Making a French Cleat | Paul Sellers

I have been asked many times about something called a split cleat or a French cleat oui oui I grew up with it being called a split cleat and then people in the US started referring to the same thing as a French cleat so obviously something derived from somewhere but basically it's a piece of wood like this that's been split in a certain way and it's for hanging things like this wall shelf and that some of you have asked how you can hang the bookshelves to the wall like this so we're going to take this cleat here and we're going to split it a certain way and I'll show you the simplest way to do that if you take a piece of wood this is an inch and a half by 3/4 and this could be 10 feet long this is just long enough to fit right in between the two sides here and generally that's what we do and then it won't slide off split this distance this is an inch and a half so that's 38 millimeters I think so we would come here about half an inch like this so a third of the width and pull that line here flip it like this edge four edge and do the same on this one half an inch again from here like that and then if you take this line and pull this one out pull this one out and then join these two lines together like that and now we're going to rip down this with a handsaw like this stop when you get to the blue bit that's device and you don't want to go into the vice last little bit if you've got straight grain pine just pull it apart like that and you've got the two halves take a chisel right one just chisel loose fibers level with the main length of your soccer and then we're going to plane up these two surfaces technically we don't need to technically we could just leave them as they are because they're never going to be seen just go until you get a clean surface and a continuous saving I don't need a sharp edge on here so I'm going to just take a couple of shavings off there and see what we end up with nice clean angled cut same on this one now on one of these pieces it doesn't really matter which one I'm going to go with this thinner one I did my saw kerf on one side of the line so I ended up with one being slightly wider than the other so writing from this end it doesn't really matter where I'm coming in about an inch and a quarter inch and a quarter here and then about three quarters it doesn't matter here and the same here like that and then in from this edge here again it doesn't matter quarter of an inch so this is three quarters of an inch wide quarter one inch from that back face just to give you a guideline take you chisel right on that line till until you get down to this corner here nice and crisp then on this one the same nice and simple so you can see now what we've got on each side there now just so you can see I'm going to do this towards the camera normally I would turn it around for my benefit take a smaller chisel don't go to your line just go down one side down to that corner there that internal corner like this then go down this one which is all this one down just Uihlein none of this is really critical it's just good to set yourself a standard of accuracy and work to your lines but this is actually isn't going to be seen once it's completed I'm going to put this on the bench top and I'm going to set my chisel just chisel down this face into the corner and that's it can you see that so that's one done so the same on this one if you need to use a chisel hammer go ahead I just stayed away from my line and now I'm right on my line just get nice crisp internal corner and pare down this face here just to level it out really that's all my chiseling done put this in the vise and then I'm going to use a brace and a 3/16 bit that goes with the size of screws that I'm using and you just have to pick the size of screw according to your material right in the middle of this recess here drill a hole and you want to count to think that maybe well you won't need to countersink this part but you will need a a countersink in a minute chisel just chisel off these exit fibers here and when we drill the hole there you've got to get this right this next bit here's my shelf now I haven't glued myself up yet because I'm not ready to because I thought that putting the cleat on is more important so you have to think through this bit now because this is going to hang on the cleat this way so this is going to the wall this is going to go this way so this now has to be screwed in between here so I'm going to pop my top off because I left this so I would have easy access to it this goes here on here so we're going to screw that on countersink and that may as well countersink this just for peace of mind really as I said this pine would compress just fine I've got a square all here so I'm going to flush this I want actually going to leave this slightly this is flush now I'm going to move move it so I have a very slight step away from that back edge just less than half a millimeter that will make the cleat draw tight to the wall when I drop this on make your first mark make your second hole point then this is a square or so if I do a full rotation this creates a conical hole that will receive the screw the same and the threads of the wall of the screw will bite into the wall very nicely so I'm going to put a bead of glue along here for added security probably wouldn't need it on the shelf this size but on a the longest shelf it would definitely need it especially if it was taking books or something I'm using slot head screws because I like the look of them make sure they're not coming through in my bench great and now I would be ready to glue up we're not going to glue this right now but I'm going to finish this off and even hang this to a pseudo wall so you can see where we end up so now we've got the cleat fix to the shelf this this other half of the cleat is going to actually go here but on the wall so if this was going on a stud wall or something like that you'd have to use some kind of screw fixing to fix this to the wall so we're going to drill holes through here to screw to the wall I've got a pseudo wall that I'm going to show the whole of the process meanwhile just for now I'm going to drill the holes in here this was the first ever cordless screwdriver there you go very simple very effective it works just fine for this now I don't need a countersink on this side but I'm going to countersink it just to get rid of the burrs or the fibers like this and on the other side I'm going to do the same but this is actually going to be the countersink to receive the screw head so it lines up flush with the surface when I'm done so is that the same distance from either and you want to make sure they are the city I didn't measure it I just eyeballed it and they came out the same but if you need to measure it make sure you do so here's my dummy wall here and and what we're going to do is anchor this to the wall so wherever you position it may be somewhere here anywhere here really equidistance let's pull there long enough I think yeah so if this was brick you'd have to drill the brick and plug it in then the screws into the brick it was a stud football you might try and find the studs if it's a wooden wall you're well underway so just check that for level and second screw hole this woods harder than it looked now this just slides onto the wall like that a little anchor it level and it holds it there and that's it that's basically what a split cleat or a French cleat is all about

Channel: Paul Sellers

Views: 300,832

Rating: 4.9221649 out of 5

Keywords: Woodworking, Hand Tools, Paul Sellers, French Cleat, Shelf Hanging

Id: KXHNvNshlSE

Length: 16min 22sec (982 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 09 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/DarwinsMoth]

Paul Sellers is great for anyone interested in starting woodworking. Very accessible instructions and easy to follow.

[u/TheThinboy]

If I were king of the world every slot head screw would be sunk to the bottom of the ocean.