- [Shane] I've been looking forward to this project for a while. I guess you could say for
me it's an opportunity to carve out a fresh
perspective in woodworking, or at least I'm gonna try. So today let's look at
things from a different angle on Timber Biscuit. So like I said, I've been thinking about building this project for a while now, and it's not so much the project that I've been really thinking about, it's more about the design
and execution of it. See, I've played around with
rounded edges, round corners, and sharp right angles in the past, but I've never really
explored the triangle. So, that's what I wanna do today and I'm gonna do that while
I build a console table or a hallway table, or an entryway table, or whatever you call it, potato, potato. But I wanna do that in a way that really only utilizes raw materials, which is why you see me
milling down my hardwood here. And the hardwoods of choice for this piece are gonna be walnut and white oak, but we'll dive more into
that once we get there. For now, let's take a quick
moment and look at the design. So with this table, I'm gonna be doing a
lot of different things from the trapezoidal top to some inlaid drawer fronts
along with custom pulls and dovetailed drawer boxes. And all of those things will share that similar theme of the triangle, and that of course includes the base that has splayed tapered legs and a pretty interesting stretcher system that tapers towards the center. But we'll talk more about those details as we get to them because there's a lot. For now, I just need to finish milling up my lumber for the panels. So, with all my boards skip
planed over at the planer, I took them over to the jointer
to put a fresh edge on them. Now the reason I'm skip
planing these boards and not face jointing them and then running them through the planer is because they're S2S
lumber or surfaced two sides. So when I buy them from
my lumber supplier, they're already pretty flat and I don't have to worry too much about reflattening them again. If this is all rough cut lumber, I would definitely be running
them over the joitner first and then running them through the planer. But if you can get your
hands on S2S lumber, it's worth the added time savings to not have to reflatten everything. Now, that's not to say
that all these boards are gonna be perfectly flat. There's probably gonna
be some that have a twist or a bow in them that
I'll have to work out, but for the most part,
they're mostly flat. The biggest thing is to choose
boards at the lumberyard that are mostly flat. And after a bit of time you'll figure out what boards will work
and which boards won't. So I don't really have a
problem skip planing boards if I know they're gonna
be relatively flat. But either way, these panels are gonna be 3/4 of an inch thick. So I'm gonna be using dominoes
to keep those panels flat and reference all the faces anyway. So even if there is a slight bow or twist in those boards, the combined strength of those joints should level everything out. And if there is any odd
twists in those boards once those panels are made, I can always go back and
flatten them out a bit with a hand plane. So if there is a bow, it's
not the end of the world. Either way, I'll just keep my eye on it and my other eye too. (Domino whirring) So like I mentioned, now that
all my boards are milled down, the next thing I'm gonna do
is plow a couple mortises into the edges so that I can
reference all those faces flat. This ensures all the faces on the boards are at the same height when
the panels are glued up. And if you don't have a domino, here a biscuit joiner
would work just as well. Now, because I'm gonna be
grain wrapping this piece, the biggest thing I need to watch out for is that those dominoes don't get placed where those miters are going to live. So the outer carcass or case is gonna be made up of
two different panels. And since you'll actually
see the miters wrap around the top of the table, I need to make sure that that top panel is longer than the bottom panel. This way I can cut those miters
to get the continuous grain or waterfall edge. So with both of my panels
glued up and dead flat, I could head back over to the table saw and trim them down to their final width. And as always, I say final
width kinda loosely here because I'm about a 16th of
an inch over my final size. So I can hand plane back
to the final final width once the entire carcass
is fully assembled. So once I have my boards to their final, air quotes, "width," I could go ahead and
cut in the inside bevel. Now I'm gonna do this now
while these are large panels as opposed to when they're
cut down to my mitered pieces because it's much easier
to cut a consistent bevel on one large panel than it is
on four separate smaller ones. Next up on the Gantt chart was to go ahead and trim out my sides, top, and bottom. Now for the pieces that are
gonna be mitered at the top, I wanna hit those dead on, and that's because those are acute angles. Meaning that I have to cut
those miters vertically at the table saw because as you know, all
right angles are 90 degrees. So we need to make sure
that our combined angles add up to 180 degrees for our two sides. And that sounds kinda
complicated, but it's not. As long as you cut your acute angles vertically at the table saw and your obtuse angles
