Make Wide Coves for Box Newel Posts

hi thanks for checking out next level carbon tree or I've been shooting a lot of video on the shop recently while making these custom box newel posts in this video I'll show you how to set up and use a unique milling process for making the coves in these cap pieces and then the tops of the base using a table saw of all things and not a shaper or a molder I'll show you some slick tricks for setting up and making this dedicated cross fence that's used for cutting the coves in all these pieces plus I'll show how to make custom sanding blocks like this one that exactly matches the 5 inch radius of this custom Cove so that I can quickly sand it smooth enough for the stain finish that these posts are going to get and I threw in a random shoptalk dialog that came to mind as I was going through the process so there's a lot of steps to cover for setting up and cutting this Cove and all the pieces so I'll just paraphrase a famous Frenchman who once said I have made this video longer than usual only because I have not had the time to make it shorter and now it's time to get to work [Music] yes it's time for another day in the shop this for us the clamps here is all the pieces that I'm putting together for the coped pieces on the Box Newell's the way I've gone about it is clamped up panels that are extra wide so that I can mill the coves on pieces are a little wider and easier to work with it's pretty true what they say there's no such thing as too many clamps really they like these Irwin ones I got these as an upgrade to these old Pony clamps these were the standard 30 years ago these burly Jorgensen ones are my latest favorites for heavier clamping work they're a little too heavy for some things screw and there's a really good clamping action handles are nice and big and get it good tight clamp on them they'll hang up on this rack over here wish I had a little more wall space I'd have all my clamps on a rack like this I see a lot of videos where somebody has plans for a big old clamp rack on wheels at wheels around the shop and I think that's Fat City having that kind of room wouldn't know how to act if I had placed a parka rolling clamp rack with three times as many clients as I have but then again I don't think I'd be near as efficient as I am being crowded for space makes you think a little different and personally I don't think the work suffers for it the old Pony clamps are little rusty and crusty but I get the job done I've never had a glue joiner panel anything fail because of a lack of clamps sometimes I have to be a little more efficient at the glue up process the way that I organize projects there's always something to be done while one batch of parts is in the clamps I'll upload the Sketchup model I did for designing and planning these posts to the Sketchup component warehouse anybody can download it if you want to look into it a little deeper but I use that to get the proportions and the joinery right for these posts and the next thing I do is take a piece of melamine I think you can see this in the camera and then I do a full scale drawing of the post so they can get the exact dimensions right this is a little more tangible for me than working with the Sketchup model because I can have this out here in the shop take measurements directly off of it and make sure everything in the process is coming together right so I refer back to this for each of these parts and right now these pieces here are the stock that's going to make the base part of the column with these coves and then this upper cap this is six inches long these are ten inches tall and they all have the Cove on them you can also see that in the Sketchup model but the process is a little unusual making these parts because normally on a base trim the pattern goes with the grain if that was the case I just make one long piece put the pattern all the way along the edge and then cut it up into pieces later but that would make the grain wrap around the post like this going around but in this case I want the grain in the post to be running up and down and that put The Cove across the endgrain of each piece on the bottom and then it'll be the opposite for the pieces on the top rather than make these pieces five inches wide and put that cove on the end each one I just glued them all together actually I milled it down from rough to about thirteen sixteenths thick and glued it together I'll run these through the thickness planer to get everything flat I'm not sure where this segment of the video will turn up in the final production but I changed out the knives in the wall dw7 35 planer and they just come out buttery smooth that's unbelievable initially I was going to plane these down to 3/4 of an inch thick and glue them together again so they were four segments wide so I could do the pieces for each cuff all at the same time but in the meantime I decided that it's going to be fine to do the cove when they're just two pieces wide so I'll mill this down to 3/4 inch thick like it is and then cut them into segments and do the Koch process and I imagine you're not watching this video to see me shove a bunch of pieces of wood through a thickness planer so I won't