fixing to show you how if you want to keep the low profile or minimalistic look to this table you could also use one by eights or one by sixes put together on the top just however you want your to look I like the bigger thicker top it just makes it look a little better in my opinion [Music] [Applause] all right so now we're going to assemble this tabletop with pocket screws and we're going to set our jig on an inch and a half and then we're going to set the bit at an inch and a half very important you don't forget this part then we're going to use that little turret there set that on inch and a half then we'll set our stock collar right there now I'm just going to drill those pocket holes with that setting at an inch and a half on both the bit and The Jig what I like about this jig is the fact that it has these work supports as you can see you can adjust those any which way you want and it supports that piece so that it doesn't tilt and make your pocket holes off now for assembly we're just going to use a little bit of wood glue and then pocket old screw those in with two and a half inch screws how do you know what size screws to use on what size boards well I have a guide for you I'll link that in the description below if you ever need to know you can reference that guide now you could absolutely just glue this up and clamp it in place and then let that dry but what I always like to do is especially if I'm building a lot of these at a time you don't want to wait on the glue to dry so that's where the pocket holes come in because they basically act as a clamp until the glue dries if you'd like to see a full tutorial on how to build a tabletop like this out of wood with pocket holes I will put a link at the end of this video as well as in the video description you can go check that out for yourself it'll tell you how to get these seams really nice and tight as well as how to pocket hole them if they're really big I learned a very long time ago that this is a true asset in pocket hole joinery because it allows you to clamp those table tops together it keeps those nice and flush and will help reduce the amount of sanding you have to do later especially if those pieces shift when adjoining and then you have to sand that lip down all right now all we got to do is put the top on and pretty much we're done unless you want to paint indoor stain this I just like to Center this up on the top it should be about an inch overhang if you built it like I did now this is where we get into a little controversy because a lot of people think that if we screw these together here or screw this Frame to that tabletop that it's going to cause that tabletop to split because of of wood movement later because it will not allow for that top to expand and contract my argument on that is there's very little wood here to actually expand and contract now if we had a very large or wide tabletop I think it'd be a lot different but in this application I really see Zero reason why you can't again I've done this multiple times on multiple pieces of furniture and tabletops that are small like this that have never had an issue now I'm not saying it won't ever come back to bite me but for the most part seven years six seven years of doing this built dozens of these type tables never had an issue just want to make sure you Center everything up and it's Square you just don't want it to look waffle jaw so to make this a little more finished looking I would actually take an eighth inch round over bit on a router these are very inexpensive as far as the bit goes and it makes a lot of difference because it's going to do a couple of things number one it's going to put a rounded Edge or takes that sharp edge off the top as well as if you use it on the bottom of the legs it'll prevent the bottom of those legs from splintering over time as people move this table around if you don't have a rounder just use your sander to knock that sharp edge off you're going to do the same thing on the legs on all four corners and that also helps the paint stick to those edges if you're painting a solid color on a very sharp edge like that that's the first place that's going to Chip and where if you can round that over slightly that's going to help that wear better over time if you built this and your table is wobbly and swampy jawed it ain't setting up right the reason is one or more of those legs are too long all you have to do is set it on a flat surface figure out where it's rocking let me use this little piece to simulate that leg is too long we're going to put something under so now you can see that the table is rocking side to side what you're looking for is the two that's coming off the ground you know that those two aren't the long legs it's the ones that are touching so you just pick one and shave a little off until it sits flat once you can build this little table and apply the principles that I showed you today you'll be able to build multiple different types of pocket hole projects and some of my favorite include are outdoor sectional by far one of the most popular pocket hole projects to date as well as our dining tables end tables anything that you've seen us build on this channel all the principles you saw me put to use here will work on our furniture builds that's what I love about boggados because they just make it so approachable for beginners and DIYs to build awesome projects this is the table we just built right A lot of people say pocket holes aren't strong enough I weigh 200 pounds sometimes 205 depending on fake cake or not this thing is more than sturdy to act as a stool I would have no problem with this now who's going to put 200 pounds on a small side table most people are not this will hold most anything that you're going to use it for as an end table as a nightstand putting a clock on it setting a cup of coffee on it setting your cold one on it at night it's just not gonna fail on you for those type purposes there's really no reason to be concerned about the strength of a pocket hole joint when it's used in these type applications for these purposes and with these tips and tricks I showed you on the pocket hole jig you'll be able to create a ton of different stuff now if you want to learn more pocket old tips and tricks click that box right there it's going to tell you all my secrets click that box gets a big old virtual fist pump also if you'd like to know how to make a table top out of wood with pocket holes watch that video

Channel: 731 Woodworks

Views: 112,593

Keywords: 731 woodworks, how to build a table, diy woodworking project, how to make a table, how to make an end table out of wood, how to build an end table out of wood, pocket hole joinery, pocket hole project, woodworking projects that sell, diy project, how to build a small table, diy side table, diy table out of Home Depot wood, diy table out of pine, easy diy table, easy beginner woodworking project, beginner woodworking project, woodworking for beginners, night stand

Id: SMC_85ULxa8

Length: 18min 22sec (1102 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 19 2023