Mastering The Grain

Good morning folks, and get yourself ready for what is going to be an amazing woodworking day. Here's the format of what's happening. Six different content creators have provided us with video many different aspects of what are going on here. We've got marquetry, epoxy inlay, shop tips, all sorts of stuff. So what will happen is that at the top of each hour we're going to start a new video.

The person who made the video is watching along with you, and they're available to answer your questions live. Now, a really important part of this is there's a PDF with background information that accompanies every one of these videos. So just is going to put a link for that PDF in the chat roll. Make sure you grab the PDF. Make sure you grab a cup of coffee.

Make sure you watch all six of these presentations. We're going to start with Ramon Valdez. I've known Ramon for a very long time. He does stuff with marquetry that you are absolutely not going to believe. This is a really cool session.

He's going to take you through what he does and how he does it. So let's start with that one and get Ramon teaching. I've been teaching woodworking for a very long time, and I know people can be intimidated by using a handheld router. So let's take the other out of router. And mild scratch is going to help us with that.

They have got a bunch of really cool jigs. They're going to let you do a lot of stuff with your router. One thing that's cool and watch for it is the interchangeable bass that will snap into a variety of these jigs. Very simple to use. Now switching to the edge guide.

What I've done now is added the mortise pin. With a corner cut and a router bit. We can put a bunch of different profiles under the corner of your work. Lots great jigs, lots of great ways to put your routers to work and take some of the intimidation out of them. I am thrilled that you are here and I'm excited to share with you the art of marquetry.

I'll be talking specifically about the double bevel technique. This video is under an hour. It's a bit of a crash course, but I will share with you the geometry of the double bevel technique or why it works. I'll share the process, a few tools that you'll need to get started, and how you can go from an idea to beautiful hand-cut motifs like this. Let's jump right in.

First off, I want to start out showing you the primary differences between marquetry and inlay. So inlays where you cut a recess or a cavity and then you inlay something into it. Whereas with marquetry with this particular process we're cutting the background and the insert piece at the same time. And then that veneer assembly can be adhered to a substrate. So inlay and marquetry can look the same.

But the process to get there is much different. Here you can see the background or the picture. This is what you would draw your pattern on and the insert piece it comes in from the back. So we would line up the grain. You can see I've got these pencil lines drawn to mimic the leaves, the veins in the leaf.

And so I could just find some grain that I like. Maybe. So here I've drawn a pencil mark to show that grain direction. And I can just line that up like that. We would take these pieces together and we would cut them at the same time.

Once they're cut, this piece goes away. We take our insert piece. And since they were cut at a bevel, we'll talk more about that here in a bit. It will fit in just beautifully with zero gaps. With glue that in, and then we can continue.

If you want to use regular masking tape, not blue tape, the blue tape doesn't adhere as well. So here's a couple of diagrams. So the background again is the insert piece. This is a waist piece. And this is the background or the picture.

For this particular veneer. This is 1/16 thick. So there is a mathematical relationship between the thickness of the veneer the curve of the blade. And we'll talk more about that in a bit. And the angle of the marquetry platform or donkey with this particular veneer at a 1/16 thick we are cutting at ten and a half degree bevel.

So here you can see how this insert piece. This dotted line represents the very top of the insert piece at this point is exactly the same as the top of the background piece at this point, including the sock half. Here are a few of the thickness of veneers that I've used and the related angles to cut. You'll notice that the thinner the veneer, the more angle you'll need. Here you can see, depending on the thickness of my veneer, I can loosen this knob, remove this indexing pin, and change that.

In this case, we're using 1/16, which is actually a ten and a half degree bevel. Just lock that in place. So as you can see, there is a massive range of colors and grain patterns that you can pick from. Some of these are exotics. This is American Holly.

This is the whitest wood that we have in our palette. Some satin wood ebony catlow American walnut, pine wing. Wingy purple. Heart. Butte Choctaw cock and booyah.

Cedar. Yellow heart. Right. Just a beautiful palette of colors and patterns. Some of the tools that you'll need.

And incidentally, this tutorial will provide a PDF with the tools that are necessary to do this. This is my favorite French style. This is an eclipse brand and this is the blade. This is a two blade. Speaking of blades, this will help you massively when you install your blade on the bottom mount, make sure it is in line with the handle and not angled one way or the other.

The blades are tiny and they break easily, so that needs to be properly aligned. You'll notice that the springing of the front subframe will provide the correct tension of the blade. Also on mine I remove these screws and I added a small flat washer. This will reduce friction slightly and make tightening easier or better. Just be sure to align the blade with the handle.

You'll need a pin vise. This basically holds the tiny little drill bits. This is a number 69 job. The drill bit and you'll need a glue bottle. When inserting the drill bit into the pin vise, just let it protrude slightly beyond the veneers that sticks out too far.

They're also tiny and easy to break. You'll need a few other things like tape hammer that. That'll all be on the list and we can talk about that more. All right, let's begin with this leaf here again. The veins in the leaf.

They're going to radiate. Some sort of angle like that. So we can pick this grain and see how the grain is running in that direction. It's parallel with that line I made. So we want this somewhere in that area.

And a lot of times. You can simply do something like that. Add your tape and start cutting. If you want to get even more detailed. So we want to add some of this white at the tips of the leaves.

I don't know if that kind of a tree exists, but in our world we can do what we want. So I can bring that grain direction in line with the pencil marker made. I want a little bit of the white at the tips of the leaves, and I bring that over like that. Then I can just add a mark here. One here.

There and there. Put this on top like so and tape it in place. And you'll find that 3 or 4 pieces of tape is usually sufficient. We will start to cut by first drilling a hole to allow for the blade of course. Right.

So let's do that. So these four pieces are kind of formatted like a cooking show right. So this would be the first one we're letting in the first piece. And then we just continue adding pieces. You can see that this leaf it would go in last.

So in other words, the things that are closest to you closest to the viewer will be inset or inserted last. You can see this leaf is behind this one. So that one is furthest away. It would be one of the first ones that gets cut. Of course that tail needs to be in front of the branch.

One of the last pieces cut. So here all I lack is the main wing. And this last leaf. Okay, let's drill a starter hole. Now, keep in mind, as you're doing this, that these pieces that you're cutting are wedge shaped.

It can be easy to drill the hole at the wrong angle or on the wrong side of the piece that you're cutting. Just keep in mind that they're wedge shaped and that drill bit angle needs to reflect that. Now with the hole drilled, we can flip it over. You can see that tiny hole. Now to get the correct orientation to insert the blade, do this.

Imagine the line going directly from front to back. You will rotate the workpiece 180 degrees. Flip it over. The blade comes in from the back. So again we drill the hole.

We have a in imaginary line from front to back. We rotate this piece 180 degrees, flip it over and insert the blade. In another frame. I'll show you how to hold the saw. Hold the veneers, how you can insert the blade without breaking it.

It's a little tricky, but once you do it a few times it'll become second nature. Notice that small notch I have in my donkey that helps hold the frame of the saw. With the handle of the frets against my chest. I can easily move forward and squeeze that frame, insert the blade and tighten it. If you're interested on my website, you'll find something called Market Class 101.

In it I provide the donkey, the frets, saw blades, pin vise, drill, bits of veneer pack, small glue bottle. Your first lesson, a complete tutorial on a flash drive, and much more. As I mentioned earlier, this video is a bit of a crash course, but my market, your class 101, is a complete, comprehensive all in one package. I'm going to move the camera to show you a little bit of a closeup of exactly what's going on here. I apologize for the hissing.

That's my air blower. You need to move the dust out of the line of sight. And I like the air blower. Otherwise, I sound like a pregnant lady in Lamaze class. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The goal here is to keep the saw completely vertical and rotate the marquetry without moving the saw left or right. So we just continue moving clockwise around the piece that we're cutting. In addition to the saw blade being held vertical left and right, we also want to keep it vertical front words and backwards until we get to a corner. Then we can push the handle forward thusly. We make that small area where there's a corner tighter.

This may sound tricky or confusing, but believe me, it is not. And in this video, I will show you some practice techniques that you can do a few times and you will be well on your way to creating beautiful marquetry motifs. Once we've gone clockwise around the entire piece, we end up with starter hole. We can release the blade, pull the saw blade out of the hole and the two pieces fall out. The top piece, which is the background, in this case pine that goes away.

The bottom piece or insert piece in this case is poplar that comes in from the back. We'll remove the tape separating the two pieces, set the background aside. And typically we would glue this in place. Here I'm just going to insert it to show you. And boom beautiful tight.

You can see the grain direction of the leaf. How awesome is that. And yikes. I apologize, I'm a bit out of the frame there. And here we're going to add some embouchure, which is a beautiful, beautiful wood.

Quite a bit different than walnut. It's just as beautiful. Dark chocolate brown. And this embouchure will make up the stem. So there are like 99 things to remember.

I know, but you'll get it as you learn the tape. Try to keep it out of the path of the cut. It will gum up your blade and you just don't need to be cutting it. I wanted to include a shot straight on from the front. All right, so you can see the ten and a half degrees of that marquetry platform or donkey.

I am attempting to move the fret saw vertically as as much as possible. And you can see the frame near my shoulder moves left and right a little bit. That's not to hurt anything, but the goal is to keep that frame straight, front to back. And of course, the vertical ness, the vertical ness of the saw blade. You can get away with a little bit of out of vertical or out of plumb, but if you drift too much left or right, then your pieces will either be too tight or too loose.

Don't glue your pieces in at the donkey. It'll just make a mess. I like using this cookie sheet or cutting board. Looks like a HDP. Polypropylene.

Polystyrene something. The glue doesn't stick. It works amazingly well. We just add glue around the perimeter of the piece, or you can add it to the inside of the hole that you cut either way. Just make sure you have four bit of glue all the way around.

I will sometimes double up and make sure I have plenty of glue at a sharp corner. Insert the piece. Wipe off the excess. You can tap it flush with a hammer. A roller kind of works, but sometimes the pieces are a little bit tight.

Maybe you didn't hold the saw completely vertical. The pieces can be either tight or loose. If they're just right, they will flush up on the top surface. I don't remember where I got this hammer, but I love it. One face is convex and the other is flat, and I just have this little mark on the handle that I engraved to clarify that.

And the convex side is perfect for marquetry because it gives it just that little bit to make sure that those pieces seat tightly. And you can see that glue just wipes off this cutting board. Yeah man. That's how you do it. Okay.

At this point we're getting ready to cut in the third and final piece of this particular leaf. Now when we cut in these other two pieces, we didn't have to worry about hiding that drill bit hole because the subsequent piece cut it out. But on this last piece, there's no place to hide that final drill bit hole. So there's a way to to eliminate it. Let me show you.

Here's a diagram of the pin vise not to scale. And maybe it is not sure. Anyway. Here's our bottom piece. This is our insert piece.

This is the background right. Here's our drill bit. And as you can see as we angle that we will angle it slightly more than the ten and a half degrees. In other words this piece is waste right. And this is basically waste.

It's fall off of the insert piece. And so that drill baby drill bit will will go into this waste area and it'll exit in this waste area. Retaining this piece and this background is always intact. This will make more sense as you start to learn this process. Okay.

Again screen direction. Screen direction. We wanted to get a little bit of this white right on that tip. So I'm just going to kind of assume where that goes. Looks like right in there.

I can put a mark here. Mark here. When there. Something there. And mark that.

And when I put this on top I can see those marks line everything up. There we go. Add a little tape. And then move the camera so we can get a good shot on the angle of the drill bit. To be clear, one should always be practicing hiding the hole.

Here you can see the drill bit is vertical, which is actually ten and a half degrees. We want to go just a little bit more. I say ten and a half. That's just something that I've dialed in. It could be ten.

It could be 11. Ultimately, what counts is keeping that saw blade or the saw vertical when you're making the cut. Here's my process for feeding the saw blade through the veneer pack. The handle is against my chest. The other end is in the notch of the donkey.

With my left hand, I can control that blade. Feed it in. Tighten the knob with my left hand. Grab the far right of the veneer pack and move it into position like I would normally be cutting. I'm going to show you a different angle, so let's drill a hole.

This is really important because this is where most beginners will break blades. Handle against my chest. The top end against that notch in the donkey feed. The blade in. Tighten the knob.

Reach over with my left hand. Grab the veneer. Pack with my right hand to grab that handle. Put it in place like it would normally be sitting. Most donkeys have a v notch, which makes it easy.

Mine has a sore curve. It actually offers more support but can be a little trickier. More support, yes, but the small curve can bind the blade. And again the goal is to remain straight with the saw. The saw blade vertical.

And once you've done this a few times you'll notice that it's literally the same. Rinse and repeat. All right I'm going to speed the video up a little bit here. Now I know there is tons of information here. What I would suggest is watching the entire video first and then go back through.

This should help some of those problem areas stick in the mind a little bit better. Yeah. I find marquetry to be extremely relaxing as you cut in one piece at a time. And of course at the end very gratifying as well. And now let me show you how to make one piece pop against the other with some sand shading.

All right. This is another piece. But you can see, as we led in this last piece of this leaf, we would have cut right along this shaded area. And that will give the illusion that this is behind this leaf or in shade. Right.

And the way we're going to do that is we're going to use hot sand on a hot plate to create this scorching basically before we put that piece in. And I'm going to show you how that's done by cutting this piece in. So I'm going to cut this piece. This will be made of poplar. And before we insert it we'll use some hot sand to shade this upper area.

And then when this piece goes in, it'll give it that nice definition that contrast. This one hasn't been cut in yet, but you can see how with that here this guy. Yeah. This is the one we just did. And that will show up as being in front of this piece.

Okay. This looks ready. We're going to be doing the right side of that leaf. Got the two pieces taped together with the grain going the right direction. Yeah.

Let's give this a go. I taught a marketing class at our local college, and I used to drill fun into my students to get these fundamentals down tight. Drill a hole. Visualize that imaginary line front to back. Rotate the piece 180 degrees.

Saw blade comes in from the back. Blades tighten, tightened up. And again, my hand position is always the same. You do that repeatedly. Everything gets easier.

All right. This ugly old beat up thing is an electric hot plate with an old pan. And this thing is just filled or, well, that much volume, place and just fine place. And that's all you need? Nothing special.

I like using a pair of bent needle nose to dip those pieces in. You kind of see the red hot electric elements starting to heat up there. A spoon, you can manipulate the sand and maybe even create these peaks. That way you can use those peaks to sand, shade, maybe a concave piece of a veneer. And of course, it's a good idea to practice.

Here we have the fall off piece of pine. I don't think the sand is quite hot yet, but we can check it. I'll sometimes use the, element, the heating element, to shade something, but it's really tricky to be consistent, and a lot of times the whole piece just catches on fire. And I have to cut another one. Which, incidentally, if you do mess up a piece or maybe even lose one, you can just put another backer piece behind your background and cut right inside the perimeter of the hole and make a new piece.

It's almost like magic. I should add. Losing pieces does happen, especially if they're tiny, so make sure to do yourself a favor and sweep your floor where you're working. So if something drops, it'll be nice and clean. You can turn out the lights.

Grab a flashlight, create a low raking light you know, along the floor and you'll find it. I like sand shading with poplar. It tends to behave. And you know, the the scorching happens slowly but consistently. And here you can see I'm just dropping hot sand right on it to kind of feather that a little bit more.

Keep some water handy to rehydrate the piece. Or a wet rag. A wet paper towel. Yeah. I believe I did say something about the sand not being anything special, but the finer the sand, the better control you'll have scorching these small pieces of veneer.

Here, I remembered I want that shadow to be down just a little bit further. So let's try this. Oh, Ramon, you're such a rebel. Let's see if we can turn this into a flaming marshmallow. Okay, I feel like that looks a bit better.

