Make Shelves Fit Perfectly with Simple Stopped Dado Jig!

hey thanks for clicking on the thumbnail for this video and for checking out next level carpentry where I'll show you how to make exceptionally strong storage shelves with a simple but very accurate fixture for routing stopped they don't throw once you see how easy this really is you'll be making better shelf connections faster and with the professional fit and finish you're seeing in this panning shot of the completed shelf I build in this video so let's get to it so you can watch and learn this shelf project starts out like many others where I use the assistance of my grow tangent wrap out feed roller stands to break a full sheet of three-quarter inch AC plywood first down into manageable pieces and then into the finished sizes needed for this particular Shelf while the table saw and roller stands are set up I rip a piece of scrap 5 8 inch thick melamine-faced particle board about five feet long it's two strips about four inches wide that I'll use for the stops dado routing jig to this project next I chop these two ribs about in half and then cut four pieces to equal but arbitrary length a little over two feet long it'll turn into a simple but very accurate NATO routing fixture in a few minutes once the side pieces are cut to their exact final size I add layout marks for the three-quarter inch thick top and bottom shelves and notes for orientation that serve as a guide during the build and finish up the layout by adding marks for three quarter inch shelves with spacing that's specific to this particular cabinet I start at the bottom with a 16 inch shell spacing add another space at 10 inches and then add marks for an upper shelf that's 10 inches down from the top and this specific layout leaves an arbitrary shorter shelf height near the top of the cabinet for storage of things that are equally arbitrary once all the predetermined shelf location marks are made I Square those marks across both side panels for the cabinet for reference when I route the stop-dadles for these shelves most of what you've seen in the video so far is particular to the specific cabinet I'm building this is just a storage shelf for a mechanical room but now I'm going to get to the Crux of the video which is what I promised you in the thumbnail a quick and simple jig for routing stopped dadles on a shelf like this and I hope that it's obvious you can extrapolate the process you're about to see to any shelf anywhere for any cabinet so I've got these melamine pieces set up here so I'll bring the camera in close so you can see these simple but key steps for assembling The Jig the first thing to keep in mind is that you want the space between these two pieces to be at least as wide or preferably wider than the widest piece that you'll use the fixture for in this case my widest piece is 15 and a half inches but I'm going to make the space about 19 and a half inches for a clean looking jig so make sure you go through dimensions for your project to make sure the fixture is big enough for the work you need it to do as you can see I've got this piece of material up against my rip fence which is locked in place and then I just cut two sticks to exactly the space between these two blocks which as I said is 19 and a half inches and that'll just help with this setup process by keeping these two pieces parallel as I build the fixture also I put layout marks on these two pieces that will roughly Center the fixture on the length of these two blocks and that's helpful but not essential in this first step for assembling The Jig I use starbond accelerator and medium flexible CA glue along with the framing square to attach one of the pieces of melamine particle board to another piece at exactly 90 degrees I spray accelerator on one piece add a couple strips of that medium thick flexible CA to the other piece and then using the framing square for alignment quickly stick the piece firmly and accurately in place and this step is just as quick and simple as that with strong Starbound CA glue holding that piece firmly in place I use a Snappy bit for a pilot hole and countersink and then drive a couple one inch long Square Drive screws into the connection these screws aren't necessary for strength during normal use but they're there to back up the starbine glue in case the jig gets dropped or abused while in use or storage and that is one fast strong connection with those first two pieces firmly and accurately attached together I'm going to add a second piece here I've added a clamp to kind of hold this whole thing in place because I'm working alone by myself here and with the camera running this could turn into a fracas but I've got another piece that's the same width same thickness as the first one and like the first one and all the other pieces it's got a very clean straight accurate Edge cut on there and I want to attach this to that as well and the key thing at this stage is to use a piece of scrap material from the actual shelves that you're cutting these dadles for this is just an off cut from one of those side pieces so it's the exact thickness I want to end up with and I'm just going to be able to drop it down in between these two pieces like so and then you can see how this second piece is going to fit up next to that one there's a little bit of a bow in this piece and I can just push that out with a little bit of pressure when it comes time to glue this one in place so here we go second verse same as the first accelerator on one piece medium thick flexible CA glue on the other piece position the Shelf scrap and glue the piece in place and the takeaway from this sequin is how the CA glue speeds up the process by holding the piece in perfect position while I pilot and drive screws for backup strength and that's the kind of snug fit you want between the particle board pieces of this fixture because I want a nice symmetrical fixture when this is all said and done I've added a layout mark on this second piece that lines up with the end of the first piece and this guide piece here so that when I glue it in place everything is nice clean and symmetrical but the most important part about this fixture is the space