How to Build an Octagon Shelf // Octagon October Challenge // Woodworking

hey it's Brent from the white lab workshop I got a message today from our buddy Felipe from simple woodworking challenging me to an octagon shelf build off let's take a look hey Brent I'm here making this opto and shelf right right now and I thought I wonder how he would make it so how about a little challenge between you and I to see who makes a cooler one what do you think well he's waiting for my reply here goes what's up Felipe its Brent got your message that's a great idea how about if we call it the Octagon October challenge and you know what I hope you like to lose challenge accepted I started out by pillaging my lumber stash for some one by fours that would give me enough material for a reasonably sized shelf then I measured it out to figure out what my actual dimensions would be based on the video Felipe sent me I had determined he was going for the bigger is better approach typical I knew that we had no place for a massive octagon shelf in our house so I decided to make mine roughly 20 inches across I'm not gonna compete with him on size instead I'm going for the more technical angle with some interesting joinery I used my crosscut sled in a stop block on my table saw to cut the sides to length [Music] [Music] [Music] with all eight sides cut to length it was time to tip the blade and cut the miters now here's where it gets tricky in order for the miters to fit together perfectly and allow for all sides to make a complete circuit the blade has to be tipped to 22.5 degrees off of 90 if the table is zero degrees and the saw blade starts at 90 degrees the blade needs to be tipped to sixty-seven point five degrees if you think it wouldn't matter much if you are ever so slightly off you'd be wrong every miter connects to another miter so any deviation from the plan has automatically doubled for every joint since there are eight joints this adds up pretty quickly in order to keep the length of the sides I just cut I tried to position the RIP fence so that it would cut the miter exactly to the corner of the piece without shortening it you'll also see that I have an additional spacer that I was referencing the pieces against but removed it before doing the cut this is table saw safety 101 kickback is bad if I run the piece directly along the RIP fence it wouldn't take much for the piece to get kinked slightly and caught by the saw blade sending it flying on a path of destruction I used the additional spacer to help me position the piece then I took it away so that there was space between the blade and the RIP fence [Music] while I was doing my best to prevent kickback I don't have a zero clearance throat plate so some of the little off cuts were falling down the blade instead of falling away that can be dangerous too so I decided to put some painters tape down and make a temporary zero clearance throw plate [Music] [Music] this word great but it also introduced another problem remember that discussion of how even slight differences get compounded across all the joints well the tape introduced one such slight difference I ended up doing another round after this one without the tape to clean things up and get the angles correct a quick dry fit showed me my joints were looking tight I was feeling pretty good about this project and then this message shows up hey Brent how's it going just going to see how you're doing make sure that you haven't got off any fingers yet and also remember an octagon has eight sides okay eight all right see you later ha who does this guy think he is teasing me about cutting off my fingers and of course an octagon has eight sides everyone knows that I'm at least 80% sure my shelf has eight sides I bet he's just starting to get worried and he should be look at these miters so I sent him my reply hey Felipe I see how it is I think you're just worried about all the awesome that's happening over here you know what good luck to you buddy you're gonna need it enough shenanigans it was time to start making my joinery stand out I decided to use splines to join the sides together so I switched out my blade for one of my dado stack blades which cuts a flat kerf all the while making sure to leave the angle set as is here's the cool part about doing angles like this flip the side over then stand it up on end and you've got yourself a perpendicular spline dado geometry for the wing I used my cool tenoning jig for this but you could make one of your own in fact I do have one I made myself that I used to great effect before my father-in-law gave me this really cool one [Music] look at that beautiful slot see that Philippe that's a winner slot right there knowing that I hadn't ruined everything and didn't need to start over I got to work cutting the rest of the spline dedos [Music] [Music] next I got to work sizing the splines themselves I used offcuts of the one by force so that the splines would match in width I needed to make sure the grain would be running perpendicular to the joint otherwise the spline would be worthless getting these sized just right took some finessing and a lot more attempts than I was hoping but I got there I used the tendon in jig to cut the thickness and the crosscut sled to cut the length [Music] [Music] look at that a thing of beauty time for sanding I had to make sure not to ruin my miters by sanding the ends here since glue ups are stressful enough already I decided to make it a little easier on myself by gluing the splines into one end of each side first and letting that cure before attempting to do the whole thing I'm not sure if I didn't seat all the splines properly or if the glue for some expansion that caused them to shift but some of them needed to be sanded down a bit to make the joint fit as expected [Music] much better to finish gluing up the frame I first had to glue to the splines on every side then quickly add a glue to the adjoining end before joining them together once I had it roughly in place I could put my ratchet strap around it just snug it up then I did my best to clean up the squeeze out [Music] [Music] that must have worked alright because the glue up looked pretty good [Music] Sandeen is one of those things i wish we could just ignore but we can't so yay for sanding [Music] for the additional shelves I opted to measure with the actual piece rather than the tape measure if I was a pro I'd say that's a pro tip but I'm not a pro I'm not even close to a pro so I'll say it's a far from pro tip measure with your work piece instead of your tape measure when possible I also used my utility knife instead of a pencil so that I could mark right where I needed to cut for a snug fit I made the cut repeated the process and ended up with two snugly fitting shelves [Music] [Applause] rather than simply nail or screw these shelves into place then have to use wood filler to cover them up I decided to use oak dowels to attach the shelves this gives an excellent hold and turns what would otherwise be an ugly nail or screw head into a nice design detail I originally planned to use a Forstner bit to drill a nice clean hole but I ended up only using it to start the hole the bit was making too little progress for my liking so I swapped to my traditional bit after I got about a quarter of an inch in with the Forstner bit this way I still had the clean hole but was able to actually remove the rest of the material as well I then used my crosscut sled in a stop lock with a removable spacer to cut the dowels I made sure to cut them a little longer than they need to be so I didn't risk cutting them too short [Music] then it was just a matter of putting on too much glue pounding them in place and cursing all the extra squeeze out as I tried to wipe it up [Music] how do you like them apples Felipe a flush cut saw and my sander took care of the excess dowling and any glue squeeze-out that I missed to fill in any slight gaps I employed a cool trick that I tried before but kind of failed with it's the glue and sawdust trick last time I saw dust wasn't fine enough so this time I sanded off some dust specifically for this application it worked much better [Music] the finish we decided on was a weathered gray stain I have to say I really hate staining and to be perfectly honest staining really isn't a fan of me either but I forged on and managed not to get stained anywhere I didn't want it to go actually I'm really impressed with myself that it didn't walk away wearing any stain that I'm aware of [Music] and with this our eight-year-old makes her triumphant return as chief cinematographer [Music] so here it is the finished product I'm actually really happy with how this came together and I'm most excited that I learned some new joinery techniques but this is a competition so let me know how I did in the comments below if you haven't watched Felipe's video yet on a simple woodworking channel I'll link that below go ahead and check it out and let him know how much better my shelf is in his comments he'll appreciate that we'll reveal the winner next week on Instagram and if you don't follow us there that's link below to for your following convenience if you like this video consider hitting that thumbs up button and subscribing to the channel we've got a lot more woodworking projects queued up and we'd love to share them with you thanks for stopping by and we'll see you next time

Channel: White Lab Workshop

Views: 42,515

Keywords: woodworking, white lab workshop, octagon shelf, spline miters

Id: jqfse26fha4

Length: 14min 31sec (871 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 27 2019