I dont know why more people dont do this

this video is sponsored by bespoke post this is something that I've never done before and what I mean is that I have never built a commissioned piece of furniture with Lumber provided to me by the client about six months ago a client reached out asking me to build them a floating nightstand we talked about design details and everything else that goes into building a custom piece and got the contract signed just like normal only difference is that they already had all of the wood that they wanted the nightstand to be made from I was immediately thinking it was going to be something awful like reclaimed Pine but it was actually some really old Cherry evident by how dark and aged it is but to my surprise it was in fantastic shape I had to let this wood acclimate my shot for a while before Milling it down which is why it's completely covered in dust I've covered this probably oh my gosh I don't know 25 times in previous videos but I don't own a jointer so I used a planer sled to get my boards perfectly flat on one side down the description I will link to a video that covers this topic in depth and answers all the questions I know that you're going to ask and yes while it does work and works really well it is insanely slow and not at all in efficient use of time the reason I do it is because I work out of a one-car garage in my apartment where I only have access to a single 15 amp outlet running on 110 volts which causes this to happen a lot oh I love when this happens I know I could get a small jointer but I haven't found one that I'm satisfied with that fits my electrical constraints here we go again and before you ask no I do not have the ability to access the breaker panel to increase the amperage on my circuit or upgrade the electrical so I've got all the lumber milled down that's going to make the case for this nightstand and that's going to be the top the two sides and the bottom however I have not milled this Lumber down to its final thickness and that's because I have a trick that'll make this way easier to get a perfectly flat panel and I know that probably seems really weird but just hold on let's grab these boards make some panels for the case like I told you earlier I don't own a joiner but I still need to rip a straight edge on all these boards to create the large panels the fastest way I've found to do it is by using a track saw but there are tons and tons of other ways to accomplish this exact same thing this is just what works for me and the tools that I personally have access to [Music] and here's what I mean by it being really fast and efficient this clip is 100 in real time with no edits or speed bumps or anything just take one board out from underneath the track grab the next board take a little bit of time to line it up with the edge of the track and then rip a perfectly straight edge on that board with the track saw no it's not the traditional way to do it but hey it works great then it's over to the table saw to rip a perpendicular Edge which will allow me to make perfect glued up panels so I've got those straight edges ripped on all the boards that are going to make up the panels and I want to glue them all together now to make sure that these boards are perfectly flush across as I glue them up I'm going to use my Domino no no no I'm kidding I'm kidding not going to use the Domino at all with gluing up these panels that's because the trick that I'm going to show you makes it so it doesn't matter at all if these boards are slightly misaligned so let's glue up these panels and get on with the project I'll get to the main trick for getting perfectly flat panel glue UPS in just a second but one tip that works extremely well is once all the glue is applied and the clamps are lightly tightened take a few clamps on the ends of the boards and clamp the seams this will pull the boards together and cause them to be coplanar with each other which makes your life substantially easier further along in the project also stop tightening your clamps down with the jaws of life all that you need to do is tighten them until you see a thin line of squeeze out and you're done oh and throw some clamps on top to prevent the panel from bowing up too the long panel is going to be for the sides and the top of the nightstand since it's really the nicest looking Cherry that the client gave me the Cherry that has a ton of sample it doesn't really look the best so I'll glue that up for another panel that'll make up the bottom of the nightstand no one will ever see it right and remember you can never have enough Woodworkers telling you that you can never have enough Woodworkers telling you that you can never have enough clamps oh and don't forget to wipe up all the excess glue before it cures so usually as I wait for the glue on these panels to cure there's really nothing that I can do and it's just kind of wasted time however there is one knot hole on this panel here that's still accessible so let's fill that in while the glue cures this is going to end up being the inside of the nightstand so you won't actually ever see it but I still want to stabilize this knot I grab my finest five dollar chisel from Harbor Freight to remove all the loose pieces of wood around that knot hole before sucking everything back up and I always take some hot glue to make a dam around the knot hole before moving on to the next step now there are a million different substances you can use to fill knot holes some people like to use stuff like CA glue you can buy this like weird wax stuff that goes in there but the thing that I find Works foolproof and probably the best is this and that's some total boat epoxy and before you think that I'm only telling you to use this because they pay me that's not true they don't pay me a dime I just love using