between these two pieces and the fact that they're perpendicular to at least one of these edges so I'm adding these spacer blocks now so that this side of the fixture is perfectly parallel to that side and when I line up this Mark with that edge everything will come out symmetrical like that and because there's a little bit of a bow in my scrap piece you can see it here I add a squeeze clamp to pinch things together so that the sides of the space between the two guide rails is parallel and correct for the thickness of the Shelf material I'm working with and now with everything set up just so you can see that if I align this pencil Mark with this Edge when it's glued in place everything will be just wonderful so I proceed with the CA glue steps to lock the pieces together right where they need to be except this time I put the accelerator on the upper pieces and the CA glue itself on the bottom piece because it just makes the whole thing easier and this also demonstrates the beauty of Starbound CA glue because the CA and accelerator can be left on the surface for minutes if necessary while fitting and aligning Parts but still react almost instantly with a 10 second bonding time once they come into contact with each other so I've got all the time I need to properly position Parts before pressing them together for 10 seconds while the glue and accelerator react and set so all I need to do to finish the fixture is to Pilot countersink and dry four screws to hold everything securely together for Peace of Mind as I handle and use this fixture and even though it takes a bit of time in the video to demonstrate the setup and building of this fixture if I do this without the camera rolling that takes you know less than five minutes to make a fixture that's specifically sized for a specific material making it my go-to way for getting this done rather than spending the time creating a fixture that's adjustable for different material it's much simpler just to get another piece of scrap and build another fixture of the right width and the right length for the project I'm working on and then send the scrap on its way to the scrap bin where I interrupted it to build the fixture in the first place but now that the fixture is made I'm going to put it to use and I hope you come away with an appreciation of how versatile this simple jig is and in case it hasn't registered the core of the beauty of this fixture is the fact that it works with a simple flush trim router bit many others of jigs like this and there's dozens of them out there on YouTube they operate with uh by using the router base itself to guide for the width of the dado so that takes a lot of offsetting a lot of different things some of them use a guide bushing in the router and that adds its own measures of complication because of concentricity between the guide bushing and the bit itself but this one is as direct as can be with a guide bearing running through this slot the slots to write with the guide bushing transfers the width of the slot to the work piece which eliminates a whole host of variables with those other methods I just described in addition to that okay the fixture works on different width material I'm going to be routing one of these pieces it's 15 and a half inches wide this one is 12 inches wide and as The Jig Is set up it'll route a clean dado right across that at 90 degrees for the piece there's plenty of videos out there that show how to set up a dado blade or a router table to do this but then you're forced to move the work piece across the bit and the longer and the bigger the work pieces the more potential for mistakes errors and oops as there are in that scenario but with this fixture as you'll see as you can see already a fixture attaches to the work piece and the router itself moves across the work piece instead of moving the work piece across the router it's a big difference and one that you might not appreciate until after you see this work and especially if you've used some of those other methods in the past as you already know this fixture is not adjustable but it's so quick and simple to make in my humble opinion that it's not worth the time or effort to make another fixture where you can vary the width of the slot even if the width of the slot matches the material you're working with rather than the router base or a guide bushing so with all that for a sales pitch I can go about showing you how to use this and I think I already mentioned that this can be used for daydoing all the way across a piece in one side and out the other but one more attribute of this is that it's real simple to make stopped dados with it and because that's what I need to do for this particular project that's what I'm going to show you how to do next and it starts off with a little piece of this scrap material Ariel cut to the exact width of that slot and I'll set up the jig to Route the 12 inch piece first and you can see here I made a line at one inch I'm going to stop the dado there and I'll just slide the fixture over to that Mark which is right here between the slats and then I take that little scrap piece and just drop it in here and I line up the end of the scrap on that Mark right there and you can see I've got a couple holes here as I was experimenting with this for the video and I'm just taking a Snappy countersink bit and drilling a hole slightly off to the side I drilled one there but I'll drill another one here that's a little too far away I'll just drill this closer I want the hole to be in this piece not halfway in between but close enough to the edge so I'll drill another one over here [Applause] something like that and then I'm just going to use a number eight by three quarter inch flat head screw and plunk it right down in there and that holds that piece firmly in place but the router will be able to slide over this if it needs to I'm going to jump in here with a little insight into the awkwardness of being a YouTube content producer as I'm doing this little stop block I realize that that countersink screw a flathead screw is spreading the fixture apart so that now that plywood fits loose in that slot because that screw made it expand and those little