Precision Joinery for Professional Results

hi I'm Matt Jackson and this is next-level carpentry you know you don't get professional results on woodworking projects by accident but by using a planned approach and a few pro tips there entirely possible so if you want professional results on projects with sharp mitered corners like these short Cove sections for the Box Newell project I'm working on stick around and I'll show you how I made them so you can too [Music] I'm in the thick of it making the coved parts for the Box Newell's got most of these pieces cut with double 45s on the back but I thought I'd better stop at this stage and kind of explain the process in the last video I showed the process for making these coves in all these parts and the next step is to put a 45 degree angle on all the sides of all the pieces so I can put them together to make the basis for these Box Newell's and I'm just about done ripping the bevels on the back but I wanted to stop long enough to explain the process I'm using to make sure all these parts are as accurate as they need to be to produce consistent sized pieces so that the cove base parts of the Newell's fit with the center waist section on all of them if there's any kind of discrepancy between them then I've got to do a lot of fussing and fitting to get the newel post together in the end and I don't want to do that so here's the process I use for getting accurately sized pieces with double bevels on them because of the nature of cutting something with a sharp 45 degree miter on both sides creates problems because when the miter is sharp enough for a tight gluing the long point of that wants to slip under the RIP fence if there's any discrepancy there whatsoever and that sharp point of the mitre slides under the fence or it's not consistent on every pass the pieces are going to be tapered and just end up like a mess so the method I use is to rip the pieces on a table saw with a small flat spot on the side I hope this shows up in the camera there's just a small flat spot on the side and there's one on each side so that that small 1/16 of an inch shoulder on the piece rides up against the fence when I cut one side and when I cut the other side if you've worked with sharp 45-degree angle cuts on the table saw you know what I'm talking about if you haven't take my word for it and watch how this process goes so you'll know what to do if you end up with this kind of fight on your hands so I start the process with layout and I roll ripped these pieces to a consistent with but I determined that width by taking the final width of the part which is going to be four and a half inches and then I leave an extra sixteenth of an inch on each side so for a four and a half inch wide piece I started out with four and 5/8 inches which is what I ripped all these pieces to that way the sharp point of the mitre will be 1/16 to inch in on each side and the thing that a table saw is good at is ripping pieces to inaccurate width with two parallel edges there again the piece is four and five eighths wide I go a sixteenth and four and a half and another sixteenth so that these lines represent the finished long points on either side of the piece and I'll slip that in the vise and draw these angles on here so you can see what I mean turn it around so I can see what I'm doing [Music] using a super accurate starett try square here I'm able to line up a 45-degree angle line with the pencil line on either side so I know that when I make the final pass on those bevels I'll end up with the exact width I want from long point to long point because I want super tight miter joints when I glue these box noodles together I want the final pass to that pencil mark to be made with a joiner not with the table saw so I add two more lines on these pieces that connect that 1/16 of an inch up from the face on the sides probably makes more sense of looking at it than talking about it and explains like so so that God is the exact final width of the piece from that mark to this one and the 45 degree lines that correspond to those and then another 45 degree line that goes the sixteenth of an inch up on either side I hope that all shows up good on the video and now back at the table saw see this is a piece that I already cut this is a piece I just put those layout marks on and the saw blade lines up with the outside pencil mark it's just taking the pencil mark on the face and you can see it here on the edge so when I run the piece through this way turn it around and run it this way I'll have 45-degree cuts with that extra sixteenth of an inch of wood on either side that allows me to get consistently parallel cuts with a 45-degree cut on both sides like I said earlier if I try to cut this with the saw down till there's a razor sharp corner on there and then feed it along that corner is going to slip under the RIP fence and make the pieces inaccurate I recently did a video about making these handle style push Nick's with some explanation as to why I like these versus the kind that are long skinny sticks and this is a perfect illustration why I prefer this style of push stick I saw in the other video when I made this cove cut in there the face of the piece has to be down on this set up to make an accurate cut with this table saw granted it's a right tilt instead of a left too but if I had left Hilton I just reversed the whole setup the face would still be down on the table and with this bevel cut if I was to use one of those Twiggy push sticks and push a piece is going to want to tip up because the pressure from that little push stick pushes on the end of the board with this style of push stick I could put pressure on the face of it and still hook this back with the heel and shove it safely through the table saw in that video I also covered the way to make a handle forward style of the same push stick and this