This FRENCH CLEAT Design Change is AWESOME

hey guys welcome back to the channel you guys might recognize this as being a french cleat but the french cleat game has been turned on its head with this i'm gonna explain just how and why this is so important let's go [Music] so just a little overview before we get started what is a french cleat well it's a 45 degree angle beveled piece essentially you're going to want to take the smaller side okay put this easy terms small side large side small side goes up against the wall that's what these are then on your tool holder you're going to join it with the opposite side facing the other way that way you can lock things in place i'm going to show you this is a pretty good example of a tool holder i built years ago here's some footage of it how it works i mean it's easy stuff right i've got a ton of videos on these french cleats as you can see here so they're going to be in a playlist down below so why is this so important well we'll get into that just in a minute but i'm going to first tell you the formula that i've come up with to cut the original fresh cleats on the table saw and here it is okay so here's the formula right here i'm going to place it on the screen you can screenshot this you can pause the video you can write this down whatever but it really does work essentially what you want to do here okay hope you got that screenshot what you want to do is you want to make one piece of wood basically about however long you want but i will say i would go no less than five five and a half inches you want to cut that directly in half but you just can't put your table saw fence halfway between five you can't put it at two and a half doesn't work that way because you're cutting a 45 degree angle bevel now that formula basically essentially tells you to take half of your material width and then half of the thickness and then half of the kerf of the blade set your fence and then you can cut it through and what that does it essentially makes yep you guessed it it makes two pieces identical okay so i'm not holding there right these two pieces are identical and they were cut from the same piece of wood now this is the way i've always done it and honestly i like it it works really well but there's a new a new sheriff in town in the french cleat world and it's like this it's got two bevels this way and this way the exact same there is no 90 degrees why is this important like i said we'll get into that in a little bit but i'm going to show you how to cut this on the table saw and here's how you do it of course you want to set your blades to 45 degrees you can also do 30 degrees as well which is another common degree for a cleat system you're going to cut off one end you're going to bring your fence which has been modified with an auxiliary fence that goes all the way down to the table saws table at this point i can then now rest that angle up against the fence making sure it doesn't tuck underneath and keep cutting 45 degree angle pieces this allows me to have those bevels be parallel with each other but what you're left with are those two bevels that are very sharp so to break them i use the table saw again and i take basically the kerf width of a blade off the edge making them nice and smooth okay now that we got these cut i'm going to say this a word of caution if you think hey i could just move my fence to the other side of the blade that creates a bit of a problem you see this little footage right here see this piece yeah you see how dangerous that is i couldn't even imagine the kickback that would happen i think that death might happen i don't know yeah you could essentially do it that way but you would have to have all kinds of luck precautionary measures i don't know my recommendation is to put yourself a sacrificial fence not even sacrificial but just a fence that is as tight to the table saw table as you can like you saw in the earlier clip works fine that way all right moving forward and by moving forward i mean let's build something with this new cleat check it out so at this point now that we've discovered a new cleat it's time to put it into practice i've got an idea to put something else up on the wall something pretty handy that will all become clear very soon i just want you to hang in there with me and enjoy the ride as we make something to go up on the french cleat wall again french cleats are kind of comfort food to me in the shop i've made them for years i like doing them and i always like seeing the result and the functionality and the convenience of what we can come up with you can see here i put a pretty severe chamfer on these edges i've got two of the identical pieces here we're going to cut them down to length on the table saw sled nice crisp cut and then like all tool holders in my shop i want to make sure there are no rough edges we sand everything down to feel nice and smooth now we make a few marks here i want to find the center of this piece then i want to come out about an inch or so and then put two 45 degree angles down and realized that the angles weren't quite where i needed them to be so i had to redo it but no big deal now here is the perfect example honestly this is a perfect example of starbond ca glue being a tool for me at this point now i need to put this directly on this line and ca glue an activator honestly is one of the better ways to do this because i wasn't going to take the time to cut a groove or a dado in there again activator on the surface glue on the adjoining surface line it up carefully and then within seconds you have a strong strong bond i do it again to the top this time i don't need the angles there because all i need is the center of the piece and once we line this thing up this thing is actually coming together pretty quickly i got coupon codes down below as you saw so check it out starbuy.com really is great stuff so with my super glue tool in place i am now going to put some mechanical fasteners in here i've done a quick little countersink and then i like this little trick whenever i have to screw in a whole bunch of screws at once i like to put them in place with