Uncommon Tips to Make Woodwork Easier

millions of years humans have been making things out of wood and subsequently through the years we've passed down ways to make the job a little bit easier but no matter how fancy our technology is nowadays the simplest things tend to be the ones that stick here are my favorite tips that I picked up along my own Journey all of them rely on simple ideas that make Workshop life easier first things first I can't do that the humble washer in every Workshop whether you like it or not one of these bad boys will be rolling around under your feet somewhere but did you know they double as a really helpful outline and template generator the way this works is very simple put a pencil in the middle of the washer you can then roll the washer's edge around any template you want to extend the thickness of the wall of the washer will determine how wide your line is all the way around the second trick I'm going to tell you about is taking this ordinary pencil and turning it into your best friend when it comes to measuring out tough Corners if you plain down the pencil like this what this does is removes the thickness of the lead and the bottom of the pencil when you're trying to mark an accurate line I'll show you what I mean this is hard to explain so I hope this helps but it's really simple and effective and a great way for tracing Contours accurately you might have seen this in the ukulele build video I use it when I'm fitting head and tail blocks accurately next up though here's a trick for your hand plane planes really great to do normal plane stuff with have a good time there 10 out of 10. shooting board my bro love it but did you know the plane also has a good time on its back in advice if you're trying to plane but some really thin veneer for example or if the material's too thin to go on the shooting wall without bending at the other end when you put pressure on it this is a really good way of planing something much like you would with a machine planer passing it manually across the top gliding it beautifully flat it seems obvious now I say it but actually a lot of people don't realize that you can use a plane in this way so I thought I'd include that on the list because I myself was somebody who didn't realize that until I was shown it the next thing I'm going to show you is my absolute favorite when I was building this Workshop I was doing a bit of joinery which I'm not really familiar with I don't want to be bothered to Mark everything so accurately like I do with guitars so I ended up using this trick a lot when you next need to rule a line a long piece of Timber at a certain depth whether it's finding a Center Line roughly or creating a pencil line if you want to line up some screws if you hold the pencil like this you can use your finger as a depth gauge and just create a really even line like that again wouldn't recommend doing it on a precise thing but it's perfect for when it doesn't matter so much if you're working with a particularly satanic Timber make sure you wear gloves next one up is a modern drill hack for me Circle Cutters are a pain in my ass you order a six mil Circle cutter it'll cut like a 6.1 6.2 mil hole or like a 5.8 or it's never accurate I use a circle inlay on every single one of my Tempest guitars and the way I achieve that is like this I drilled a hole I put the little inlay of the logo in and then I have to cut a perfect circle that fits that inner diameter exactly if it doesn't fit exactly it'll look like crap don't ask me how I know that and as I say never has a circle cutter been the exact diameter ever what I do to get around that is I get my friend I don't know why I'm talking in French I will then use the circle cutter to cut a circle which is vaguely in the ballpark and it has to be oversized not undersized I normally go a mill higher because it genuinely is so inaccurate I'll then super glue the rough Circle onto the end of the dowel I'm not going to do it now because if you hadn't noticed already I hate Circle Cutters so I don't want to do it but imagine there is a circle on the end of this super glued on what you can then do pop the drill in your dowel down in your drill and you have a spinning friend then comes the fun bit get a sanding block or lay out some sandpaper on a table if you keep the drill at a steady height above the Sandpaper you can clamp it if you want but I never bother then you got yourself a little lathe that will do your bidding just fine for minor tweaks of circular things it's a perfect way of doing it obviously don't go strapping a massive like Bowl blank on there because obviously you're not going to get anywhere but you know little things does the trick next next is kind of a more of a technique than a natural hack but I've found it quite useful over the years and that is using a soldering iron a bit of kitchen roll and some water in order to steam out any dents that you get in softer Woods such as Spruce Redwood again I'm using guitar word examples this has been especially useful if I've slipped with a clamp or something and created a teeny ding all you need to do is get paper towel water get your soldering iron on cover the ding that you want to steam out with the tissue and just gently touch the soldering iron to the wood and watch those wood fibers spring back up into place we had a willing assistant to help us commit the crime of the dent a nice healthy Dent get that wet tissue on the fibers and just touch the soldering iron gently doesn't want to be scorching but you know it's got to be hot enough that it'll Sizzle when you touch it don't hold the soldering iron there for too long because it will leave a burn mark in the wood but that's the job I'm really not very good at doing this so I try and avoid it at all costs but it is good to know it's there if I need to next up is something I did in my last video which a couple of you noticed so I wanted to bring that up here as well when you're clamping together a few pieces of wood and it's very slippery there is a way that you can stop the slippage this is particularly relevant for a scarf joint for a guitar neck or when you're gluing the bottom of the neck up like the um the heel blocks what you want to do is once you've applied your glue wipe out a little bit in the middle drop some super glue on there and then clamp it up the super glue will Bond much quicker than the normal glue and create a really solid start to your clamping job supporting the slippage and making your life a hell of a lot easier the next one is something I get asked about quite a lot because I put it sometimes in like my photos or my video content and people are like is that what I think it is the answer is yes it being used inner tubes from a bicycle these I get free from my local bike shop down the road a little bit of scalply welply in the middle there and what you find yourself with is a brilliant clamp again I use these on guitars when I'm doing The Binding to just make sure everything is perfectly secure and wrapped up but you could use them for whatever you want this guy's the limit I don't like using string because it's not flexible so yeah bike inner tubes also it's recycling in that vein just another really quick one to do with recycling don't throw away your old store cards and credit cards because they make excellent glue scrapers you can even take them to the bandsaw and cut little um like trench rivets in them which I do when I'm laminating guitar sides because they're like the perfect size for that and they're nice and flexible but not too flexible it's it's great it's good if you enjoyed the video subscribe and leave a comment obviously but more importantly if you have any tips or tricks that you feel like are gapingly missing from this video please put them in the comments because to become better Woodworkers we always have to be learning but

Channel: Daisy Tempest

Views: 205,810

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Id: Mz-tdjT7IDk

Length: 7min 1sec (421 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 07 2023