Seamless mitered corners with handtools and easy jigs.

when I started this video it was not about cutting lighters and it was not about jigs and fixtures for the shop this video was supposed to be about making and installing the trim in my new kitchen cupboard I finished the doors about two weeks ago and this week I was gonna cut some lovely rounded profiles install them in the cabinet and be done except doing that well you gotta cut a bunch of minors to get everything lined up at the corners and listen I can cut a 45 degree angle freehand with a saw anybody can it's not difficult but you do need a line to follow and if you've got a curved surface well it can be really hard to draw a nice straight line across that so I guess that's why woodworkers invented the miter box which I completely hate those clumsy dusty old contraptions with the slots all hallowed out from years of sawing they're hard to use they're not accurate and I am NOT making one of those things but it would be helpful to have you know just something just to to get things lined up and keep them square so maybe I could take a couple pieces of wood very very simple just put them together put a couple of saw cuts in that would be enough to get me through the project so I did that and then things spiraled utterly out of control let's be clear I like miter box is just fine as long as we're talking about this kind find me a big old cast iron Stanley miter box built-in clamps ball bearing guides and a massive absurd distant miter saw and well that's a totally different story these old beasts actually work great I've got one and I use it but this is woodwork for humans and I don't use any tool unless it's commonly available and affordable so what's the minimum that we could throw together for a nice repeatable little miter jig well how about we start with a scrap of 2x4 we can dress it square and that will make a great fence for the base we'll just use this piece of kitchen cabinet that I pulled out of the trash we can do a quick layout by eye and get our dimensions I'm moving way too fast for a long rip cut so I'll just split off the part need and plane it down to the line with my scrub plane for the crosscut I'm going with miry ova saw with its fine teeth and no spine it can do a long crosscut without all the splintering i'd get from a bigger saw I'm leaning more towards western tools these days but I'm keeping my railway I'm laying out the cuts with a square across the top of the piece and then carrying those lines across the faces then I'll chisel out a knife wall to guide my saw and saw shallow kerf across the top and both faces then when I know where the fence is going I can use my Stockman knife to mark out my screw locations and that's gonna keep my fasteners out of the way when I saw these cuts then I can run my countersinks drill all my holes and spread on my glue I've got a bunch of plain shavings around so I use one of those with the fence clamped on I can flip the whole thing and rest it between the edge of the bench and the top of my vise while I run my holes up into the fence and run in my fasteners I generally use my bit brace for this kind of thing but this is a fast jig so I grab the power tools now the jig is awkward to try and hold in the vise but my joiners bench has a lot of holding options I can knock up my planing stop and grab the other end with a hold fast that's why I left that lick behind the fence it gives a lot of places to hold the jig now I can run those saw cuts down and that's no problem as long as I don't suddenly hear the sickening grinding sound of my newly sharpened saw hitting a piece of metal good thing I was so careful in placing all those screws good thing I kept them where I wouldn't hit them with the saw because that would be terrible with the fence and base made I just added a little riser which lets you angle the saw down towards the handle as you cut and then I thought I should saw the angles into that riser because that would give me a reference line for keeping things straight while I cut so I dropped my crosscut saw into the kerf and struck lines on both sides and those lines let me carefully bring the saw cuts across the base so that both my miter angles are easier to see and you can line that saw up no problem now I'm almost done and I'm not getting involved in some cop kated project really but then I did get to thinking there's there's nothing that's gonna keep those slots I just cut from getting all chewed up over time then they're gonna be all loosey-goosey and the jig is gonna be totally inaccurate and then what's the point of all that marking and measuring and terrible cutting I just did we will all be ruined but then I thought you know the folks at Veritas have a very interesting solution to this problem they've come up with this set of Delrin guide blocks that you can install in a plain wooden miter box and they keep the saw blade from chewing up the wood and they're adjustable so as things go out of square over time you can tighten them back up and shift angles it's a really clever idea but I am NOT spending $16 on those but what if instead I did the same thing with some plain blocks polyethylene I know poly ethyl polyethylene it is a super common household plastic you've got bottles and jars and packages in your house made of this stuff and it's a great material because it's very slick very low friction now you probably don't have blocks of it sitting around but that's no problem go down to the dollar store buy the biggest plastic cutting board you can find and you will have enough polyethylene for a lot of projects the best part of this stuff is that you can work it with your regular tools it's much softer than wood and you can saw it clean it smooth and square mark it with your homemade gauge and plain in some nice bevels because you don't want any sharp edges on your jigs then I'll clamp my ethylene block to the miter box drill it and add screws with washers with your blocks installed you can saw right through from the top and you'll get the miter angle right on I'll do that for both of my angles and then as long as I'm letting this project get totally out of control anyway I might as well put blocks on top of the fence and sawed through those too now I have a really tight and accurate jig but as my saw chews it up and things get loose I can adjust my plastic blocks to take up the slack I made the screw holes oversized so the blocks can slide back and forth and even pivot to adjust angles this Jade can stay accurate for years and because I'm with only one fence you can fit in boards of almost any size and cut miters vertically or horizontally the thick rear fence and the guide blocks make it run true especially if you use the cuts in the riser to keep things aligned when you're cutting small stock you can also angle the saw into the riser and get a really accurate cut now the miners that get here are really good they're definitely good enough for fixing some trim