this stuff because it works every time sixty percent of the time it works every time you literally can't mess it up just one pump of resin and one pump a partner that is all you need but before mixing it grab your favorite neon color I'm kidding I'm not gonna put a horrible neon color in my project get rid of that crap and grab yourself some black pigments that it actually looks good you just need a few drops of this stuff like literally hardly any of it and you can tint epoxy totally jet black I like to use the slow hardener to give me a lot of working time and to allow any potential bubbles to release but you see how the hot glue Dam makes it super easy to keep the epoxy from running all over the panel sweet so I'm going to let that set up for a couple days and thankfully to movie Magic you don't have to wait boom three days has magically passed I need to remove the hot glue Dam and all the excess epoxy before moving on with processing this panel and yes the epoxy looks really weird because like an idiot I set a box on top of it while the epoxy was partially cured and it just dented it up see literally every single one of us makes mistakes again that five dollar Harbor Freight chisel came in clutch this time removing all that excess hot glue in my attempt to satisfy all of the angry people that hang out in the comment section who say that I'm not a woodworker because I only use power tools I bought one of these card scraper things it's supposedly good at tasks like this I guess you just bend it and scrape it along the surface and to my surprise this actually worked super super well leaving thin shavings of epoxy and honestly might be my preferred method now so to all of you angry people that hang out in the comments section you're right about this one card scrapers are great now I can rip the panel down to its final width before moving on to the trick for getting perfectly flat panel glue UPS you might have already seen this coming but if your panel is smaller than your planer you can just joint one side perfectly flat and basically re-mill the panel just like it were one large board and that is why I didn't Mill everything down to its final thickness before I can do it while the panel is glued up which will leave me with a perfectly flat panel of course this only works with up to 13 inch wide panels for me because my planer is so small but when I finally get out of the apartment garage and can get full-size tools that's one of the massive benefits to getting something like a 20 or 24 inch wide planer there you go two perfectly flat panels that are the exact thickness that I need and by doing it like that you get absolutely Flawless perfectly flat perfectly even panels every single time but before I go and start constructing the box it's a little maintenance I got to do because this nightstand is going to be so small it will be impossible to sand everything once it's constructed and to make sure that the panel continues to stay perfectly flat I took a pencil and made marks all over the boards before carefully and methodically sanding off all of the pencil I know this might seem like Overkill but it ensures that I don't spend too much time in one area and accidentally gouge the surface ruining the flatness that I worked so hard to get but with that taken care of I can move along to cutting this panel up into its smaller components at this stage the only thing that I'm really concerned about is making sure that the center piece which will be the top panel is the correct size this will result in those side pieces being longer than I need but that is perfectly okay right now absolutely cut this panel down on the track saw but I did that last time so I want to show another way with my cross cut sled today this is by far the most used table saw jig that I have and it's super super easy to build there's a full video and downloadable plans for this in the description if you need help building one for yourself all that I have to do is line up the cut marks to the zero clearance slot on the sled well that was tough to say and uh then you're all set [Music] with the larger panel broken down into the sides and the top for the nightstand let's bring it in and take a closer look at how this is going to go together so even after this has been cut you can push the boards back together and it gives the appearance of one solid board and so what I want to do is basically Bend this board around the nightstand and to do that between these two pieces I basically need to remove this section here so that these two boards can give the appearance of one continuous grain and of course I'll do the exact same thing over on this side removing those sections right there I find that the table saw is by far the most accurate way to make this cut but you won't have any success unless your blade is perfectly calibrated not at 45 degrees but actually slightly off and actually I want to kick to a quick tip to show you why I don't actually want this at exactly 45. so here's a rendering of what I want the nightstand to look like it's got two sides a top a bottom the drawer and then some mounting hardware but I'll get on to that later in this computer simulation world this is a perfect 90 degree angle which comes from these boards being cut again at perfect 45 degree angles if you have ever done any woodworking before you know that this is really hard to achieve and what typically happens is this either your outside corners meet and your inside Corners have big gaps or your inside Corners meet and your outside corners have gaps I want to err on the side of that first option which will give the outside of the nightstand perfectly mitered corners so instead of setting my table saw blade to exactly 45 degrees I actually want to kick it ever so slightly past 45 degrees back in the shop I