How to cut a CROSS HALVING JOINT by HAND

good afternoon everyone today we are learning how to cut the cross having joint and thus concluding our mini-series on carbon joints so let's go [Music] so starting with two blank bits of timber let's get in close and we can see what tools we need and how to mark this out okay so with these two bits of components we are looking to mess them together like that to create a cross so tools we need for this are crosscut saw marking knife marking gauge you Jesus Penn Square a mallet chisel and preferably a router plane because it makes everything so much easier here but you can work without it if you want to so let's get into marking it out so first thing of course marking our face sides and face edges so that face that edge let's go for that face and that age and now the orientation is going to go together and let's say is like that so it's gonna kind of the Hoffa it's gonna create the heart again but it wasn't unfortunately so we're gonna nest them together like that so what I'm going to do to make this easy for myself is that I'm also going to put an X on here as well and on the underside here I'm gonna put an X so then I know that that material I want to be removing and that material I want to be removing because as a beginner it's quite easy to get your face size and face edges mixed up when you wanting to remove timber on the opposite side so with this roof timber there remove timber there then we can slot them together like that so what we're going to do is get our square reference it off our face edge here almost did it wrong and then line that up there by eye now what we're going to do here is take advantage of the compression of wood in order to get a really tight fit with this so what you might do is you might square this bit of timber across it and then just mark around it with a knife but then obviously that has offset the knife line to the outside of this component here even though it's a really fine point on there so what I like to do just to get a really really tight joint on there is square up with one end take the material away do not move that square give ourselves a really fine mark to work to so light pressure is slightly increase the pressure and now without moving the square put that back on there keep the pressure down on it and now we're going to work on this side here so again really like pressure so now providing we work accurately to these knife lines we're going to take advantage of the fact that this timber can ever ever so slightly compress and that will give us a really really nice joint so essentially these lines are ever so slightly thinner than this component here so that's all done now let's do exactly the same on this timber so again I'm using my X here that's also the bit I want to remove just check where my face side is there it is so reference the square off there material off like pressure and without moving it's there we go so now what we've got to do is get our marking gauge which is over here here I'm using the Veritas marking gauge so I don't even need a ruler for this I can just measure it like that then on the side here I've got metric graduations that I can read so these are 26 millimeters that means I can take this down to 13 millimeters and I've got half the thickness so what we're going to do now is mark how far down into each of these we want to be cutting now again if you watched the previous videos you'll know how easy it is to do this wrong reference this stock off of your face side every time so this is the face side we're going to mark it across like that and again on the other side so now I've got these lines here I can see roughly how far I need to mark with this gauge there we go so that's marked off the face side now it's quite easy to look at this and think ah cross cross I'll mark off that don't do that mark off your face side doing this will allow your joint to fit together perfectly in terms of up and down because if you're marking gauges slightly off it's going to exaggerate that discrepancy and your joints aren't going to sit flush if you reference it off the same face side each time those discrepancies are going to cancel each other out and you'll get a nice flush joint there we go squared on there and now we're just going to get the knife and join those lines up so again referencing off the face side on the back here get the knife into that line at the front slide the square up drive back that's there you go that one is done let's do this ash now so referencing off the face side you know this term is being used a lot but it is important with joints like this not only to be able to get them together in the same orientation each time but to allow your joints to actually fit together because for years I neglected face sides and face edges and I wondered why my joints weren't working properly so there we go waste material waste material and then face sides are in theory up but I'm going to be removing that mark there I'm just gonna redraw that on so I know there we go we can see how those meant to go together so let's get hacking out this material so to the vise so we're going to remove it from this one first so get that in there nice and even and we're going to get our crosscut saw and work as close to these lines as possible I've said it in a previous video what some people will do at this point is get themselves a chisel and chisel diagonally into that line from the waist side and then that will give them a V groove that they can then put their saw into and go down to that base line I don't tend to do this because sometimes I have off day sometimes I have good days with my saw and I don't want to run the risk of accidentally going into the material I want to keep here I would rather go back to it with a chisel the other advice with the chisel is that it gives you a really nice crisp edge to work to whereas a sore gives you a bit of a fluffy edge so although it's a great method and it works for a lot of people I don't tend to do it I just like to saw about a millimeter it's a half a millimeter away from the line and chisel back to it so as you see here it's starting on the back edge it's gonna level the saw out go they just work down to that base line just watch that one both sides want to go right down to it to help the cleanup later on now if you want to know why I'm starting at the back edge and then leveling out the saw I did a video on how to saw me and that will be linked up here and you can watch that it will give you great things to practice before starting cutting any of these joints and will help you enforce those good habits when it comes to soaring so sorry enough chatting let's carry on and the beauty of this joint is it doesn't matter if you go too far below that line because it's all hidden anyway so that's alright it doesn't really matter too much and now we're just going to do a few cuts in the middle here to weaken that material right let's chisel it out now so what I'm doing now is standing from the side here so I'm looking at this line down its entire length because if I stand here and did it I can't see if my chisel is tipping forwards or backwards properly if I stand here I can see if that