Quick Tips #1

hello I'm Ramon welcome to the channel I'm starting a new series or playlist here on YouTube called quick tips and I've been told that I have more tricks than a Vegas cooker and it's true I do have a ton of woodworking tips and tricks you can check out my two ebooks volumes one and two tricks of the trade well this is more of that so let's just dive in yeah all right so here I want to bring attention to a feature of a chop saw or miter saw more specifically a characteristic of how they make a cut they essentially make a plunge cut if you had a flat board your plunge cutting right through the middle of it right so it's a bit of a challenge for the saw blade to engage the work which is why sliding miter saws were developed so for instance here as I'm cutting this piece of aluminum I turn it upside down and the saw blade engages the edges kind of similar to how a table saw would cut the edge of a board just makes it a lot easier to cut and makes a clean cut makes sense yeah sometimes we need to make the grain parallel to the edge of a board and it looks better oftentimes right and here's an easy way to do it I just use double stick tape straight edge run that against the fence and boom that looks a lot better subscribe or a compass in the workshop can be a huge Time Saver and so what I've got here I've got some legs this goes to a footboard headboard and a footboard and I'm going to have some rails coming across here this is just fall off right and I've got the location marked but I need centers of this and I also need Center this way and I'm going to need center of my pieces as well so I can make all these mortise and tenons at the Panera router lots of ways to find centers of that but here's how I do it simple scribe and this is some fall off same size material and so what I can do is just get down here at eye level to the piece and I'm just going to shoot for somewhere in the center um I just want to get close of course being exact would be good but make one Mark flip it over do it again you can see there's space in between and I can just shoot for Center of that split the difference I'm going to put a small Mark here try that again flip it over that looks pretty good so now I know that that is dead on center right so I can mark my pieces and this is for Micah table I know it's flat I just want to make sure that there's nothing underneath it I'll push down on this just in case there's any warp in the table or maybe the leg has boat a little bit push it down you can see a little bit of a gap there so I can bring closer to the edge here and that's the center in that direction that's awesome right same thing with this one this will be my rail I also need a center Mark here so when I go to the paner router since it works off the center marks at least for the first ones you can set stops after that I'm gonna do the same thing I'll just put a small Mark here flip it over sometimes I get lucky it's dead center so you just put a mark put a mark boom so that's my Center in between these two marks for this direction I also need this Center so what I can do is utilizing this compass and I can just strike an arc I just need to be a little bit over half this is just simple geometry right do that again strike an arc and where those radiuses intersect is where dead center is boom so that's that Center how fantastic is that lots of ways to do things yeah hey maybe this is well known I saw somebody kind of struggling the other day on Instagram uh trying to lay some parts out so what I have here are six components and they are going to be spaced equally in this long piece kind of a ladder formation right so I can just gather these all up put them flush with the end and like I said this may be well known but maybe it'll help somebody out there and I've got those flush at the end I can see what this difference is and it is 66 and a quarter 66.25 so I know that I will have let me just separate these a little bit I'm going to have one two three four five spaces right so I can simply take old iPhone 6. let's see where's my calculator that is 66.25 divided by 5 equals 13 and a quarter pretty simple right so I can just take a spacer to lay those all out and boom they'll come out exact regardless of what these pieces are I mean if you have some crazy fraction um super easy to figure yeah so a question that I get asked occasionally is when should I use a domino versus a biscuit well biscuits are less expensive right and a lot of times you don't really need something crazy strong you just need to connect a couple of boards I like screwing my biscuit joiner down something like this and I should put this over there where the clamp is but anyway with it down I'm using the base as a reference so that I can easily make my Plunge so I'm connecting this component to these and yeah I could put a couple of eight millimeter dominoes in there and that would be very strong but I really don't need the strength I just need this to be connected and I'll show you what it's for here in a bit but I decided might as well just use biscuit if I use Domino's it would take 24 of them and they're really not that expensive I guess but in the long run and you can even make your own of course but biscuits are going to be way less expensive so that's the route I decided to use a lot of choices and I'll quit talking now because I'm just rambling so of course to start I find center for the first one and then set up a stop block as I mentioned earlier securing the jointer down to this sandpaper board works extremely well as I make these plunge cuts and all of the components they stay put with very little effort this shop made belt sander dock has been a fantastic addition to my shop I use it all the time I do have a large Edge sander but with a belt sander I have a lot of different grits and they're easy to change out I have this little accessory that I can make 90 degree edges right and you can see the top plate of the dock is adjustable so well to ensure perpendicular or 90 degrees the edges come out perfect and then I made this additional piece and with it I can make chamfers quickly here you