got set up to make this cut with my miter gauge but that ended up looking super sketchy so I need to make an audible up in the rafters I've got the official Brink and Johnny Tsunami vertical panel jig that will be perfect for this task and yes I'll leave a link in the description for how I made this one too it just rides on top of my table saw fence and allows me to run the board through the saw vertically the little slots allow these Fancy Pants clamps to slide in so hold the board securely to The Jig slide your fence toward the blade and make a cut [Music] just be careful with the offcut potentially shooting back at you you can see I didn't make it all the way to the edge so I can tap my fence over to work on dialing in the setting before making another cut [Music] again it's not quite where I want the cut to be so I need to make another quick adjustment yes this is annoying to have to dial it in but once I get this set up I don't have to make any adjustments for any of my other boards rather than having to perfectly line up the cut edge with the blade I just clamp It On The Jig and I'm ready to rock and now that I've got that one perfectly dialed in I can just grab all the other panels and make the exact same cut and while I cut these pieces down I do want to let you know that because Craig wants to support me and the entire woodworking Community watching this video you can download free yes free plans that'll give you everything that you need walk you through all the steps to build this nightstand for yourself so I want to give another huge shout out to Craig for supporting everybody here I really appreciate it now that I have those perfect 45 degree angles cut on these pieces I can join them all together and I can get that perfectly wrapped box and to join these pieces together you wouldn't 100 could use just glue you could use dowels you could use biscuits you could use those bead lock Tenon thingies okay weirdo but what I'm going to do to make things fast and easy for me for Old Times Sake so I'm going to use my Domino I'm like no people always get so upset whenever the Domino is used but you 100 do not need it to build this nightstand the only reason that I'm using mine is to Aid in getting the edges perfectly lined up during the glue up the box is plenty strong with just glue the dominoes are there only for alignment speaking of blue to prevent Globs of glue getting stuck inside the box I always lay down some painters tape right on the edge so it's easy to remove any glue squeeze out and now for the great race the glue up I'm using these angled clamping blocks that I made like two years ago that make this process super easy I'll link to that old video down in the description too but once the race is over it looks like this jumbled mess of clamps so with the glue cured and taken out of the clamps this is what the bedside table looks like now however I want to show you something that I messed up I think that's really important to show your mistakes and not hide them to make it look like I'm better than I am so come in here and check out what I messed up so on this edge here even with all the clamping pressure and everything that we had there are still some small gaps you but I want to show you a way to very quickly and easily hide that mistake listen every single one of us makes mistakes during projects the only difference is that I most of the time know how I can fix them I first grab some glue and pushed it into the open seams I use this plastic spreader thing but honestly your finger would probably work much better and with the glue pushed into the cracks I can now grab something hard like a screwdriver and start pushing all those fibers together what this does is basically burnish or fold those wood fibers over which will close that Gap just make sure that you do run the screwdriver at an angle from both sides for best results then just grab a little bit of fine grit sandpaper and push the little sawdust in there that sawdust just helps cover up the color of the glue and leaves you with a pretty perfect patch job now check that out I'd say it looks pretty good it definitely is not perfect but I doubt the client will ever know that I messed up that joint unless they watch this video Dang I just blew my cover maybe you could make it up to them by giving them a lovely subscription box to bespoke post the sponsor of today's video the spoke post is a curated subscription box where you only pay for what you want you'll get a box assigned to you each month based on the quiz you take when signing up and before it's shipped to you you'll get a preview of what comes inside yeah it's like seeing into the future and you could decide if you want to one keep it two swap it out for a different box or offer or three skip the month entirely for absolutely no charge which means that you don't pay for a bunch of crap that you don't want you only pay for what you actually want plus the Box lineup changes every month and each box has around 70 dollars in value but you only pay a fraction of that price ninety percent of products in bespoke post boxes come from small Brands many of which are based right here in the US they sent me three boxes that would be perfect for any night of the week but I'm going to use all three of them for a romantic date night the first one is this filet box with a super nice chef's knife and paring knife that I can definitely cook up some scrum diddlyumptious meals for a very sensual date night the second one is their Spritz box which comes with three lovely smelling colognes to really make me smell undeniable before that date starts and the small bottles make it easy to toss in a pocket if you need a little before the date and lastly the night cap box which comes with these whiskey glasses for a romantic late night beverage leather