a hammer take my time and then drive them home giving me a nice clean look repeated that process on the other side and now it's time to attach the back to this piece glue and brads and of course again some mechanical reinforcers this is probably overkill but i like the look of it and makes me feel good so if you can visualize what this is well it's not really a little chair i wonder if anybody's guessed exactly what i'm making all become clear very soon guys just hold tight we're going to put a nice hand sanding down now and everything making the edges all nice and smooth like i've said before again here is that new parallel bevel 45 degree cleat we're going to install it on the tool like you would any standard cleat but it's going to give us a bit more functionality and this is what i'm pretty excited about little glue and ca glue trick hold it in place with a few clamps and then reinforce it with a few brads now we're good to go now the back doesn't need to have that much support that's why i just got a small strip here but i do need some because my cleats are spaced out 12 inches on the wall and you do need a backer for support all right so like i said this idea is not mine it is pete's and again i'm gonna let him describe some of the things he's come up with so pete you ready all right bud take it away all right chris thanks for having me on your channel uh here's a few ideas for holders on the french cleat wall one idea is this bandsaw blade holder you can see it's got two french cleat wedges here and then knobs that turn and allow you to get the bandsaw blades off easily you can see it wedges on there and it's super sturdy another idea is the sanding disc rack it organizes your sanding disc by grit and hangs on the french cleat wall for easy access one last idea are these holders for nailers they allow you to put the nailer perpendicular to the wall which saves you a lot of space thanks again chris for checking out the french cleat wall and for all your support back to you right i know awesome stuff all right back to what we're gonna do here and let's continue so these cleats with the parallel 45 degree bevels have a trick up their sleeve you can actually run them through the table saw and cut them in half which give you two standardized french cleats pretty cool little thing here also i'm going to use these for a little bit different application and again like i said these projects where you just kind of go and follow your nose and you think of an idea and just kind of make it work these to me are some of the best in the shop as you see i'm putting everything together i got to trim that up and we do that we clamp it in place i leave a little bit of a gap and then i fashion it all home with some glue and brads okay so i am going to use one of those standard cleats here but i'm going to extend its reach using some pva glue which is standard wood glue and some ca glue we're going to just tack it in place and then now i'm going to take this piece and attach it to the one we just made and of course i am a sucker for using flush trim screws to reinforce all these joints like you see me doing here and there you go this is what kind of a squirrely looking cleat you think how in the world is that going to work if you figured it out by now hey congrats but i'm about to show you so here it is it is a yep you guessed it a trash bag dispenser i've always been wanting to make one of these works pretty well but the top of it still using that parallel cleat allows for a space for us some more organization now check this out there you go you can put a cleat on a cleat such a cool idea so glad this worked that well and honestly it's so satisfying now let's discuss some other options for this check this out alright truth be told i just made a trash bag holder well one i did kind of have this idea a little bit ago figured i'd make it for this video but i'm going to show you an interesting thing about this system too if you design your pieces where they sit flush on a work surface you then have now something to come with you wherever you are so what i mean by that is you want to take your trash bags everywhere of course not what i'm saying is if you design like small parts bins for nuts bolt screws you name it this is this could be a really cool system to not just take the bins i mean for instance like this is a pretty ubiquitous bin that you might see somewhere in the makerspace that hooks on to a well a system that will stay on the wall right let's put that back but this you could take this little shelf with you and it could have a series of maybe 12 bins so you need to work on something at a different location pretty cool idea um i really like it i really do and i hope you guys consider not just the original french cleat but also making some of these with the parallel 45 degrees the functionality is just added and i don't think it takes anything away so let me close this up with my final thoughts alright guys well that's all i got for you this week i want to tell you i want to thank pete as well really for introducing me to this really telling world about it he just kind of slowly just put it out there and i was pretty blown away so i tried cutting these myself and the functionality was pretty awesome i honestly i'm going to incorporate these in this shop from here on out this is such a cool system again i'm going to link all pete's stuff down below go check it out and again if you want to help support the channel i've got campaigns down there as well i've got an etsy store got a patreon why not again no pressure for anything but i am slowly building what i am doing on etsy if you want to check that out the link is down below thank you so much guys i appreciate your viewership appreciate you watching and i'll see you on my next video until then y'all be safe take care [Music] you

Channel: A Glimpse Inside

Views: 311,475

Rating: 4.8648086 out of 5

Keywords: French cleats, Organization, French cleat system, DIY, Shop, Shop organization, Shop hack, New, Do it yourself

Id: usFRvasGW70

Length: 11min 47sec (707 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 13 2021