squares the material or not and therefore gets more accurate cut but we're not going for that curacy this point we're going for whack whack so here we go remove that remove that remove that it's always a satisfying job back there I must say flip it over cramp it up again go from the other side give it a bit more whack whack okay so rubbish out of there and then you've given your kids some dice or something to play with happy days bit more whacking needed so let's get that back so I'll get it pretty close to that baseline about a millimeter off or so don't smash all the way through on this work from both sides because then going to stop it from breaking out in the opposite face so you'll see I'm flipping it over every now and then just to make sure I'm coming down to that baseline evenly and now we'll go for a little bit of pairing with the chisel so get rid of all the peaks in fact we'll go to the tail vise for that so pressure on top of the chisel and just take away some of those peaks this is just very coarse adjustment at the moment so it needs to be too precious about this other side take out some of those Peaks never guess we've got a pretty flat surface to reference from there now what you can do from this point as I've said in previous videos just keep working through that with a chisel so get right into this line here pair all the way through and then every now and then get yourself a little ruler or something pop that in there and then see if you can find any high points in there if you can mark it with a pencil and just chisel it out and eventually you'll work your way down to those by lines there and give you a nice flat surface to work to so that will work just fine an easier method is to get yourself the optional router plane so I'm going to do this is set it so it's taking off the peaks of everything there we go see I'm just working from opposite phases here make sure it does all come down evenly approaching our base line now I can see it starting to fray a little bit on this corner and chances are that's where the V left over from the marking gauge is breaking off so let's just do a tiny tweak here now yeah I can see that that relatively it's going straight into the marking gauge line so it's all lovely and flat on the bottom quick way to know if you want to know why I'm using the Veritas router plane I did at all jeweled between the Veritas and the Lea Neilson router plane link is up here and that'll tell you why I use this rails plane and the advantages I see with it especially in terms of sharpening because obviously doing joints like this you want to have a nice sharp blade this has a very big advantage over the Lea Neilson you should definitely watch it let's get these walls chiseled down now so we're chiseling down these walls I've got about a millimeter between my saw cut and the line there and I don't want to be taking that all off in one hit because it's just going to end up pushing the chisel back like this and damage this nice crisp blown we've got along here so what I'm going to do instead is half that material take away half a mil and then I will trim it back to that final line and what I'm also doing is looking at it with my eye sight going this way as well so for same reasons before I can see if my chisel is square or not so let's take off a half a mil to start with and we'll do that all the way along [Applause] so into the knife line like that get it square nice controlled taps all the way to the bottom because I'm so close on this side here I'm just gonna pair it down see how easy it is for me to pair down the same green like this again I'll plug another video here if you haven't already seen it I did a video on how to get a deadly sharp edge on the end of a chisel the link is up here I would very much recommend watching that you can see how are you able to do that and just take nice smooth shavings out then grain just got a little bit of clear out to doing the corners now on this one so there we go I think that one is done I'm going to do exactly the same to the other component and I'll see you on the other side of that [Music] [Applause] [Music] right so they are both hacked out L or I say hacked they are precisely shaped out should we say so first thing we're going to do is just double check them all with a ruler and make sure there's no humps in the middle that is able to rock on I've done this with a router plane sir shouldn't be the case for me but if you've done this with a chisel or a shoulder plane that's entirely possible for you to have small peaks in the middle it's gonna rock on that's all looking good next thing to check on these is the shoulders if they're actually 90 degrees I haven't got one but you could get a combination square to check this for me usually over something this small I can just sort of do it by eye and see if there's any little small points in there that I need to take out I'm choking up on the chisel when I do this it's just a little bit of fluff in the corner so I'm just gonna remove that out so I'm just gonna run down that with a knife no loose debris in there so let's see if they assemble shall we let's firstly see if this one here will locate on this section here just to check we have got this fit right sticky here on my bike so that's a good fit and let's check this ass one on here as well yeah again you're at creaking so moment of truth let's get this assembled we're gonna need a hammer for that you know let's do this a bit more careful yes to it with a cramp so pressure right in the middle there we go I'll get my microphone closed there we go that is popped out it's the best one I've done happy days so let's get a bit of a close-up on that there you go so as you can see really tight fit along there really really tight fit along there no gaps whatsoever really nice and crisp this isn't even plain flush yet and on the edges here because we didn't undercut the edges of those shoulders there is no gaps on there either and there we go that is how you cut a cross having joint with minimal gaps if any and yeah that is a rock-solid joint as I said in the previous one obviously it's quite easy for me to edit things to make it look like everything went to plan so to prove that there is no glue in this joint let's just get on the edge here wallah no glue whatsoever it all holds itself together through the compression of the timber using that method that I showed you at the start so yeah there we go I can't get it parking but anyway there we go I hope you found that useful and enlightening I will see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Matt Estlea

Views: 98,689

Keywords: hand cut joints, woodworking by hand, how to cut a lap joint, how to cut a halving joint by hand, woodwork, handmade, beginner woodwork joints, beginner woodworking, woodworking for beginners, woodworking joint practice, face sides and face edges, using a chisel, using a router plane, cutting woodwork joints by hand, beginner handmade woodworking joints, hand woodworking, fine woodworking, tutorial, how to cut a cross halving joint, wood halfing joint, basic woodwork joint

Id: bkFrS7Ah5GY

Length: 14min 26sec (866 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 06 2017