can see this small adjustment screw and that'll fine tune the size of the chamfer and I first made this to quickly make chamfers on these marble stands for my son Derek he makes these incredibly beautiful marbles completely by hand and sells them by the hundreds so yeah of course it works great for aluminum as well here I'm making some Panter router stop blocks or some K3 Hammer blocks love love love this thing extremely effective well I'm not sure whether to put this under routers or Sanders but maybe both anyway I made this Frame it's a simple frame it's a support for a bed I'm working on when should you use a chamfer bit versus a round over bit well if it's not decorative and it doesn't matter then I always choose a round over bit primarily because it's a lot easier to sand a round over profile versus a chamfer or a 45 degree bevel that needs to retain crisp Corners with a round over it's a lot easier to sand right so that's what I chose to do is just a small eighth inch round over and I always if I have something to Route like this I'll just take it outside it makes way less mess incidentally when you're sanding something like this I see a lot of people using a sander and they sand and they progressively work down the profile well that's okay but under magnification or if it really counted and you took that to a strong breaking light you would see facets so a better way to do it is to well let me just show you this may be obvious already but I see a lot of people doing it the other way and this way works much much better that'll get more of a consistent round over blend so at this end of the K3 originally there was two screws holding this plate on I removed those two screws used two different screws to attach this plate like a drawer front to this drawer so now I have my wrenches in here I keep my commonly used 23 gauge pins in here here are the original screws to this plate with the exception of these two new holes that I drilled one could put this back if they ever needed to but this is actually super handy I put a screw here to act as a stop so that can't come out too far so yeah gotta get creative in small workspaces right yeah man I love it so I'm finished sanding some panels getting ready to fit them to uh some frames and I noticed a small scratch right there might not show up on camera it's pretty small but uh you know I could sand on it and sand on it and get it out or I can just use a scraper now it's probably well known that when you use a scraper you're literally creating a belly a bow a dip and depending on how much you bend it you know depends on how deep that dip is and it's really not very much I mean you could go overboard and create a hollow for sure but really we can use that to our our advantage as far as this scratch here I should be able to get that out pretty quickly this is starting to make sawdust I need to turn a hook but that scratch is gone just like that now I can come back with my 180 and blend everything yeah so I wanted to share something with you so uh this probably won't make a lot of sense but this is a headboard this is the front and one little area here is going to show kind of like a toe kick area and it would just produce this hole I want to fill that so I just made this this is a Baltic Birch with some wenge veneer and you can see I've created this uh dado here and here and this is the curve of the dados blade right so I just produced this thing we used to call this a relish it's sometimes referred to as a haunch same with this situation here there's some material there rather than clearing that out and squaring that up which doesn't really do you any good you can just remove that and now this will seat in there like that this will all get glued in place when all the joinery happens when all the joinery gets glued clamp this direction as well and it'll actually add a little bit of support or bracing at this corner not that it needs it but uh yeah and like I said only about this much inch and a half of this is going to show here in the front so here at the table saw I'm getting ready to cut these chamfers so this is a top rail to a headboard and a in a footboard this would be the legs right so it'll look something like that it has this 26 degree angle so which ones which angles would I cut first well it makes sense to me to cross cut the ends first right if I was to here at the table saw and make those cuts all the way down and then cut this end angle well more than likely one of these Corners is going to chip out the one in the back right so it makes sense to do that one first any little bit of tear out or blowout will get cut by the subsequent Cuts here and here makes sense yeah it all adds up so I just got done with a fairly large glue up and something I wanted to share with you I've got these magnetic pads or just a piece of Baltic Birch with some leather and a couple of magnets and the reason I put two magnets is because sometimes I don't want the the cowl exactly centered on there I want to put it to one Edge and the reason I want to do that at times is because I can put a little bit better focus to this component which is off you know in the center of this and I can't quite reach it because this clamps in the way and so rather than just putting that like that which would actually put pressure here and cause that to twist I can bring that down as far as I can that's going to focus that pressure wow a lot better on that style there and that tightened up just right so I actually move those clamps to underneath where I could get a better pressure point right in the middle where I needed it and I was able to move this long bar here and casing point this pads dropped down to where you know contacting in the center here to correspond with this mortise and Tenon on the end of this rail in addition this is a really long clamp this is spanning about I don't know 80 inches or something this side was pretty tight but I needed that side to tighten so that's where I put the the screw part of the clamp so it does make a difference when you're clamping something you put this part of the clamp where you need the most