is an instance where that handles forward style worked really well these long pieces with coves on both ends I left them long so I can make these miter cuts on half as many pieces they're twice as long a little easier to handle well while pushing these guys through the table saw it's nice to have this handle forward version putting pressure way up here and I can feed the whole thing through accurately without I thought worrying about it tipping on the way in we're tipping on the way out and I will endeavour to put a link to the push stick video at the end of this one so you can check that out if you haven't seen it already so once all the pieces are ripped to an exact consistent width with parallel edges and I've done this layout except the saw blade it's a matter of just ripping this bevel on both sides of all the blanks and this push stick rest right there on the RIP fence for a quick draw capability [Music] [Music] and now you can see how there's a small flat spot on each side of each piece and there's still extra to trim off and I'll set the joiner up to make a final pass on either side of all these blanks now that the edges are all bevel cut on the table saw I wanted to show that scenario on one of the actual pieces but I made these sample blocks they're the same width as the real pieces but I'll have this available to set the jointer up to get this to end up of exactly four and a half inches without risking any of the final pieces that I need for the project and now I'll rip the last few blanks for the cuffs on these mules notice how as I'm pushing the pieces through especially the shorter ones and got the push pick to this side of the piece and I'm pushing in and towards the fence as I go through I don't want to have the push stick over here where this piece could get caught and come out at an angle like that and because it's a push stick I can put it right over there next to it if that blade happens to make the push stick it's no big deal that's what it is for I gotta say there's a few perks to having a woodshop in the garage and a word burning stove for heating the house the first perk is you get the burn designer firewood what do you think coved kindling is worth huh I probably shouldn't even mention the second perk but any mistakes I make go up in smoke nobody's the wiser when we write all the red and blue lights quit blinking I think we're live and in color with all these pieces cut with the bevel it's time to run them through the jointer for their final pass on the miters and the final width on the pieces and I've got these two sample pieces of scrap they're cut just like the final pieces and I put these margin marks on here to show about how much needs to be planed off to end up with a final piece I'm going to take it over to the jointer for that part as much as I love this pj8 82 jointer I'll have to say that the fence angle setting thing is pretty lame and I think of it more as a rangefinder than as an actual gauge for the angle setting so to do this I always cut a piece on a miter saw to the angle I'm looking for in this case exactly 45 degrees rather than rely on this veneer and this gauge because that's nowhere near accurate enough for this sort of work and it can unlock the fence and dial it down and I always prefer to put the workpiece for a sharp angle like this into the fence so I can push it back into the notch rather than tilt the fence the other way and have this piece want and slide around and not hold the true 45-degree angle and it's going to be tricky to get this angle shot in the camera but I think you'll get the idea I just lay the flat edge of this on the table and then turn the crank and tell the fence meets up with that block that's a little too far that's not far enough and I dial it right in there and then use the block arm to lock this down and I've added a stop bolt in here there's a hole in this piece of the fence apparatus has a threaded hole for a 5/16 16 bolt and I threaded that down in to the point where the tip of that bolt is resting against the back of the fence because of the flat angles all these parts this fence will flop around without that extra bolt in there and every manufacturers fence setup is going to be a little bit different the fence will probably have its peculiarities but just make sure that the fence is rock-solid in the setup and dead-on for accurate because any inaccuracy in the miter gluing up these box Newell's is going to multiply itself or al if it's a little too much or a little too weak there's going to be issues later on so it's key to spend the time getting this setup rock-solid and spot on so once the fence is all set up and I've got it set this direction a good ways so there's not a lot of exposed cutter head under the guard and then I'll take a scrap setup piece and I want to set it up so the jointer is set where I can take one pass on each edge of all the blanks and have them end up exactly four and a half inches wide from Long Point a Long Point and like so many other setups I will just sneak up on it until I get it dialed but my first pass is going to be to get the cut right into that pencil mark with that first test run I'm at almost four and five eighths still so that's not quite deep enough I'll lower the cut by half the amount that needs to go narrower so it's about another sixteenth of an inch and then I'll run that test on the second scrap and because I only have one test piece left and I need to run the cut from each end it's going to gauge this out and it looks like my adjustment it's probably going to be a little bit too much so I'll raise it back up again and finish this up and hope for the best and I'm liking that final pass I'm at four and a half and just a fuzz strong about 1/32 and I'd rather have it just a little big done a little small so I'm going with that I can see with this angle of the light this