Step Up Your Box-Making Game! | Four-Corner Grain Match

the Wood Whisperer is sponsored by Titebond when I build furniture and accessories I often try to use the grain itself to kind of flow through the project so if you have a whole bunch of drawer fronts getting all that out of one board so it kind of just makes its own little picture when the thing is done is pretty cool and then of course with things like small boxes like this it's great if you could have the grain wrap around a corner now there's a lot of different ways you can approach this but most of them just yield almost perfect results and let me show you what would happen with a box if you just take the more simple approach but let's say this is our board we've got the grain running through it and we're trying to cut this into pieces for a box so oftentimes what we'll do is we'll make a few cuts and the key is to Simply keep these in order as long as these two are always joined together these two are joined together and these two you can kind of wrap the grain around the box but where this falls apart is here and here because eventually these two ends need to connect to one another and the chances of the Grain on this part of the board matching the Grain on this part of the board it's impossible they never will so you often end up with a box that has three great wrapped sides and one bad side that you put back in the corner now here's a very special box that I made for a couple of friends recently and look at that grain it just goes all the way through every single Corner not just three all four corners are perfectly matched up with the grain so it's going to be a little bit more work and you do need material that is thick enough so you could resaw it in half which means you're going to need a bandsaw to do it if all that stuff is there though this is definitely the way to go because that effect on all four corners looks a whole lot cooler than just having one that you kind of have to hide in the back so let me show you how I made it a small box doesn't need super thick sides so a rough four quarter board should yield at least two 3 8 inch pieces I lay out the center line for the resaw and then Mark out my cross cut locations being careful to allow for the blade kerf and notice that these cross Cuts will take place after the resaw now don't skimp on this layout step you really need to keep track of the parts after the cut so trust me do it all right so we go a or d d c okay b b c here's a final look at the layout that you'll want to copy it might not make sense yet but keep watching oh and because I like to build suspense I'm writing in to denote the inside face of the Box because ultimately the current outside face of the board will eventually become the inside of the Box the board first gets a resaw right down the middle the cleaner the cut the better since we're trying to remove as little material as possible that's part of the reason that it's best to use a thin bandsaw blade instead of something like a table saw which has a much thicker curve in woodworking we usually call this book matching so if you saw down the middle and opened it up like the pages of a book you end up with something that's really a nice Mirror Image where the grain looks almost exactly the same on both sides in this case for what we're doing we're actually going to go more of an end-to-end book match so if you take these pieces like so you can see how the grain just kind of travels right on through and we want to minimize the amount of material we take off of this face as well as minimize the amount of material we saw away when we make that cut because as you travel through the thickness of the board the grain moves and it changes so in order to retain that illusion we have to retain as much material as possible in fact let me show you what this looks like if I just take a little bit extra off of this piece here's the piece I cut let's see what we did so you still have a decent Mirror Image there it's not perfect you can see it's starting to deviate a little bit but let's look at this this is the one that matters in the context of this project it's pretty far off now right those do not look like a perfect match right and that was just by removing an extra eighth of an inch off of this piece so that drives home the point we really want to be careful how much material we remove from that inside face with that in mind I'll join the inside faces very lightly by the way remember I said before that the outside of the board becomes the inside of the Box well that also means that the inside of the board will become the outside of the box and that's why we're jointing the inside face first retaining the grain position on the visible faces any planing that we need to do will be on what will eventually be the inside face of the box where we don't have to worry about the grain match now I can cut the pieces into the various box sides using the layout lines from the first step and if you're paying attention you probably realize that the eighth inch blade kerf works against us by removing material at our joint lines but in some cases there's only so much we can do making these cuts at the bandsaw would certainly be an option if you've got really wild grain where that 1 8 of an inch could cause you problems okay so here's where the magic happens this is the orientation of the parts where they lived in the original full solid board we're just going to take the top two and place them on the other side now what was the inside of the board becomes the outside of our box cool cool cool very cool very cool now at Each corner I recommend drawing your bevel cut lines this this is easy to show but kind of hard to explain so just do what I'm doing and you'll be fine and now let's check all four corners to make sure that we have what we think we have and they're all nearly a perfect match okay so now for the bevel Cuts I like to use the miter saw with the head tilted to 45 degrees and I also like to use stops they help keep the piece the right length but also help stabilize the work but the real key here is to double check the lines that we drew before making sure that we're cutting in the correct orientation and by the way if you want to know what joint and woodworking I dislike the most you're looking at it I honestly hate doing long bevels short ones not too bad but long ones not my favorite [Music] foreign [Music] so from here it's just basic box making stuff we're going to cut ourselves a little box bottom and then cut the grooves for it at the table saw this isn't really something I'd bother using a dado stack for just a couple of passes at the table so I will do the trick oh it's the best [Music] foreign [Music] I may as well make the cuts for the box top we'll make a rabbet for the top to drop down into thank you sometimes when you make a rabbit like this you might have some cleanup to do and a shoulder plane will work great for