horizontally at the table saw, and you don't move the
blade between those cuts, the math is going to work out and those angles are
going to align perfectly. The biggest thing you have
to watch out for though is that all of your pieces
are cut to the correct length. So it's my recommendation
if you're going to do this to keep your bottom panel or your more obtuse angles
for your second cuts. It's a lot easier to adjust
those horizontal cuts than it is to adjust the vertical ones, which is why you see more
of an offcut in these shots. But if you guys wanna know
what these exact cuts were and you want plans for this project, let me know down in the comments and as always, if there's enough interest, I'll put them together. So with my carcass pieces all trimmed out, the next step is to go ahead and lay out, then cut the stopped dados. So what I like to do is just lay out my markings on one board and then align and transfer
those marks to my other one. And in this case, since
my pieces are wide enough, I'm just gonna go ahead and
cut both my stopped dados at the same time. This guarantees that both my
joints will align perfectly as long as my boards
are centered correctly, which I think is a heck of
a lot easier than resetting and trying to cut the stopped
dado two different times. And for these cuts, I'm
gonna be using a downcut bit 'cause I want the cleanest
lines at the top edge of that dado joint. If I was cutting mortises and I was really just worried about hogging out the material, I'd use an upcut bit so
that it pulled the material out of that joint. But for this situation, a
downcut bit is a better solution. (router whirring) Just be sure to stop at your line and if you do go over,
don't worry too much, you can always cut the
shoulder a little short. Like the guy who invented
crunchy peanut butter, sometimes you just gotta
quit a little early. Next, you can toss in the dado stack so that it can cut the rabbet
along the backside of the case for the rear panel. This is another situation
where it's easier to do this when they're full panels most of the time. But because that material
thins out so much, when I've cut the miters in the past, I've seen a bit of tear out and I'm not fully convinced
that I won't see it again. So, I kinda changed
the order up this time. And since I had the dado stack and sacrificial fence all set up, I went ahead and cut the shoulder
on my vertical partition. Then from there I could
swap in my miter sled and cut the rabbets on
the sides of the case. And the last step was to trim
down the vertical partition to its final length. From there, I could
head over to the bandsaw and notch out the shoulder
for the stopped dado Over on Instagram, I got a
question about whether or not I'd use a sliding dovetail for this joint instead of a stopped dado. And the reason I went with a stopped dado rather than a sliding dovetail is because the assembly on
this piece is kinda difficult. Now, originally I planned on
using dominoes in the miters and in fact I went ahead and
cut all those dominoes in. But when I tried to assemble
this piece the first time, the dominoes were shifting everything and actually making it a lot
more challenging to glue up. So instead of dominoes, I
opt to go with blue tape and strap clamps, which
I've also done in the past and had great results with but I really like using
dominoes and miters when I can. This is just one of those situations where it didn't work out. So with my carcass all
glued up, I could go ahead and get to work on what I'm
gonna call my wedged partitions. And these are gonna be partitions that wedge into those outside angles, which will give you a 90-degree
wall from my drawer slides, which are gonna be wooden so we need this to be nice and square. From there, I could
head over to the bandsaw and rough trim it out to its final height. Now I did this at the bandsaw
rather than the table saw because of that wedge. Doing it at the bandsaw also allows me to just use my hand planes to
work back to the final fit, which I think ends up being
a bit tighter than it would with just a table saw cut anyway. And while I finish that up, if you're finding this video
to be helpful and entertaining, please like and subscribe. It really helps the video out and I greatly appreciate your support. So if my wedge partitions' all
fitting correctly vertically, I can trim them down to
their horizontal final width. And I'm actually gonna
cut these a bit shorter than you might think. And that's because again, I
wanna play off the triangles. So I'm gonna nest these
back from the front of my center partition
by about a half an inch. This way I can cut some triangular blocks out of my white oak to give a little fun surprise of contrast when the drawer boxes are opened. So here I'm gluing my
wedge partitions in place and a good word of advice is
to keep your offcuts handy whenever you're cutting
mitered pieces like this 'cause there's no telling when you're gonna need
them again in the project and they're really useful for glue ups. Here I just use some double-sided tape to hold those wedges in place and give me a 90-degree
reference area for my clamps. From there, I can just use my miter gauge to trim out those triangles. (saw whirring) In the last couple projects,