pressure or to draw a gap so I'm cutting some small pieces of plywood this is actually shot made plywood I need to cut just a little bit off this it's cutting cross grain so an easy trick you could do I mean I have a scoring blade on my other saw but not everybody has a slider so here's what you can do I'm going to add one layer of tape to my fence these are small pieces so right in there should be plenty good right I've already got my distance set I'm going to drop the blade down to just make a scoring cut somewhere in there let's make a cut this is an excellent trick that I will use often rather than using the scoring blade on my bigger saw it's just quick and easy to set up and very accurate so we make the cut with the tape on the fence right then we can remove the tape thusly shifting that board over about four thousandths of an inch that's cool yeah now we can raise the blade up and cut like normal and yeah you're creating a tiny little Offset you can barely see it and you might not even be able to see it but that slight shift will keep those fibers from chipping on the bottom side these actually go into grooves so it wouldn't show anyway but it is a fantastic solution for cutting cross grain plywood without getting any Splinter splintering by using that extra piece of tape excellent excellent tip right there my shop I am constantly mixing up epoxy sometimes it's the five minute version or could be the 30 minute option or sometimes it's a 24-hour choice but I always use a hard surface I don't really like using cardboard it's too absorbent and so oftentimes I'll just use tape right on my workbench or here I grabbed a scrap a piece of plywood add some clear packing tape mix up the epoxy glue up the job and then peel the tape while the glue is still uncured it's a super simple tip that works extremely well and I never have to look for that just right object to mix the epoxy on here's a great one for you so I'm needing to drill a hole straight in the edge of a panel and can't really use drill press so I thought I'd make a quick and simple jig just using a square I'm attaching a couple of blocks and I'm sizing the space to the drill bit I'll be using to start I've dimmed the lights for a sexy atmosphere right got my laser going so of course that'll ensure plum in One Direction for the other direction I'm starting by sizing my clamp right you can see I've drawn a couple of lines on this little jig just makes squaring The Jig or template to the edge of the panel a little easier then I can use that same Brad Pitt drill bit I mean Brad Point drill bit to ensure center right piece of tape that designates Center on my drill guides a drill in one way and I can keep an eye on the laser in the other direction and Bam just like that I'm pretty accurate in both directions love it now I don't mind crude if it's effective so here at my slider I'm changing out the scoring blade and this wrench well it's designed to make the adjustments for the scoring blade and I just took this whatever this is four or five millimeter Allen key put some welds on it to build it up and then ground it back down so it would fit in this this is magnetic and remember if I added that Magnet or not but because I don't know why it would need to be magnetic inside there for these adjustments I might have added a magnet anyway this slips in there and with it I can use this same wrench to put my zero clearance insert back in place so yeah I love stuff like that double duty so maybe you already do this I don't know but I like making a little story stick so here I'm cutting a bunch of dominoes I want them all in the same place of course there's a quite a few drawer boxes to do and four corners on every box this just makes it quick and easy when doing these exposed dominoes not often but occasionally I'll get a little bit of a chip out the repair is simple I just make a wedge I just cut that by eye with a chisel of course the cavity is created with a chisel as well as you slip it in it gets Tighter and Tighter Right add some glue and the fix literally disappears I'll show this entire process at some point in this same series so there may be some controversy here but since I've been doing this process I cannot help but do it every time and that is dampening these dominoes two things a gets all the dust off right and two there's a phenomenon known as surface tension so if you were to take a droplet of water and place it on a piece of wood or a domino it's just going to sit there for a while right until the moisture will finally start to Wick in well glue will do the same thing quite a while back I had to tear something apart where I had put dominoes in the conventional way without adding moisture and it came apart pretty easily actually and there were some areas of the Domino that just seemed dry and not bonded well after doing another test where I moistened The Dominoes I achieved a much better and stronger Bond so it makes sense to me the absorption rate of the glue will be faster and better and ultimately yeah you're going to get a much stronger glue Bond it'd be really cool for fine woodworking or somebody maybe me to do an actual official scientific test all right you might find this comical I find it effective and so I made these uh not too long ago I've been using them a lot four layers of tape 16 and a half thou six layers seven layers five layers three layers 13 and a half thou super effective you know I have feeler gauges but feeler gauges are usually contained in a holder and to use just one is sometimes awkward but I use these all the time setting up routers pan to router table saw um here at the router table yep very effective very simple I love Solutions like that all right that's it for this video I will be sharing more of these quick tips and remember click like subscribe learn

Channel: Ramon Valdez Fine Furniture

Views: 2,375

Keywords: woodwork, woodworking, woodworking tips, woodworking tips and tricks, woodwork tips, table saw, sanding, wood, drilling, drilling straight holes

Id: ud1j76-KBk0

Length: 25min 3sec (1503 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 02 2023