that so my box bottom is oversized and I can use the Box sides to tell me the final dimensions foreign just a little tip when your parts are sized for a snug fit it's a good idea to chamfer the edges to help avoid tearing out the grain so the Box bottom gets a little love for my sweet baby brass plan love that thing now a little test of it okay so now's our chance to do any sanding that we want to do on the inside face because we're getting ready to glue it up B B A to a d it's a d and then C it's a c a cool technique for bringing a miter box together is to stretch some masking tape across the joints on the outside face I like to use a piece of scrap to help keep the pieces in line the last corner will get taped after the glue is added and when you do a bit of a dry assembly to test it out you should feel some resistance getting that lash joint closed that means that we've got no we got a nice amount of tape I'll drop some tight Bond into the groove and onto the bevel joints and with the bottom in place we can just bring everything together making sure all the joints are nicely seated sometimes the tape is all you need other times the glue up can benefit from supplemental clamping now regular clamps are going to be tricky to use in this context so if you can get yourself some band clamps like these marrow clamps you'll be better off I'll put a link in the description as I highly recommend picking one up it is so choice now make sure you clean up any squeeze out with a putty knife or a chisel and then a wet rag in the case of an urn the Box will be sealed up so we don't have to get too crazy worrying about the inside but I can't send this thing out with glue squeeze out so I'm cleaning it up one of the reasons why I don't like doing joints like this is because there's nearly always at least one corner with a fine Gap that you need to contend with you can certainly use filler if you want but one cool trick is to actually deform the wood slightly using a screwdriver or anything with a smooth shaft foreign if you apply a nice even pressure at a shallow angle you could sort of crush the fibers at the corner causing them to push into the Gap we're talking small amounts here not big gouges now this isn't a perfect fix but it's one that can make you feel better about a less than perfect appearing joint another option is to make your own filler using some sawdust from the project wood and a little bit of glue just keep in mind that if you are staining the wood the repair won't accept stain okay now we can sand the outside of the box don't go nuts with a powered sander because if you spend too much time at a corner you might really mess up the appearance of the joint now to help strengthen the joints and add a little spag flare we need to talk about your flare we'll cut two splines in each corner to do that I'll use a little spline cutting jig I actually made this jig for my award-winning world renowned and still available in many stores book essential joinery pick up a copy at twwstore.com today we don't want the splines to show on the inside of the box so I'll make some measurements and set the blade height on The Jig and then test in a piece of scrap to get the best results you'll want to use a blade with a square ground tooth alternating bevel blades will leave an irregular surface she said [Music] the splines themselves will be made from a casser ebony I'll get the rough shape and then cut the oversized triangles at the bandsaw watch those little piggies [Music] and then use a putty knife to put glue into the slots in on the splines and then press them into place just keep in mind that if the fit is tight without glue it's going to be nearly impossible to insert the splines with glue because the wood expands from the moisture so size them appropriately and don't be afraid to run some clamps from corner to corner gluing up a couple at a time I'm on a tight time table so boom splines in the house while the splines dry I'll Mill up some stock for the lid really nothing fancy here just another attractive piece of maple with some spalting [Music] I cut the lid to size and then fine tune the fit with a hand plane foreign if your box is slightly out of square at this point this is a good way to sneak up on the perfect fit even if the angles aren't perfectly Square while the lid sits down in the rabbit I'm going to add an additional rabbet to the lid itself and I'll cut those at the table saw by the way notice on these rabbits that I'm using a sacrificial fence you pretty much need to when the blade is this close to the fence and when you have a metal fence on a saw stop table saw that's a recipe for a very expensive wall ornament so you need to be careful with the double rabbit we should have a nice satisfying drop in fit and now for a decorative bevel on the top perimeter [Music] okay back to those splines I'll use a flush trim saw to cut the excess and then sand to remove the glue residue foreign [Music] and any of the sharp edges are broken with sandpaper [Music] now let's drop in the lid looks pretty pretty pretty good obviously you can use any finish you like I've been using a lot of this stuff lately it's called Bumble shoots and it's a food safe mix of tung oil and citrus solvent you can actually get 10 off using my code tw10 at checkout the oil really brings out the beauty in the maple you just wipe it on thin and wipe off the excess for something like a box that's mostly decorative a couple of coats should do the trick [Music] [Music] so obviously quite a bit more work involved but I totally think it's worth it uh you know sometimes the average person you can't really tell what they're going to notice with things like this but I think when you put this level of time and effort into a project and you have that much pride in your work it's worth it to do the extra mile if you can if you've got the thickness of material you would need and the tools to do it totally worth it so thanks for watching Everybody we'll see you next time so you go all the way around just by reversing the inside and the outside so that that is we call that the Texas rack is no aluminum foil involved huh given a conversation with Todd you know he's not here right he's here always watching I'd like to file a report against two my mother she's supposed to be the head of HR why she curse at me so much okay why Todd

Channel: The Wood Whisperer

Views: 266,048

Keywords: woodworking, wood whisperer, free plans, fine woodworking, woodworking projects, hybrid woodworking, wood finishing, power tools, hand tools, free woodworking plans, woodworking techniques, the wood whisperer, table saw sled, woodworking for beginners, carpentry for beginners, mortise and tenon, table saw, workbench, firehouse shop, shop tours, four-corner grain match, grain matching, box-making tips, continuous grain box

Id: SUd3I6Kx1Z0

Length: 16min 22sec (982 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 09 2023