screw head holes are also going to cause an interruption on the Inside Edge of the fixture that could cause the bearing to chatter so I've got to rewind because in an embarrassing moment of delayed intelligence I figured out there's a much quicker better way to do this so I'll just rewind and show you that and I'll start out by clamping this board in place so that the distance from the back edge of the Shelf to the front edge of the stop dado is correct and then I'll quickly remove the little stop block I started out with into the dumpster you go and I'll replace it with this piece this is a half inch thick where this is 5 8 but as long as this is flush with this or less it's good now I can just put the end of this smaller piece that fits snugly in the slot like that and then I can use that Snappy bit to drill and pile it back here and that is a perfect fit that does everything I needed to do and nothing that I don't need it to do so that this slot is now a nice snug fit once again the stop block is as positive as I can get exactly at the Mark that's an inch from the front edge of this 12 inch piece and another beautiful thing about this fixture for this jig I keep using the terms interchangeably is that you could use pretty much any router to do the actual routing typically if I was doing a lot of this I would probably use my D handled router but I want to just show that even a small Palm router is effective so that's what I'm going to use on this project and I'm using a 5 8 inch diameter half inch cut length bit with a top bearing this particular bit happens to be a Freud but the brand of the bit doesn't matter because the most important thing is that the diameter of the bit is equal to or less than the width of the slot and that the guide bearing is on the top of the cutter Not underneath it because obviously the guide bearing has to follow the template while the cutter cuts the work piece below setting the depth of cut for that router bit is pretty simple and the total distance from the base of the router to the end of the cutter equals the thickness of the fixture plus the depth of cut which in this case is an eighth of an inch so I've marked out that eighth of an inch depth of cut right here and I just set the router until the base of the bit matches that Mark and that'll leave a depth of cut of exactly an eighth of an inch just like I want it and to demonstrate those properties of this fixture I'll just fire up the router and make the stop dado by going down one side of the Gap and the fixture and back on the other side I'm able to start the router on the outside of the fixture and move it in I don't have to plunge down through the slot or anything which is part of the quick and simple feature of The Jig [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] and I don't think it could get much more quick and simple than that and that ladies and gentlemen is just about as quick fast and accurate as you can get for plowing a stopped dado in a piece of sheet goods and that's a fit all by any day of the week and I quickly pay off the time invested building this fixture because it takes just minutes to reset the fixture and plow two more stopped dados in the side piece of this storage shelving unit I take an extra measure for the dados on the very top and bottom of this shelf unit side which actually turns out to be a rabbit when it's done by just placing a piece of scrap material underneath the fixture and then lining up the fixture with the mark and the end of the panel making sure everything is lined up accurately before making the cut [Music] [Applause] tell us about that and naturally once I'm finished with the dados and rabbits on the 12 inch side I can reset the jig or fixture to do the same thing only just a little bit different on the 15 and a half inch side and I start by resetting the version 2.0 stopped dado stop by removing the screw repositioning the stop and then piloting and screwing it back in place for the new desired dado length setting and that works so quick and Slick it was worth the embarrassment of changing the design with a few styles of viewers looking over my shoulder at the time and because these slots are the same width and depth as before the only necessary adjustment was the length so I could proceed to Route these stopped dados in exactly the same manner as the other and if you ask me that is pretty tough to be [Music] [Music] and with that I've got a matching pair of sides for a simple storage cabinet and the fact that these are different widths is because the location of this is kind of a unique installation with a non-standard back to the cabinet otherwise this would look a little different but that's two things one is it highlights the value of taking the time to dado these sides for shelves because it makes them extra strong with little extra work but it also highlights kind of the absurdity of this because this just goes into mechanical storage room it's for storing cans of paint but the project presented itself for being able to Showcase this fixture and the method and how it works and because it's just a cabinet for a mechanical room anybody else in the world would have just made through dados here and fit the shelves flush with the front but I believe how you do anything is how you do everything so I took a couple extra steps for this particular storage cabinet that could easily be extrapolated into a finished bookcase if this was solid wood and not just AC Plywood And that has to do with fitting the shelves to the sides and the fact that I used stop dados because it just gives it a more refined look even if it's just for an old mechanical room to fit shelves in these stopped dados I have to start out with shelves that are exactly the right length for the finished width of the bookcase so I've clamped the two pieces down here dadoed sides out to measure the total shelf length and to quickly figure that length I take the total width of the cabinet at 31 inches and subtract the combined width of the two cabinet sides for a total shelf length of 29 and three quarter inches with a stack of shelves accurately cut to identical length the next step is to put a small notch in the front