bore you with that part but I will show how I do this to minimize snipe on the pieces I could glue pieces to the ends of the boards like I've showed in another video but in this case I will just run the pieces through and to end so they'll only be a little bit of snipe on the beginning of the first piece and the end of the very last piece and I'll be able to cut that off with the cove so I've got everything stacked up here on top of the planer and I'll just run the pieces through one after the other in that fashion when they're done on one face I'll drop the blade another 64th of an inch or 1/32 of an inch and take them down to 3/4 of an inch I'm running the planer at the slow speed because the panels are so wide and even though I've got brand-new sharp knives in there I don't want to overwork it unnecessarily I think you see in that fast motion part of the video how I make sure the pieces are butted end-to-end as they go through so the only place I get even the slightest bit of snipe is on this very tail of the last piece and that'll get cut off anyways but I don't think you can get a finer finish on a piece of wood from a planer than with this machine with brand new knives in it unbelievably smooth now I flip all the pieces and friend top for bottom and run them through again to take a pass on the other side you can see that I've put these squiggle marks on here and that reminds me which face is done and it also shows me when the whole face has been plain smooth should be overseen the reflection of that light how silky smooth the milled finishes on this stack of boards it's pretty remarkable so if your planer won't perform like that there's a link at the end of this video that shows the care and feeding of that DW 735 planer where I change the knives cleaned it up and do a couple other maintenance items so that you can get this kind of performance out of a machine like that now that these are milled down both sides are silky smooth I'll true up one edge rip the other edge on the table side so that I have parallel edges so here I run each of the wide pieces over the jointer to get a nice square edge and I stack them on the table saw with a jointed edge on the right and then I'll use a table saw to true up the edge on the left that way I know the two edges are perfectly parallel after the glue up process from earlier where I put my earplugs my earplugs just broke how do you fit that into the video I guess to get a new pair out of the earplug box and these are the 3m ones that I really like except I don't wear them under my chin like this guy does finally here we go it's gonna reposition this saw a little better place in the shop and all these are stacked with the jointed edge to the right so I just move them over here and cut them down 10 and 1/8 and this is a situation where a table saw with the riving knife is a whole lot safer when moving the board's past the blade if this board drops onto the blade while it's spinning you get a mule kick to the gut it's no fun so don't overlook those safety measures on your saw in your shop know that I've got all the stock for the cove pieces on these box Newell's Hall plane to the same thickness and cut to the same width I'll shorten them up to do the coving process and I'm gonna leave them as pairs where I can the six inch pieces I'll leave about 14 inches long a middle cove on each end and cut them in half later the same with a 10 inch pieces for the bottom I'll cut them to about 22 inches and then cut them off to their exact 10 inch length later because the cuts that I'm making to shorten these up are going to be a finished cut I'll switch the blade to a crosscut blade so I get a nice smooth cut little or no sanding required in the end because I'm making a long cut across these a relatively long crosscut I'm using my forest blade stabilizer to keep the blade running clean and true I don't want any saw wobble marks on these particular cuts because they will end up getting just a light bit of sanding and then stain and I don't want to have to do extra work for that later because these cuts are so wide I will be using this osborne miter guide which is just one step shy of a dedicated crosscut sled it's a wonderful tool with a great flip stop on it I'll be able to set that up once I've cut all these square ends and done the coving for now I just need to have one clean square cut on each end of these pieces all these pieces are marked out to approximate length because I don't want to mistakenly cut any of the material I have set up for a 10 inch piece and make the mistake of cutting it down to 7 inches for the shorter ones I'll start with a 20 inch pieces I'm cutting these 20 inches are going to be close to 21 inches long I'm going to put a square cut on each end and then decide later which end gets the cold and then like the rest of the pieces all trim the square end to length after the coving stun [Music] and this Osbourne eb-3 is about the best miter gauge that I've found I really like its simplicity and accuracy it allows me to pre-cut all these pieces down with repetitive accuracy into blanks that each have one end set up for putting the Cove on it now that those pieces are all ready to go I will set up