So here you can see I had to do quite a bit of sand shading to get it to migrate down this far, when in actuality, it would have been a better idea to cut closer to this line. Maybe right in here this piece would have been smaller, and that sand shading would have been easier to to make work. So another thing you're going to notice is when you heat a piece of wood, it's going to shrink a little bit. That's why we want to rehydrate, not only to stop it from toasting, but to keep it from shrinking. This one fits pretty good.

Interestingly, if you know you're going to be sand shading an area, you can tilt your saw to make the piece slightly bigger in this area, knowing that it's going to shrink a little bit. All these tiny little nuances add up and it'll come with experience. This could have been at the beginning of the video, but I didn't want to lose any viewers. Now this is just a blob. Just some random shape.

Doesn't have to be pretty. Just practice cutting that. Once you get familiar with that, you can move to something more circular. Doesn't have to be a perfect circle, but something a little bit more consistent in shape and then move on to a square. These corners are going to give give you good practice for making those sharp turns, moving the handle of the frets off, forwards and backwards.

Then move to a triangle like an equilateral triangle. Really good practice at those corners again, and then ultimately practice on something that's like a long isosceles style triangle. That sharp point is going to give you really good practice for making those tight turns. A couple of things about the starter hole. One, you want to make sure that the top end of your pin vise is leaning towards the pieces that you're going to cut, and b you want the drill bit to pierce at the 9:00 position.

In other words, regardless of how your two pieces of veneer packet is rotated, you will always be starting at the 9:00 position. And again, from that orientation, we rotate the packet 180 degrees, flip it over. Blade comes in from the bottom or the back. This practice session is hugely important. This is where you're going to gain the skills and the confidence to make cuts on something that counts.

Well, you want to start with is just drawing a bunch of blob shapes. And then as you make those cuts, if you drift inside the line or outside the line, don't worry about it. Keep going. What counts here is trying to maintain a vertical saw blade. In addition, remember to keep the frame of the saw perpendicular to the front edge of the donkey or straight front to back.

I would have the students number their blobs like maybe one through five or however many they did, and they would see the progression of their pieces being tight or too loose and intentionally. I'm going to cut this first one to lose to show you what happens. So here you should be able to see if the piece is too loose. It's not going to be flush. It's going to be sticking out further than the background that's too loose.

All right. Let's go ahead and do another one. I know people get eager and anticipate cutting their first beautiful marquetry masterpiece, but you have to start practicing with blobs and just ovals, circles, squares, just geometric shapes until you get the feel not only of the saw blade staying vertical, but also feeding the blade and all that. That has to happen consistently each and every time, or else you will be breaking a bunch of blades and get, you know, I don't want you to get frustrated as what I'm saying. When you're cutting something like this blob or this circle, you can move.

That's all you know. Try to use as much of the blade as possible. Just make sense. When you're doing tight little corners. You can just use part of the blade just to have more control.

Just something to think about, something else to think about. This one I intentionally cut it so loose that it comes right through. Now it probably makes sense to start at the corner, but don't. And I'll speak on that more here in a bit. With double bevel marquetry, the process of making those cuts, you're going to learn that really quickly.

Where I saw many students struggle was breaking blades, and usually that happened when they were flipping their veneer pack over. So practice that and just try to watch what you're doing. It'll make sense as you do more and more. All right. Sometimes you'll be cutting something that maybe is, you know, pretty close to perfectly round, or maybe it's perfectly square and it's a good idea to mark a corner so you can keep that piece in its correct orientation.

This third piece, which is a square rectangle, whatever, I intentionally cut it too tight, and you can see it's literally recessed below the surface of the background. That is too tight. Now you might feel like you can get away with it, add some glue and hammered in place, but since it's wedge shaped, what can happen is it will crack the background, so they need to be flush on top. That is the goal. Another key point about to start a hole is where to start it.

Where to place it. We could be anywhere, right? Well you don't want to be on a sharp corner. It does seem like a good place, but it will always show up. Of course, if you can hide the hole with a subsequent piece cutting it out, then it wouldn't matter.

But when it counts and there's nowhere to hide it, you want to start on a curve. And here's why. As the saw blade begins to make the cut, it's easy to start turning. It's hard to keep it straight, but it's easy to start turning. So if you start on the curve, well, you're halfway there.

Here we are at my Excalibur scroll saw. The angle is ten and after degrees it's the same, but it's actually opposite. Why is that? Well, with the frets, all the teeth are away from you on a scroll saw they are facing toward you. Just keep that in mind.

Of course, the drill bit gets drilled at a slightly more angle than vertical, and I keep this little countersink. It's designed for a drill, but I can countersink for the whole location. It just makes it easier to insert the saw blade. In general, I use a scroll saw for bigger pieces and for tiny, intricate pieces that have a lot of detail that I want to get really accurate. Then I'll use a fret saw.

So originally this saw had a small hose coming off the motor to pull the sawdust, but it didn't work very well. So I added a valve, a coupling, and the hose coming off of a regulator and that works so much better. I also added a foot switch and that just offers extreme control. I always suggest not getting hung up on which direction you're making the cut. Just keep in mind the the angle of the saw blade.

This may be confusing at first, but always pay attention to the direction of the lean of the saw blade. In other words, your insert piece is wedge shaped and it's bigger on the back or the bottom, so it will insert into the background and be superbly tight. Right? Right. Some practice blob cutting, right?

And something else to consider is use some soft species. This is poplar. This is aromatic cedar. It's pretty soft. It's going to really help you get those practice sessions in pine works.

But don't start cutting maple or oak or some you know ebony purple heart is horrible. It's really hard. Use some softer wood to to practice. You may have wondered how to get the drawing on the on piece on the background. You could just draw it on there, but you don't want to do that.

Do it like this. This makes more sense. Create a drawing and of course you could download something, create a pattern that way, and then you want to make a tracing of that right. Use hold this up to a window. Trace it out.

So now you have your your tracing. This is going to use more than just once. So let's say we have a blank canvas here. A blank background. We can put this right over that like a tape one edge.

And so this just hinges open. We can take carbon paper. Put it between those and then use a stylus to transfer that to your background. These are super inexpensive and easy to find at Michael's or some art supply store. And they'll have this little ball and in different sizes.

I like the tiny little ones. For more intricate drawings. You may notice on darker woods, here's some ebony, some catalog. This is really hard Wingy. That is transfer paper.

This carbon paper. It will make marks on there but it just doesn't really show up. So you might have to go back over it with some white lead. This is a bohemian pencil. It takes a white lid.

It's kind of soft and breaks easily. But it does work. That was written in this white led. To make those marks stand out a little bit better. Pencil lead works and it can be seen.

It's almost always the graphite that you're seeing is like a reflection or, you know, it's kind of shiny and that's what you're seeing. So it's a little bit challenging. But. These work well this is what it should look like. You have your tracing.

It's taking place. Carbon paper goes on. Trace it all out. I wanted to show you this. I like adding these crosshairs.

Right. Just put those on there, transfer them on. You can see them there. And so when you start to cut and this will be removed, you can easily put it back. Because what will happen is that some of these pieces will will cut out and you'll lose your reference.

You'll lose these pencil marks. So you will have to revert back to putting this in place. And redrawing something in those crosshairs will help you be more accurate. And there you have it. I glue this to a piece of quarter inch MDF, make sure to veneer both sides to create a balanced panel.

Added a border if you want some tung oil and this dude is complete, well that is going to do it for this tutorial. I sincerely hope that you enjoyed it. Get out there! Make something beautiful. Thanks again for watching this.

Thanks so much for watching our Day of Mastering the Grain, and a huge thank you to Ramone for making what looks like an incredibly complex process marquetry look simple on his video. He really did a great job. Next thing we're going to do is talk about something very important to woodworking. That's glue, Bob. Or you might know him as type, and Bob has forgotten more about glue than I'm ever going to know.

So we're going to jump right into Bob's presentation following a look at a video from one of our sponsors, which, ironically, is tight. Bob. I'm ready to do an edge to edge glue up on this red oak panel. When you put your joints together with tight band, the joint you've created, as long as it's a good joint, is stronger than the surrounding wood. Also, when we're putting this together, one of the things we going to run into is making sure that the boards are even all the way across the joint.

So I'm going to give you a couple tricks for that. It's okay to be a one edge glue or I'm a one edge glue, but make sure you have a good uniform code of glue on that one edge. So here's the way to do this. I'm going to snug these sorta, but I'm not closing the clamps yet. What we're going to do here in the center is take advantage of cores.

X means I jointed that edge. All that is on there is packaging tape. This call is going to go like this. This call is made exactly the same way. That's a dead straight edge.

Got packaging tape on it. That one's going to go like this. Take a clamp and snug that out here on the ends. Very simple. Take a clamp, bridge the seam and snug that.

Now we're ready to close these clamps. And this approach is so much easier than trying to push on these boards and get everything aligned. This is now a dead even amazingly strong glue joint for this right oak panel. Today we're going to talk about wood gluing. Now wood gluing can encompass a lot of different things.

Construction. Today we're going to focus on wood gluing for for kind of fine furniture in those things. Now wood wood is a wonderful composite wonderful substrate to work with. It works easily. It's light, it's strong, easily bonded together.

And so the other thing that we really love about this product is it's just so gorgeous. I mean, so many different species of wood, so many different colors that you can get, really perfect for, for that artist in you. But because wood is a natural product, there are certain characteristics of wood that we have to keep into consideration when we're gluing it together. Now the first of those is going to be wood density. Now wood density comes in.

And what we look at when we're, designing glues is basically we look at that chain of adhesion. We have substrate A, then the glue and then substrate B. Now one of the calls that we got was, you know, I'm making model airplanes. I need your strongest glue. Well, in this particular case he's gluing balsa wood together, which breaks somewhere around 80 to 90 C maximum.

For this particular wood. You don't need my strongest glue. In that particular case, you need something that will. Because of the chain of adhesion, the weakest link in the chain will break even. If I had a 10,000 20,000 C glue, that's that structure.

That glue line, the bond is still going to break at the, at the wood, which is going to be about the 90 POC. So in some cases we want to just keep that into consideration when we're picking out the right glue that we need to use for this situation. In some cases the strongest glue is not the one that you need. It may be the one that you want, but in some cases just keep that in mind. The other thing we want to talk about is moisture content.

So so wood. When a tree is growing in the woods, its first cut down can be up to about 200% moisture content. And in some cases, once it's fully dry in Minnesota, winter, very cold, very dry air. I've seen 2% moisture content of some of the woods. Now, the reason for that is all of our testing.

Everything of the information that I'm giving you right today is going to be for 8% moisture content of wood, 50% relative humidity, and 70°F. So if your wood is is drier than that, you may find that it, dries faster. If your, your wood has a higher moisture content, it's going to dry slower and to the point where if you're at around 17% moisture content, of your wood water based wood glues won't dry. And so you may have to choose a different type of adhesive, maybe a polyurethane, maybe a CA glue, maybe an epoxy in that particular case. But I will warn you that, you know, wood has this tendency to want to move, with moisture changes.

And if you start with wood that is high and it gets put into a house, and then eventually it equilibrate down to, let's say, 6% moisture, there's going to be a lot of movement in that project that you had, and it could result in cracking or deforming of of the project. So we want to just make sure, if you don't have a moisture meter, you may want to get one just to get an idea of what is the moisture content of that wood. The other thing we want to talk about is dimensional changes associated with those changes in moisture. So what is going to move? I mean, you you have to plan for that.

This is this is the characteristic of this substrate that you've determined to work with. It is going to move, and it's going to move differently in the, tangential direction versus longitudinal direction in the, radial direction. And so we want to at least be cognizant of what that is and why that makes a difference. So in this particular slide, we look at gluing together panels that have different moisture content. Now this can also mean, say gluing different species together because each of the species of wood will have different moisture, movement, capabilities.

And so in this particular instance, we have 6% moisture content boards glued to a 10% moisture content board. Eventually, all of this wood is going to equilibrate into the environment that it is pushed. So if, say you work on the coast, you have 12% moisture content normally and you're selling a $20,000 table, that's then going to Arizona, which will eventually see 4% moisture content. You can run into trouble with, what we call step joints. In this particular case, once they equilibrate the middle board, which had the higher, shrinkage or the higher moisture content now is smaller.

And so you'll see a step in those tables. The other thing that we see is what we call sunken glue joints. Now in a lot of cases will usually get a call on the phone. The call will say, hey, I can feel your glue line. Your glue is extruding out of the glue line.

Well, everybody knows you've tried to scrape wood glue. Wood glue, once it's dry is a very hard plastic. So to actually get a wood glue to extrude from a, an assembly, let's say a tabletop that you've felt the, the glue line, to extrude, you'd have to have tremendous pressures on that glue line. But obviously it's a tabletop and there is no pressure on there. And so the glue really is not extruding.

So what's occurring is, is there's two things that can occur. One here that we see here is for when the glue is freshly bonded, to the wood, the wood around the glue lines will swell. If we then sand that or plane it while the glue while the wood is still swollen. We'll end up with a flat piece at that time. But then as the wood equilibrate, as the wood dries out, that swollen wood around the glue lines will shrink.

The problem is, wood glues don't shrink with moisture. They tend to be the same size. And so what happens is you will actually see the glue line. Actually same with the surface, but the wood around it has shrunk. You can tell by taking a straight edge.

Put it down there showing a light behind. You'll actually see dips of light around each of the glue lines. Then we can tell that this is occurred. Now another thing that can occur which kind of gives you that same thing glue line is that the wood itself, let's say we we ran that at 10% moisture content when we glued it up. We waited the time frame that requires now waiting 24 hours before sanding would usually be about 5050.

Chance of of the glue lines, being sunken. If you wait three days, it usually gets rid of about 90%. Three weeks will eliminate any of the issues with that. But in most cases, we can't wait three weeks before we start sanding. But now in this case, this is where we take boards that say we're 10% moisture content.

They're brought into a house and the house gets very dry and the wood shrinks down. Again, this can occur where the glue lines become part of the surface. Now, these will actually disappear when the moisture content of the wood goes back up as the wood expands. And remember, the glue lines are not expanding into contracting. This can in some instances get so bad, where the wood shrinks enough.

Let's say you started off with ten, maybe 12% moisture content. Now it goes down to the 2 or 4% moisture content. It can actually lift the finish up off the wood, and you'll get white lines all the way down your finished product. So that over occurs. Just understand that this is a process where, the movement of wood becomes a function of making sure that you're keeping that into consideration when and where you're finishing the product.

Well, we try to make sure is that we're close to the use, moisture content when we put our projects together. The other thing we want to talk about is, is really the stuff that's inward. Tropicals tend to have a lot of oil in it, and the and some of the trees will have a lot of tannic acids and other things. Now, these chemicals that the tree produces to protect itself from, from insects, from mold, mildew, viruses and things like that, are there to protect the cellulose, of the wood and the living portion of that tree. Now, the big question comes in is why does that affect it?

Well, what glues bond through the cellulose in the wood and not the pores of the wood? And I know I'm probably throwing some people off and go, well, that's that's not the case. But let me give you a little example. If wood glues bonded through the pores of the wood, the strongest bond that you could make would be end grain to end. Great ingredient in grain has much more pores than, face grain.

And so therefore that should be the strongest bond. But it is not it is actually the weakest bond. And the reason for that is if you look under a microscope, it's like bonding to the ends of straws. There's very little cellulose. There is a lot of pore structure but very little cellulose.

So I know I might bore some of you guys. But we're going to go in a little bit of the chemistry. And this is important for a little reason. And I'll try to make it, quick for you. Cellulose is just glucose molecules that are linked together into long chains.

Now, those hydroxyl groups, the oxygen, the hydrogen, oxygen tends to want to grab an electron. The hydrogen gives it up. And so you end up with the oxygen having a net negative charge, the hydrogen having a net positive charge. Very similar to like an atomic neodymium magnet. Now what this does is our wood glues also have these hydroxyl groups.