coaster so your date doesn't ruin your new table that you just built Amber and oakmoss Reed infuser to really get those senses flowing and to really cap things off on the date night a nice crossword puzzle book to chop 20 off your first box click the link in the description and enter spencily20 at checkout or go to bespoke.com spencily20 thanks to bespoke post and let's get back to the build now that the nightstand is glued up I can cut those sides to their final length I find this substantially easier to do after the box is glued up so I don't have to try to do rocket science to figure out the length of the part before the angle is cut just set it up against the fence and let it rip did I waste material doing it this way yeah but it made my life a heck of a lot easier and I will absolutely take that trade off and with that upper part of the nightstand situated I also need to cut down the panel to close in the bottom this is that chair that has a lot of the sapwood in it but no one will ever see the bottom unless they're in the bedroom on never mind uh let's change gears and talk about the next roadblock so again here's a finished rendering of the nightstand this part is already made and I need to connect the bottom I honestly thought I could squeeze some dominoes in there but that's not gonna fit I could use pocket holes but I really don't want to put those in a visible spot on the commission piece so I figured I've always wanted to try one of those sliding rabbit dado things maybe this would be a good time to bite the bullet and give it a shot what the heck let's try it hopefully that animation kind of helped explain how I'm going to get this together so that this top piece can meet the bottom piece here so to make it easy for myself on the bottom shelf I've already marked these spots in white lead that I'm going to remove and I've done the exact same thing marking out the spot that I need to remove on the side of the nightstand now I will 100 admit I'm a little hesitant to try this I think it's called a sliding rabbit or sliding dado or something like that that because I have never ever done joinery like this but there's a first time for everything so let's give it a shot because I didn't think of things ahead of time the only way I could cut these grooves on the inside of the nightstand was to use a handheld router but to make sure that I route a perfectly straight line I cut a scrap piece of wood to offset my bit to the exact location just make sure to stop before hitting that layout line also don't try to remove all that material at once take multiple passes and slowly sneak up on the cut with that groove cut in the nightstand I need to make matching Cuts in the bottom panel I threw my ripping blade into my table saw since it's the only one that has flat teeth and set it at the height I needed which is right about one quarter of an inch it's important to take it easy and really sneak up on this cut as you can see I was nowhere close on the first pass so I headed back to the table saw to raise the blade up just a touch and remember the adjustment of the blade is basically double itself because it's being cut on both sides of the piece after nailing that fit I went back to the table saw to start extending that cut further into the work piece after every single pass I would check the Fit until I was super super close [Music] and sorry about the audio here I didn't check that I turned on the correct mic [Music] and then on that side oh we're going okay [Music] kind of rack inside the side a little bit [Music] oh it's going so I'm pretty happy with this bit I don't want to hit it all the way in because I might never get it out I think just a touch of sandpaper on that Tenon will just loosen things up so that when I put some glue on there it all slides on literally just a touch of Sandra and it should fit that little bit of sanding was all I needed to get a perfect fit but in order for it to slide all the way in I need to cut off this little tab from the front just a quick cut on the table saw and then look that five dollar Harbor Freight chisel back at it again to give the perfect relief cut quick drink let's get after this seltzer water is always my drink of choice before glue ups and if you listen to my podcasts off the cut with Zach from Zach builds you know all about it you can check out the podcast on all streaming platforms or at the link in the description below oh this is exhausting it's almost there now that I've got the main construction the nightstand situated I want to focus my attention on making the drawer box now whenever I make drawer boxes the number one question especially on Instagram and Tick Tock is how do you measure for the size of the drawers my first tip is to stop using these side mount slides because these things suck but because of supply chain issues it is absolutely impossible to get your hands on the nice Bloom undermount slides so instead I bought some no name brand on Amazon and hopefully they work at first glance these slides seem really similar to the Blum ones other than the lack of the adjustment mechanisms but the eclipse were super super cheap now instead of trying to decipher those ridiculous convoluted directions you just do this you pull these out right follow me you grab a tape measure and you measure how big you need the drawer to be that's it seriously it's that simple instead of stressing out over the instructions just put the slides in place and measure the drawer that you need to build now here's something that I've honestly never done before and that's built an entire drawer out of hardwood I typically use plywood for the bottom panel but I wanted to try something different I built this fancy mobile cart a while back to transport My Little Tikes Band Saw and got set up to resaw some more cherry from The