the fixture for putting the cove in I'm gonna talk a little bit about versatility here's this catch-up model that I built for designing and planning these box Newell's I've never built a box Newell like this before I probably never will again once this is done but I conjured up the proportions and the curves and things on it using Sketchup to visualize different proportions and dimensions and then settling on a design that I'm happy with and got approved by the design committee and the versatility comes in because I drew a wide cove on the top of the base and the bottom of the top cuffs after settling on the cold feature I looked real closely at the Sketchup model and determined that the radius that I had arbitrarily drawn was about 7 inches and when I started to think about I was going to get that done and the thought that came to mind is making a Cove with a table saw cuz that's a simple process so I reworked the model to show a 5 inch radius which is the radius of the saw blades in my cabinet saw and there was no visible change to the proportions of the dimension so that's what I decided to go with I might have decided to use a raised panel bit in a router with different profiles to make the coal but I guess what I'm trying to say is the versatility is coming up with a design and then kind of figuring out later how that's going to get done the fallback position for all of these is to have a custom cutter made for a wh Hussey molding machine then I can make any pattern or profile or width or depth that I want but only if it's necessary for that level of detail in this case a 10 inch radius using a combing operation on a table saw is going to be fine and I wanted to go through this dialog to expand the designs that you can achieve if for instance I started out thinking well I only have these certain router bits then the range of profiles that I could use on the box Knowles is limited by the router bits I have if I think well I can go by such - router bit okay then I expand my range because I have a wider range of router bits that I'd have access to but the whole point of the exercise and the discussion is to say well I just came up with the design and then working backwards towards the tooling instead of starting with the tooling and working forward to end up with the design I hope that's a worthwhile discussion because I've devoted this part of the video to going through it but on so many projects over the years I found that the thought process of starting with the design and working backwards towards the tooling is better than starting with the tooling and work it forward to the design there you have it with all that said I need to lay out the profile for this curve and I'm just going to do it on a extra piece of the material and I know that I want the coves to be - it's as high on the Newell's and that I want it to be 3/8 of an inch deep at the top so I'm drawing these two lines there's the depth and there's the height and this is a disc I made out of Plexiglas it's exactly ten inches in diameter and I use it for setting the table saw up for doing various Cove projects because it's easier to draw around than a saw blade so I'm just lining up this disc with these two marks and I'll draw that cove in there so I know that you know two inch height and three-eighths inch depth it's going to take that much saw blade to get it done and see how the teeth will roughly match up with that and that's the approach I decided on using for making these parts with that custom Cove in there and I keep using the word custom because with a regular router bit they tend to have a set radius this is quite a bit of reach a raised panel bit would have a deeper sweep to it over less distance and leave kind of a flat spot I didn't want that and it's just a way of stretching the capabilities of your tools and equipment and expanding the possibilities for design and you don't necessarily have to have huge machines to get it done because cutting this Cove is primarily a ripping task I'm going to switch back to the rip blade from this crosscut blade for a little more efficient cutting and hopefully no smoke and my typical rip blade is a thin curved but this is a full-body flat top grind ripping blade because I want a smoother cut on that Cove on alternating top bevel blade might put a more textured cut and more sanding and you know I hate that because I'm switching blade thicknesses I have to change out my think earth latest dirt to the one I've got labeled high eighty because it's for a full one eight inch blade and now I'll set the blade to the height of the depth of the Cove and I want to make sure to teeth line up so that the arc gets cut where it's supposed to that's going to do it and I'll lock it in down below for later because of the design of this particular Cove it's equally important to set the point where the blade is going to exit the wood and enter the table so that the cove ends up two inches tall I'm just gonna mark that on the tabletop for setting up the fixture well basically what this set up is going to require is a fence that goes this way instead of the RIP fence that goes this way I don't know how this whole thing is going to turn out in the video but