Stop Ruining Your Work... + 3 Other Tips Every Woodworker Should Know

hey everybody welcome back to another episode of tips and tricks every woodworker should know today we're going to cover five easy ways you can reduce tear out a simple hack for setting perfect router depths why you should mark your pieces with a thick sharpie rather than a thin pencil sometimes and a better way that you can fix joint gaps in a pinch we come out with new videos like this every month so make sure you get subscribed and let's get to it this tip's going to be all about getting a perfect depth setting on your router for doing inlays or cutting in hardware anytime you need to cut in a very exact depth with the router here's the easy way to do it so the thing that most people try to do initially is if you have a plunge based router like this first off it's kind of hard to really set because there's quite a bit of tension as you can see so it's hard to get it in the exact position that you want it because it's kind of bouncing around and you would need a third hand essentially so what people might do is try to set it up upside down like this get it lined up next to their bit and kind of put pressure down as they slowly let it up and even then when you get close as you can see there i'm not that close and you can feel there's a huge difference and you're going to sit there and try to micro adjust it all day and get it just right and it's just not happening so a really easy way to do it is you take your router and you plunge it down so that you're bottomed out on your material that you're going to cut into so with it bottomed out you can take whatever you want to cut in and just rest it right here on this little positive stop and then lower what is this thing called then lower the depth gauge and we'll just get it in there nice and tight and lock it down now if we were to plunge as deep as we can it's going to be the exact right depth to cut it in all right so here we're actually going to do it to prove that the technique works just in case there's any skeptics out there and this was actually a harder version of using this tip and the stakes were even higher and that's because normally when you do this let's say you were inlaying another piece of wood or a bow tie or something basically you do exactly what we talked about and then you could back it off a little bit so that you were plunging slightly shallower than the piece that you had referenced and that would make it so that whatever you inlaid was sitting slightly proud of the rest of the surface then you'd just sand it ever so slightly and you'd be good to go well here you can't do that because obviously i'm not going to be able to sand my hardware down to being perfectly flush and it has to be perfect because if it isn't the hardware isn't going to function properly basically if we don't mortise deep enough the piece won't come together properly and there's going to be a gap between the rails and the footboard and headboard and then if we go too deep the hooks won't be able to get in deep enough to properly seat so basically we have one shot to perfectly nail this also to make matters worse in order to cut my mortises i'm using this little plywood jig so if i were trying to set up my depth the traditional way that we showed before i'd have to have the router upside down with the jig on top of the base my bit protruding through the slot in the jig and this is a bad look so what we can do is set our jig on any flat surface and plunge the bit through the jig until it bottoms out on the surface beneath it then do exactly what we talked about sandwiching our hardware between the depth gauge and this little spinny guy positive stop thing so once i set it i can just clear it out by plunging all the way down until the depth gauge is bottomed out and then you can see here that after i scrub the corners the hardware is going to sit at exactly the right depth and it'll function perfectly again this was a very specific example for this hardware but there's a bunch of different situations you could encounter where you just need to set a perfect depth using your router and this is a way easier way to stick something in there and reference it rather than trying to fiddle around getting just the right depth which is nearly impossible all right this next tip is a bonus tip and it might be a weird tip to give within the context of a woodworking tips video but that is don't always watch tips videos woodworking tips are great but they're not the end-all be-all of woodworking and i think most of the tips that you learn you actually learn within the context of a project that's the way that they really stick with you so what i would highly recommend and encourage you to do is go watch some of our project videos if you haven't already pretty soon we're gonna have one coming out on this nightstand and we already have one out on this bed that is the companion piece to this nightstand and in those videos we cover a ton of tips and they're all within the context of actually building something and i think that they're a lot more impactful that way honestly so i'm going to put a link at the end of this video to the bed video you can go check that out for now let's get back to some more tips so i guess yeah you should watch tips forget what i said before but do go watch that bed after all right this next tip is all about eliminating tear out and we actually talked about getting rid of tear out in a previous tips video which we'll link to in the description but that was more about organization of cuts and doing rip cuts after cross cuts and for this i want to talk about a couple other options and i like to think about them kind of doing things before the cut and doing things during the cut turret often happens when making cross cuts because we're cutting across the grain and all those little wood fibers have the tendency to pull out when making these types of cuts so one of the things that we can do before the cut is use a zero clearance insert in our table saw and what this does is essentially create a slot for the saw blade that is the exact same size of the saw blade which creates a shearing action when you make the cut whereas without the zero clearance insert the fibers of the wood are pulled out by the saw blade which results in tear out another thing we can do is use a dedicated cross cut blade like this forest chop master and what a cross-cut blade has is more teeth than a combination or a rip blade and what this does is create a smoother cleaner cut so if i know i'll be making a lot of cross cuts especially with plywood i'll switch out my blade for a dedicated crosscut blade to be sure my cuts come out as clean as possible the last thing we can do and this probably should be the first thing we do is to make sure your saw blade is clean and sharp you'll be amazed at how much better just a clean blade will cut than a blade that's dirty and hasn't been cleaned in a long time and it's just about the easiest tool upgrade you could possibly do okay so let's now talk about the things we can do during a cut to help eliminate tear out one of the quickest and easiest things is to throw some tape down on your cut line the tape's just strong enough to hold those wood fibers in place during the cut and result in a really clean cut we just have to remember the direction at which the saw blade is exiting the wood so on a table saw because the blade is cutting downward we'll want to tape the cut on the bottom of our work piece but if we're using a handheld circular saw the blade's cutting upward so we'll want to tape on the top side of our work piece and this even works on the exit of a cut on the edge of a piece which can also be prone to tear out another technique i like to use is to score my cut line and i especially like to do this when using a router for things like rabbets