is where the cut was too deep and it transitioned to the right depth of cut at that point on both sides doing this process in two steps one with the table software rough cut and then finished pass with the jointer increases the level of accuracy on the finished parts and I do it that way as opposed to just taking off a huge pass with the jointer in the first place going from a score edge all the way down with a 45 and this machine can do that but it introduces too many opportunities for inaccuracies in the process and here I stopped a piece partway through its passed so you can see the material that the jointer is taking off it makes the surface perfectly smooth for gluing and it removes a 1/16 inch wide flat edge that helped cut pieces to a 45 in the first place now make sure that I do every single piece it's going to be needed along with the spares while the jointer is set up this way which is having to repeat and that's the process is time-consuming when dialing in this level of accuracy it's absolutely essential that this whole setup stays locked down and that the pieces continue to come off the jointer exactly the same as the section of the pattern piece that the setup was made with if something gets bumped or moved I always have this one to refer back to and a lot of times I'll check partway through the process just to make sure something didn't change that I didn't notice well all these pieces are now jointed down to their final size and I can cut the doubles in half and get ready to glue them up into the final box Newell setup which will look about like that final comment about using the jointer for making the final pass on these normally I pass on a jointer is just for flattening or straightening an edge and you can take multiple passes till the edge is the way you want it but in this case the depth of the cut determines the width of this piece so I've got to make sure every pass through is right the first time because I get one chance on side if I have to take a half a pass again or if I get a chip of shaving or a sawdust under there and it turns this run it through it's going to distort something so using the jointer for final sizing of a piece is a different operation it's more like a table saw operation where you set a dimension and make a cut in this case we're setting that dimension with the depth of cut and making the pass as the cut so that the cutters on the jointer are making the final pass them out the teeth on the saw blade and that's just because I want this glass smooth and flat finish for glue up all this is possible using just a table saw and the joints would probably be plenty strong enough if it's a good sharp blade and it's not wobbling but it's always going to come out better using a jointer for that operation so the next thing I'll do is cut the doubles in half and start gluing these up for the final base and top pieces for the Box Newell's well I'm working my way through this batch of parts that are all coved and mitered and gluing everything up using these Murli clamps that are absolutely indispensable for this kind of an operation I've got the taller waist sections of these new posts a tall cold section on the bottom a waist section in the middle and then the shorter Cove pieces will go on top like so I've done myself a carpenter's favor by making these pieces just random lengths and then I glue them up with one side all nice and flush and then I trim this side off later to have it come out the exact length I did the same for these waist sections they're kind of even on one end and they're way off on the other end same for these that way only have to pay attention to the four corners in one end I don't have to make sure everything lines up so much you got to make it easier on yourself because nobody else is going to write and I went through the glue up process on that taller waist section but I wanted to show you how it looks doing these shorter ones just one clamp is involved and I need to make sure one end lines up accurately so that's what this segments going to be about gluing up these two different lengths Cove sections is the same thing only different than gluing up these Paul waist sections so I'll go through the process for one of these and glue up this batch of short pieces for another one of these top cove sections to show you the process you can see what's the same and what's different sorry went through all the short code pieces and worked out the grain mats just like I did on the longer pieces for the waist sections and for these parts I want the cove end to line up perfectly in the clamping process so I'm just putting them up against the RIP fence and again I will overlap the miters just so ever so slightly and because these are so small I'll use one Murli clamp but two pieces of tape I want to make sure that's pressed down good everything's overlapping just a little bit and add that second strip of tape press everything down good and then I can just take these pieces to the Formica table for glue up because I'm using that good 3m masking tape everything stays together I can just roll this thing over I want to make sure I get glue right out to the edge of that cold section I don't want any gap you glue joints and that important part of these pieces I've got good glue layer everywhere press the joint together and pull it apart make sure everything's looking good if you use inferior masking tape when you go to push this stuff together it just tears at the corners because of the overlap part a few crumbs from cutting those pieces in there I want to make sure it's out so they don't hold the joint open and that's about all it takes but I did forget to shuffle this end I want to make sure all these ends are nice and flush and that last joint was misaligned by a little bit I can slide it back and forth like this a little bit there's a little bit of play and