I've really been playing around a lot with contrast, and I think this element, those subtle is one of those tiny details that really increases the
interest on a project. Sometimes these details
can feel a bit gimmicky but I feel like if they're
used appropriately, like they are here with a tiny reveal, they make things more interesting. But I'd love to hear your take on it. So let me know down in the comments, are you a fan of hidden
gems within furniture or do you find all that
stuff kinda gimmicky? If you're a fan of gems,
start your comment with gems. If not and you think they're gimmicky, start your comment with gimmick. And if you start your
comment with gems or gimmick I'll reply to you guys first because as always, I know
you're paying attention. (saw whirring) So next was onto the drawer boxes. And since I have the drawer
box sides all ripped down, I go ahead and cross cut them
down to their final width. Now again, on the drawer boxes
I'm gonna be using dovetails, so here I wanna make sure
that I cut all my boards down to their exact final width. We don't want anything
overhanging or too wide here, otherwise the drawer boxes
are gonna be too snug and they're not gonna fit
correctly in the case. Next, it was time to
cut out the dovetails. And as much as I'd love to cut
these dovetails out by hand, I just don't have enough time
to do that on a regular basis. So here I'm gonna use the PantoRouter. Now I've used this tool a few
times in videos in the past but for those of you who
are not familiar with it, let me just give you a quick
refresher on how it works. So basically you use these templates that are attached to the
side of the jig as a guide, and you move those templates
up, down, left, and right based off where you
want the machine to go. From there it's like a manual CNC machine where you move the bit around
to outline those templates and remove the material
from the edge of the joint. So for dovetails, we first
start by cutting out our tails using a dovetail bit. Then from there I'll swap in an upcut bit and cut the pens. I can adjust the fit on these tails by moving that template holder up or down to make sure the dovetails
are snug but not too tight. And this type of machine is really useful whenever you're needing to
batch out a bunch of dovetails because while it takes
maybe 30 to 45 minutes to set up initially, it saves a ton of time by
allowing you to batch things out. Now there's also a dust shroud that comes along with this machine but it's kinda hard to see
what's happening while it's on. So instead for you guys, I just remove it and clean up the mess later on. (machine whirring) Now there's a couple different versions of this type of machine on the market and I don't have any
affiliation with any of them, but I am happy with this purchase. So if you're in the market,
just do a bit of research and see which one fits your
needs and your budget best because there's nothing worse
than when the jig is up. And I mean you can't
really deny those results. Next, I could take my work
pieces over to the table saw and use a flat tooth
blade to cut in the groove for my drawer bottoms. I prefer using a single
blade over a dado stack for this procedure because for these drawer bottoms I'm gonna be using quarter inch plywood and quarter inch plywood is not actually a quarter of an inch, so it's a lot better
to sneak up on the fit with a single blade than it is with a quarter inch dado stack where you undoubtedly will have a loose fit on the drawer bottom. And I'm using plywood here because I A, have this
white oak plywood left over from the hutch build, B, it'll save me some time
not having to glue up panels, C, I'm gonna end up lining these
drawer bottoms with leather so you're never gonna see
the bottom material anyway. And I guess D, plywood's
a really stable material so I don't have to worry
about any wood movement. Maybe I should have just
said E, all the above and skipped the explanation. So from there, all I had to do was glue and assemble my drawer boxes. Now because these are dovetailed boxes, they're already gonna be pretty square, but I went ahead and threw
an extra clamping square into the situation just to be sure because it would really suck if I popped these guys out of clamps and they weren't square. Luckily that was not the case and when I did pop these
guys out of clamps, I could throw them onto the workbench and just use the number four smoother to clean up the pins and tails. And then from there I could check the fit. And yeah, that'll work just fine. So, since we're going with
wooden slides on this piece, I'm gonna be cutting in some stop grooves in the sides of my drawer
boxes to ride on those slides. And to cut those in,
I'll use a downcut bit over at the router table. Now, I'll be honest, it's a bit unnerving to run a drawer box that you've worked so hard on
over a router bit like this, but if you take light passes and feed your work piece slowly,
it's going to go just fine. (router whirring) Another thing that really
helps is the downdraft table with the router setup because the suction pulls the work piece down into the router, which makes things feel a bit more stable. And the final depth I'm going for here is 3/8 of an inch. So again, I'll just do
