How To Cut Perfect Long Miters on the Table Saw - Woodworking

in a recent project that i did that not very many of you watched i made some long miter cuts on solid cherry to form the speakers on the end of the console that i built and if you've ever tried to make that kind of joint before that type of cut while you're watching it you might have said to yourself he's making that look really easy because i know it's not and i can think back to the time when i first made that cut or tried to make that cut when i was much younger and yes it didn't work out well for me either before you can even think about making that type of cut you need to be working with tools that are well set up and aligned properly your table saw blade has to be aligned perfectly with the fence it can't be any drift or deviation there otherwise you're not going to get a smooth cut and it certainly won't be burn free next you'll want to have a zero clearance insert for your table saw what the zero clearance does is it doesn't leave much room beside the blade for the material to get jammed in there and cause a kickback so that's very important especially when you're making angle cuts and finally what you need is a good quality sharp blade very important that it'd be sharp you're not going to get a good clean cut if the blade is not sharp and the better quality of the blade the more precise the cut will be the blade that i have on my saw right here is one that's reasonably good quality it's older like it's not new but it is sharp i just sharpened it before i started doing this and if you want to watch a video on how i sharpen my own blades there's a link to that in the description i'm going to be making my cuts in these four pieces of scrap plywood that i have here i'm actually going to make a tall box from it might as well get something out of it as long as i'm doing the demonstration so what i'm going to do first is i'm going to set my saw to cut the two narrower pieces to width and this is a 90 degree cut and i'm actually cutting these an eighth of an inch wider than i really need and that gives me the opportunity to make a couple of test cuts to make sure that i'm actually cutting at 45 degrees and i wind up with a box that will go together in the end so now i have the four pieces to get started and the next step of course is to tilt the saw to 45 degrees what you're looking for is to get this as close as you possibly can to start with this won't be your final cut now when you tilt the blade you affect the depth of cut so i'm just raising it up and i like to go a little bit higher than i normally would for a 90 degree cut so i'm ready to make the first cut let's see line up the fence and i'm going to do that by eye um i just like to take the work slide it into the blade line it up like line up the corner of that square cut with the edge of the blade and then lock the fence and then i can turn on the saw and make a partial cut to see exactly where that lines up then i can finish the cut by running it all the way through and then i'll do the other piece through the other side as well [Music] okay so i got a couple of clean cuts there they look good and what i'm going to do now is i'm going to put them together just hold them together and use an accurate square and if you don't have an accurate square that's something else you need okay so i'm gonna hold the miter together top and bottom as flush as i can and take my square and see how it looks and not unexpectedly because my saw is well tuned it lines up really well but if you find that it doesn't like it's too uh open this way okay that means that you're not cutting a sharp enough angle you need to push your your saw more maybe past 45 degrees on the thing it depends on the saw i mean the cheap ones don't have stops in there really good positive stops whereas the more expensive ones will so you may have to make some adjustment there as well but the point is that you what you want to do after this cut is you want to make another cut and make sure that what you wind up with is absolutely square when you measure it with the square now admittedly that's pretty low precision the square even if it's really accurate even if it looks really good there's a you know there's a more precise way to do that and that's to cut all four pieces that's what i'm going to do next so i've already cut this edge and now when this goes up against the fence this one looks pretty good the other one over here looks pretty good as well what we can do is if this is too sharp if the material is too soft it will bend a little bit so you may have to flatten that edge slightly the thing about flattening the edge is that when you put the smarter together afterwards you're never looking for something that's razor sharp on the edge so a little bit of flattening on this edge won't hurt the main thing is that the piece sits up tight against the fence and it doesn't crush that tip on the miter doesn't crush with the edge flattened the next step is to cut the other side i'm just going to nudge the fence over very slightly to make up for that flattening operation and then run the pieces through and then i can reset the fence and do exactly the same thing that i just did with the first two with the wider pieces for the other sides and while you're watching that i can tell you about an upcoming event on the makers mob that will be starting on september 26th we're gonna have frank howard and he's gonna be launching a new woodworking design series over that four weeks frank will cover everything that you will need to know to understand the fundamentals of woodworking design along with the series you'll also get access to my woodworking tutorials and as well as projects from youtube's top makers like the samurai carpenter jimmy deresta liam hoffman john peters and neil paskin the doors for this event will close on september 25th at midnight so click the link in the description below to register and we'll see you on the inside i'm going to tape these joints together this is just a test to see how well the miter actually lines up if they're accurate enough to make the finish cuts and then i can very carefully stand it up and actually put it together if i can get that to happen here and i can see how well the miters line up so that's looking pretty good that means my saw is accurate enough to make uh precision cuts and you can stop at this point if you're happy with the size i mean if it doesn't like if what you're working on doesn't have to be a specific size and you're you're getting good results at this point just glue it together and and call it call it done however i'm gonna go the extra step here and re-cut these like you normally would if you had to make further adjustments i'm not cutting very much off and that's key to doing this as long as you're working with a very sharp blade when you're making this cut it's going to result in something that's a lot cleaner because you're not putting any stress on the blade when you're making this cut when this goes through this time you're going to wind up with something that is a lot smoother and a lot cleaner now it's time to put the box together i've laid all the parts down in the correct order uh before i do this a box needs bottom so i cut a rabbet into the bottom edge of each piece and that'll be for a piece of plywood the same thickness as this that i'll glue in after the box is glued together and to glue it together i've laid out the parts as they're supposed to be i'm just going to take pieces of the green tape just to keep them lined up the green tape is not strong enough for this he either needs a packing tape you know the clear packing tape or duct tape works but you don't want to leave it too long because that kind of leaves a residue behind what i like to use is this stuff here this is actually gaffers tape this doesn't leave any residue and it's really strong the first thing i'm going to do is check to make sure that it does go together you don't want to get glue in here and find out that it will not go together okay so this looks excellent so i can go ahead and get this glued up and to do that i'm going to be using regular woodworking glue normally what i like to use for this type of glue up is polyurethane construction adhesive because it gives me a longer open time i have more time to try to get clamps on it and whatnot but since this is just a sample box i'm not going to worry about it too much i'll put the regular glue in here and then use tape to close up the last seam i let it dry for about an hour and i'm just pulling the tape off and uh i just used the tape to clamp this really you should clamp it and i normally would other than this being just a demonstration now all of the miters like everything looks good but it what you can do if you find that they're slightly open on the outside edge here there's a trick where you can take a screwdriver or i've got a wrench here just use the side of that to rub on one side of the miter like this and then rub on the other side and that'll close it up and if it's really open what you can do is you can squeeze a little bit of glue in there before you do this and that way the glue will permanently hold it together after you get it closed up tight [Music] you

Channel: John Heisz - I Build It

Views: 253,497

Rating: 4.9176984 out of 5

Keywords: woodworking, how to, diy, jpheisz, ibuildit

Id: Fofhv5c1w8o

Length: 12min 2sec (722 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 23 2020