You Can BUILD This Wooden Christmas Tree With A Simple Jig

so the other day I was scrolling through my online woodworking community and I noticed that everyone has started making these really festive holiday trees but one thing that struck me as odd was the amount of frustration that everyone was having because of complex angles and having a hard time assembling them so in this wood story I'm going to show you how you can make this beautiful and fun holiday tree using just one angle and I'm also going to show you how to put together a really quick jig that's going to allow you to assemble it in minutes so grab your tools and join me for this wood story so this board that I'm going to be working with is 5 ft long and it is just over 5 in wide and that's going to give me two Christmas trees this one is only about half of an inch you can use thicker wood as well uh but what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut it down in the middle first and then I'm also just going to cut off the sides because that's going to clean up both ends and that's going to look nicer when it's done and you can use pressure treated wood you can use regular pie you can really use any kind of wood there's no rules just make sure your wood is nice and flat if you're the type of person who likes to have the plants in your hands then go ahead and grab them from my website via the link below in the description so these trees consist of eight different pieces that need to be cut with a 30° angle and it may look a little complex when you first see it but let me walk you through it and I think you'll find it a lot easier so there's 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 eight different pieces in this tree and they're all cut with 30° angles we have four pieces that are exactly the same and they are going to have a MIT cut that looks like this where if you're noting this angle and this one is the same and we're going to need four of those and in our case we're going to make those 6 in Long now we're also going to need another four pieces and they're all going to be different and their miter is going to also be 30° however there is a difference they are going to look like this where the length is in the bottom and when we're measuring we are measuring from here to here and when we're measuring the bottom we are measuring from here to here so when I say 6 in this is your measurement and for these ones they're going to have different measurements but you're going to be measuring from the bottom so the first one is going to be 6 5 in and you're going to need one of those the next one is going to be 5 58 then you're also going to need one of those third one is going to be 11 and A4 and you're going to need one of those and the last piece is going to be 3 and 1/2 in all inches and you're going to need one of those and to put this into perspective here so these ones that are 6 in that is this one this one this one and this one this all represents these ones and for the other pieces your 6 and 1/2 piece this one is going to be your 6.5 in piece this one is your 5 58 piece piece this one is your 11 one4 piece and this one is your 3.5 in piece so keep that in mind as we go through it on the miter saw we're going to need four of the exact same ones and then we're going to need four of the same angled pieces but with different measurements I'm starting by making a 30° angled cut at the end without needing to measure and once this initial cut is made I can measure out the 6 in that I need for the first four pieces and remember we want to measure this from the long part of the angle I'm also using a scrap piece of wood to set up a stop block this way I won't have to measure all four pieces that I need I can just measure the first one and then make three repeatable cuts which will speed up the process this is also a great thing to do if you're planning on making a whole bunch of Christmas trees you'll see that I'll use it a couple of times in this process so when we're making the next cut we want these angles to go in the same direction we want them to go down going bring you back to that book where we looked at it they're going to go down down and we're measuring from the longest point to the longest point I'm going to take my measuring tape and I'm going to measure out 11 and 1/4 right here and then I'm going to make sure that when I have this lined up here that I am going in the right Direction which means I need to have go this way right here but you do want to make sure that you're not lining up your laser uh with the cut line here cuz if you did that it would actually end up being too short so you need to line it up with your cut up here otherwise you got to subtract that from your measurement but I find that harder to do so what I'm going to do is I'm going to line this up with my laser and the top here and then I'm going to cut it and that's going to give me the right cut and then I just proceed in the same fashion with the other three cuts that we still needed to make and I measure each one out as I go along do make sure that you keep flipping that board over so that you maintain the right angle and if you are making multiple trees you can set up that stop block again each time you've measured out a new piece that way you can make multiple trees at the same time before assembly I highly recommend that you stand off any Refuge that the miter saw may have left behind and one thing that you may have come to the conclusion with already when you see all these angles is that it's going to be a little bit tricky when we start to assemble them in terms of clamping them together we want to be able to put a shape like this together and we want to be able to clamp it pretty tight so that it's not going to come apart uh and that can be tricky to do because would an angle like this there's really no where for a plant to put pressure so I have a very simple J that I'm going to show you how to make in basically a couple minutes all you need is a couple pieces of scrap wood