that in two separate passes and stop when I hit the stop. Next I can build my slide
material down to 3/8 of an inch and then trim it down to its final length over at the table saw. And then lastly, rip down
four sticks to half an inch, which again is the
diameter of my router bit. (saw whirring) So once I've ripped them
down to half an inch, I'm just gonna use my hand plane
to smooth out the saw marks and that'll also remove
just enough material to make sure we don't have
a super tight fitting slide, but one that's pretty snug. From there, the last thing to do is get these guys installed. So I went ahead and cut
out a reference block so that I can just slide that
into the drawer box opening and then rest the slides on top of while I glue and pin them in place. Then after about 20 minutes or so, I went ahead and slid the
drawer boxes in to check the fit and there was a nice sigh of relief when everything was good. Next it was time to get to
work on the drawer fronts and the drawer fronts are getting an added triangular element to them in
the form of a white oak inlay. So I considered a couple different ways to cutting this inlay and ultimately just decided to use my CNC. Now, I don't normally use my
CNC for projects like this, but in this situation, there wasn't really an easier solution. While I could make a template
and then route it out by hand, I really didn't see
the benefit of doing so when I could just put it on the CNC. And I guess the only
negative side of using my CNC is that it's not incredibly accurate. I mean, it's good enough
to get most things done, but it's not spot on. So here I decided to make
my carvings oversized and then just use my hand tools to give me a little bit
more space to work with. This is like the ultimate mashup of modern and traditional woodworking. And doing it this way was
actually a really wise decision as you'll see momentarily. So next up, I needed to cut some veneer and to do that, I'm just
gonna head over to my bandsaw and use a resaw blade to cut my veneer to about three sixteens
of an inch in thickness. (machine whirring) Now I set about 3/16
of an inch in thickness because I don't need to
nail 3/16 right off the saw. Instead, what I'm going to do is cut them slightly over what I need and then just use my drum sander to thickness them back down. And the final thickness
should be just a hair over an eighth of an inch, which is about the depth of my inlay. Again, not perfect but close enough. Now one thing I did do
before running these through the drum sander was mark the ends so that I know where my book match is, because the goal is the book match these two inlays at the center. This way we get a nice mirrored look on the front of the drawer fronts. So as I mentioned, there was
a bit of shifting at the CNC, and what I'm doing here is
just trimming both my boards so that the inlays are evenly matched. From there, I'll just rotate the pieces and trim the excess from the top. Now my two walnut boards
are a continuous grain because they're from the same piece, but even I'll admit that
that's not super apparent. So the next step was to go
ahead and trim out my inlays and to accomplish that task, I whipped up a quick tapering sled and trimmed them down
over at the table saw. (machine whirring) So with the inlays all trimmed down, I could go ahead and glue
them to the drawer fronts. Now here I'm just gonna use
blue tape and a bunch of clamps. While I do have a vacuum press and I've used that on
the channel in the past, I just didn't feel like
it was worth all the setup to do two inlays. Though I'll admit after applying 18 clamps to each one of these inlays, it probably would've been a
more efficient use of my time. I guess sometimes you
gotta look at the forest instead of the trees. After about an hour, I
could rehang all the clamps and remove the blue tape. And since I already used the drum sander to thin these pieces out, all I needed to do was
use my random orbit sander to flush everything up. Smooth. Next, it was time to cut out
the actual drawer fronts. And to do that, I just made a
quick template out of plywood to make sure my template fit nicely before I trimmed down
my actual work pieces. This also gives me the
add benefit of using this as a template at the router table so that I know my drawer
fronts are going to be exactly the same and it takes away any measuring
that would need to be done to center them over at the table saw. Instead, I can just reference off my marks and that'll ensure that
the inlays are centered and positioned equally
across the drawer fronts. So with my inlays
centered, I could go ahead and trim the drawer fronts
down to their final width. Now, I didn't use the
router table for this because I think these types
of cuts are a lot cleaner when done at the table saw, and it also avoids having
to route any end grain, which to me is a huge plus. So once I have the centers
cut as close as possible, I could go ahead and angle my miter sled and cut the outside angles. And I think it's worth noting
that in projects like this where you have a lot of miters, it's a good idea to keep
track of all your angles. I know some people like
to write them down. I personally like to take
out my phone and snap a photo at where those angles were. This way I can always go back
and have a visual reference. Now that might mean adding
