Woodworking Tricks You'll Actually Use // Helpful Woodworking Hints

welcome to another video this one is all for you guys you asked for another tips and tricks video and by golly you're gonna get one so watch the video you might already know these things i don't know i don't know what you know i'm not you but you might learn something so follow along subscribe down below go follow me over on instagram you can follow me on facebook if you're an old person and uh yeah let's do this let's talk about sanding everybody hates sanding but you don't have to no you do but the only thing that makes sanding more horrible is when you don't really know how to do it properly now i'm not saying this is the only way to sand but this is how i sand and i managed to get good finishes so there might be something to it this is my process i like to start at 80 grit every single time no matter how clean the wood is and i work my way from 80 grit to 120 to 150 to 220. now i don't finish my pieces at 220 because i use rubio monocode and they say not to go that high so i usually finish them at 150. but i go up to 220 with my random orbit sander and then i come back to 150 by hand why do i do this well i don't trust the random orbit sander to get a perfect finish without leaving swirl marks so the only thing that i trust is my own fingers so i go up to 220 on the random orbit and then i go over the whole thing again by hand with 150. now if you're gonna hand sand it all i highly recommend you get one of these little doohickeys it's a little hook and latch hand sanding block and it just takes a little sanding disc it hooks right on there voila and then you can sand away i'll put a link to one of these in the video description now there's some other things you want to consider when sanding a piece to make it go a lot better and here's what you want to do a big mistake that people make when they're sanding is they'll sand the board with their power sander and they'll start at let's say 80 grit and then they'll finish the 80 grit they'll take off the 80 grit slap on the 120 and they'll just start sanding the problem with this is once you sand a board you create a lot of fine dust that remains on the board now if you immediately just throw on another pad and start sanding you're taking all that fine dust and you're grinding it into the surface of your board this can cause a lot more swirl marks and scratches that are going to show up in your finished piece so what you want to do is in between each one of your grits you want to clean off your board now you can just blow it off that's fine wipe it down with a rag that's great the best thing to do is to wipe the whole thing down with mineral spirits that gets rid of all the dust i understand this can take a little bit of time and slow you down but you get a really nice finish do it in between each grit and then you're not grinding all that fine dust into your board sandpaper is flipping expensive let's just be honest and if you throw out your sanding disc every time it gets a little dirt on there then you're gonna just spend a ton of money and you're not gonna make any money and we all like making money so here's a trick that you can use to make your sanding pads go way farther now they make these little eraser things everyone thinks about these for the drum sander or the belt sander but no one thinks to flip and use these on your random orbit sander it works exactly the same way just clean it off this will make each one of your sanding discs go like three or four times further and you don't have to throw them all away i just tossed them in the trash for years i started doing this and now when it gets all clogged up pull this out clean it off keep going i can do an entire tabletop with one sandy disk and i'm rich now no not really but i am saving more money let's talk about something else pallets if you're working with pallets these things can be a pain to de-nail but i found a quick easy solution to get all the nails out and you're not even going to break a sweat but for this we have to go outside we're just going to let this burn a while and then after the woods all gone we'll come back and we'll sort through and we'll just pick up all the nails it's that easy let's make drilling holes more fun drilling holes it seems like a really simple thing not that hard to screw up why do people screw it up all the time maybe it's because they don't know the proper way to drill a hole now here's some helpful little tricks that make drilling holes a lot easier well not easier it'll just make your hole not look like crap let's talk about drill bits with spurs on them now when i say spurs this is what i mean i mean drill bits like this brad point bit here's a forstner bit and a paddle bit these are the most common ones with spurs and the spurs are these little tabs that stick out on the side they also generally have this brad point in the middle now the brad point is very useful for alignment you can stick that point right on wherever you want to drill your hole and it ensures that your drill bit's not going to wander around what a lot of people don't realize is that these spurs are also designed to give you a nice clean cut on the perimeter of your hole but it's not as simple as just sticking it