And so what happens is it's kind of like taking a small neodymium. Maybe put it on your refrigerator. If I've just got one, I can pull it off the refrigerator pretty easily. But if you look at these, glucose molecules, these these cellulose model, because they have hundreds of billions, trillions of these hydroxyl groups on there. So as, as a a note, let's put a 1000 neodymium magnets on your refrigerator and try to pull them off all at the same time.

And in that case, you're going to pull the door off the refrigerator. And this is very similar to how wood glues work. So they need to bond to the cellulose. And the more cellulose, the more hydroxyl groups that it can bond to, the stronger the bond is going to be. We want to make sure that we get enough cellulose, to bond.

So a couple of things that will affect that. The oil of the wood and wiping it off with acetone is usually the best way to remove that. Use a white rag wipe until the rag comes back clean and put the glue on right away. That will keep any excess oil from coming back to the surface, and that will help you get the best bond. So you want to wipe the, anything off.

The other thing that you can run into is burnished wood, right? So if your tools aren't sharp, you can actually cause burning of that surface. And again, since we're not bonding through the pores of the wood, I need that surface to have enough cellulose to bond to. If I've burnished it. And it doesn't have to be brown, it can just be that glazed glaze type of surface where I'm burning just the hydroxyl groups off of the surface of the wood.

That can affect the strength of the bond tremendously. And in a lot of cases, if you guys have ever tried bonding those laser cut edges where the wood is very burned, those typically don't don't bond at all. And so you want to just be sure that you get that done. Get a nice clean surface, the best one sharpen playing surface. Or we recommend maybe a handstand with a 200, 220 to 320 grit that will get rid of really any of that burnishing off the surface to really help get enough cellulose there to bond.

Now you can we have people use an 80 grit to quote, rough the surface up. But the issue with doing that is you can damage the fibers on the surface. Our glue will bind to those damaged fibers, but the damaged fibers will tend to break at a lower strength than, say, a nice, they say structurally sound surface. The other thing we want to look at with wood, can sometimes be issues with, glue lines turning a different color. And most of that would be black, and black.

If you, if you see your glue like string black, there's iron there somewhere. So our PVA polyvinyl acetate acetates tend to, oxidize off the surface, forming acetic acid in the glue that acetic acid is, is the same as vinegar. It's similar to making a dye out of, steel wool and vinegar, which makes that nice black color. It's actually kind of a very, very, very dark purple. But this is the same thing that occurs.

So if you're getting black glue lines or they're kind of purplish in color, it's usually because there's iron, contamination somewhere. And we see that a lot of oak. Oak has a tendency to pull that up out of the soil. And then when you go to glue it, it turns black. To fix that, you either have to either change away from a PVA or use a, either an epoxy or a polyurethane, or get some new wood.

It's usually typically, limited to that tree where it's grown. There might have been iron in the soil nearby. Now, we've heard of green glue lines. We've heard of red glue lines. We have heard of other colors.

If you ever run into that, please send me some samples. We'd love to test and see what that is. We believe the green is is copper. The red. Something else we don't know.

We'd like to find out, though. So let's talk a little bit about some of the wood glue applications. Right. So because of that, the the strongest bonds you're going to get is going to be end grain. I mean edge grain or face grain gluing.

This is going to give you a lot of cellulose, a lot of cellulose on the surface of those bonds and give you a nice strong bonds. Clamp those together and you'll be fine. No extra is necessary in that particular case. But let's talk a little bit about clamping. The objective of clamping is to get your pieces into the position that you want them to be in when the glue dries, right?

So when you're putting clamps on, you want to make sure the force on the face of the clamp is going to come off at about a 90 degree angle, 45 degrees in each way. It's kind of called the the cone of force. Right. So we want to make sure we have some overlapping there. And the reason we want some overlapping.

And you can see on this one where this particular slide is showing a veneer onto a thicker substrate, we note that it's pretty easy to understand is that if you don't have clamp pressure between, you won't get bonding. You'll get the wood movement in that area as it absorbs the moisture. And so to get rid of that, we usually add a call on top of that, a larger piece to spread the force out. Or we use a vacuum bag which spreads that pressure over the entire surface. So the question becomes is how much clamping force doing it.

So we did some studies. We had a guy who was, gluing some jito bow, which is Brazilian road, very, very hard wood, together using our, our normally recommended pressures of 150 for soft woods, I mean 100 for soft, 250 for medium density, which would be maples, oaks and then 200 for the, the high density woods. He was having some problems. And so he sent us some stuff in so we could try to understand what was going on with his, his product. So.

So we ran a test. We ran poplar for softwood. We ran maple for the medium density, and we ran his toba Brazilian rosewood for the high density. We ran it at three different pressures. We ran it at, put a 5 pound weight on, which basically ended up being 0.6 pounds per square inch pressure on that joint.

Then we ran our recommended and then we ran it up to 1000. Pierce. And that thousand was because there was a paper published in I think it was 1998 that said you could go all the way up to a thousand psi without, affecting the, the bond strength. So what we found in every single case was that the 5 pound weight gave us the best bond. So basically the point six psi.

Now that varied, with the hardness of the wood. So with the poplar going from that point 6 to 1000. So we really only lost about 10% of the strength on the maple. We lost between 15 and 20% of the strength. And on the total we lost 50 to 100%.

In some cases, we took it out of the Carver Press where we pressing it at a thousand psi, and the parts just basically fell apart. So our thought process is that as you get higher and higher pressures, you tend to squeeze out more of the glue, which can cause the joints to not be capable of movement. And so when the when the wood needs to move, it tends to break the joint at a lower strength. So what this means for all of you guys out there is don't crank down on the clamps. Now, if it's a soft wood or medium density, it's not going to be a big deal.

You'll lose some strength, but in most cases, this wood glue is going to be much stronger than the wood that you're you're putting together anyway. And so don't don't how do you say obsess about this? But just note that a little bit of pressure is good. A lot of pressure is better is not the case. So we we've actually changed our recommendations for clamping pressure to just use enough pressure to get your, project into the right position and the right shape, that it needs to know.

Obviously better joinery is going to need less pressure. And so and we kind of get an understanding that we already know this better. Joinery tends to give us stronger bonds and that that's the case. The next thing I'd like to go through is really to look at, well what happens when the glue dries. Okay.

So this picture that you see here is actually what the wood, what the wood glue looks like under a microscope. It's just microscopic balls of plastic that float in water. The PVA is in the middle of the polyvinyl alcohol, which is actually what sticks to the glue. And we ran a test on that. We took tape on two and made a formulation with and without the polyvinyl alcohol, which is what sticks to the wood to see what was the percentage of the hydroxyl bonding.

Because polymer has a lot of those hydroxyl groups, which stick to the cellulose. And we made one without it. To find out what is what is the percentage of the pore structure that actually adds to the, to the strength of the glue? So what we found was the tape on two without the polyvinyl alcohol actually gave us about 800 psi for strength on this. But the same process with the tape on to with the polyvinyl alcohol gave us 4000 psi.

So at this point, we know that poor bonding, is going to be maximum of about 20%, whereas the hydroxyl bonding is the main function. And so you want to make sure that, because of that, you want to make sure that the wood glue is able to flow onto to the wood to give you that good hydroxyl bonding. A couple of things happen, when the glue hits the wood. Right? So in that particular case, we talk about open time and then total assembly time.

So the open time is the time where you put the glue on and the air is evaporating, the water out of the glue. And in addition to that, the wood is sucking the moisture out of the glue. And everybody's done that. They've put glue on and then rubbed it with their finger. And already you're finding it getting a little draggy in those areas.

In that case, we know that, it is forming a glue line right away. I mean, everybody's rubbed glue between their fingers. It's very slippery, but eventually it gets kind of what I call putty. It sure gets to a point. If you took that glue that is putting it up on your fingers, rubbed it on pieces of wood and stuck them together and bonded, you wouldn't get a good bond.

The bond would be horrible. And that's because the glue hasn't had the opportunity to flow onto the surface and to wet out all of those hydroxyl groups that we talked about on the cellulose. And so you you get surface bonding where they can find a hydroxyl group to bond to, but because they can't flow in that the percentage is very low. And so you get a weaker bond. So we want to make sure that we have enough glue on the the gluing surfaces that is still moist and able to flow.

Now the total assembly time is that time that you have. Once the glue is and the parts are put together to finalize them in the clamps. And what we want to make sure is that they are in the position we want them to be when the glue starts to set, and that is called the total assembly time. So what we look at is what's occurring in the glue lines is that the particles are far apart. There's a lot of water in there.

Then as the water evaporates, it gets sucked into the wood. The particles get closer and closer and closer together until they touch. Once they start to touch, then they can't flow past each other. And that's where that putty point is. So the what is that theoretical amount?

So if all of the particles were the same size, that putty point would be where they touch. And we we see a jar full of marbles. We can still put a third of water in there. So it's around 67% solids or 33% water. Most of the wood glues that you that are on the marketplace are going to be around 50%.

Type on two type an original type on three, usually around 50%. Now you're fast setting ones like our quick and thick, and the speed set that we have out is at about 60% solids. So you really only have 7% moisture to play with. And the and the wood will suck that out very quickly. And that's why those glues can set very, very fast versus say, the type on to the type on three and the original which have 17% water, below that putty point.

And so there are things that we do that can cause it to cure quicker. We'll add some chemicals to type on original the type on two to get it to cure quicker. However, with say type on three, we can add chemicals that that plug the pores of the wood so that it set slower. So we can, we can have, you know, in our repertoire of glues, we can get them to set faster, we can get them to set slower. But really all it comes down to is where does it get to in that putty point.

So now the question comes up is okay, so do we do one sided gluing or two sided gluing. Right. And so if you're a one sided glue or a two sided glue you're both correct. There is no right way to do the gluing in this particular case. Now there are some benefits to being a one sided glue.

Or if you're looking for invisible glue lines. Because remember what we said, as soon as the glue gets on the wood, you're forming a glue line and the longer it stays on the, on the wood the the thicker the the glue gets. So basically the water's, getting sucked out of the glue and the glue gets thicker. If you're a single sided glue or though the one thing that you have to be sure is that you're doing it relatively fast, because that single glue line can dry out relatively quickly, and you need that that glue. Once you put your other two pieces together to wet the other surface, you've got to get that glue on to the cellulose, right?

So if the glue dries too quickly, you're not going to get that flow. And your bonds are going to be weaker and they'll be weaker by how much further past that that set time that you are, if you're a two sided glue, are now the issue that you run into is you're going to be starting to glue lines. Right? I put glue on here. It's forming a glue line.

I put glue on the other side. I'm starting from the glue line. When I get them together, my glue lines are going to be twice as thick. You're also going to use twice as much glue. And we thank you for that.

But the other issue that you're going to run into is, is you're going to get more squeeze out, which is going to be harder to clean up. It's going to be all over the place. And so again, there isn't a best way of doing this. You have to look at your particular project. If the squeeze out is going to be really, really hard to get to, maybe you want to consider being a single sided glue.

If you've got a lot of stuff to glue up. Being a two, Sigler will give you a little extra time, because all you need is one layer of of glue that will flow, right? Because now I'm sure I've got my two sides wet it out once I put them together. It's just that the two glue lines have to flow together, and normally that's going to give you a bit more time. Single sided glue.

Make sure you have a timer. You got to be fast double sided. Glue a little more time. If you need even more time than that, you can always wet the wood first. Get it above that 70%.

Above 17%. The wood is no longer going to want to suck the water out of the glue. You can humidifier, glue up area, blow some humidity over that. Get an ultrasonic humidifier. And just put some humid humidity over the area.

If you're up above 100% relative humidity, nothing is going to dry. And so you can get an unlimited amount of time, for glue ups. But you got to remember that it's going to take longer for the glue to dry also. And so your clamp times are going to be much longer. How much longer I don't know I don't know how wet your glue is.

I don't know what the environment is in your shop. But you can set aside a couple of scrap pieces that you've done the same thing too, and then just kind of, you know, work them. And if they're strong enough to handle the stress that you believe it's going to be fine, take them out of the clamps and go at that point in time. So let's talk a little bit about really the kind of joints that you're putting together. One of the toughest joints to glue is the mortise and tenon joint.

And the reason I say that is because a lot of woodworkers will pride themselves on a mortise and tenon joint that fits very tightly together, very, very tight fit. I can tell you with those joints, if I put water on those and slap them together, you're not getting them apart. So I can actually glue those together with water. And you're not getting a getting them apart. Now, today again, as the wood dries out.

Yes, you'll be able to get them apart eventually. But let's talk about I'm going to be gluing those exact ones with a water based wood glue. The same thing is going to occur. I put the water based wood glue in the mortise and on the tenon, and they will start to swell, the tenon will expand, the mortise will shrink, and as I put them together and I knock them together with my hammer, what is occurring with the glue? Basically, I'm squeezing all the glue off.

Now. Will it feel tight? Yes, I can glue with water and they'll feel tight, but is it glued long term? I have a question about that. We see a lot of repairs on chairs for that very reason.

You know, they see a lot of racking force. Now, the other problem that you run into is if they're too loose, wood glues are about 50% solids. And so in some of those cases that glue is going to shrink. And if you get some gaps in there that allows that tenon, to move in that mortise over time, eventually that will start to break some wood fibers. And again that that joint will fail.

So maybe a better idea would be to look at a glue that does not shrink and make them just a little bit small. So I don't scrape off all, all of the glue. So maybe not so tight. Give it a little space for the glue and use a glue that doesn't shrink. And one of those glues would be an epoxy.

Epoxy is work great in those situations. Now the problem with epoxy sometimes is if they're too loose, they can run. So again we want to use our ideas of what the glue can and cannot do and use it wisely in those situations. I wouldn't recommend a polyurethane because they tend to foam. That foam tends to be very weak.

And so if I've got a polyurethane in there in the foam again, I may get some movement breaking the glue lines. And then further failure of that joint dovetails. Let's talk a little bit about dovetails. Now. Dovetails are mechanically locking joint in this particular case if it's designed correctly with the pins and tails in the right position that joint will lock all on itself.

And really the glue is only there. And I always say the glue is only there to keep it from the kids putting too many socks in the drawer and pushing down and popping the sides out. So really, the glue is there really just to keep the sides from popping? Do I need to glue every surface of that? Dovetail?

In a lot of cases? The answer to that maybe no. I can put a drop of glue on each of the pins and then slide it together. That will lock them in place enough to handle most of the force that's going to be pushing to the sides. So again, we want to be cognizant of, you know, what is the glue doing?

What is the joint itself going to do and how we can marry them together to be successful over the long term use of our projects, we need to understand the forces that are going to be put upon these joints and select them properly. And that's the fun of woodworking. I mean, that's the fun of designing your projects. You've got a whole plethora of joints to look at, and some of those joints are when you have and grain to side grain. Right.

And that's where most of these joints come in. And most of these joints are designed for that because you're maximizing the amount of side grain and minimizing the amount of end grain that is being bonded. Right. So in a lot of cases, where we have dowels, biscuits and dominoes, in a lot of cases if you really put it down, these are how you say floating mortise and tenon joints. Right.

And floating a tenon onto mortises and in those cases, excellent. Absolutely. Great. Maximizes that side grain to, to to end grain on those joints. Now, if you're bonding, edge to edge though, putting in dominoes, biscuits or, dowels can sometimes weaken that joint.

You don't really need them. Edge grain. Edge grain is going to have enough cellulose there to cause wood failure of that joint. Now they're good for alignment purposes. Don't get me wrong.