a couple notes to the photo but for me it's safer than
having a sheet of paper floating around in the shop. You know, sometimes we all
wish we paid more attention at the first rodeo. So with the drawer faces fitting nicely, it was time to address the pulls. And on this piece I wanted
to do something more custom and make my own pulls, again, really embracing
that raw materials idea. So I went ahead and
picked up this brass bar and decided to cut my
pulls directly from the bar using my bandsaw. (bandsaw whirring) Once I had the initial squares cut out, I again marked my angles for the pulls and took them back over to
the bandsaw to trim them out. The main thing here is that you wanna use your finest tooth bandsaw blade. The one I'm using is six
TPI or six teeth per inch. This bandsaw blade's also pretty worn so if it breaks in the process,
I'm not too worried about it and I don't have any problem cutting nonferrous metals with it. So, once I had my two pulls trimmed down, I just used my diamond stones
to remove the oxidation and smooth out any scratch
marks that may be remaining. From there, it was time
to cut the mortises in the drawer fronts for
the drawer pulls to rest in. So what I first did was
mark out their location, which is gonna be towards
the edge of the drawers, and then from there I
could just use my router and an edge guide to
plunge in the mortises. Now, when I was designing this piece, I was a little concerned
that the drawer pulls might cause racking since
they're so close to the edge, but I really didn't wanna break
up the line from the inlay by putting the drawer pulls in the center, but I decided just to risk it with the interest of the design in mind and hope that things would work out. Luckily for you guys,
you'll know pretty quickly whether that risk was worth taking or not. For me, it meant a couple
nights of restless sleep. Anyway, I cleaned up the
rounded edges using my chisels and then popped that guy in place, and when it seated fully, I
was pretty stoked on the fit. Next it was time to adhere them in place. And to do that, I'm just gonna
use some five-minute epoxy, which is a lot faster than the hour or full day epoxy that I normally use. But I gotta warn you, this stuff stinks. I guess that's the trade
off for efficiency. My only tip here is just to make sure that you tape off the area around where you're using the epoxy. This way if there's any squeeze out, you can just peel up the
tape and remove the drip. Sanding right up against those pulls is gonna be pretty difficult, so avoiding squeeze out
altogether is the ideal solution, but we all know that's not gonna happen. So after about 10 minutes
of dry time, no cap, I was good to go ahead and
pop on my drawer fronts and to attach them to the drawer boxes, I'm just gonna use some
shims and some CA glue. Once the CA glue's in place, I'll just pop on a couple clamps to hold the drawer fronts in place while the CA glue dries for a bit, maybe another five minutes or so. Then from there, it can pop
the entire drawer assembly out and pre-drill so I can screw some screws through the drawer boxes
and into the drawer fronts. Now this process only
works if your drawer fronts and your drawer boxes are super flat, and if not, you might opt
for using double stick tape rather than CA glue. From there, we can pop the drawers back in and yeah, those are looking really good. Next thing I can go ahead and mill down my eight quarter material
to an inch and a half. This will be the thickness
for all of my base pieces. And then from there I can use my template to mark out the location
on each of my boards for where I want the legs to live. I kind of tried to predict where the straightest grain would be once my tapers were cut in
and the legs were angled. And this again is one of those situations that sounds a little bit more
confusing than it really is. You see, the reason that people use rift-sawn lumber for table legs is because it gives them
really straight grain. And when it's done correctly, that straight grain exists on
all four sides of the legs. Well, because these legs
are gonna ultimately be triangular in shape, there's not gonna be four sides. So I kinda have to guess at where that grain is going to live and what direction it's gonna be going in once I remove that material. So it's a bit of a guess but
like Leo in "The Revenant," you gotta bear with me. So once I had my boards rough
cut out over at the bandsaw, I could take them over to my router table and slap my template on
and template out the sides. Again, here I'm gonna do everything I can to avoid the end grain
as well as the joints because I'm gonna cut those
flush over at the table saw. Now, knowing that I have
a half inch diameter bit to use for this process, I'm also sure that I only
leave about a 16th of an inch of material for the bit to remove. And if you're interested
in getting yourself one of these combination of down bits, I'll leave a link to it
down in the description. From there, it was on to cutting the tops and bottoms of my legs. Now the tops and bottoms are
gonna have mirrored angles and that's what's going to allow for those legs to splay out. The biggest thing here is just making sure that all my legs are
exactly the same size. And to do that, I just use