in there turning your drill on and drilling what you actually want to do is turn your drill on in reverse cutting backwards will actually make a nice clean perimeter and then once you score out that perimeter flip it forward and then drill your hole and you'll get a crisp clean cut all the way around your drilled hole i'll show you watch and it's perfect because the reverse cuts in one direction you might get a few little burrs and then you flip it in forward and it trims off all those burrs leaving a perfect hole every single time now you know but what happens if you drill one hole and then all of a sudden you realize oh no i made a mistake that was the wrong size hole it's supposed to be bigger well you try and switch out your drill bit for the bigger size now you've got no place to reference your drill bit to drill a perfect hole so you can try and just stick it on there and eyeball it and force it but since it's not starting on that brad tip chances are it's gonna bounce all over the place and you're not gonna have a clean crisp hole so what do you do here's what you do you take a scrap piece of wood this is just half inch mdf you take your bigger size bit that you need to drill the hole bigger to and you drill a hole in it see just like that then you take that board you stick it over your already drilled hole you get it lined up perfect where it's supposed to be and you clamp it down then all you got to do is insert your drill bit this is going to act as a guide now to keep your bit from bouncing all over the place and you drill your hole like this so there's some simple drilling tricks that should help you out there's a bunch of other ones too obviously if you don't want to get blow out on one side that you're drilling through put a backer plate on and drill into the backer if you can't put a backer plate on something you can always drill a small pilot hole and then come in halfway through on one side come in halfway through on the other side and meet in the middle this will eliminate blowout all together but that's probably enough for drilling for today let's talk about gluing glue it can be your best friend and your worst friend can be your best friend because you stick it on the two boards and then boom the boards are mated for life it's great when you're woodworking you'd be your worst friend because stain and finish does not take too kindly to glue now it was a few years ago that i first learned that you can make your own wood filler by mixing glue and fine sawdust of whatever species you might be working with mix it together into a paste and you can fill little imperfections or cracks this is great and it matches really well to the piece you're doing what's not great about this is that stain and finish don't take too well to glue so if you fill a crack with that glue and sawdust mixture and then you put stain over the top there's a really good chance that wherever you filled is actually going to be highlighted even more because that glue is not going to take that stain or finish and then i had an epiphany is that the right word epiphany yeah i had an idea and it worked really well i used to finish a lot of my pieces with shellac or lacquer or varnish or wipe-on polyurethane and then i had this idea of instead of using wood glue to mix with my sawdust and make my wood filler for tiny cracks and imperfections i just started using whatever finish i might be putting over the top now let me preface this with this does not work with oil-based finishes because they're not going to harden but anything that will actually harden up like a glue would you can mix wipe on poly lacquer varnish with a little bit of that sawdust make a paste if you're using lacquer or varnish you got to work really quick because it dries really fast use that to fill your cracks and then when it comes time to finish because it's already mixed with finish you're not going to have those highlighted glue seams or you know standout middle fingers of glue let's talk about glue squeeze out i get asked a lot what do i do about glue squeeze out specifically in tight corners where sanding is going to be a pain in the butt i don't do anything i literally i just let it squeeze out and don't do anything not forever but for the time being what everybody wants to do when they see squeeze out is go get a rag and wipe it off the problem with this is as soon as you start wiping that wet glue you're going to smear it all around into the pores of that wood and you're not going to be able to get all that glue cleaned up so you're going to actually make a bigger problem and a bigger sanding catastrophe that you're going to have to deal with later so what i like to do is just leave the glue alone let it harden up do its thing and after it's hard and dry i'll come back and i'll clean it up with a chisel now some people they'll take a straw and they might run it along the edge you might have seen that trick but even that is going to smear that glue around and make a bigger problem let me show you what it looks like to just easily clean up that squeeze out with a chisel after it's dry okay check this out now that we've let this dry and we've essentially contained the area that the glue's in it's not smeared all over the place you can just take a