If you can put those in and you can glue up and get those together quicker, you are going to have stronger wood joints because the dowels and, and the biscuits and all that are going to be small enough portion of that glue line that it doesn't matter. Fully gluing them in place sometimes can run into issues. Let's say I'm making a tabletop and I use a lot of of biscuits in there. Fill all of the biscuit, joints with glue before I fill them again. When we talked about sunken glue joints, what can happen is the wood will swell wherever you put that water based wood glue.

And then if I go and sand that down, eventually the wood will shrink. Depending on how thick the initial, wood is, but I can. I've actually seen projects where I can see sunken areas where all of those biscuits were put in. So you can just be cognizant of what what you're doing, what the wood glue is doing, how that's going to affect the assembly. We just want to understand what is the glue doing, what is the joint doing, and how can we marry them together to to get a good project.

Let's talk a little bit about hot and cold pressing now. And when we talk about cold pressing that would be saving venturing. Right. And some of the bigger issues with the nearing is that if you have a differential in moisture content between your veneer and your subbase, the veneer can shrink a little more than the subbase and cause cracking. And that's usually, when you see cracking, that's usually the issue.

So a couple of things that you can do is you can use a more, how do you say a more flexible glue to allow for some of that movement? But again, if that veneer is shrinking, it's going to move somewhere on your your project. And if the shrinkage is enough, you'll see movement on the edges. So we want to be cognizant of making sure that the veneer is dry enough for those substrates. The other thing is to keep things from warping.

We want to make sure that we put a veneer on the top and the bottom to counteract those forces of differential movements based upon moisture content that we went through, previously, pressure on top of the veneer is very critical. Usually a vacuum bag is going to do that. When we talk about force, maximum amount of pressure break is going to be 14 psi pressure anyway. But that's over the total surface. If you're going to do clamps, you're going to want to make sure that you get those, spread out.

We talked about the cone of force around clamping areas. So that becomes, important. So let's talk a little bit about in grain gluing. Now in grain gluing in some cases is okay. Right.

So let's say I'm making a picture frame. A mitered corner tends to have a lot of end grain characteristics to that. And in those particular cases, since the frame doesn't have a lot of stress on it and grain gluing is fine without any, face grain, biscuits or anything else added to that. And so the best way to glue in grain is we need to satisfy the end grain for it's need to get filled. So what can happen sometimes on these end grains is that when I put it together and clamp them, the wood glue kind of gets sucked into the end grain and I end up with a starved joint.

So what we found is the best way to glue a miter joint is to actually take the glue, put it on the miter, pushed the glue into the end grain portion of that on both sides. Then put a little bit more glue on and then put those together. That will give you the strongest end grain bonding that you can get. Now. Again, end grain is not going to be extremely strong.

Anyway. So again, that's why there is all of that joinery out on the market. So let's talk a little bit about gluing applications in the guidelines. So there are certain things that you need to keep in mind when using a water based wood glue. Right.

One of those is you want to keep it from freezing. And the reason you want to keep it from freezing is because when a glue freezes, the little microscopic balls of plastic, as the ice crystals form, will get pushed together. And just note that when the ice crystals form and the glue particles get pushed together, they're glue. They're adhesive, and they like to stick together. They don't like to come apart after they've been stuck together.

So in a lot of cases, if you have a high solids product like the, the, the speed said or the quick and thick once it freezes those particles, you know, there's a lot of particles in a little bit of water kind of get pushed together. And typically it's toast after that point of time. Type one, original two and three. And a lot of the other ones are designed to go through a couple freeze cycles, but it's usually not good. You end up having to mix them.

Basically, you've got to take the top off and get a stick and beat those little particles apart, right? And if you don't get all the particles apart, the flow of those particles are going to be different. And in some cases you can end up with weaker bonding because the glue won't flow as well as it does. So my recommendation is, you know, keep it, keep it, from freezing. Now you also want to keep the glue from getting too hot, because that will tend to age the glue a little bit.

Normally, most of our glues have a two year official shelf life. And, basically that's a it's a lawyers term that our lawyers ask us to put on. That limits our liability because we can't control it. How you're going to store the glue once it leaves our facility. The usability of the glue can be much longer if you store it in good conditions.

If you stored at room temperature, most of the non water resistant glues will remain usable for up to ten years, and you can always add 5% water if it starts to thicken up over time without losing strength of the glue. Type one, two and three, which are water resistant adhesives go through a chemical reaction and at room temperature. Usually they will remain usable for 4 to 5 years. If you need any of your glues to last you longer than 4 to 5 years, refrigerate them. Refrigerating them will slow that aging process down and allow the glue to be usable.

But what I would tell you is if you got a four ounce bottle and it's been around for ten years, you need more projects. The other thing we want to talk about, all of the wood glues are going to also have what's called a chalk temperature. And that's a temperature at which you have to glue everything together so that the glue will those little microscopic particles have to flow and then melt together into a plastic film, to give you a strong bond. And each of the glues will come with a different temperature. And as we see from the bottle on the back of a tape on two, we can look on the back.

In this particular tape on two is going to be 55 degrees. Now what that means is as the glue is drying your wood and the project needs to be above that temperature during the drying process. How long that takes, I don't know. Again, it's going to depend on moisture content of your wood and all of that. And so again, usually minimum clamp time for type on three, I mean for type on two is going to be 30 minutes.

We typically the longer you leave it in 24 hours is best if you can get by with it in some cases. But I've seen people take it out in 30 minutes and it can be fine. You just don't want to stress it because the glue is still going to be weak. It goes through a curing process where it's very weak, and then it kind of goes up over time. As the strength builds, you can take it out at any time where the strength is enough to hold it together in the position you need it to be without the clamps.

Now, where that is, I don't know if you've got wood that's very warping. You're going to need to clamp it a lot longer than, say, straight Greenwood that maybe doesn't want to move. So again, the clamp time is going to be up to you to kind of determine, because I don't know what conditions you're gluing those in and what condition your wood is what it looks like. But what I can tell you is that if you get below that, you know, looking at this, you go from the little balls of plastic to, coalesce film. What happens is, if you are below that temperature, the little balls of plastic kind of stay as balls and they don't flow together.

And actually, to get that to bond, you got to be above the melt temperature of the PVA itself, which is going to be about 280 to 300 degrees. Now, what that means is you might have to, you know, iron it down. But that's not applicable in most cases. So in a lot of cases you just sand it off and then you've got to start over. If you have a shop that's not heated, you can still do this, but you'll need to get maybe some heated blankets, go to a goodwill or get buy some cheap heated blankets and just wrap your wood in that.

Get the wood above the temperature. The glue will very quickly get to the temperature of the wood, and not vice versa. So if your wood is warm, you can glue it up, put it in, even if you're below zero, wrap them back up in the blankets, keep the heaters on and just kind of, hold it until the glue dries and you'll be fine so you can work with that. It's a little bit extra, but, yeah, you can work in your shop in an unheated shop. In winter.

It's still work. But just know that there is a temperature you need to be above. But when we look at joint preparation, what we want for for the wood is to be as smooth as possible. If, say, your your blades were dull and there's some burnishing, you want to get rid of that, that that can very much affect the strength of the bond. If you have saw marks, the will the wood glue work to that?

Yes. But just remember some of those are damaged fibers. We bond to the damaged fibers. Well, but the damaged fibers tend not to be as strong. So some marks we typically like to recommend getting rid of those.

So just just note that your better joinery the better fit the smoother the wood is the better bonding that you're going to get. When we look at clean up, the best way to clean up squeeze out. So our recommendations that we still stick with this is that wait until the glue is up. And when I say putty up, usually that's going to be you know, any squeeze out is going to get rubbery over time. And once it gets to that rubbery point, once there's enough moisture out basically above that 67% solids, then you can scrape the glue and it may look like the glue kind of gets all over the surface.

But just note that it's not liquid even enough to flow over the surface to get you any good bonding. And so it tends to be easy to sand off. Then say if you wait for it to fully dry now, you got to kind of scrape that hard glue off. And so that can be very difficult to do. So our recommendation is to wait time.

Now you can also and this is actually a little bit faster. But you can take a very wet rag and start to wipe it up. Right after you're done gluing. And that works just as fine to just note that you don't want you want to pull the the most of the glue up off of the surface with that wet rag, and then come back with a wet rag to to wipe it, then off of the surface. That could work too.

But just note your woods a little wet on the surface, and that's going to cause it to, you know, you're going to have to allow that to dry a little bit before you get into your final sanding. So now, after all of this, we're going to get to the five steps of gluing. Right. These are the five steps for a successful gluing project. Following all of these steps as best that you can will ensure that you're going to be successful every single time.

My recommendation is to do a dry fit. A dry fit will do a lot of things for you. One is you'll get to understand how many clamps I'm going to need to hold this in the position that I needed to be. And when I put the glue on, the other thing that it does is it gets you to look at proper alignment. Are the pieces in the right place?

Because I will tell you, one of the most frequent calls that we get is, how do I take these parts, these pieces, apart? Because I've either glutamine backwards or sideways, or they're misaligned. And once the glue sets, that can be very difficult and depending on what type of joint that is, if it's a mortise and tenon joint, a pin, mortise and tenon joint, you're not going to like to hear our answer to to your request on can I get it apart? So again, this dry fit does a lot for you. It'll also let you look at.

Okay, I've got a saying this with squeeze out. What are the areas that I'm going to have a hard time getting a sander or getting in there to, to, get it in those particular cases, you can then tape those joints and use a good tape, because sticky glue from the tape is just as difficult to get off as hardened wood glue. So use a good quality tape. When you do mask it. It can also tell you, you know, what are, you know, clean away a little bit of residuals, do your parts really fit together well and in the right configuration?

Do you get 90 degrees in all of that? The dry fit will help you in a lot of ways. The next step is to prepare your glue and the accessories. You want to determine the right glue, right? We we talked a little bit about this.

We have softer glues. We have, faster setting glues. We have glues. We've got all different types of glues that will help you in certain situations of glue up. In some cases, your, dry fit should have given you some idea of how fast you're going to be able to get that together.

And so determining which glue you're going to need. In some cases, you may end up having to go, well, I can't glue it up all in one piece, so I'm going to have to do it in section at this point. That dry fit should tell you that. And that tells you, okay, I can use this glue or I can't use that glue. You're going to want to test the glue.

I mean, is the glue still good? Now one of the ways, even if you're glue is a thousand years old, you can take it, put it on some scrap pieces of wood from the project you're working on, and then clamp it overnight and then test it. If it breaks wood, you can use it. If you're finding that it's difficult to get out of the bottle, the glue, chances are that's not a good time to be using that glue. And maybe it's time to go buy you a new bottle of glue.

Just remember, that bottle of glue is going to be a lot less expensive than all of the time that you've put into manufacturing those pieces, and the cost of the wood itself. And so, making that bet that, well, I can I can get by with this glue because maybe you don't want to go to the store, maybe not the best bet that you want to be making at that point in time. I want to make sure that your glue brushes are all in order and in fine ready to use if you've got a large area to spread it on. A residual, resilient flooring trowel, basically, unfortunately with the small grooves is usually spreads glue very fast and you can get the glue on for, veneer and usually the best for that. You want to mask any pipes and anything that has iron, you want to put masking tape on there or wax paper or whatever.

Again, that iron forms, that iron acetate. That's a salt and it's soaks very deep into that wood. Those black stains can be very hard to get rid of. So again, you want to get everything prepared and your dry fit will tell you where that may be occurring. The next thing you want to do is kind of prepare for cleanup.

So again, get your get at least have some water ready. If you're a water based adhesive, get some mineral, acetone or mineral spirits if you're using a urethane or an epoxy for for helping clean up. Now, if you ever do get, water based adhesive on your shirt, keep it wet. Again, as long as those particles don't coalesce into a film, you can always get them off. If the glue has dried on your shirt and you need and you need to get it off.

Usually a mixture of alcohol, water, vinegar. 12121. Soak it. That'll soften the glue and then you can scrape it from there. However, if that glue then goes through a dryer cycle and really kind of melts that glue together, how I tell people is then wear your glue proudly, protect against drips.

This is a good time to just make sure that, you know, if you're gluing on something that you know you don't want your parts to stick to, put some wax paper down or wax the surface. Again, the wood glue is designed to stick, and it may stick to things that you may not want it to stick to. This is a good time to, you know, when you're doing your dry fit. You know, look at all of these things before you start the glue up. And then you want to do the glue up.

The thing about glue ups is it's almost like the whole time space continuum just changes, time just, you know, shortens it. It's rough. You've got to get to make sure that, you know, everything's above temperature, your total opening assembly time. If you're a single sided glue or get an egg timer, set it when that when that timer pops, when it dings, you got to understand that you got very little time to get those back, you know, into position. And you may again that that dry fit should tell you in a lot of cases how that's going to work out for you.

You want to peel off any masking tape, after it gets rubber. You don't want to wait for the glue to dry on any masking tape. That makes it very, very difficult to remove. If you've done all of your work properly, you understand what's going on. This should put a little bit of that stress out of your glue up project, because you've chosen the right glue.

And you know what? What's going to occur because of the dry fit. Then we want to let these projects dry. And a lot of people say, well, how long do I need it to dry? And in a lot of cases, you can take it out of the clamps in 30 minutes.

If you know your your joinery is good, nice and square and stuff 30 minutes in some cases. I always tell people two hours if you if you can just just give it that two hours. Much better if you can leave it 24 hours or overnight, even better than that. But now again, if you're going to be leaving it longer, you want to make sure that you get the squeeze out, done early. Because if you leave that squeeze out to dry, it can be very difficult to remove if you're worried, if you're making a tabletop and you're worried about some glue joints and all of that, if you can wait three days.

Absolutely wait the three days. If you can wait longer, better, you don't. Sunken glue joints can be very, very difficult to work with. If it's truly a sunken wood glue joint. There is a lot of wood that you have to sand, to get down to where it's even.

Again, if it's the other way around where the just the moisture of the wood is, is, you know, goes down during the winter and you get it popped, temporarily. You just have to basically sand it when, when the, when the board is at the driest. So that becomes the issue and that's it. That's all I have for you guys. Again, questions that you have, bring them into the program.

There's we also have the 800 number on every bottle that you can ask us. So thank you for, listening. Man, you can tell that Bob has been with Taipan for a really long time, and he knows glue inside and out like nobody's business. Now, I want to remind everyone that there's a PDF companion that goes with all six of these topics, and you definitely want to grab. That just was great at putting that link in the chat roll.

Make sure you click that link to the PDF. So later when you're trying to remember what Bob said about glue, what Britney is about to say about epoxy, you have that reference and you can go back to that. So speaking of Brittany, Brittany Carbon is next. She works with epoxy. And what I like about her work a lot is that she gives it this crazy, cool artistic flair.

So it's stuff you need to know about epoxy in general anyway. But her wrinkle on this is bringing this artistic side that she has to the world of epoxy. So next we're going to watch Brittany Carbon. We're going to learn about epoxy. Before her presentation.

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This is cordless. It's also got dust collection on it. It's variable speed. I always like variable speed because it gives me more control to make sure that I'm doing exactly what I want to do on the cutter itself. On the Mini Pro, I can remove those inserts when they're dull.

I can also simply rotate them to a fresh spot when they're dull. So a lot of opportunity here to make sure you always have the best possible cutting edge. I'm not gorilla gripping this tool at all. It's really easy to control this. I love this project.

I love making this door and the mini grinder really was the hero on this whole thing. Great cut quality coming off of the mini pro head and then the ability to also create the pull, get everything smooth and sanded and finished. What a winner! This is a great project. Very fun.

I'm excited to teach you about all things epoxy. In this video we'll start by covering the science behind successful Paws because at its core, epoxy is a chemical, and understanding how it behaves gives you far more control over the outcome. From there, we'll talk about how to choose the right epoxy for your project, since everything begins with the application that you're trying to achieve, well, then dive into different ways to color epoxy, including how to select the right color and based on your goals and the effect that you're looking for. Next, we'll explore a range of artistic techniques that can be applied across both maker based work and fine art practices. We'll also discuss how to approach a larger scale projects, or integrate something new into your process, and finish by walking through common issues and how to troubleshoot them effectively.