my first leg as a template and used a marking knife to
mark out the rest of the legs. From there, I can just use a
combination of different sleds to cut down all of my joinery. Now when cutting joints like this, there is no one size fits all solution. That's why you see me
hopping back and forth between my miter sled to a miter gauge to a shop-made sled because for any one project, I could use half a dozen or more sleds just to get those repeatable cuts. In woodworking there's a lot of situations where it's better to be off once and be consistent about being off once than it is to be off three or four times. It's a lot easier to fix that one mistake than it is to try to hunt down solutions for all those different problems. (saw whirring) So with the joint edges all trimmed out, it was time to cut down
that outside angle. And to do that, I'm
gonna use the table saw. So the first thing I'll
do is cut in my angle on the outside of all my work pieces. (saw whirring) Then from there, I'm just
gonna use some blue tape to reattach my offcut. This will give me a 90 degree
reference from my table saw when I'm cutting the adjoining angle because if I didn't
re-tape this offcut back on and I attempted to cut
that opposite angle, I would end up with a leg
that was super uneven. So with my leg all stitched back together, I could head back over to the
table saw and let her rip. (saw whirring) The only thing to keep in mind here is that once you get past the blade, there's no longer gonna
be the support underneath. So you really need to exit the cut by pushing through the blade. This way the leg doesn't
stop and get chewed up. There you go, four legs nice
enough to make Ralphie blush. Next, it was time to get
to work on the stretchers and the first thing I'll do
is just rip down two pieces that are two inches in thickness, which is the same height as the leg joint. Now, you'll remember early on that I said that these were
going to taper and they are, but there's a couple things I need to do before I cut those tapers in. And the first step is to trim
all my stretcher pieces down to their final length. So once I had the final length
on the right angled side, I could go ahead and cut in the
angles for the center joint. Now these angles are a bit more math than just trial and error, so they come directly from the plan. That's because all four
of these stretchers are going to align at
the center of the piece. So I don't want any guesswork here. With the leg shapes all cut out, I could go ahead and plunge
in the mounting holes. And to do that, I'll
just use my drill press. The first hole I plunge is
going to be an oversized hole for the head of the bolt. Then I'll swap in a 9/32 bit and plunge all the way through. And that's because the
bolts I'm gonna be using are quarter 20, meaning they're a quarter inch in diameter and 20 threads per inch. Not that the thread count really matters. What's more important is
that the bolt has room to move in the hole if there's
seasonal wood movement. If I didn't leave that extra space, there's a chance that
with changes in humidity, the base could get ripped apart. So, with all my mounting holes plunged, I could go ahead and cut in the tapers. Yeah, woodworking is definitely all about those order of operations. Now, I've never built a base with tapering stretchers like this before, and what it's going to
do is it's visually going to make your eye go towards
the center of the piece, which at the end of the
day is the ultimate goal. If we can give visual cues as to where we want the viewer to focus, then we can use those design elements to control the perspective. So the stretcher's all cut out, it was time to lay out
the joinery for the base. And for the base joinery, I'm gonna turn to the domino. Floating tenons are super strong and when you double them up like this, they're even twice as strong. So all I'm gonna do here
is plunge in two mortises into each of my work pieces, then give everything a thorough sanding. And believe it or not, this is one of the more challenging parts of the entire project. Maybe not challenging,
but definitely a pain. Because of the angles, the legs had to almost be
completely sanded by hand, which meant I had to be really careful not to round over or sand too
far on any of those angles or at risk introducing some
sort of wave into the line. So once they were sanded, I could start by gluing
my stretcher to my legs and to help with the glue
up, I just cut a wedge out of one of my offcuts and used it as a clamping block
on the outside of my legs. It's a pretty similar clamping solution to the one I did with the dining table and the birdsmouth joints. So once the glue had dried
on those stretchers and legs, I could go ahead and glue in the dominoes that would attach the front
and back stretchers together. And finally, once the
glue was dried there, I could pop off the clamps and plunge the mortises
for the center joint. Here I was just sure to
reference off the top of the base since the underside is
where that taper exists. If I were to reference off that, the dominoes wouldn't meet in the center because they'd be following the taper. Now for this glue up, I cut out two wedges and then notched those wedges
so that I could clamp them to the sides of the stretcher. Then from there, it could