Climb now I bought a brand new resaw blade specifically for this task and my little take saw really really struggles with cuts like this I even had time to look at funny memes on Instagram while I waited for this cup but at the end I did it I seriously made my first resaw cut in my life at least I'm pretty sure it was my first one I don't remember these now thinner pieces are going to make up the bottom panel so I can quickly rip clean edges on them before gluing them up into a larger panel since I had less than Stellar results with re-sawing my panel is nowhere close to being flat so again I just milled this larger panel down using my hot glue method on the planer sled until she was perfectly smooth pop it off the sled run it back through the planer on the opposite side and boom I just made my first solid wood drawer bottom now I can cut all the pieces down to their final length for the drawer box these sides are easy they're just the length of the slides so 10 inches but for the front and back it's just the distance between the slides about 14 and three quarter inches just slide the stop block over that measurement clean up one end flip down the stop block and then make the final cut if you're ever worried about tear out during your cross Cuts just do what I do make your cross Cuts first then come back and rip your pieces to their final length this will remove any potential tear out that you might have leaving you with nice and clean boards do I remember to do this every time no but it definitely helps so that's all the pieces cut down that are going to make the drawer box now you could go with some fancy construction you know dovetails if you're into stuff like that it's definitely enough for me dog but I'm just gonna keep it nice and easy since no one will ever see the front and back of the drawer I'm just gonna use pocket holes I know you probably think I'm crazy but no one is ever going to see these they will be completely hidden and it makes the construction of the drawer fast and easy plus I know all the old people in the comments love pocket holes so these are for you to hold the panel in place on the bottom of the drawer I marked out some more grooves all these layout marks might seem unnecessary but they help remind me exactly where things need to go and prevent me from making even more mistakes than I already do I make small passes on the table saw slowly nudging my fence over every time until I sneak up on the perfect fit for the drawer bottom yes you could use a dado stack but I have a method to my madness here just stay with me and yeah it does take a little bit of time to sneak up on that fit but check this out it fits perfectly but before you do anything to your fence leave it locked down grab the piece that is going to make up the back panel and check this out because of the way that I cut the dado in both the sides and from the drawer I can now get my back panel perfectly sized by just running it through the saw because it's already at the exact same spot that this dado is going to end simply cut the back piece to its final width and assemble the drawer with some more pocketable screws and you can see how the back piece doesn't interfere with the dado from the bottom panel now all that's left to do is to cut the bottom panel to its final size now before you just go and take your drawer bottom and glue it into the bottom of the drawer there's something you have to remember because this drawer bottom is a solid piece of wood and not plywood it's going to expand and contract so instead of taking glue and putting around the entire perimeter of the drawer what I'm going to do is just put it on the front part of this and not glue the back that way the back is free to move expand and contract as it needs to throughout the seasons now is this going to move much I highly doubt it but I just want to be safe since I've never done this before it really doesn't take much glue here just spread a little bit in the front and then a little bit on the sides leaving the back portion without glue this gives the panel the ability to expand and contract with the seasons if it needs to and you can easily slide that panel in place if you've never used undermount slides before they require you to attach these clips on the bottom side of the drawer and that's the entire reason for inserting that bottom panel nothing crazy just fire some screws in to hold it in place so with those little Clips put on the bottom of the drawer there's one last thing that I have to do for under mount slides to work before I can install the drawer so if we take a look at the slide itself you can see that on the back it's got this little pin right here now you could absolutely go out and buy one of these fancy jigs that tells you exactly where to drill the hole but I'm a man of the people I want to help you save some money so check this out if you go ahead and just set your drawer slides on the bench grab your drawer box line it up exactly where they need to go and you can see where those little Tabs are going to poke in so then I can just take my drawer give it a bang that's what she said and another bang that's what she said and now I've got the perfect indent of where I need to drill the hole and check this out take the little jig set it on there it's in the exact same spot there you go I just saved you like 30 bucks you don't need this to prevent yourself from drilling through the drawer box I put a little bit of painters tape on the bit to serve as a visual flag but honestly this doesn't need to be super super accurate now you can see the drawer slide can attach with the clip and the pins in the back can slot into those holes but how do you know where to attach them in the nightstand it's easy just slide this combo into the nightstand and Mark where the drawer slides end it's