edge of the Shelf at each end so that the Shelf fits snugly into the stopped Dado Dimensions change from job to job but for this particular shelf design I want the back of the Shelf to be even with the back edge of the 15 and a half inch shelf side and that leaves the front 3 8 of an inch shy for a little offset in the design so the notch in the Shelf needs to come back to this point which is about 7 8 of an inch and ultimately the notch will be an eighth of an inch deep and the notch will look just like that on the front edge of both ends of each shelf so I set the height of the blade on my table saw to an eighth of an inch and then set the fence so it measures 7 8 of an inch from the fence to The Far Side of the blade and with those settings made I stack all five shelves on end with the front edge towards the fence clamp them together and again cut that little Notch into the end of each Shelf at the front end pretend clean consistent notches with just two passes over the saw blade next I reverse the settings and set the height of the saw blade to 7 8 of an inches and the distance from the fence to The Far Side of the blade at 1 8 inch so that finishing all 10 notches is just as easy as starting them naturally it takes well-tuned equipment with sharp blades and an attention to detail to get this kind of results when gang cutting Parts but the time spent invested in dialing in a table saw for exactly this reason is time well spent because with a stopped dadle that's the exact width of the thickness of the shelf and a carefully cut knots in the front of the Shelf the end result is an amazing fit between the two pieces for a refined look even on what you might consider as a rough storage Shelf and a fit like that is what you can expect on a project like this using the process you just learned for plowing stop dados with a simple router fixture or simple router jig whichever way you want to say it this kind of joinery is remarkably strong for how simple it is but because this cabinet design doesn't have a back in it I'm going to put some screws from the sides into the shelves to kind of stabilize it but if the cabinet got a back and the sides were the same depth this would be plenty strong if this was just glued and clamped together because the nature of the support for each Shelf and even that shallow dado is remarkably strong and if your finished design doesn't permit exposed Fasteners and by way of screws glue and clamps would do a great job of making a small shelf like this plenty sturdy for all practical purposes but I'm going to lay this out for screws so you can see what that looks like for a utilitarian shelf like this one another benefit of using dados for joinery is that screw layout is quick simple and accurate because I already know the horizontal position of the screws I just Mark two inches from the back two inches from the front and one mark in between for three screws in each of the shelves in the wide side and I'll just go two from the back and two from the front for two screws in the narrow side once I've marked all the screw locations I use the pilot bit of a Snappy bit to drill through the marks by eyeballing the center of the Shelf in the dado and this sequence transfers those layout marks from the inside of the Shelf where they're easy to lay out to the outside where the screws will actually be driven once I'm done drilling all those holes to transfer the layout marks from the inside of the Shelf sides to the outside I'm ready to start the assembly process by Drilling and countersinking pilot holes from the outside and screwing it together but before I do that I want to demonstrate the strength of this joinery method with no glue and no screws and I'll demonstrate that with this quick setup where I clamp one side of the shelf unit to the rail on my table saw to hold it vertical and then dry fit a shelf into the stopped dadle slots in both sides of the shelf and you can see the accuracy of those slots because this is just a dry friction fit of the parts because they slip together easily and hold snugly with nothing more than the friction between the two pieces and as you can see the result is that the stop dados easily support my weight even before Fasteners are glued are involved but of course you can see the necessity for glue and or screws because the slightest twitch of the sides this engages the shell from the dado and the connection fails but once stress testing is complete I can position a shell pilot and countersink the hole and drive inches three-quarter Square Drive screws to maintain the strength of the connection during real world use of the Shelf before anyone gives me grief about the inferior nature of one side of this plywood keep in mind that this is a humble shelf for a lowly utility room and not a showpiece for the living room so the fact that I used AC plywood instead of CDX already takes the fit finish and quality of your shelf to a higher level than the project requires and once all the intermediate shells are fit and screwed into place I can slip the top and bottom shelves into place and drive screws to hold them in place as well foreign of all five shells between the sides for the Shelf I took it out to the job site and did some field modifications so that it fits into the framing and around wiring on site where this shelf is going to live when it's all done and you can see a picture of it here it's a tight little mechanical room where the Shelf gets installed between studs and around wiring in the corner of the room which is really going to help organize that little space efficiently and with those modifications made I brought the cabinet back here to the shop so I can disassemble it to work over the pieces a little bit to take the overall fit and finish of the cabinet to the next level and it takes only a few minutes to zip out all those screws to disassemble the shelf unit for routing and sanding that improve the fit and finish of this piece to begin the fit and finish campaign I switched from the pattern bit used for plowing the dados to an eighth inch round over bit that I used to round off all the sharp exposed corners on the sides of the shelf unit and the front edges of