around the house or putting mouldings on a big cabinetry project but you know they're not perfect perfect and if you cut one sixteenth of an inch too long you're kind of screwed because they're really difficult to trim as long as this project has gotten totally out of hand anyway but we're gonna build one more jig it's called a miter shooting board and it's gonna let us use a common hand plane to square up and perfect and trim those minors to make them just right and it really is a simple jig this time I actually mean that make your miter shooting board out of scrap plywood or MDF to make it cheap and stable you need two half-inch pieces for the base and a chunk of thicker stuff for the fence I've got a good set of plans with all the dimensions the plane is gonna ride against this edge here so it needs to be really straight and don't worry you can play in plywood just fine notice that I'm pinching the toe of my plane to keep the blades centered on the wood and I'm checking the edge with a good metal straight edge I need a base for my jig and I'm using another scrap of Clive for that luckily my cheap hardpoint saw is made for construction work and it goes right through plywood no problem just like any other wood I can shoot the end of this ply for a square edge but I'm using my scrub to get it done faster now you need to glue the narrow piece with the jointed edge down to the base I'm using a few grains of salt to keep the pieces from sliding around in the glue and I'm spreading the clamping pressure with a hard wood call this keeps everything flat as the glue dries dry glue on this edge is gonna keep my plane from tracking so I clean up all the squeeze out with a sharp scrap of hard wood and I let the whole thing dry for at least an hour while I make the fence for your fence it's really helpful if you've got something with a factory corner then you can just cut that corner off and you have a perfect 90-degree angle this offcut is really close to square but it's just a little high on one side I'll color it in with pencil and concentrate my planing strokes on the high end before I take some passes over the whole edge you really can get a perfect right angle with hand tools you just need to be patient once you have your corner cut it off with your coarse saw you want it to hang over your narrow piece a bit because a sharp corner is going to be fragile and crumpled under the weight of the plane so let it overhang about an inch and cut it with the Raiola to stay close to the line and minimize splintering I use glue with a bit of salt again and I double-checked my fence with a couple of squares I want a dead-on 45 degree angle on each side I use a clamp with a call again and give it an hour to dry then I had three screws and countersunk holes to lock it down for good I'd like to use this shooting board in the vise so I'll add a cleat underneath just screws is fine then I can drop it into my vise and use the plane to trim the tip of that fence you'll need to do it from both sides to get it really flush and square then you're done no seriously you're actually done we're not adding strips of Teflon or anything like that this is it here's how you make it work the trick with mitre in jigs is using them to cancel out any error so I like to pencil a number one on one piece and a two on the second piece of any mitre you could cut both these on the same side of the mitre box but then if there's any error in that angle you're gonna be doubling it when you assemble the two pieces using both angles and minimizes error and you can always use our adjustable blocks to true up any side of the jig that has problems over on the miter shooting board it's the same thing I've got my pieces numbered and I'm gonna be sure to use one side of the jig for each piece I can't be positive that my fence is exactly the same on each side but I was careful to start with a perfect 90-degree corner it could be that one side is closer to 44 degrees but then the other side will be 46 degrees they add up to 90 so using one side of the jig for each side of the joint cancels out any error and this joint really is perfect I could do a picture frame with this thing no problem so clearly I got a little sidetracked on this project but I'm kind of glad I did furniture makers need to cut Myers they need to be repeatable and they need to be accurate the miter box really helps with that but even a good mitre needs to be trimmed and squared up and for that you really need to have a miter shooting board so I'm not sorry I made them if you've got both of these jigs and they're tuned up and running right you can make your miters perfect and I don't use that word lately but perfection is possible with this even with hand tools now you might want to make these two jigs and I have got a fantastic set of plans they are very accurate and very affordable and you can grab those by going to Rex Krueger comm slash store or clicking the link down in the description my store it has a lot of affordable plans and even a set of free plans that you can just have and I get the flexibility to make things inexpensive and even free because of my patrons on patreon they provide the support that lets me keep prices down and you didn't give things away for free once in a while beyond that they're also a great community we have this fantastic discussion board and my patrons have gone crazy with that thing they are on the board every day asking questions and talking about tools I'm hardly ever on the thing and they don't care they don't need me they're like oh you you gonna make the videos we'll just talk about stuff we'll answer each other's questions it's fine go make your little videos I'm like awesome okay it's really fun if you would like to be one of the people who gets to participate in that conversation it's easy just go on over to patreon comm slash Rex Krueger and check out the early access rewards and exclusive benefits that I give to the people who make this stuff possible oh don't forget to sign up for my free newsletter fabrication first it comes out on the first of every month and it is packed full of interesting real tips and articles I'm not gonna try and market a bunch of stuff it is really spam free it's just something I want to do for my viewers you can click the link down in the description to sign up for that and I'm gonna be back next week where I swear to god I'm going you make and attach the trim on my cupboard and finally finish that project off I hope you'll join me thanks for watching

Channel: Rex Krueger

Views: 76,685

Rating: 4.9446368 out of 5

Keywords: easy woodworking, mitered corner joints, cutting miter corners, glueing perfect miter corners, easy miter joints, easy joinery, easy, miter, corner, handtools, easy joinery techniques, mitered edge joints, miter joints, easy wood joinery, waterfall corner joints, miter spline, face sides and face edges

Id: VignpjIbkVE

Length: 13min 24sec (804 seconds)

Published: Wed May 27 2020