if you want to see what it looks like for somebody with 40 years experience to wing it this is what it looks like I've never done this before I know it's gonna work and so what I decided to do was to take a couple strips of maple I've used these on various jigs and fixtures before the triangle trellis video etc so I've got those maple sticks that fit snugly in the miter slots because it's important that this cross fence is square and sturdy and then I have a scrap piece of 3/4 inch plywood and I verified that the corners dead square and I need to attach the board to the sticks because I'm kind of lazy I'm gonna do it like this and you get to see yet another use for instant CA glue in the shop so that's where those ribs are approximately going to land right it's two lines so I'm taking the activator which just now ran out just so happens I have a brand new can of this three ounce size stick fast at spray activator which is awesome and I'm just spraying these two pencil marks and the piece is going to go to about here and there now I'll take the gorilla CA glue and put some dabs on those strips strategically placed so that they'll end up where the activator is on that board now take the activated board put it on the marks up against the fence and drop it down on those strips so those chips are now being glued to the bottom of this piece of plywood and miraculously they're all lined up and trued up exactly where I want them and where they need to be a couple countersunk holes in here from previous jigs they're gonna work and then I need one new one here and I drill those deep enough so that the screw heads are below flush I got these little number seven by three quarter-inch countersunk Phillips screws that hold like crazy easy to use they'll hold those guide sticks to the board have you ever tried to measure and mark with pencils and screw stuff down and all that that's a lot of messing around and this just works perfectly with the board running parallel to the fence so I know that this is square to the world won't be a defense anymore and before I put a pencil mark on the table for the end of the board when the cove cuts made so I'll just push this through so that I can stop at that mark [Music] now that cross fence can just be clamped in place making sure that the edge of it is exactly on that pencil mark so if they forgot one step it'll make this thing a little bit more wonderful and in this kind of take this water paste wax same one I used for polishing cast iron tabletops and waxing the platen on that the wall thickness planer recently no I can clamp this into place and here's a little insight into winging it that goes on off-camera generally got everything set up here according to plan want to go to move these pieces through like I'm going to need to do for the cove process the piece is hitting the end of these sticks so I'm going to rework the whole process take the sticks off move them back so that they don't interfere with the sliding piece in the final setup with the guide sticks reposition so they don't stick past the end of this platform I can just slide this back into place and get rid of the fence again and with those runners out of the way the piece will slide across here just it like it needs to for making the cove line up that mark once again clamp this down so that all the pieces come out consistent if I'm giving this a coat of wax along with that edge again just to make sure everything is slicked up so that these pieces feed through here nice and smooth the smoother the feed rate the more consistent that texture is going to come out when it's all done and will minimize the amount of sanding necessary it's important to think through any specialized setups like this the safety features built into tools are for their normal operation ripping on a table saw cutting with a miter fence and that sort of thing I'm doing a process here where when the piece comes off the blade I won't I don't want and of course the camera battery died right in the middle of that discussion so what I'm saying is that as these pieces are fed through the blades going to come out this side of the workpiece I don't want my fingers there in that sort of situation if you need to add an additional safety block a cover block red arrows or something so that you can work safely basically it's up to the user to design in their own safety features into a hybrid setup like this so think through how the process is going to go and add any features that are necessary and you got that little entertainment because I didn't shut the sound off on my phone when I hit the record button I'm gonna do an initial test of this whole setup with a scrap piece that's not part of this project I'm doing this test run I'm just going to lower the blade initially I was going to move this fence forward and then advance it back as the cut progressed but I decided I'd rather just lower the blade and then raise it up progressively until I'm at the height scribed on this pattern block part of what I do is pay attention to the angle of this crank handle I'll put a mark on the face of the cabinet to remember that when I'm getting back to this position and that's going to end up that the blade will