so let's start working on that jig now that's going to be really helpful when we start the actual assembly so to make this assembly jig all you're going to need is three pieces of scrap wood from the same uh from the same piece of pine the three at least have to be from the same piece of pine cuz it want the same thickness and what we're going to do is we're going to just Mark 1 in in on both sides here and do same thing on this side 1 in in on both sides and then we're going to cut a 30° angle here and here and once we have these two to cut we're going to assemble them like this and we're going to use our little attachment piece in the back just to screw it in to hold these two pieces together it's a lot easier to cut this angle on the minol which is why we're doing it this way and then for our last piece here you're just going to cut two 30° angles like this so that we end up with a triangle because that triangle we're going to need in here afterwards so that we have something to put pressure against when we add our funny angles in here let's go over and make those [Applause] [Music] cuts so when your pieces are all cut they're going to look like this you're going to have one triangle all with 30° angles and you're going to have these two pieces with 30° angles and then we're going to have our little extra scrap connected piece and the idea here is that we're going to find the right spot to put these together so we're going to put it like this then as an example when we do get to those crazy angles that we have to do we're going to put it in like this so we're just going to do a quick test here what I want it to be able to do is I want it to be able to go through with this little line I don't want to put any pressure on the end but I don't want it to go so far that it's going to go all the way through I want it to be kind of at that happy medium so I'm going to just make sure that it can still put pressure up against here that looks pretty good and then I know when my other piece comes in it's going to put pressure in here but I'm not going to be pushing that and then my last triangle is going to go in like this and that's where the clamp is going to sit it's going to sit here and here but right now we're going to just make a mark of this being the spot where we want to screw it in from this side we're going to do one little bit more of sanding before starting the assembly and I just want to take a minute to say thank you so much for your support it means the world to me that you're subscribing and liking and sharing this content it means that I can continue to do what I love which is create great content for you so that you can go out and create your own wood story so thank you very much so as we start assembling this I do want to point something out and that is the thickness of the material so as you can see right here this is how it's supposed to look once it's all glued up these connecting points changes if the thickness of the wood is any different so right now as mentioned ear earlier in the video this is about half of an inch but if you're using thicker wood then chances are you're going to be shifting things up because it's going to add to the thickness so just something to be aware of when you're assembling your pieces so what I like to do to avoid not having any issues at all is I will assemble these pieces first and this because that way when this is assembled and when that is assembled I can go in and I can kind of shift it a little bit here and there to make sure that it's absolutely at the right angle where if I started by assembling all of these then these pieces might not properly align if I did anything wrong in these sections so start by doing this one and this one and then we will get to the final middle pieces afterwards to assemble the pieces you're going to want to use glue and a nail gun and of course your new handy assembled G now engrain mther joints such as the ones we just did are not very strong when you only assemble it with glue and that's because the wood is extremely porous at the end so every time you add glue to it it just soaks it right up instead of bonding it with the other piece this is why you definitely want to use Nails as well you can of course also use small screws if you don't have a nail gun but either way the jig will ensure that your pieces stays in place as as you assemble these tricky 30° angles for the middle pieces you'll want to use some clamps you can also use painters tape I like to lay out all the pieces first and then I'll add a clamp to each of the top pieces without using glue then I'll use glue for the bottom pieces and clamps and then I'll go back again and add glue to the first two pieces that I just used the clamps for the reason for this is that it ensures that nothing shifts around and that my spacing is maintained to add the final piece which is the bottom piece just measure out the middle and you can attach it with glue and painters tape or a clamp if you have extras to finish off these trees you can do a combination of things you can either use oil or you can spray paint them or if you are planning on keeping them outside using a coat of Spar urethane might be a good idea and it didn't take long until these trees were done and ready to be displayed on my mantle this was such a fun and quick project if you'd like to see another really quick project I recommend that you check out this pumpkin tray and for more great content and videos don't forget to like And subscribe and I will see you soon in the next wood story

Channel: Standish Woodstory

Views: 128,119

Keywords: Standish Woodstory, Woodstory, DIY Woodworking, Woodworking Projects, How to Build A Wooden Christmas Tree, Build This Christmas Tree, Build A Wooden Christmas Tree, Easy Wooden Christmas Tree, asy Christmas Tree Building Project, DIY Wood Christmas Tree, DIY a wooden christmas tree, Simple woodworking Project

Id: eEloQKjEO-Q

Length: 13min 47sec (827 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 14 2023