on the end of a panel because the router's cutting across the wood grain there's a good chance we'll get some tear out so if i score the edge of my cut line i effectively cut all those wood fibers so that when the router cuts across them the fibers break away instead of tearing out of course there's plenty of other ways to eliminate tear out i just wanted to touch on some of my favorites and the ones i use the most and so hopefully you can use those in your work as well all right this next tip is one that hopefully you never have to use and it's going to be for fixing a gap that you have in a joint so i've got some miter joints that said this would be for any kind of gap in any kind of joint and this is probably something that you've seen people do plenty of times the basic idea is you're gonna use some glue and some sawdust to fill it in that said i do this a little bit differently than the way i've seen most people do it and i'm actually gonna try it two different ways so i got two bad joints and these gaps are pretty bad it might not look good on camera i'll try to get a close-up but like i mean i can see daylight through this so i would not want to use this on an actual project that i was working on we'll see so there's a number of ways that people like to go about this but probably the most common version that i've seen is where people get some sawdust from their sander and mix that with the glue to make a sort of slurry paste thing basically making their own custom wood putty concoction i never liked doing it that way though because i don't know where this wood came from and i feel like i'm probably not going to get as good of a match that way so instead what i like to do is sand right around the area that the gap that i'm looking to fill is and i'll usually do this with about 150 grit sandpaper then once i've got a small amount of buildup i can get some glue into the joint and i'll try to get a good amount of it down there so i usually just kind of flood it and then press it in with my fingers then i can start sanding over that area forcing my sawdust down into the joint and using the glue that's on the face of the wood to create a slurry or paste or whatever that's also going to be forced down into the joint also sometimes i find that after this dries it kind of shrinks a little bit so i might have to repeat the same process more than once as for the ca glue version i'm going to try it here for the first time just to see if it works any better so i guess we're going to find out together in a minute that said i'm going to wear gloves for this one because unlike wood glue you don't want to touch this stuff and i've also heard people talk about the exothermic reaction that happens when using ca glue so basically you're just going to want to be more careful i'm guessing that we're probably not using enough of an amount here for it to be a problem but just be careful if you try this and make sure that you're in a well ventilated area since there's some toxic fumes involved okay so i'm sure it's kind of hard to see in these shots so i'll get some close-ups so you can see what the results look like end of the day i would say that this is a technique that you don't want to have to rely on it's kind of a worst case scenario and you don't have any other alternatives you have to fix it you can do this personally i like the results of the wood glue a little bit better than the ca glue it was also a little bit easier to use in my opinion that said this was the first time that i ever tried it using ca glue so maybe i'm just not that good at it so you might be saying if this is not a good technique then why teach it as a tip and again it's because you might find yourself in that bad worst case scenario so while i wouldn't do this for joints in a situation like this i would just remake these joints a time where i actually did have to use it recently was i was building this piece where it had this little detail on the top that got really fragile and i messed something up screwing into it and i cracked it and it was just way too deep in the project to be able to fix it and it came out pretty good you can see here in this shot that it's not very noticeable when you get up close to it yeah you can still see it but if you're making it for youtube you can always just photoshop it away and you're good to go hey sorry to interrupt but i want to take a second to thank squarespace for sponsoring today's video both chris and i have been using squarespace for years now and that's because squarespace makes it super easy to get up and running with a ton of professional looking templates to choose from as well as making things like purchasing domains really simple squarespace also has plenty of e-commerce tools to help you grow your business things like inventory management a simple and secure checkout process and unlimited products allow us to easily manage online transactions and not get bogged down with mundane tasks so that we can devote more time to doing the things we enjoy like learning all sorts of woodworking tips and tricks so if you're thinking about starting a website or even if you already have one go check out squarespace to see if it might be a better option for you head to squarespace.com for a free trial then when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com4i's to save 10 off your first purchase of a website or domain all right thanks squarespace let's get back to the video okay this next tip has to do with using a sharpie or any other marker for marking things as opposed to using a pencil i use pencils all the time especially when i'm marking for accuracy but in a lot of situations i'll opt for a sharpie and especially when i'm tracing out parts that will eventually be trimmed so a part that's going to be rough cut then flush trimmed or something like that later i'll always opt for a sharpie and let me tell you why first of all a thicker black line is really just easier to see and allows me to be more accurate with my cut second the thickness of the line gives me a perfect buffer to make sure i'm cutting just the right amount so in a situation where i know that i'll be flush trimming with a template after rough cutting i want to remove enough materials that i'm not struggling to remove too much later on with the router and by cutting just on the edge of the sharpie line it'll leave me with a small enough amount to make flush trimming easy but still give me a good buffer so that i'm not risking cutting too far into my part during the rough cutting stage it also works well for a partner shape that'll be sanding to final size if i mark it with a sharpie rough cut it so that i leave just a bit of the line then i know all i need to do is sand until i can't see the sharpie anymore and i'll have a perfectly sanded shape so for the most part we always have sharpies laying around the shop as i'll grab them fairly often when marking things out and it works like a charm thanks for watching this one everybody make sure you get subscribed and if you want to check out more tips you can watch the playlist here and if you want to check out some woodworking projects which are also chock full of plenty of tips click this one right here alright we'll see in the next one

Channel: Foureyes Furniture

Views: 335,355

Keywords: woodworking, wood working, wood work, woodwork, wood, woodworking tips, woodworking tricks, woodworking tips and tricks, carpentry tips, DIY woodworking, workshop tips and tricks, woodworking hacks, woodworking hack, woodworking tip, perfect miters, miter joint, clamping tips, clamping tricks, clamping angles, how to avoid tear out, reduce tear out, better sanding, workshop hacks, workshop tips, do it yourself, woodworking projects, woodworking for beginners

Id: YIhgvCsDS6g

Length: 15min 37sec (937 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 31 2022