end up back at the height that I set it to previously so let's give this thing a whirl I'm using Smurfs gloves hold onto stuff and I'll lower the blade till it's barely sticking out of the table so the first pass is really light [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] after those passes can see where that Cove is right where it needs to be pencil mark showing and this is a very smooth face that's not going to take much sanding at all to polish up that coal so it's ready for stain so now that I've proven the concept here it'll be a matter of running all those Cove pieces through at each blade setting run them all through raise the blade run them all through raise the blade etc until I get them all to this point want to prove a point here safety block to this fixture so that the piece can pass through and I won't be able to accidentally leave my hand where I don't want it so I just added a couple eatment shims took this scrap of plywood just gonna extend it out here far enough so that my fingers hit that everything's okay cause they don't go underneath that's easy to remember in the heat of battle running a couple screws in so they don't hit the blade so now as I'm feeding my pieces through my hand might be in the wrong spot if something slips off it'll hit the block and not go into the blade I've gone through and marked all the pieces so that I'm putting the cove on the best looking side and on the top best looking edge for the best look on the final box Newell's there again I don't want to think of it while I'm going through the process it gets kind of monotonous and it's easy to forget which which is what and where so I've thought it all through ahead of time I've lowered the blade and now I'm ready to start milling the pieces for all the glamour of woodworking this part kind of demonstrates the tedium that's also part and parcel with the occupation I'm leaving that little blooper in the video and see I had the feed rate a little too fast the saw caught the wood and it pushed it out which is fine I don't want a blade sucking worth in if it pushes it out in a controlled manner I can deal with it but what I learned from that little very minor blooper is I don't want to force the feed rate on these pieces other than that it's a pretty routine process for doing these parts I'm doing all the initial and intermediate passes as aggressively as I can just so I don't have to do everything so many times but the final pass I'll take just a whisker off a 64th of an inch or less so that the finished surface is as close to finished sanding as can be as I get ready to put the final pass on the final piece there's a couple things I figured out while using this fixture one is I slipped another piece of this miter gauge slot material in here this piece is low enough that it doesn't catch but that prevents the shavings from piling up in there and keeping the piece from sliding and the final pass is really light and I'm running it twice to get the smoothest finish on there which minimizes sanding [Music] this process does create some unique looking shavings that's for sure in this close-up you can see how smooth this surface is there's just barely score marks in that surface those will stand out easily but the whole stack of pieces is done to the same step where all these coves are consistent and on the correct ends of all the pieces and it matches the exact pencil mark that I put on the pattern in the beginning and I usually mentioned volume on a task like this if I only had to do a couple of these coves I probably do it had gone about it a little different not made that set up for the table saw if I had to do a lot more like hundreds I would have some sort of a custom cutter made one way or the other because the efficiency of the sanding process is going to max out at about this quantity of pieces and because I don't particularly care for sanding I'm going to make this part as easy as I can on myself by making a custom sanding block for these for making this custom sanding block I'm just going to clamp one of the pieces in the vise here this is one that's been cut on the saw and that's it next thing I'm gonna do is take a block of wood and a little scrap of plywood and screw those together and we'll stay together taking some of this press and seal cellophane just going to wrap it on this block of wood nice and snug and tight all the way around it says press and seal so I'm doing a little extra on the press part right there put that back in the vise then take a blob of bondo on a mixing board that should be enough I don't want this to take a long time so I'm going to heat it up pretty good normally about a one-inch ribbon of the activator is enough I got more than that here for some reason that activator and that tube is all runny makes it annoying to work with but it still gets the job done the more activator the faster this stuff sets up if it's hot humid and lots of activator this stuff will start to set up before you're done mixing right here right now in the shop it's warm but not hot and it's dry not humid once I've got the glob all mixed up I'm just gonna layer it on here might as well use it all beginning as I mixed it up kind of want a full