the shelves themselves and the way I'm showing off this little palm router in the video you might think that Bosch would want to sponsor the video but I'm just a small fish in a big pond and I don't think they really care but if you see the usefulness of this router or any of the other tools and supplies used in this video I hope you'll follow links in the video's description below to sources that Amazon Acme Tools and elsewhere where those various sources pay small ad fees to the channel that help support video production which I always appreciate as it is it takes just a few minutes to put that eighth inch round over profile on all the exposed corners of this plywood that really takes the overall fit finish and quality of the project to a next level in my humble opinion once I'm done with the eighth inch round over on all those edges I use a jumbo oops eraser to remove extraneous pencil Marks here and there on the plywood faces of these shelves and then use one of the great five inch diameter ceramic abrasive discs that I'm beta testing for starbond on a Bosch 5-inch random orbital sander to smooth the surface of these rather rough AC plywood panels and clean up any remaining pencil marks or smudges from the surface of the plywood before they get a sealer coat of pre-catalyzed black and I chose 120 grit ceramic grit disc for this project which has a super fast cut for smoothing out this rough plywood and it's plenty fine for the lacquer finish I'll apply especially considering the utilitarian nature and installation of this particular shell and as you can see the ceramic abrasive on these discs makes quick work of sanding the surface smooth and because I dislike sanding as much as I do that's a good thing which is what I'll tell Starbomb in my beta test review comments two coats of spray applied pre-catalyzed lacquer is my go-to finish for projects like this because the cost is reasonable it dries quickly it stands easily between coats and leaves a durable medium rubbed effect Sheen behind to give this shelf a professional finish with a pleasing look that's easy to clean and will last indefinitely in its indoor installation and with that kind of performance I'm able to start the finish and finish the finish in just a matter of hours so that after a final buffing with the world's finest sandpaper I can quickly reassemble the shelf so it's ready for delivery and final installation and because all the pieces of the shelf unit have been pre-fit and pre-assembled it goes back together quickly and painlessly it's almost like it was planned that way benefits of the stopped potatoes and rabbits in the design of this storage shelf are pretty obvious in the speed and lack of effort that it takes to put all the pieces back together so that it takes just a few minutes to put the finishing touches on the assembly so that I can get this loaded in the truck and install it in the mechanical room where to live forever and always and I think you'll agree that the final fit and finish you get by using stopped potatoes and a couple of pro tips for building shelves is well worth the extra effort for making the routing fixture considering the results you get and especially if you compare it to assembly using just a butt joint screws and a bit of glue all right so I'll stop on my way out the door to ask you if you like the kind of content in this video that you'd consider subscribing to Next Level carpentry if you haven't already hit the Thumbs Up Button if you like the video and some of the tips for making those stopped potatoes and the fixture for routing them and I'll wrap this up by saying as always and until next time thanks for watching foreign so you're one of those folks that sticks around to the end of the end of the end are you well this should make an interesting end of the end uh the audio is going to be terrible because I can't mic up for this installation uh the room that you can see here this little mechanical room is more like a bad prison cell it's four and a half feet wide six and a half feet long and barely seven feet tall and I've got to install that shelf right here in this corner and it's a it's a tight fit but here goes to do that I need to remove this little shelf here I made this for holding modem Etc that has to come out I also took the hinges off the door back here just so the Shelf can get shoehorned in here so let's see how this goes [Music] oh and I did pre-fit the shelf so let's hope things still work out [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] all right there's a couple stubborn wires down there in the bottom that cause problems but you put one screw up here in the corner to hold this end up in place and the extra notching in the shells is for a bundle of wires back here and a stud in the middle and the reason that the depths of the cabinets were is different is because this 12-inch side hits a stud 15 and a half inside goes all the way back to sheetrock on the other side of the wall foreign [Music] that's pretty much what it takes to get this thing in place I've got to get another screw in this other side which I did not do before but I can do it now and pre-mark these holes and I am going to call that good that's a shelf with the stopped dados nice coat of lacquer even though it's installed in this humble room and the whole purpose is to help store things like a bunch of paint cans Etc from the project and things that just need to be stored in this mechanical room but now I can put this little shelf back up and I'll end up adding a few more screws to this shelf unit just to make sure I can sleep at night knowing that it'll never crash down no matter how much paint gets loaded on there and now I'll be able to load this up with everything that's on the floor here and put the door back on and wrap up this video for good so thanks for hanging out to the end of the end of the end and checking out this awkward installation and now feel free to click off that button because this really is the end

Channel: Next Level Carpentry

Views: 225,547

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Id: 9iD-ScWJEpE

Length: 34min 13sec (2053 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 26 2023