At the end of this video, I'll take you through a full project from start to finish, incorporating several of the techniques covered throughout this video. I hope you enjoy watching. Believe it or not, epoxy is a chemical obvious? Sure, but if you're like me and you use it as an art medium or for woodworking, it's easy to forget. For your pores to actually work, you have to follow the science, which basically means read the back of the bottle.

I'm not a science person. I'm right brained, creative, all of that. Most of what I know about epoxy came from trial and error. A lot of errors. But lucky for you, I'm sharing the secret.

The science that makes epoxy behave. You cannot argue with science. Epoxy is a chemical process and exothermic reaction that starts when you mix part A resin with part B hardener. Once they're mixed, the epoxy goes through what I call its exothermic journey mixing time, working time, tach time, and curing time. It warms up as it cures and eventually becomes solid.

There are a few key things you need to pay attention to its purpose the AB ratio, ambient temperature. Working gel time, tach time. Cure time. Poor depth, viscosity. These all work together.

Let's break them down. Ambient temperature. Epoxy has an ideal temperature range, which is when it flows well and cures as expected. If your room is too warm, the working time speeds up. The pour may not itself level and it can cure unevenly or crack.

Extra heat adds to the reaction. If it's too cold, the opposite happens. Think honey. Cold equals thick and slow. In cold rooms, bubbles get trapped because they can't rise through the epoxy.

You may end up with a frosted look or epoxy that never cures. So pour in the right temperature. So pour in the right temperature. You'll be happier and so will the epoxy. Next let's discuss the working time or also called the gel time.

This is how long you have from mixing to pouring before it starts to thicken. After that comes tack time when the epoxy is no longer sticky. This is usually the ideal moment for a second coat. Full cure time. Just because it feels hard doesn't mean it's fully cured.

Full cure is when it reaches maximum hardness and chemical resistance. Don't rush this or you can damage your work. The scarcity viscosity is just the thickness of the epoxy. Low viscosity equals thin. High viscosity equals thick.

If you're making ocean waves, you want higher viscosity. So the design stays put. Filling a tiny not. Use low viscosity so it flows into the space AB. Ratio plus pour depth.

Epoxy only cures properly when the resin and hardener are mixed in the right ratio 1 to 1, 2 to 1, 5 to 1. Whatever the bottle says, if the ratio is off or it's not, mix properly, or if it's not mix well, it stays sticky forever. Scrape the sides and bottom mix for the full recommended time and for big batches, pour into a second cup to catch unmixed material for pour depth. Every epoxy has a maximum. If you pour deeper than recommended, the reaction accelerates and can cure unevenly.

Crack or even smoke and catch fire. Even leftover epoxy and a mixing cup can overheat. Always have water or an extinguisher nearby. Level surface epoxy is self-leveling, so your workspace must be level. Don't eyeball it.

Use a level. Quick recap for a successful pour. Pay attention to ambient temperature, working time, poor depth level service, and as a bonus, the UV inhibitors, especially if clarity matters. There are a ton of different epoxies in the market, and most of them are made for specific purposes. The easiest way to choose the right one is to start with why you're using it.

You can't just grab a random epoxy and hope for the best. Some are versatile, but you still need to pick the one that matches your goals. Let's go through common applications and match them with the right epoxy. This is the best way to figure out which one you need. One.

Structural work. Gluing. Filling. Sealing. Repairs.

If you're adhering to things, filling cracks, sealing wood, or doing anything structural, you want a low viscosity epoxy. Something more watery with a shorter working time. Total boat's high performance epoxy is perfect here. It's made for laminating, coating, repairs, woodworking, and bonding. The low viscosity helps it soak into cracks, knots, and even fiberglass.

It's also slightly flexible, which is great for anything that needs movement. One cool thing about high performance is that you can control the working time because it comes with three partners. Fast, medium, and slow. Larger projects use a slow hardener so you're not racing the clock. Two.

Coating surfaces. Tables. Counters. Blood work. Blood coats.

Artistic work. If you're coating a table, making a countertop, flood coating artwork, or doing designs like marble or ocean pours, you want a high viscosity epoxy. Think honey consistency. This is where tabletop epoxy shines. Anything labeled table top coat or clear top is usually the same idea.

Tabletop epoxy self level between one eighth inch and one quarter inch, making them perfect for coatings. Total tabletop has a 40 minute working time, which is amazing for both large surfaces and artistic play. When you're using heat, color, and other materials, that extra time matters. Three. Art.

Resin. Canvas. Coating. Tumblers. Small casts.

Waves. Molds. Our resin is similar to tabletop, but it's made specifically for artwork. You'll usually see the word art right in the name. This one has about a 30 minute working time and self levels at a fourth of an inch for flood coats.

For small mold castings it can go up to about two inches. Art resin often has UV inhibitors. You'll notice a slightly blue tint which helps your work. Stay clear and resist and bring over time. Four deep pours, river tables.

Large castings, thick molds, floral pieces. If you're pouring a river table, casting flowers, or making something more than two inches thick, you need a casting resin or a deep pour epoxy. Look for labels that say deep pour or cast. I like total boat fathom, which has great UV resistance and barely needs any work to release bubbles. You can use tabletop or art resin for a casting, but UV pouring half inch leaves forever.

A deep pour epoxy lets you pour up to two inches at once, sometimes more, depending on the brand. Deep water systems also have very long working times. Fathom, for example, gives you 4 to 6 hours. Yes, hours. That may sound wild, but it saved me once when a previous layer was not ready yet.

I had mixed two and a half quarts, ended up waiting a couple hours before pouring without wasting anything. Five UV resin, small molds, jewelry, quick adhesive work UV resin is the easiest. No mixing, just cure it with a UV light. It's best for small molds like jewelry, charms or quick fixes. I use it to secure dried flowers in place before a larger pour, so they don't float up into the next layer.

Let's review what we've covered about choosing the right epoxy. Start with why you are using it. There is a kind of epoxy system that will match your application. Pay attention to the labels. Its use is usually in the name.

Check the back of the bottle for working time and pour depth. That wraps up how to choose the right epoxy. Next, let's discuss artistic techniques for elevating your craft. Graphite. Ink.

Paints. Plaster. Clay. Wood. Metal.

They're all just mediums, so why not epoxy two and the past several years, epoxy has entered the art world and is reshaping what we think of as fine art. Think about its physical traits, its mirror like liquid looking even when cured, glassy, strong, moldable, and reacts to heat. What else comes to mind because of these unique visual and physical qualities? Epoxy is incredibly versatile. It can be the main medium, enhance another, or complement mixed media.

Its visual and tactile diversity elevates the surface beneath it and anything added to it. There are so many materials you can pair with epoxy pigments, dyes, paint composites, dried organic materials, metal and wood shavings, foils, textured pastes, laminated photos, sealed papers, the list goes on. Let's look at a few techniques you can create with epoxy. Here's the classic wave technique. Probably the most recognizable epoxy style.

How is it done? Start by choosing your ocean colors, usually a gradient of blues. At the outer edge. I add pigment closer to the shoreline. I keep the epoxy more translucent, just like real water.

I tint it with a tiny bit of acrylic paint. At the shoreline, I draw a line of clear epoxy, which is where the wave will sit. For the white foam, the lace or cells, white alcohol ink mixed with either white dispersion pigment or cast in craft opaque white. I mix a little into a small cup of clear epoxy. Draw a line of white on top of the clear at the shoreline.

Then use a heat gun with a nozzle to push and shape the wave. Different nozzles give different, more natural wave shapes. After that, I give it a quick pass with a torch to help the cells develop. And make sure your workspace is level. Otherwise your waves will slide right off.

You can use the same cell technique for galaxies. Marbling any color palette alcohol inks mixed into your wave mixture will still create that beautiful cell effect. One of my favorite techniques is layering epoxy with other materials. The idea is usually to see the layer underneath, so keep the epoxy clear or lightly tinted. It's always interesting to see how epoxy flows around raised textures or built up surfaces.

And if you're coloring epoxy, a simple way to boost depth is to paint the substrate first. For example, in ocean art, the deeper areas are painted darker, while the shallow areas near the shore are so light they look like sand. This takes pressure off the epoxy colorants and instantly enhances the look. This trick works for so many applications. I really encourage you to play.

Try different materials. Here's a simple mixed media recipe. Start with a wood panel or other stable surface. Paint it. Add texture.

Paste. Add foil or laminated paper. Pour a layer of epoxy. Let it cure. Then paint on top or add new materials and adhere them.

Pour another layer. Maybe introduce a new color. See what happens. Play. Be curious.

There are all kinds of projects where starting on a small scale will prepare you for a much larger one. In this video, we'll look at common large scale epoxy projects and some universal tips that apply to all of them. Now, a small scale test isn't just helpful for when you're trying something big for the first time. It's essential. Any time you're using a new type of epoxy, so different epoxies have different viscosities, working times, and overall feel.

So getting comfortable with how they behave before jumping into a big pour is incredibly important for both your results and your safety. Common large scale epoxy projects include countertops or tabletops with a flood coat. River tables. Casting projects, especially floral preservation. If you've only used a tabletop epoxy before, but your project calls for something structural or with a faster working time, you need to practice with that specific epoxy first.

Make a mini version of whatever you're planning. Whether you're pouring, casting, or coating so you understand how it behaves on a small scale before committing to a big one. This also applies to any new material you introduce into epoxy. Always test it first. And I cannot emphasize this enough.

Do not test anything sentimental. If you're working with precious flowers, a photo, or a meaningful memento, use something similar but not sentimental for your trial run. You do not want to trap something irreplaceable and a mess up task for how to make a mini river table. A mini river table is one of the easiest test projects, and you can do it without needing big tools. Cut two small pieces of wood.

Even scrap wood works. Aim for pieces that are the same length as the mold. They don't have to be the same height as the depth, but you will want them thicker than two inches. Make sure the two pieces of wood will leave a gap in between. This is where you will pour the river part with epoxy.

Seal the wood with a painted or spray sealant so it doesn't release bubbles. There are many products that work well for this. Place the pieces into the silicone mold. Be sure to weigh down both pieces so they don't float or leak excess epoxy underneath them. Mix the same kind of epoxy you plan to use for your real piece.

It should be a casting or deep pour system. Check the back of the bottle for the working time and the max depth of the pour. This will inform how much to mix up for the initial pour. Add your pigments, mica, powder, dispersion, pigment, whatever you plan to use. Start with less than you think you need.

You can always add more but can't take it out. Pour the river between the two wood pieces. Work in a controlled manner to prevent splashing or unnecessary spills. Use your heat gun to release bubbles. If you'd like to create any effects you want to test swirls, depth, color gradients, wave lines, etc..

Wait until the end of the working time. This is when the epoxy is more likely to hold its design. Look at the back of the bottle to see when you can pour the next layer. Be sure to wait for that specific amount of time. Otherwise, you'll damage the layer you poured beneath it.

Once you've poured enough epoxy to make the height of the wood pieces, let it cure again. Check the bottle to see how long you need to wait before removing it from the mold. How to make a mini flower casting. Flower casting absolutely needs a test run, especially if you're preserving something sentimental. Choose non sentimental flowers that are similar in thickness and moisture level to what you'll use later.

Use a small silicone mold. The size and depth depends on the flowers you're using. Make sure the flowers are fully dried. Makes a small batch of your casting epoxy. Use an epoxy calculator to determine the volume needed to fill the mold.

Be sure to check the back of the bottle to determine its maximum pour depth. Pour a thin base layer of epoxy into the mold and let it partially gel. It should be the minimum pour depth of the epoxy you're using. This will lock the flowers in place so they don't float. Place the flowers onto the gelled layer.

Pour in small layers at a time, letting each one thicken before adding the next. Test your bubble release method, whether that's a heat gun at a distance, using isopropyl alcohol, mist, or nothing at all if the flowers are fragile. This tells you how clear your epoxy cures. How your flowers react to heat. How many layers you realistically need, whether your poxy yellows or micro bubbles.

How long you have before the epoxy thickens. Too much to pour again. This is the perfect chance to find out any issues before risking the real bouquet. Timing yourself for large projects for large pores like big ocean pieces. Working time is everything.

One of the best ways to prepare is to time yourself on a small test piece. You can record how long it takes you to make sure. Epoxy to pour it. Push it around with a heat gun. Create your design or effects.

Then you're going to multiply that time based on the size of your actual project. If your test piece is one foot and your real piece is three feet. Multiply everything by three. This tells you if your epoxy has enough working time, or if you need a slower formula before you start a giant pour that might cure while you're still working. Let's talk about how to prepare for the unexpected when you scale up.

Always have backup supplies ready. Spare molds for excess epoxy baby wipes and water, isopropyl alcohol, extra cups and stir sticks. All your pigments prepped a small batch of un pigmented epoxy ready to tint. This is so if you run out of a color or something goes wrong with pour. This saves you.

And if you don't need the extra epoxy, pour it into a mold. Zero waste. Let's recap about practicing on a small scale for large pores. This is going to help you not just for your practice, but also for your safety. You want to be comfortable with the epoxy that you're going to be using, and also for the project that you're going to be creating.

Don't ever practice with anything sentimental and make sure you have backups and ready to go. There are so many ways to color epoxy, and the best choice really depends on what you're trying to achieve. With so many colorants available, it can feel overwhelming. So let's break it down and make it simple. Where do you even begin?

You've got alcohol inks, dispersion pigments, mica powders, and even acrylic paint. Quick note about acrylic paint. People often say not to use it because it speeds up working time, but in small, controlled amounts. It works beautifully alongside other colorants. When choosing a colorant, think about three categories opacity, saturation, and texture.

The level you want for each will guide your choice. Let's start with opacity. Do you want your color? Transparent, translucent, semi opaque, or fully opaque on the opacity spectrum? Alcohol inks are the most transparent.

All colorants can become more opaque depending on how much you add. To show this, I ran a test using alcohol, ink, acrylic paint, dispersion pigment, and mica powder. Each was mixed into the same amount of epoxy. Starting with a tiny amount and increasing across three cups. When we poured them out onto vinyl, you can clearly see the difference.

Dispersion pigments and mica powders achieve the most opaque color. Next is saturation. How intense or vivid the color is? Lower saturation looks muted. Higher saturation is bold.

Looking back at our test, dispersion pigments and mica powders are much stronger in saturation than alcohol, ink or acrylic paint. But just like with opacity, you can control the saturation by adjusting how much you use. Finally, texture, color, and stone offer a huge range of texture on their own, but there's still variation. Epoxy itself is shiny, so most colorants appear smooth and even once cured. The exception is mica powder.

It's naturally shimmery and when mixed into epoxy, it flows and creates dimensional swirls, especially as the epoxy starts to thicken. Matte mica powders behave differently and won't create that shimmery swirl, and they take longer to fully disperse, so let them sit a minute in the cup. Now, even though we looked at this color and separately, you're not limited to using just one. I often mix them. For example, I might use mica powder around the edges of an ocean piece.

Then transition to acrylic paint closer to the shoreline. For the white waves, I always use alcohol ink mixed with white dispersion pigment. Sometimes I add a light blue for shallow areas. You get the idea. Mix and match to get the look you want.

Here's one more curve ball. Your substrate affects your final color. Pouring white tinted epoxy over wood will make it look warmer. But if you paint or seal the surface first, you increase saturation and get a cleaner, truer color. Let's recap.

When coloring epoxy, think about opacity, saturation, and texture and how much of each you want. Choose your color and based on those goals. And don't forget your substrate plays a big role in the final result. We're human. We make mistakes.