chisel and with a flat side just directly against the wood so it's nice and flush what you're gonna do is you're gonna just come in here and you're just gonna trim up all that squeeze out like this now this isn't quite dry i didn't wait long enough but it'll still work to show you do it on one side and then you do it on the other side [Applause] [Applause] just like that now every once in a while you'll get a board with a crack in it now in an ideal world you just cut that crack out and use the rest of the wood but sometimes you can't sometimes you need all that wood or sometimes a crack develops in an existing piece and you have to repair it and the trick is how do you get enough glue into that crack to get some clamps on and know that it's going to hold well there's two ways that i know of to get glue inside of a crack let me show you what they are and you can decide which one's best this is method number one and my preferred method you just take some glue and you run it on the top of the crack like this okay you want plenty of glue because you want to make sure you get enough glue in that crack then you're going to take your shop vac and you're going to turn it on and hold it to the bottom of that board and suck that glue in now you know when you pinch that together that crack is full of glue and you're ready to go let me show you method number two method number two we're going to do the opposite of sucking the glue in from the bottom we're actually going to blow it in from the top so what you're going to do is take your glue bottle get come glue in your mouth like this put your mouth over the crack and just blow it in there you might be able to see why i like method number one better let's end off with some measuring tips all right in my last video showing you how i built the built-in bench in my mud room i showed you a little trick for measuring when you have to measure in a corner or up against something because we all know that you get to this point where your tape measures all bent funky dory like that and you end up having to kind of guess what the actual measurement is now my preferred method for dealing with this is to measure from that corner out a set distance i always go one foot and then i measure from the other end to that mark and add on one foot that gets me a perfect accurate measurement but a lot of you guys in the comments set another suggestion that i actually didn't know and you can also do on the back your tape measure it says the size that your actual tape measure body is on this one it says two and three quarters of an inch so potentially you could go all the way with your tape measure touching that wall find your measurement here at the mouth of the tape measure add that two and three quarter inch and get your total length i don't really like this because it's kind of hard to see exactly what the measurement at the mouth of the tape measure is it's hard to get your tape measure perfect up against your wall that you're measuring off of so i'm still going to use my measuring out and to that mark but you can do either one of these finding the center of a board for some reason is still a problem that we're talking about in 2020 to the point that companies have even made special jigs that will just perfectly find the center of a board for you i think this is crazy because it's ridiculously easy and all you need is a ruler no i'm not just saying to measure to the center of the board using a ruler you can accurately find the center of any board with very very little math let me show you how you do it all you need to do is take your ruler you're going to turn it at a diagonal like this and pick two points just go on the inch because it'll be a lot easier i'm picking the six inch mark over here and to make it simple on myself i'm gonna pick the 16 inch mark over on this side you get that 16 perfectly on the edge over here the six perfectly on the edge over here i know that is a span of exactly 10 inches what is half of 10 inches well that would be five so i go five inches in from either side and i make a mark boom that is the center of my board now aren't you glad you didn't buy a silly jig all right that's all i have time for today like always if you like this video let me know down in the comments and subscribe go follow me on instagram and if you're an old person follow me on facebook also if you have some helpful tips and tricks that you think the world needs to know about well put them in the comments and i'll steal them from you and claim them as my own in my next video not really i'll try and give you credit dream

Channel: Bourbon Moth Woodworking

Views: 54,776

Rating: 4.9351935 out of 5

Keywords: woodworking tips, tips and tricks, woodworking tips and tricks, woodworking hacks, woodworking tricks, woodworking hack, woodworking tips and techniques, woodworking tips and tricks for beginners, how to, woodworking ideas, homemade tools, woodworking tips for beginners, woodworking tips tricks and secrets, woodworking tips table saw safety tips, woodworking tips youll actually use, 6 woodworking tips and tricks, best woodworking tips and tricks, woodworking tips and hacks, DIY

Id: YXQI16FKQGg

Length: 18min 49sec (1129 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 05 2020