How to Create a Scarf Joint like a Pro!

[Music] welcome to skill builder I'm Robin clever and I'm just gonna show you and talk to you a little bit about the new 36 volt 185 mil brushless circular saw it's a cordless circular saw and what's significant about that all my career I've used a circular saw just like this so this is a lot bigger it's a lot heavier and of course it has a cord so with the advent of cordless tools and precision cordless tools this is actually solving a lot of problems for me you can see I'm out on site now let's say I didn't have any power which is sometimes the case this is perfect I'm going to do a simple joint for you the joint is called a scarf joint it's something I use all the time it's for extending Timbers or making them super long and the principle of the joint is quite simple so you've got a length of timber and you've got to join another section onto it so what you do is the height of the timber times three okay three times height is the length of the joint okay and what we're gonna do we're gonna form a scarf which is basically I'll just draw it out for you you're something like this so there's one part there there's another part and what we do is we put a set of folding witches in there when we drive the folding wedges together it pushes this one this way it pushes this one this way and then we finish it with a mechanical fits in there and there the joint will hold without mechanical fixing in fact I often use math get without mechanical fixing there's no glue involved quite often if it's a hip rafter for example which is where I use them all the time or a ridge because of the length of the joint you might have a jack rafter fix him right over it sometimes in a couple of places and that actually clamps it it's a beautiful job now let's take a look at the saw compact lightweight and mechanically very well built so for example it's so simple there's a lot of easy movement to get your degrees of pitch obviously you've got your fence screw there which is quite sturdy as well it's got a lovely spring on the guard super-important that for safety reasons and want to talk about that as well for the experts out there one thing you'll notice this doesn't have a right nice and for me that's quite a good thing because I do a lot of plunge cutting which I'll show you in a minute the other thing to say about a riving knife if you're cutting a lot of sheet material make sure your sheet material is well supported because as you're going through if it gives you a little bind whereas the riving knife would hold that bind this isn't going to do that it's likely to kick back okay so you're going to avoid that so make sure your works well supported the battery again 36 volt this one's fully charged just come off charge takes about 25 minutes it's really good it's quite a high output battery as well that it's got your room indicator on the back which shows you how much life it's got and this will run until it's finished there's no darkness it will run run run and just go boom finished okay so let's mark up a simple scarf joint right we just need a couple of bits here so this is the link for timber I'm going to put the scarf joint on and we only have to mark it out once even though it's two pairs there's two parts to it we only have to mark it out once it's got that bit of shake off there so the joint principle is three times the length of the joint is three times the height of the timber that you're joining and I'm gonna round this up just simply to make it a little bit easier to count I'm gonna hold it 180 so it's 300 plus 240 is 540 that's the link for the joint so three times the height I'll just put another shoulder line here over to the other side I've got a section of timber she's exactly the same thickness that way I'm gonna take the outside to the outside and I'm going to mark here and I'm gonna mark on the opposite side here okay then what I'm going to use is my speed square run a couple of shoulders in so basically my shoulder here runs down it's 90 degree shoulder - there all right so that's 90 degrees there and the same on the other end coming back there 90 degrees there and then all we need to do is put one in the middle same principle okay now that is effectively the joint this is the bit I'm taking off that's the bit that stays all right so we're going to cut that out now just you're going to check this is square up add it in and out of the box pretty nice this is where the magic begins this usually happens on a customer's drive or anywhere I can find the space as you know timber isn't an exact science a natural product it moves it bends it bows and we've got to go with that sometimes you get a stack of timber you pick out the straightest ones for the most important components a little bit like this so what I need to do is add this whole length onto the end of there so I need a bit of space for that so find a nice flat spot on the drive I'm gonna run it over here there we get our piece we're joining on make sure the best end of it is going to be joined with that joint and if there's any Cup in the timber that's when the Timbers go like that try to marry the cups up but don't have the opposites so sometimes just by looking at the aim grain look you can see but if you match the aim grain the chances are the cups going to be in the right place but this particular structural timber is beautiful stuff and haven't really had a problem with it so we're gonna lay that on the ground and we're gonna lay that over the top here flush it off but the most important thing now is know which is your tapia timber so if this is my top of my timber here for example I'm going to give it a little bit of Bowl so when the joint goes in and it goes into compression it goes straight you can only go straight doesn't sink so I'm going to look down that now make sure it's nice and true and straight you could do the string line as well but I know from experience where it needs to be to be straight and that's it now it's a matter of marking the male to the female with a pencil and you can't get better than ape you try to mark the joint out to a two separate bits and put them together chances are you'll have a few gaps or it won't exactly fit now there's one more bit we need to cut which is here and the same there and you see I'm just roughing it in that's eighty millimeters roughly and that's for a pair of folding wedges put that back up on here and we just make sure we're going to cut off a bit we want to cut off repeat the process I'm gonna mark my extra shoulder and cut that as I do it the joints nearly ready just gotta just this one the last bit to make there's a pair of folding wedges and we can just take that out of an off cut [Music] okay now you demonstrate how strong this joint is as our folding wedges we're go in there what I like to do is attach one so when I push the other one it doesn't move all right so we're just gonna tuck that in there now it's heartbreaking to see that when I started putting this joint together I used that to market which was the same thickness and the only reason I do that is to win I mount my folding wedges it's the right thickness and it's just you know it's a it's just years and years of trying and practice you just think of the quickest way it's just an off cut that's what it is okay so now we need to demonstrate the strength of this so we need a couple of bits of timber supported and we'll walk across it once it's wedge together [Music] [Music] get more wedge I think pull it one so the principle of this joint I'm just gonna mark an arrow on it in two places that's what's happening as we bang the wedges in general tap you can see it pulling up now to the shoulder what do you think about a joint like that straight off a circular saw I mean that's what you want this joint isn't designed it's not for a floor joist that don't span big areas and do it for floor joists it's ideal for a hip rafter it's ideal for a ridge so the region will stop it from pulling apart hip rafters got lots of support by jack rafters but I'm just gonna demonstrate I'm only 65 odd kilos I'm going to have a little walk across this just base 10 10 and a half stone now a bit of a light weight so I'm just gonna stroll across it just to show you and dilling tries to get a close-up see if there's any flex in it okay a little bit of balance is needed it's a bit wobbly but there's nothing to do with the joint that's the timber I'm on the tightrope and he makes it yeah yeah oh yeah oh yeah I'm still so there you saw me making the scarf joint with this brushless 36 volt cordless saw and you can see how easy it cope with it and this timber is fantastic structural timber it's been dried out for ages inside and it coped with no problem now if you want to see some more tips and tricks just keep checking back to the channel so I made you a scarf joint and in return for the scarf joint I want you to subscribe if you're not a subscriber it's got a ring to it saw scarf joint subscribe are you getting it now thank you

Channel: Skill Builder

Views: 680,649

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Keywords: how to create a scarf joint, scarf joint, how to cut a scarf joint, scarf joint timber, cutting scarf joint, scarf joints in wood, scarf joint timber frame, robin clevett youtube, robin clevett carpenter, robin clevett, carpentry lessons, carpentry life hacks, carpentry tutorials videos, carpentry tutorial, carpentry tutorials youtube, how to cut a scarf joint miter saw, how to cut a scarf joint in crown molding, how to, woodworking joints, timber framing

Id: -SUtoKKNKHQ

Length: 13min 12sec (792 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 07 2019