The good news is proxy is forgiving and most problems can be fixed if you know what to look for. Let's go through some common issues why they happened and how to troubleshoot them. Sticky or on cured epoxy. If epoxy feels tacky or soft, even after the expected curing time, it usually means one of three things. It wasn't mixed thoroughly, leaving unmixed resin or hardener at the bottom or sides of the cup.

The resin to hardener ratio was off. Even small deviations can prevent proper curing. Curing conditions weren't ideal. Temperature, humidity, or airflow can all affect the chemical reaction. Here's an example.

If a coaster or small paw remains soft, it's likely because part of the mixture wasn't fully incorporated or the conditions were too cold. Minor stickiness can sometimes be fixed with a light sanding and a thin topcoat. Larger problems may require scraping and starting fresh, cloudy, or hazy finish. Cloudiness often comes from moisture, dust, or low temperatures. Here's an example.

Pouring epoxy over slightly damp wood can cause a milky haze, or a cooler room may prevent epoxy from leveling properly. The fix or prevention is to keep your workspace warm and dry. Seal porous substrates and ensure tools and containers are clean. Yellowing, even clear epoxy can yellow over time. UV exposure, heat or certain pigments speed this up.

Here's an example A piece cured near a sunny window may develop amber edges. The fix or prevention use UV resistant epoxy. Avoid direct sunlight during curing and minimize heat exposure. Poor adhesion or peeling. Peeling usually occurs because the surface wasn't prepared or had moisture.

An example would be pouring epoxy on raw on sanded wood or a dusty service can lead to lifting or peeling. A fix would be to sand, clean, and wipe the surface before pouring. Sealing wood can help reduce moisture interference. Cracks happen when epoxy cures unevenly, especially in thick pores or with a rapid temperature change. Here's an example.

Pouring more than the recommended depth in a warm room may cause cracks as the epoxy heats and cools unevenly. The fix pour in thinner layers and maintain a stable ambient temperature. Strong odors. Strong smells often indicate poor ventilation or lower quality epoxy. The fix work in a well-ventilated area.

Use a mask if necessary and choose high quality epoxy to reduce odors. Misjudging the amount needed can be frustrating. Here's an example. Starting with a large pour without extra epoxy can leave you scrambling mid project. It's the worst kind of stress with epoxies for prevention.

Mix a little extra 10 to 20% more than calculated and keep unmixed on pigmented epoxy ready to tint if needed. Scraping off a mistake. Sometimes a pour needs to be removed. Wrong color. Dust contamination or bubbles.

Here's a tip. Keep molds or catch trays nearby to save excess epoxy and reduce waste. Dimples. Dimples are caused by surface tension breaking, often from dust oils or improper spraying. Fix this by keeping surfaces clean and use a light mist from a distance when needed of isopropyl alcohol, and make sure your substrate is level.

Dust. Dust can settle on epoxy during curing for prevention. Cover the piece while it cures. Minimize airflow and use a heat gun to lift stray particles before it sets. Epoxy can irritate skin.

Prevention would be to wear gloves, long sleeves, and wash immediately if the epoxy touches your skin. Pouring too deep if your epoxy is designed for a half inch pour, but you pour more than recommended, the excess volume traps heat. This accelerates curing and increases the risk of a dangerous exothermic reaction. It is dangerous. Epoxy cured too deep may cure unevenly crack or even smoke.

Always follow manufacturer's directions for working times and temperature. Your safety and proper curing depend on respecting these limits. And that brings us to bubbles and the importance of respecting poor depth. Bubbles are normal. They happen anytime you mix are poor, poxy, especially over poor surfaces like wood or using dried flowers.

The key is knowing how to manage them. A little heat, a light torch or fine mist with isopropyl alcohol can help. Pouring too deep is a related issue. Epoxy has a maximum recommended depth for a reason. Go beyond it and the heat from the chemical reaction can accelerate curing, causing cracks, uneven surfaces, or in extreme cases, smoke.

Always follow the instructions for depth in working time. It's not just a guideline, it's science. Understanding bubbles and poor depth sets you up for success with every project, and the next segment will dive into techniques to prevent and remove bubbles effectively. Plus tips for pouring safely at any scale. Bubbles in epoxy.

Nothing you did wrong. It's just what happens when you mix two components together. Stirring introduces air. The chemical reaction causes outgassing, and sometimes your substrate is porous and adds even more bubbles. It's normal, but thankfully very fixable.

There are two big stages. Avoid bubbles and remove bubbles. First, avoidance keeping your workspace at the epoxies ambient temperature is your best friend. Consistent temps make everything easier. Assisted heat also helps prevent bubbles before they even start.

You can warm your epoxy with a seedling mat. Warm water bath just don't let water into the bottles or a small space heater. Whatever method you choose, keep the bottles or mixed cup at a distance so you don't overheat them. Use the back of your hand to check the temperature and remember, heat speeds up the working time, so use less than you think you need. Next, pay attention to how you mix.

Don't lift the stir stick. That's how you scoop an air. Scrape the bottom and sides. Stir in figure eights and keep a steady, intentional pace, not slow motion. Not washing machine on high.

Somewhere in the middle you'll get the feel for it. After mixing, give the epoxy a little warmth from a heat gun under the cup or along the sides. You can also gently rotate your cups so the bubbles gather in the center. Then do a quick torch pass to pop them. When the bubbles are tiny, that's the perfect time to pour.

Once it's on your surface, use a heat gun to move the epoxy and help release bubbles. Then do a quick torch pass a few seconds at a distance. Let the epoxy warm up and push bubbles to the top. Then do another pass if needed. If you're working with fragile items like flowers or you're worried about damaging a silicone mold, the heat switch to isopropyl alcohol.

Missed it? Don't spray it directly. Hold the bottle at a distance and let that fine mist drift down. Quick recap keep your workspace at ambient temperature. Use gentle, excessive heat to warm the bottles with mixed epoxy.

Stir with purpose, not speed. Keep the statistic in the cup. Let the mixture sit so bubbles can rise. Mist with isopropyl alcohol from a distance, especially if you're using fragile items or silicone molds. Use a heat gun and or a torch to release bubbles.

So I'm going to show you guys in real time how to create this piece from start to finish. Using applications and techniques that we discussed in this video. So here you see I have an aerial view landscape. It's no particular place. I just kind of made it up.

But this is going to show you how to use two different types of epoxies and so many different materials that you can use together with epoxy. Now that we've seen this project from start to finish, I hope you can now appreciate how many different things you can do with epoxy. Obviously this is not showing you everything, but it does show you that you can use so many different materials and the possibilities are endless. I hope you found this video helpful, insightful and clarifying. Take what you've learned and apply it to your own.

Practice experimenting thoughtfully and paying attention to how the material responds. Over time, those small observations add up to real understanding and control. Epoxy is highly sensitive to variables like temperature mix ratio and timing, and small adjustments can make a significant difference in the final result. Approach each project as a controlled experiment. Make one small change at a time and let the outcome inform your next decision.

Thanks so much for watching and keep building your practice. What a great session from Brittany. The artistic flair that she brings to epoxy is absolutely incredible. And to reinforce what she said, the chemistry of epoxy is not a suggestion, it's a rule. You got to read the directions.

Now a couple things going here. One, all of these videos are going to be archived. So you can always come back and watch again and grab the PDF. There is so much information in that PDF that reinforces everything you're learning from the videos coming up. Adam Barnett, who doesn't love a really good sharp tip, a sharp trick.

Adam is the master of many, many different tricks and techniques you're going to want to look at and use in your shot. Before we watch Adam, we're going to watch a short clip from another one of our sponsors, Ryder Set. For a lot of woodworkers, the problem with making any kind of a frame using their table saw in miter gauge is getting the motor gauge set to exactly the right angle. Until now using miter set. This is very simple.

Leave one pin at zero, move the other pin to the angle that you're trying to produce with the head of the miter gauge. Lose. Just engage and push. We are now at a perfect 45 and ready to cut frame parts. Miter set has another product.

In this case, if I want nine segments in a ring one pin at zero, one pin at nine. Same program here. Head of the miter gauge is loose and we're ready to go. But. What a great jig for getting your miter gauge to exactly the right angle, no matter what kind of angle you're trying to produce here at the table saw.

Shop hacks, tips and tricks, whatever you want to call them. To me, that's some of the funnest parts of woodworking. So let's hop into some of my favorite ones. First up, jointing without a joiner, we're going to make an edge joining jig for the table saw. To make this jig you need two pieces of plywood.

I'm going to cut them both from this piece. When I first broke this down I created a straight side. But this factory edge needs to get cut off. So I'm going to square this board up. And then I'm going to cut a strip off of it.

That strip is going to be as tall as my fence. It'll get screwed to the other board. And that's going to create a clamping point on the fence. So I'm essentially making an L I misspoke there. I'm not going to square the board up.

I'm just making the two sides parallel. I could have cut the small strip from the side with the factory edge and just left it, but I think it's ugly and it would look weird not being straight. Also, squaring the ends isn't necessary since I'm only using the sides as the end feet and out feet of this edge joining jig. Now I'll cut the board to use as the clamping point. This strip will be about the same height as the table saw fence, so just measure your fence and set it to cut a strip the same width.

Now you can start seeing the jig come together. This next step is the most crucial part of this jig. You'll make a curve cut halfway through the board and then stop. Now when you set your fence for this cut, take your time and set the fence so that the edge of the board is perfectly in line with the outside edge of the teeth on your saw blade. Use a straight edge to get it perfectly lined up.

I'm using a six inch scale that I know is dead straight. In case you don't know, a curve is the empty space or slot that the saw blade leaves behind as it cuts. So in woodworking, the material lost to a curve is where sawdust comes from. Once you've cut about halfway through the board, stop. Do not take your hand off the board.

Then hold it firmly in place while you turn off the table saw and wait for the blade to stop spinning. It's very important that you don't let go of the board or move it. During this. You don't want to cause kickback or mess up the cut you just made. The curfew just cut is actually the feed side of this jig.

When you're using it, it'll be flipped around with the step behind the blade so you can remove the driving knife when using the jig. Now you can pre drill and add screws through the side strip and into the base of the jig. I put a screw less than an inch from each end and then spaced the screws about every eight inches. I generally don't glue shop jigs, I just screw them together. It makes them easier to assemble, but also easier to repurpose and alter them later if needed.

All right, it's time to set up the jig and test it. You want to get it set up so that the blade is exactly in line with the curve. Cut the outfit. All of the stuff in the back should be flush with the outside of the blades teeth. Use the table saw fence and jig together and get this lined up so that it's good.

When the fence is locked, I eyeball it to get the jig close, and then I use a straight edge to dial it in again. Align it to the outside of the teeth, not the face of the blade. Notice it's touching the outfield and the side of a tooth. You can see a slight gap between the blade and the straight edge. I've also found that if you have a longer straight edge, it's faster and easier to see that it's aligned.

You'll be able to set it flush against the outfield side of the jig, and then have it touching one tooth at the back of the blade and one tooth at the front. You might need to adjust the blade height to expose two teeth that are in line at the front and back, but this is easier than using a smaller straight edge. Go ahead and clamp it to the fence. Now it wouldn't hurt to double check things again before turning this on. And I gave it the good old pat that ain't going anywhere.

To test this, I'm going to use some rough sawn lumber. It is already studs, which means two sides have been surfaced. So one face has been jointed to create a flat surface, and then the opposite face has been planed, making two flat and parallel sides hold up. One side is jointed already. Isn't the point of making this jig because we don't have a jointer?

I was just explaining what else to us means. I get my lumber from the lumber yard already to us, so it's ready to go up to just get on my video, man. Come on. God. Sorry.

Where were we? Oh. Yeah. Time to joint this board. Keep the pressure on the side of the jig until it reaches the outfield side.

Then keep the pressure there as you finish feeding the board all the way through. Like always at the table. Saw stand off to the side, not behind the board. And there it is, a glue ready jointed edge done on a table saw without a jointer in sight. Nice and straight and a clean cut.

Just for another example. I'll run the other side of the board, even though the end is janky and has some nasty tear out damage from the mill. This time I stood off to the side of my table, saw what you can do if you can reach and keep solid control of the board the whole way through to help stop it from dragging. Like this. Just did apply some shop wax to the end.

Feet and outfield edges of the plywood. Only sand it by hand if absolutely needed. You don't want to take it out of square or create low spots, and if you want, you could make this longer to give yourself more of an in feed. Oh, and one last thing. Go ahead and take note of the fence measurement and jot that down on the jig.

That way it's saved and it's a way quicker set up. Next time it'll get you real close, but still double check it before you run the boards. Man, I love making jigs and this one is super handy. It's quick and easy and super useful. Best part about jigs?

You make it once and you have it forever. So find a place to store this and you essentially just added another tool to your shop. Another way to joint edges on the table saw is with a straight edge and double sided tape. So let me show you how to get on my level. Oops, sorry.

So you have boards that need to be glued up but don't have a tight joint. You can secure the boards to a straight edge like I'll be doing with a level and joint them on the table. Saw. First I mark an X on the bad joint so I know which sides need jointing and don't mix things up. Then a couple pieces of double sided tape will hold the board just fine to the level.

Place them carefully so that they aren't overhanging the bottom edge, or they could stick or drag on the surface of the saw. Also, make sure they are on a flat surface when you press them together. The cast iron top right on the table saw is a great spot for this. Now the side of the straight edge will ride against the fence, giving you a clean straight cut. I'm just skimming the side of the boards.

The cut is less than the full width of the blade, so about a 16th of an inch. With things like this, or just getting clean straight cuts in general, it does require that you have taken the time to set up your table saw, so the blade and the fence are parallel. Be sure to do that and check it every now and then. Now I'll remove this board from the straight edge and apply a couple new pieces of double sided tape before attaching the board. I make sure I'm setting it up properly by checking for the mark I made earlier.

Then I attach the second board to be jointed on a flat surface, again using the cast iron top. For this, just like before, I reset the table saw fence, so I'm just trimming the edge again, only cutting with about half of the blade's thickness. That being said, I don't recommend using a thin blade for this. Thinner blades have a lot more deflection and only cutting with half of the blade like this. It's just asking for deflection to give you an imperfect cut, which is literally what we're trying to avoid.

Now you can see that the boards have a nice tight glue ready joint. So why not just cut all these strips the same way on the table saw and get that jointed edge? Well these were cut on this table saw. So because they weren't jointed first up against the fence it didn't have a straight reference. So any little variance was replicated into the cut.

And that's why they needed to be jointed. So once you bring in a straight edge that staying true against the fence, the not straight edge is attached here and now is now out of play. So you're referencing off of a true straight edge. And that's how we got a nice clean, tight joint there. This last trick for jointing without a jointer is probably my favorite, most likely because it's so quick and easy.

It actually joins two boards at the same time, so you can see that there's quite a gap there. I can still see you, and we'll be able to get rid of that gap and not throw off this book match, which is pretty important. So check this out. All you need is a few pieces of scrap and some double sided tape. First thing to do is to add the tape to the scrap pieces.

I want this to be super solid, so I just go the whole length of the scrap. We don't want the boards shifting around. I'm not trying to put one little piece on each side creating a pivot point. Take a second to press the tape down and make sure that it's firmly adhered. Peel the backing in.

Place the strips across the center half on each board. Remember to throw your trash away. Make sure you brought the boards together tightly when you apply the strips. I like to give them a good press to make sure they have a solid connection and lock them in place. Set the fence so the blade is right in the middle of the joint.

We want it to be perfectly centered, so it's cutting both boards at the same time. Now the next key to this trick is setting the blade height. You want to make sure that you aren't cutting all the way through those strips we just put on. We want to cut all the way through the bottom material and just slightly into the sacrificial strips. Now it's ready to make the cut.

Pop the sacrificial pieces off and you're good to go. Again. Remember to throw away your trash and toss your scrap in the bin. Don't hoard that stuff. Well, look at that.