everything just want to make sure that that's lined up when I pull that tape around for the final side now everything's nice and flush get the bulk of the glue off the table so I don't move you up those Murli clamps and I lay this so this tightening handles up not down makes everything a little easier kind of where the least jaws into place for as many Wiggly moving parts if there are on these clamps I am absolutely amazed that you can even manage them at all I'm gonna take long to shovel that clamp into place I'm gonna wiggle it down partway add a little tension on the client and while using these I've noticed that these clamps can slide a little bit on the miters and still got these little pivoting jaws on there but the closer those clamps are to square with the corner the more even the clamping pressure if I shift one of these and tighten the clamp it tends to make these clamp up in a parallelogram instead of a square and then I get everything lined up and just put the clamp pressure to it and see all the glue squeezing out on the inside I already know that the outside corners are full and as long as the sharp points of those miters are lined up puts me in real good shape that double-check this end is still nice and flush which is the most important part because this end gets trimmed off later and pull the masking tape off to get it out of the way if they've got this one under the clam I'm just gonna leave it hurting things I'll take it off later but at this stage I want to make sure that everything's clamping up nice and square and that's gonna be this right on so it's perfectly square all the way around and one to end is flush I've got my little scraping one here like fingers on a chalkboard there like I said on the longer sections that glue on those inside corners could arguably make these glue ups stronger I'm taken out there just to keep things clean and neat to do a quick bit of preliminary glue cleanup here well it's still wet even though it's difficult working on a relatively small piece with such a big clamp I can get the bulk of it off while it's still pliable and that's pretty much the glue up process for these smaller pieces and once everything's glued up and clamped I'll trim them all to the same length with the same setup and even though I clean this stuff up when I clamp it scraping in between the clamps etc there's always going to be a little bit of residual glue on these but it's cleaned up real easily because it's so minimal by using a sharpened putty knife and this is a place that I absolutely do not want to use sandpaper for cleaning this up because it just makes that glue all gummy and the heat wants to push it down into the wood and clog the sandpaper and I don't want to dull these corners yet they're still quite sharp after the glue up because the joints were all made with the final pass on the jointer this method works just wonderfully for perfect cleanup on this sort of thing and if I try it I could probably cut my thumb on those corners that's super tight miters strong as can be this end is all nice and flush I'll have to sand it on a flat surface before assembly to get the Sawtooth marks out of those flat surfaces but that's about it and in case any discussion comes up about the strength of a glued up 45-degree angle with no biscuits and no lock mitre take this cut off from one of the columns let's put it in the vise and see what strength this thing has all by itself [Applause] and I think that pretty much explains it it's the wood itself that's failing in this sort of test not any of the glue joints and this is just a short scrap so you can imagine the corresponding strength of a full-length tube or any of these coved collar sections that's where careful setup an accurate machining really makes a difference in the quality of the finished product well I guess that's that professional joinery for exceptional result on these Cove sections for the Box Newell project these parts are obviously specific to the project that I'm working on but I hope you can see how this methodical process can be adapted when you want professional results like this on projects you're doing I guess it's just against my nature to whittle a video like this down to ten minutes a clickbait so I really appreciate the time you invest by watching it when I consider trimming out things like the process for dialing in the jointer fence accurately enough to get the results I'm showing I always think man I wish somebody'd show me that trick somewhere along the way and then I just leave it in and from what I hear that's the kind of mindset that separates the fifteen thousand subscriber woodworking channels from the hundred thousand subscriber super channels but I'm not going to let that change my primary mission here which is to help aspiring carpenters take their skills to the next level and beyond I hope everyone knows how much I appreciate it when you watch a video give a thumbs up add a like had a comment and subscribe when it comes right down to it it's that kind of buzz that provides the energy that's making this channel grow so I'll keep striving to improve the quality and frequency of video uploads as long as viewers like you find it beneficial and I'm really excited to see where this whole thing leads so for now to viewers and friends all over the world thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Next Level Carpentry

Views: 74,774

Rating: 4.9697037 out of 5

Keywords: newel, newell, box, post, balluster, miter, mitre, glue, joint, joinery, angle, angled, 45 degree, corner, spline, lock miter, lockmiter, domino, festool, bisquit, biscuit, dowel, titebond, wood glue, merle, band, clamp, handrail, timber tailor, fine homebuilding, matt jackson, next level carpentry, fine woodworking

Id: hK1vz-aKe6c

Length: 26min 48sec (1608 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 15 2018