coat on there that could easily say that's twice as much as what's necessary and I'll pry them up the bottom of this little paddle and then squish this little guy down in but like so clean up some of the who's it around the edges give it a little time to set up this is starting to stiffen already anyways want to make sure there's good firm pressure down on to that press and seal film stiffening up nice I'll shut this off while that sets up the rest of the way well that stuff is getting rubbery it's firm enough to take off of here and see what I got the contour of the filler matches that while the stuff is still pliable I'll just shave the edges then the press and seal comes right off the piece and the contour of this sanding block now matches that 10 inch radius perfectly just like that give us a little bit of time to set up so it's hard I don't want to Nick it or gouge it at this stage as soon as that's done we'll be ready to sand to finish up the block with a finger grip just clamping a scrap piece of wood onto the handle and doing some little detents into there so I could grip this better for sanding know that the bondo on this little sanding block is stiffened up and ready to tackle the drudgery of sanding this Cove on all these pieces thankfully a finish left from the saw blade is nice and smooth I'm using fresh hundred grit discs they're nice and sharp I can just wrap them up on the sanding block and knock those saw scratches right out of there because this is a smooth radius I can sand in this direction rather than just straight across and by going one way in the other in a kind of crosshatch pattern the cutting really goes quick I'm going to start with a hundred and then give it 150 and that's just not too bad and even sanding the double width pieces will be pretty straightforward with this process use the 80-grit until the saw marks are out of there and switch to the 150 and because this is end grain and I have to sand across it I've got to go finer with the sandpaper the rest of this when I'm standing with a regular sand block I can just go with 150 with the grain and that'll be a nice texture for putting the stain on it the final thing I'll mention about this is by using this process in this method I'm able to keep this transition line nice and crisp same with this corner I don't want to dumb this crisp line down because it's going to be important that that stays crisp in the final product if this gets muted down it'll lose the effect this graceful little cove in here this is a fun project I really like the way this Cove has come out it's a pretty unique millwork operation you don't see it everywhere even though anybody with a table saw basically has the ability to get this done it doesn't take a shape or a fancy molding cutter to get that done no I've gotten to this stage with these parts and shown the process of setting up and cutting this Cove all the way through to sanding it I'm going to wrap up this video and produce it but I'll follow up with additional videos while I finish building out these box Newell's the next video will show cutting all these blanks down at 45s and wrapping them around to create the base and the collar the newel post another video I'll do is to create the domed top pieces for the Newell caps that'll be a separate process and then I think it'll be an extra treat to show making the actual handrail section with this thumbnail profile and I'll do that on a Williams and Hussey molder and if you have never seen one of those machines in operation I think you'll be impressed I hope you like what you saw and you'll consider subscribing if you haven't already I really appreciate the encouraging comments you leave about the content that you're finding on next level carpentry so anything you can do to spread the word around and drive traffic to the channel with a thumbs up or a comment or a subscription share this stuff with your friends I'd appreciate it because that channel growth is what allows me to devote more time to producing videos and content which is kind of the whole idea behind the channel I'm a decent woodworker but I'm a lousy promoter so it's awkward and clumsy to say but viewers who appreciate the content on this channel and are interested in supporting the effort here check out the next level carpentry Amazon influencers page all the tools and supplies I use here in the shop are listed and if you see something on there you want you're gonna buy it from Amazon anyways use one of the links on this channel and then Amazon pays a small advertising fee that helps justify the time that I put into this endeavor so I really appreciate it so from dusty me to all of you thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Next Level Carpentry

Views: 38,071

Rating: 4.9664803 out of 5

Keywords: millwork, carpentry, cove, scoop, router, shaper, moulder, molder, tablesaw, table, saw, shop, advanced, radius, diameter, circumference, jorgensen, irwin, toolsofthetrade.net, protradecraft, proremodeler, matt jackson, the timber tailor, fence, gorilla glue, stik fast, stickfast, activator, talk, master, carpenter

Id: pMDqnRDJDuw

Length: 37min 56sec (2276 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 01 2018