We have a nice tight joint now. And the best part is that the book match is still intact. You can't beat that. For me, simple often wins and a few pieces of scrap, some double sided tape and one pass through the table saw. Yeah, that's pretty easy.

I love this trick. And if you noticed, I was once again using double sided tape. This is x fastened woodworkers double sided tape. And I use this stuff all the time. I can't recommend it enough.

To me it's an essential shop tool. So how about you stick around and I'll show you some other fun stuff you can do with it? Why am I like this? If you've ever tried to sand small workpieces with a random orbit sander, then you certainly know the frustrations it presents between trying to hold the piece to the sander and nicking your fingertips, to totally losing grip of the piece, and it shooting across your shop like a dart and getting cracked, chipped or dented, or even worse, shot into the fourth dimension shop void to never be seen again. You always end up thinking, well, I probably could have found a better way to do that.

Well, good news, this is the better way. Lay some double sided tape on a flat surface. Feel the backing. Oh, and remember to throw away your trash. And now you have a simple and solid workpiece holding solution.

Best part is, it's not in the way like clamps would be, and there's no special vacuum pump and table setup, just simple tape offering a simple solution. As you can see, it's more than strong and sturdy enough to use with a sander. Now there is always the concern of cost of consumables in the shop. Luckily, this stuff isn't very expensive and when I do use it, I can often get multiple uses out of it. I use a dry shop towel to wipe away the dust before removing them.

This tape is crazy strong, so I often use this little pry bar to help gently remove the pieces. And as you can see, I'm able to keep using the tape for the opposite sides. If I'm worried on the surface using the pry bar, then I only use a little bit of tape like this. Kind of just hanging these off the ends this time, so it'll be easy to pop them off just being placed on the ends. That little bit is still holding them in place.

Even more impressive is that after getting some sanding dust on the tape, it's still held for more pieces. However, I added a little in piece and it did make the last one not sit flat. So when I sanded the show face of these pieces, I reapplied tape to keep them all level and sanding evenly. They were really easy to remove this time having those mitered edges. Before we move on from this tip, I'd like to throw out another little time saving shop hack I use all the time.

If you water pop while sanding or clean pieces with mineral spirits or whatever, you can massively speed up the drying time with a heat gun. Call me impatient if you want, but I just call it efficient. Well, it does drive me nuts standing around waiting for things like this to dry before I can keep going. Maybe I am impatient and whatever. Also, this is a piece of granite that I've been working on.

It's great as a dead flat work surface in the shop. I use it for sanding and sharpening or just checking if things are truly flat. I got this at a yard sale for like 20 bucks. It was an end table and I just disassembled it to keep the top. I may be impatient, but I'm also resourceful and thrifty.

Does that make up for anything? All right. Next tip A common method for building a little box is to build the box and then just cut the lid off. And this next tip is for just that, but with no risk because the last thing you want to do, after all your hard work is screw this part up. So instead of stressing, I just use some double sided tape and lock everything in place as I go, thus making it me proof, I mean foolproof.

Let me show you. I grabbed three small pieces of scrap from the burn bin for this. These will be sacrificial anchors applied after each cut. When cutting the lid off a box, I use a glue line rip blade to get a nice clean cut. I highly recommend growing a collection of blades designed for different purposes.

You won't regret it if you've only been using a combo blade for everything. Having the right blade for a cut really determines the quality of a cut and the finish it leaves on the material. It's totally worth the investment. Bonus tip wax paper is a quick and easy way to get things sliding smooth against fences and on surfaces like table saws, routers, bandsaw planners you know everything. This is footage from when I was making this box, and you can see I even use it in the miter slot and on the bottom of jigsaw.

It makes a big difference. I grab a roll at the dollar store and it honestly seems to last for years before I need more. It cleans things a bit as well, which is an added bonus. A bonus to the bonus. And remember we got it at the dollar store.

Don't be a sloppy hoarder, just throw it away when you're done. Now I'll set the fence. I like to keep the bottom of the box against the fence. Be sure to set the blade height just slightly higher than the thickness of your material. We are cutting all the way through.

Now we can make the first rip cut. I'll add a sacrificial anchor strip with the double sided tape. Make sure that you don't overhang on the side that's against the fence, or you'll have some interference issues. Give it a good firm press. And now we're ready to make the second rip to make sure you don't screw up.

Make sure you keep the same side against the fence. And now I'll add the second sacrificial anchor. You know, I wasn't doing it on purpose, but I'm just now realizing that I usually have these strips overhanging the side with the lid. It kind of makes it foolproof, because I can't put that side up against the fence due to the interference issue. So it's kind of a happy accident that's helping prevent error.

Give this a nice firm press, make sure it's adhered double check the orientation and we're ready for the third rip. And now I'll place the last sacrificial anchor. Press on the last sacrificial anchor, and we're ready to make the fourth rip. Now the lid will be loose, but still locked perfectly in place, nice and safe. No danger or damage.

If you haven't noticed, I try to stay tidy as I go. All right, time for the best part. Popping the anchors off. So we've easily removed the lid with a clean cut and no risk of it coming loose and getting messed up or having the lid kicked back at us. Yet.

Seriously, it's a clean cut. There is practically no cleanup needed now. Maybe a couple passes with a block plane and we're golden. Sure beats all those other risky ways with a ton of cleanup left over at the end. And yes, put the scrap back in the burn bin.

You don't need to hoard that. Those are just some of the things I do with double sided tape. I feel like I'm always finding a reason to reach for it. However, if you don't have any, you can accomplish many of the same things with blue painter's tape and CA glue. Here's an example of this method for holding small workpieces for sanding, like I did with the double sided tape.

First, lay out a piece of painter's tape on your work surface. Then apply tape to the back of the workpiece. I apply the CA glued to the tape on the work surface as to the back of the workpiece. To avoid drips in any mess. You don't need a ton of glue and you definitely don't want it close to the edges.

So when you squish them together, it squeezes out, and then your work piece is actually super glued to something. Spray the workpiece tape with the activator and quickly press them together. Take care with this part because it isn't very forgiving. If your alignment is off, you probably won't be readjusting things. I generally press this down and hold it for about 10s and then it's usually good.

Some of the bottles say 30s, but usually don't need that much time. And there you have it. We have did some double sided tape. Will it hold? Let's sand.

Yep. It held. Held very well. So well, in fact, that I had to grab my trusty pry bar to pop these off. And sometimes you get lucky like this, and the tape doesn't come up, and you can just flip things over and keep using it.

So now I'm using it a second time and sanding without it losing grip. Much like I think that double sided tape is an essential shop item. I also feel the same way about CA glue. So let's learn some more about this stuff. CA stands for cyanoacrylate.

Say that three times fast. It's most commonly referred to as super glue. You can make it cure almost instantly with the activator, just spray the activator on the side that the glue will mate to and it'll lock it in place almost instantly. There are many brands that offer CA Glue and Activator. They're also available in different viscosities and different colors.

More about the colors later. My personal favorite brand is Tight Bond. It's quality glue, but their packaging is better than the others. I've tried the cap to. The glue has a pin in it that prevents the spout from getting clogged.

It's fantastic not having spouts glued shut. All right, let's see some other tricks you can do around the shop. The first trick is it can glue things a little obvious and right on the nose. Right. Well, one of the things I love it for is its speed.

Something I do more often than I'd care to admit is using it to fix tear out. Because of how fast this is, I often reach for CA glue before would glue. Things like this generally happen unexpectedly on accident or when I know I can prevent it, but still do the process and cause it anyway. So it's nice to be able to quickly fix the intrusion of the workflow and get back to things quickly. I add just the drop of CA glue and then get things situated, which can be tricky.

Sometimes tweezers are helpful and so is this 90 degree dental pic. I keep this pic in my shop apron and use it almost daily. I highly recommend getting a set of these once I get the piece in place with the tweezers, I hold it down with a dental pick and then I spray on some activator and give it a couple rubs, pressing down to try to help lock it in place. Any drips or buildup left. Proud of the surface, I just trim off with a chisel.

Ooh, look at the little curl that I paired off of the miter. That was satisfying and I think I need some lotion. Yeah, sorry about that. Earlier I mentioned that you can get CA glue in different colors. This is great for filling small cracks and voids or bark inclusion spots like this one I'm about to fill.

This one went all the way through the board, so I closed up the smaller gap on this side. First I apply the CA glue, give it a second to drop in, then hit it with the activator. Now sometimes you'll have to do this multiple times before it's actually filled and flush. To check if it needs more, I use a chisel to remove the excess, then repeat if needed. I also use my dental pick to get into the little pinholes, and try to get the air bubbles out so that it will fill with CA glue.

It requires patience. Sometimes. Once it's good, I clean it up with a block plane and flip to the other side. Now if you just flood the cavity with CA glue and then spray activator on the top, it's going to seal the top. But all that liquid underneath is now sealed off from air, and it's just going to stay liquid for a really long time.

Kind of like it's back in its bottle. It'll cure eventually, but it'll shrink and the top surface will sink in and look wrinkly. It's kind of terrible. To prevent this, I fill it in layers. It takes some extra time, but I like to know it's solid and won't look terrible down the road.

I start by spraying activator into the crevice before adding CA glue. This helps the first layer cure and stick while kind of coating everything with a solid base layer. Then rinse and repeat until it's full. Pour in CA glue, spray the activator, chisel it flush, pour more CA glue, spray the activator, chisel it flush. You can kind of poke around with the dental tool to see if it's solid or if it feels squishy.

Then rip it open and spray more activator when it's getting close. Sometimes I sand it lightly and wipe it with mineral spirits so it's easier to see how it looks if needed. I quickly dry it with a heat gun, then touch up any low spots or pinholes. Now you can see it's fully filled, solid and nice and flush. To clean off any buildup on my dental pick, I just scrape it with the razor blade.

Here's the box. Almost a month later, the CA glue hasn't sunk down in and looks perfectly flush and smooth inside and out. Here in the bottom is the repaired tear out, and if you didn't know it was there, you probably wouldn't have even noticed it. CA glue can be used as a clamp as well, an invisible clamp that doesn't get in the way. I use this trick a lot when I'm making shop jigs and I don't want to use screws.

Now we make jigs because it makes the process safer for the user, safer for the project, and it makes the process accurate and repeatable. But I often find myself making a jig for one of those reasons in the exact moment that I want to use it. So then I've put myself in a situation where I want to make a nice jig that will last, but I also want to use it right away, which means I don't want to waste time waiting around for glue to dry. Maybe I am impatient. Anyway, CA glue is great for things like this because I can still use wood glue which is much stronger than CA glue, but use the CA glue to instantly clamp pieces in place and use them right away, while the wood glue is still wet and drying inside the jig.

So let's make a quick little jig and I'll show you how I do it. Say I want to put feet on this cutting board. I want the feet placed in equal distance from each side, and I want all four feet to be that same distance. So to do this will make a drilling guide. I grab some scrap quarter inch plywood and cut a square that was 2.5in by 2.5in.

Then cut a couple strips of half inch ply, a half inch wide by about two inches long. The second strip I trimmed a half inch shorter so it'll be symmetrical once assembled. I hope that makes sense. Now that you can see it, I'm going to use this little 90 degree square as an assembly jig a jig to make a jig. Jig ception.

I'll mark where I'm going to place these two strips so I know where the glue needs to be. Then I'll squeeze out a small bead of glue, but avoid the ends. After I spread that around a little bit, I'll put a bit of CA glue at the ends. I'll spray some accelerator on the strips and drop them in place. Applying firm pressure.

I'll hold them down for about 10s in the moment. 10s feels pretty quick, but sitting here watching it, it feels like an eternity. But I was able to see that it was about exactly 10s. And there we go. CA glue is an invisible clamp holding these strips in place.

No clamps in the way of me continuing to finish the jig. Oh, and yes, it's nice and square. Now I'll mark the points where I'm going to drill through. I'll mark a one inch point, a half inch point, and a 1.5in point just to make the jig a little more useful and give it some more variety. Another bonus tip I use a spring punch to create a divot centered right on my drill marks.

This will stop the bit from walking and drilling off center. Very handy if you don't have Brad point drill bits, or if you do have Brad point bits. But one rolled off the bench and the Brad point broke off. Hypothetically speaking, of course. Now I'll drill these points and label them.

I'll flag the depths on my drill bit and drill through on some scrap to prevent tear out on the bottom of the workpiece. I use these cutting board feet often, and they have screws that only need a three 32nd hole. So I'll drill this jig to that size. You can see how easy it is to get the drill bit in the right spot with the divot I punched. If in the future I need to use this jig to drill larger diameter holes, I'll either use the jig to drill pilot holes and step up to the larger sized drill bit, or I'll use this to mark the locations and then drill them without the jig.

Maybe with some Brad point drill bits once I replace them. So you just watch me whip up a quick and easy jig, completely made and glued and used before the glue even dried. This CA glue as a clamp trick is great to have in the back of your mind. If you're ever in a time crunch, or if you are, as I'm coming to realize about myself, impatient like me. Before we move on from CA glue, let's talk about one last thing and it's inevitable.

What do you do when you get CA glue on your fingers? It's very likely to happen. You accidentally touch some before it's cured or a drip gets on you, or you use your finger to wipe up some excess out of habit and then out of habit again. You use another finger to rub that off, and now you've glued your fingers together. Oh.

But have no fear, acetone is here. I don't use it all that often, but I do admit that I have used it a few times over the years and possibly earlier today. Earlier in this video, you saw me fill a void with black CA glue. Pretty much right at the beginning of that process, I sprayed some activator on and like a dummy, I touched it before it was fully cured. I finished that whole process with a bit of black CA glue on my fingertip.

Not a big deal, but not something I just wanted to leave and let it wear off on its own. So to get it off, I just soaked a small bit of blue shop towel with the nail polish remover and wiped until it was all gone. This really dries my skin out, so I wash my hands and use some lotion right after. Instead of buying straight acetone, I just got this little bottle of nail polish remover from the drugstore when it was on sale. Now be aware that there is acetone free nail polish remover, so make sure you check the bottle if you get some.

This one actually says 99% acetone. And there is D binder that you can get from some brands, like this one from Starbucks, and it has a brush built into the cap, and it has a gel consistency that helps it stay where you put it and not run or drip. But it also says that it takes 5 to 10 minutes for small smudges in 15 to 20 minutes for larger smudges. Maybe it has something to do with whatever they add to make it a gel, but in my experience, it is slower than nail polish remover, so I stick to that. Alright, enough about CA glue.

Next tip. How are we going to do the swipe thing? Next tip. Are we going to pay? As much as I love jigs, sometimes I don't use them because like I said earlier, simple often wins.

Maybe I'm impatient and lazy now you're just ridiculously smart and efficient. Thanks. Well, now that that's settled, let's talk about cutting splines. Without a jig. A spline can help reinforce the joint, often using miter joints like on boxes or picture frames.

Or it can just be there to be decorative. Either way, it can be a fun addition to a project. Now, there are many ways you can make the cut for a spline. You could cut it by hand or like I'm most commonly see. You could build or buy a jig for the router table or for the table saw.

But what if you could skip all that? Just grab a piece of scrap set up in a few minutes and get it done quick and easy. That sounds smart and efficient, I know right? Like this guy. To start the setup, I like to mark the size with how long I'd like the spline to be.

I picked three quarters of an inch to start with. I grabbed this rule stop, set it to three quarters of an inch and marked two corners. Then I connect the points with the 45 degree line across the corner. You want to get at least halfway through the joint for strength, and be cautious to not cut all the way through the joint. Making this line helps me visualize the cut, and make sure I don't cut through the joint and into the box.