that simple now take the drawer out and you've got the perfect place to attach your slides I like to use one of these self-centering bits to First pre-drill the hole before coming back with some small screws and securing the drawer slide in place now all you have to do is set the drawer on the slides push it in place until the clips latch on and you've got yourself an under mounted drawer box with soft clothes now let's move on to that drawer face I know you probably don't want to watch me Milling more lumber so let's just jump to the good part just like that you've got yourself a simple drawer front that matches and fits perfectly the only problem is that since there is no drawer pull on that I don't have an easy way to be able to open this drawer but because I want things to be a little sleeker a little more modern I am not going to attach a hardware drawer pull but I'm going to do something slightly different over on my router table I chucked up a regular 45 degree chamfer bit and chamfered one edge of the drawer face this will result in a hidden recess that will be a good spot for me to put my fingers in that's what she said no time but she did no time to be able to pull the drawer out I took a few passes to sneak up on the Final Cut to prevent tear out before grabbing my palm router and doing the exact same thing on the underside of the nightstand [Music] thank you [Music] to attach the drawer front I used a little bit well actually a lot a bit of double-sided tape and some playing cards to get the drawer front perfectly spaced out the tape will temporarily hold the front in place while I grab some clamps and then make things much more secure by pre-drilling and countersinking some holes before driving in some screws would you look at that I can easily open the drawer while having a nice clean minimal look so with the drawer and everything in there this thing is looking perfect but how in the world am I going to attach this time to the wall well don't you worry I've got a super easy method and I call it Freedom cleats Freedom cleats are actually easier than they sound all you have to do is rip a 45 degree angle down the center of a scrap piece of wood and then cut it to length to fit inside the nightstand and then I can attach it with some more pocketable screws but I'll show you how this all works a little bit later all right we are nearing the home stretch I went ahead and took all the hardware off that way I can prep for finishing and speaking of finishing I've pretty much completely eliminated film finishes like polyurethane whenever I'm applying them to Furniture because they are a nightmare to apply and repair so instead I just used some hard wax oil today I'm using this furniture butter stuff but I can't comment on if it's good on toast I haven't tried it yet I like to apply the stuff with a white Scotch Brite Pad but I cut them into smaller pieces this butter stuff looks solid when you first open it so give it a good stir to help distribute all the contents until it's about this consistency then you literally just throw a bunch on the wood and spread it around with a white Scotch braid pad the white pad has a small amount of grit to it which helps Drive the oil into the fibers of the wood and also helps smooth things out it's basically the exact same application process as applying other hard wax oil finishes the only real mistake that you can make with this one is not using enough you want the wood to be completely saturated with this stuff and not leave any dry spots sure it does take some time and you work up a little bit of sweat when applying it but at least you don't have to worry about making brush marks now when you apply this stuff to your furniture you do want to make sure to apply it on a lot thicker than you would probably expect that you should then you just let the stuff sit on your furniture for a couple days and then wipe off all of the excess because I got busy it's actually been three days since I set this on here but you can see that a lot of it has been absorbed into the wood so all I have to do now is just take a clean cloth and take all the excess off since this finish doesn't have any accelerator component in it it's going to take a while for it to set up so waiting a few days before removing the excess really isn't an issue real quick if you made it this far in the video leave a comment below that says butter starting your question or coming off with the word butter lets me know that you actually watch the video and the engagement is a massive help growing my channel and getting it out to even more people and if you really want to help support my goal of quitting my day job and taking all of this this Channel full time consider becoming a patreon supporter where you get to watch every video before it's released to the public this video for example my patrons Gotta See almost four weeks before it was live here on YouTube you can also pick up plans or merch for my website too but as always there is absolutely no pressure so let's just get back to the build with the finish all situated let's see how to mount it to the wall just take one part of the freedom plate attach it to the wall make sure it's on a stud and after making sure it's level set the nightstand on top and so you don't have a Keith Johnson oh make sure that you also attach the bottom half to the stud as well obviously it'll be much more secure on a wall that isn't covered in flimsy paneling but you get the point the client requested me not to show this in their house so I'll just stop here and I'll see on the next one

Channel: Spencley Design Co.

Views: 1,269,293

Keywords: eric spencley, spencley design, spencley design co, spencely, woodworking

Id: wyHMTQVNDz4

Length: 39min 12sec (2352 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 15 2022