just pop my clamps on and clamp everything to
the top of my work bench to ensure things stayed
as flat as possible. Next, we were onto the finish
work before the finish, and the next thing I wanted
to do was use a card scrapper across the entire tabletop. This is gonna give a super
smooth finish to the tabletop, and as most woodworkers know, there's no finish quite like
that of a card scrapper. And then from there, I could
go ahead and use my hand planes to clean up the outside edges. You'll remember earlier
that I left the carcass wide so that I could hand plane back to the final dimension later on. And well, it's later on. And then from there, I could
go ahead and route in my brand. Having a custom brand like this is another one of those details that really just elevates the furniture. In the past, I've used
wood burning brands, but this brass medallion really fits this piece a lot better. So with the brand in place, I could get to work on attaching the base. And to do that, I'll just
drop a brad point bit into my mounting hole, then use a mallet to give it a light tap. This will show me the
exact drilling position for cutting my threads. And I'll start by using a drill guide to make sure my pilot hole
is exactly 90 degrees. This has the added benefit
of having a depth stop, so all my holes are the same depth. Now I really like cutting
threads like this, but I know a lot of people
prefer a threaded insert. If I was really concerned about the weight or the strength of the mount, I think a threaded insert
would be the way to go. But with a piece like
this where it's definitely not gonna see a lot of strain, I don't really see the point
of using a threaded insert. So here I opted to go with the wood tap. The last step was to
cut out the rear panel. And for that, again, I'll
just use the white oak ply. So with my mise en place, I could go ahead and get
started on the finish. And for the finish on this piece, I'm gonna be using a hard wax oil. Now I've used this same hard
wax oil on the last five or six pieces on the channel, and I'm not gonna change anything here because I love the finish and I don't think it's worth changing. But while I finish up the finish, let me take a quick moment to say that if you guys are enjoying
the videos on this channel and you wanna support the show, I'd like to invite you to join my Patreon. It's a lot of work to
shoot, edit, voiceover, and put all these projects together as I do them all solo in
the evenings and weekends. But it really helps out to know that I have your guys' support. Now Patreon members also get a bunch of behind the scenes content and other access that you just
can't get through YouTube. So without taking too much time to go through all the details, if you're interested in finding out more, just click the link
down in the description. And to those of you who
have already joined, thank you so much for
your continued support. Your donations go directly
towards making these videos. So thank you. And hey, if you can't
join today, no stress. Thank you for watching the videos and being a part of the community. All right, we're on the home stretch. So I went ahead and cut
my leather pieces to size and then just used some contact cement to adhere them to the drawer bottoms. Just make sure that you
apply contact cement to the back of the leather
as well as the drawer bottom. And then wait about 20
minutes for both to tack up before you marry them together. This is another one of those hidden gem parts of the project. You can get leather in
all sorts of shapes, colors, and sizes. So, just have fun with it. And now that the drawers
are completely assembled. I can go ahead and glue
in the drawer stop. And to do that, I'm just gonna
apply a few drops of CA glue to a stick and glue it in place. This does exactly as the namesake suggests and stops the drawers from falling out. From there, I can flip the cabinet around and tack the rear panel in place. Here I'm not gonna use any glue in case I ever need to access
the panel in the future. The last step was to drop in my bolts and thread the base in place, then we can check out those glamour shots. (gentle upbeat music) I really feel like this piece has changed my perspective on woodworking. I, like many others, have been guilty of making my pieces a
little bit bulky in the past and this piece is kinda
the opposite of that, where things feel a little bit more light and I took a little bit
more risk with the design. And I think that's where,
as craftsmen, we progress. When we go outside of our comfort zone to do something that
we haven't done before but something that still feels familiar. There's a lot of really
cool elements in this piece, and I'm not gonna list them all, but my favorites are probably the base, the drawer fronts, and the pulls. Each one is something I've done before but not quite to the level
that I've done it here. The design of this piece
overall is also just really fun. It feels like everything just
pulls you into the center and captures your attention. So I guess these were some
angles worth trying after all. So, hey, if you liked this build and you wanna see more like it, check out this video over here next. Subscribe so don't miss the next one. And as always, I knew this woodwork and I'll see you next time. (gentle upbeat music)
