Making a Step Stool? Watch This!

what's up guys i'm making a shaker style two-stepper step stool plans are in the description so check them out let me know what you think this board is cut long enough to give me both of my short sides [Music] this one will eventually be cut in half to make both of the long sides it's so rewarding simply sawing to a line and you can see in the background the stock prep power tools that i've just acquired that will hopefully help me accomplish some of my other goals this long board is actually long enough to be all three of the half dove cross rails i'm going to rip an inch and a half off of the long crossrail board in order to glue up and make my side pieces a little bit wider full disclosure unlike my previous videos these boards were flattened by machine the kerf is closing in on my saw and this ladies and gentlemen is why i always keep a couple of sawn off leg tapers laying around i'll take that over table saw kickback any day of the week works like a charm [Music] [Music] next i plane off the saw marks this is the short side still at double length and i'm just gonna edge glue to make it wider once the glue is dried the number five jack plane works great to clean off the glue line i work all the way across the board to keep it an even thickness this is the tall side and it's still at double length right now same deal sharp jack plane will clean that off really really well once everything's ready to go i'm going to go ahead and cross cut to final length [Applause] those are my two short sides for my long sides i'm going to use the old double cut technique i left a little extra length on one of these to true it up at the shooting board then i just square up all the end grain on the shooting board [Music] and then start marking base lines for dovetails these dividers are set for a quarter inch for my outer half pins and i want three tails so i'm going to step it three times starting at the half pin mark and going right to the edge of the board like that because i want my inner pins to be the same as my outer pins and then i just need to walk it back in the other direction i mark dovetails using a pencil my mom gave me this dovetail gauge for christmas a couple years ago and i absolutely love it thanks mom [Music] [Music] the focus point on cutting the tails is to cut straight across the board [Music] [Music] [Music] uh [Music] [Music] and i'm going to cope out the waste i still can't believe how long it took me to finally try coping out dovetail waste i used the chisel to pop off a little ledge to saw against next i chop out the waste right down to the baseline i do a little relief chop before chopping directly on the baseline unless my coping cut was really close to the baseline like in this next one and then flip it and finish dropping out from the other side pine is really difficult to get nice crisp end grain with chopping so you have to use really sharp chisels and even then it's probably going to tear out a little bit but it's not really any big deal i marked the baseline of the cross rail half dove directly off the shoulder line of the tail board [Music] while i'm still in the zone of cutting things at an angle i go ahead and cut the half doves for my cross rails [Music] uh [Laughter] i mark the pins using a knife and by the way quick tip for you guys a vertical line on the inside of your vice makes it quick and easy to place the board vertically my focus when cutting the pins is to cut the line straight down [Music] [Music] [Music] i cope out the tail recesses trying to cut as close as i can to the baseline without passing it i chop down to the baseline and if i can manage to not chisel into my bench then my day has gone from good to great sometimes that first assembly needs a little bit of persuasion i take a knife and mark out for the back rail socket and same with the front rail on the front rail i want it to protrude just a little bit so that i can plane that flush to the top at the end this is kind of a deep cut to keep straight so here's a little technique to give yourself a really deep shelf to put the saw against tap the chisel down with your hand flick out the waist and i do that three times here and you can see i've got a really deep shelf probably a sixteenth to an eighth of an inch [Music] on my vertical line you can see i strayed off the line a little bit but here's a cheat code to fix that [Music] the back rail half dove socket is cut kind of like a dovetail saw down cope out the waste [Laughter] if you cut inside the marked lines it's going to be a little bit too tight that can be easily trimmed off with the hand plane it should fit nice and tight [Music] and again here you want to leave a little bit of a lip just so you can plane that flush at the end on the front rail the only difference is i cut out this block of waste and then mark out and cut [Music] once the front lower rail is fit i'm going to cut a sweeping arc on the front edge of the side piece [Music] i smooth out the coping saw marks with the spokeshave [Music] i'm going to glue this up with liquid hide glue which is just hot hide glue with a little bit of urea added to give it a longer open time i've been playing around with mixing my own after falling in love with the old brown glue liquid hide glue makes the dovetail slip together easier you don't have the seizing and binding that can happen with pva glues [Music] also a quick tip for gluing this up as two sub components rather than gluing up the two sides first make sure you've got 90 degrees for the legs this is to avoid having a lot of work to flush up the two components after the glue up as you can see here this looks like it should be pretty easy to flush up with a hand plane after the final glue up and i'm just simply going to edge glue this and then once it's in place where i want it to push down with a little bit of light pressure the hide glue also works really well for edge joints because after holding a little bit of hand pressure it's on there like a suction cup as you can see there's some good squeeze out for an experiment i edge glued these scraps together and hammered them apart you can see that it broke the wood fibers but did not break on the glue line so i have no reservations on an edge glue joint because it is stronger than the wood itself nothing beats a block plane for cleaning that little glue line up to shape the legs i mark two inches in from each edge and draw a little arc to connect those two i clamp it to my bench and cope it out [Music] before applying the finish i hit all the edges with a block plane so i'm going to use this danish oil mix it's a recipe that's been around since the beginning of time it's danish oil is just a thinned oil thin linseed oil or thin tung oil with a little bit of varnish in it and this one is just a third boiled linseed oil a third varnish and a third mineral spirits it'll be good for this project because it's very thin so penetrate down into the pine and stiffen it up just a little bit not as hard as like a water locks or something like that but it will stiffen it just a bit you just put it on really thin it dries pretty quickly and i'll just put three coats of this on this project sand it very very lightly in between coats just so it stays nice and smooth so that's it guys i hope you enjoyed the video i enjoyed making it uh check out the plans let me know what you think

Channel: Frank's Workbench

Views: 54,875

Keywords: hand tools, hand tool woodworking, franks workbench, traditional woodworking, woodworking projects, woodworking plans, handtool woodworking, woodworking hand tools, hand tools woodworking, hand tool woodworking for beginners, hand tool woodworking projects, paul sellers, rob cosman, wood by wright, step stool, how to build a step stool, shaker furniture, making shaker furniture, how to build shaker furniture, build shaker furniture, shaker step stool

Id: gxlK5HVMwR8

Length: 16min 4sec (964 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 11 2021