I like to use a flat grind or flat tooth blade to make these cuts. That way I don't have to go back and clean up any saw blade peaks and valleys with a chisel. I like things to be one and done, and having the right tool for the job is key. When working without the right tool for the job, you're often just making more work for yourself later. And as we established me, liking less work isn't lazy.

I'm just being smart and efficient. Now I'll raise or lower the table saw blade and adjust the box until it's equally hitting the mark on both sides of the box. You might have a lot of blade exposed to get the right angles. I can see that the tooth is hitting the line at the top, but then by the bottom it's going too long, which means I don't have enough radius of the blade exposed, so I'll bring the blade up a bit. The goal is to have the same length cut on each side by having the blade enter and exit the box sides at the same length.

This isn't exactly a round peg square hole situation, it's more of a square box round blade situation. But if you set things right, you can get the math correct. Now for that piece of scrap that I mentioned. This will be used as a stop block and will be attached directly to the fence. Here is a great example of where you could use your new tricks from earlier.

To attach the stop block to the fence by one using double sided tape like I'm going to show you here. Attach the tape to the back of the stop block. Then, while holding the box firmly in place, set the block flat on the table saw surface gently butted up against the box and slide it over onto the fence. Press it in place and it's good to go. A second way to attach the stop block is by using the painter's tape and CA glue trick, like in this example shown here.

Apply a piece of tape to the block and a piece to the fence. I just measure the piece for the fence roughly off of the length of the block. Place it real close up tight to the back of the box, but hold the box tight and make sure that you don't move it off of its mark. Put a little bit of CA glue on the block, avoiding the edges. We don't want squeeze out and spray activator on the fence tape.

While holding the box firmly in place. Set the block on the table saw and slide it up against the back of the box and onto the fence. Hold it for about 10s and you're good to go. Oh, this feels like an eternity again. All right, I guess it wasn't that long.

Those are both great ways to do this, but I'm going to show you a third way. Now, this way I'm going to show you kind of counts as using a jig, but only kind of sorta. This is a stop block that you clamped to the table saw fence. You should make one of these regardless because of the many other uses it can have. To make it, you need to get a clamp like one of these universal fence clamps.

Then drill a hole in the scrap and simply clamp it in place. This is certainly the most secure way to do this out of the options I just showed you, but whichever way you do it, just be safe on the table. Saw the other two ways work just as fine, but you have to exercise respect and caution at the table. Saw tape and glue obviously isn't as secure as a clamp, but if you're smart and safe about it, don't let not having a specialized clamp stop you. To make this a little more me proof, I mean foolproof.

I make two marks the width of the blade where I want the splines. Visual aids help me a ton. After I mark where the curved cut will be, I use this 90 degree marking gauge and extend the lines on to both sides. Again, just to help me visualize things while I set the fence to the appropriate distance for the first cut. If you are doing two splines that are equal distance from the top and bottom of the box, just flip it and make the other cut.

However, this box I'm making has a bottom that extends past the bottom edge of the sides, making it look like it's floating when it's sitting, so I have to account for that thickness. When I make the cuts on the bottom and adjust the fence after these first four cuts to make the cut, just hold the box against the fence and slide it up until it touches the stop block, then slide it back, keeping pressure towards the fence slow and controlled. If you don't feel comfortable with this and want to completely avoid kickback danger, hold it in place. When you hit the stop block, turn off the saw holding the box in place until the blades stop spinning, then slide it back. Now you can see me readjusting the fence to cut the other side.

If you want wider splines, use a thicker blade or Dado stack that is the width you desire. You can also just make all the cuts at one setting, then adjust the fence and keep making passes until the slot is the width you want. There we go. Douglas ish spline cuts made. Now I just need to cut some splines and glue them into place.

Here's a quick note about grain orientation when you're making them for splines to actually provide more structural strength, they need to have properly oriented grain. If the splines grain is parallel to the miter joint, it can fail easily. But if the grain is running perpendicular to the joint, then it's adding a ton of strength. Yeah, I'm not snapping that, so be sure to think about that when you cut your splines. I pick a piece of lumber with straight grain millet so that it fits nice and tight in the joint.

I do joint one side and then rip it on the table saw. So the other side is parallel because I want the back of the spline to sit flush in the groove we cut. I draw a bunch of triangles on the strip, making sure that they are oversize to account for the bandsaw blade curve, and so that once they're glued in, I can easily trim the excess and make them perfectly flush. These pieces are small, so when you cut them out on the bandsaw, be safe. I use the back of a pencil.

The eraser is a nice little push stick. Then you just glue them in. I spread glue on the faces of the splines, making sure to also get the back. Then I slide it in and if it's not too tight, I try to wiggle it around to spread the glue. But the main goal here is to make sure that it's fully seated and sticking out on both sides.

You don't want to glue it in short. One of the reasons I like to keep the splines small is so that I can go straight to the router. Once the glue dries, then I just use a flush trim bit to clean them up. After a little light sanding, I like to wipe it down with mineral spirits. This gives me a preview of what it will look like with finish on it, and highlights any areas that I didn't sand enough, and the glue stain will show up in the finish.

Like this spot here. Adding splines can really elevate the appearance of a project. Plus, they're fun to add, especially when you have lots of shop hacks and tips and tricks to make things quick and easy. And you know what else is quick and easy? Following me on social media and YouTube where I share tips and tricks and really bad dad jokes all the time.

I hope you enjoyed your time with me today. Learn something new and you're inspired to go make something cool. Hey, you want to say bye? No. Okay.

That's weird. Sorry. Adam absolutely nailed those. Tips and tricks and techniques. There's some alliteration for you.

What a great bunch of. What a great collection he put together there. The next thing we're going to do is we're going to watch my friend Rob Johnstone. And he developed a very cool project that's a plant stand. And it's got a lot of stuff going on, including inlay that he let into the plant stand.

Not using a template, just using a handheld router and a chisel. And well, you're going to see all the great techniques. So let's roll on to Rob Johnstone and his plant stand. Today I'm going to teach you how to build this plant stand. It's based on an antique version that was in my house while I was growing up.

But as you can see, it's a totally modern design. It's got built up legs, and I'm going to teach you how to do some geometric inlay on the top. This is a project that I really had fun building, so let's get started. Not all of us are great designers, but all of us can be designers if we follow some simple steps. One of the things I wanted to do was offer builders the opportunity of making these legs without having to process in surface lumber.

So I used lumber that's available through the internet from Rockland. These these pieces are five inches wide, 24in long. They come in a quarter inch and a half inch dimension. And for that reason, I needed to constrain the legs for the plant stands within that dimension. It was fun.

I think I got a pretty good looking leg. And later on we used geometric inlays on the top, which added some texture and some detail. Carried the, when Gatewood all the way up through the top. And I'm really happy how this design turned out. A full size mockup is a down and dirty full sized model of your design.

It does not need to look ugly, but it's okay if it does. It lets you evaluate your idea in 3D and look at the proportions of your project in real life. I'm guessing you are really enjoying the lovely yellow color of the mock up. Okay, that's one ugly shade of yellow. Generally, I put a quick rattle cam coating of white paint on my mockups.

This helps materialize the different pieces. Mockups are often made from scraps that are just laying around the shop. After painting, you can use a marker to start adding details, moldings, bevels, inlay shapes, or other ornamentations. To some taking this time and effort, this may seem a bit over the top, but I can assure you that I have found full size mockups to be the most important step in the design process. Proportions are the most critical details when it comes to designing, both in terms of proportions of the project components to one another, but also the way it takes up space where the piece is intended to go.

Years ago, I made a coffee table for my home that looked too small as I was building it in a large woodshop, so I increased the dimensions. My children found it a great place to dance on battleship was how my wife described it. This mockup showed me that I initially made the tabletop far too big. That may be a pattern in my designing. I also decided to add splines to the legs, set assembly to make the glue up easier, and to add glue area and strings.

In addition to seeing the potential project in situ, making a fast and lean mockup also lets you consider joinery considerations. Often I go into the mockup stage of design thinking. I will be joining the pieces one way, but after seeing and handling the parts, I think of a more efficient or perhaps stronger way to go. There are many reasons why I chose to use a template to help me form my table legs. I'll explain more about that later in the video, but one benefit is that I don't need to lay out each and every leg individually, and can trace the shape onto the leg blanks quickly and accurately.

And here's a tip. Use an orange marker to mark up dark lumber like this. Gay or walnut. You can see it more clearly than a pencil on. I use my C and C sharp to make the templates.

It might be a cheating a bit, but the resulting templates are dead accurate and I happened to break one while using it. I can always make another exact replacement. I know this some woodworkers think CNC routing is not woodworking and I can understand that opinion. But you probably do know that we can build nearly any piece of furniture with only hand tools. We could rip lumber was a two handled saw, playing a flat with a handheld, playing cut pieces to length and went with our backs.

Never need to flip a switch except perhaps to turn on the lights. For me, a CNC is just another power tool in the shop. Crazy expensive tool since is do some things very well. If I'm going to drill 121 holes to make a cribbage board, I will do my best to get it done on a CNC. The job will be done fast and more accurately.

I see some guys leveling a slab using the CNC and I can get that done faster a couple of other ways, but both will require more work on my part. One thing that CNC routers do really well is cut pieces with extreme accuracy, which is why I use them to make templates for template routing. If you want a few curve pieces to nest it perfectly. I, C and C can be very useful. I know many guys want to do the cutting and shaping without a CNC and more power to them.

You'll find me doing so many a day, but for me CNC is just woodworking. One of the challenges building this project is I laminated together three pieces of hardwood. And while that doesn't sound tricky if you've ever tried to do it, when you apply glue across a wide surface like this and then stick it down onto another piece of wood, it can kind of go all squirrely on you. So when I was making these blanks, I used a little trick, one that you might find in the kitchen cupboards of your own house. Gluing together three flat boards to make up a leg blank is not overly difficult.

If you plan ahead just a bit with any glue up, it is important to get a thin, even coat of glue on both meeting faces. But as already mentioned, that glue can allow the boards sliding around when you put them in clamps. So I use a few grains of course, so between the boards, using its crystal abrasive qualities to keep the boards from shifting it makes a huge difference. Speaking of applying an even thin coat of glue, I used a roller glue applicator from rollers glue applicator set. Notice how it fits onto the tight bond glue bottle and applies an even coating of the glue.

It's very manageable and it helps keep your fingers from becoming sticky and spreading around unwanted glue spots. I chose to use tight on original formula for this assembly. Why that and that tape on 2 or 3 tape non-original is a high quality white glue that creates a very strong bond, barring some sort of catastrophic event. These legs will still be glued together, and 100 years is not as water resistant or waterproof as tape on 2 or 3. But it does not need to be.

Truth be told, any of the three options would work just fine for laminating these boards together. All of them have sufficient elasticity to accommodate any potential variation in the two species seasonal expansion and contraction. As they say, the only three things you can't avoid in life are death, taxes, and wood movement. Clamping the leg blanks requires enough clamps to get even pressure across the width and length of the boards. I had enough clamps to do two leg blank glue ups at a time.

I keep them in clamps for at least eight hours. As you can see, my dog Sydney loves it when I start up the bandsaw. No idea why, with the shape of the template drawn onto the leg blanks with an orange sharpie. I used my bandsaw to cut just outside the marked line, about 1/16 of an inch. My one inch wide saw blade was not ideal for this task, because it made it harder to cut the curved shape.

But remember, the outline does not need to look pretty. It's just too lazy to put the narrower blade on the saw. A really great way to get identical furniture parts like these legs here is to shake them using a template. It's called template routing. Now I cheat a little bit and I use my CNC router to make these templates because once I draw them there they're perfect.

But this leg is pretty easy to lay out. And I'll give you the information as we go. Out of a five inch wide, 24 inch long, blank. And you'll be easy enough for you to get that. And then you can template and get these legs done just as well as I did.

As I mentioned, I drew up the leg shape on the software that drives my CNC router. Curiously, the process I went through on my computer was very similar as to how to do an analog layout of the leg shape. Start out with a five inch wide by 24 inch long board. I recommend making your template from at least 3/8 thick stock, but I chose it in this case to use half inch MDF for my template. Some folks use quarter inch hard border MDF.

Personally, I find that material a bit flimsy and easy to break. Lay out your template using the dimensions shown on the video screen. These measurements will give you the shape of the template. After you've drawn the shape of the leg. Use a bandsaw to cut just outside the lines and refine the shape using a sander or just sandpaper by hand.

There are, of course, a host of ways to approach template routing. In this case, I use double sided tape to hold the template to the prepared blank. Then I flipped the whole assembly over and clamped it to the work tape. You could of course use a router table for this task. In my small shop I need to set up my router table, pulling it out of storage for each use.

So I just used my handheld router to get the task done. I used both standard routing techniques and client cuts to limit the potential of tear out. Using a half inch diameter patterned routing bit, with the guide bearing at the end of the bit. Engage the cut slowly and listen to hear if the operator is bogging down in the cut. To avoid tear out.

Don't root across the end grain. Use a saw to make the cut instead. You might be wondering what a clean cut is. Great question. When in template routing, you mostly move the router, so the rotation of the router bit feeds the cutting edges of the bit into the wood fibers against the rotation of the bit.

It's how router bits are designed to cut. The climb. Cut, on the other hand, moves the router or the workpiece on a router table with rotation of the blade. It's a trickier cut, as the bit can grab the wood and either pull the router quickly with the rotation. If you're using a handheld router or on the router table.

Grab the stock and pull it dangerously fast with the rotation of the bit. In both cases, you are losing control of the cutting edge. Why won't you choose a standard cut versus a clean cut? The standard cut is the most efficient and control of the two options. However, because of how the cutting edge of the bit enters the workpiece, it can split the wood fibers rather than shearing or cutting them, leading to tear out.

The climb cut. By moving with, the rotation of the bit decreases the likelihood of tear out. So I use it where I'm concerned that terra will be likely, where I see the grain of the wood flowing off the piece around curves, or when I hear the wood fibers begin to split off. Both on a router table and in a handheld situation. Great care needs to be taken when choosing to make a climb cut, especially on the router table.

An uncontrolled climb cut can put your fingers in danger. I joined the legs and the cord together, using splines to increase the glue area and to locate the pieces by making two cuts from each face of the leg and the core. I could be certain that the spline cut was dead center in the middle of the joint. As mentioned, the core joins all four legs together in a glue joint. It's made from the drop that you generate after you cut out the leg shape on the bandsaw.

The splines will be hidden from sight, so you don't need to match the species or the color of the word in the spline. When it comes to sanding, my preference is through and bran extract cubic tron sanding disks. I've been impressed with their effectiveness and their durability. Remember when using a random orbit sander, move the sander only about one inch per second. Allow the weight of the sander and the sandpaper to do the work.

When working with hardwoods, I like to sand up from 80 grit to 220 grit. Prepping the surface is the key to a good finish. Geometric inlays like these stretch diamonds are pretty easy to do. They consist of straight lines that you inscribe with a knife, and then you'll simply root out the pocket that you put the inlay into. Which isn't to say that someone, even an expert woodworker, can't screw it up from time to time.

Next time you see this, it'll look great. That's great. Now it's time to get started demonstrating how to inlay the stretched diamonds tabletop. Where the inlays go is made up of two pieces of pine glued together, so the figure of the grain is book match. The top is edged with wing, and to match the inlay piece and the base of the plan stand.

Frustratingly, some of the video I show in laying the diamonds on the tabletop was not a very good quality. For that reason, I inlaid a stretched diamond in a separate piece of prime video of that effort. Please forgive me for switching back and forth between two pieces. My goal is to teach the processes as clearly as I can. Of course, and could arise over.

Why use pine over something like perhaps maple? Both would show off the wing a very well. It's a legitimate question. Let's consider that choice and talk a bit about the basics of inlay at the same time. The board that you place your inlay pieces in is sometimes called the grounding, like in veneer.

You may think that it might be easier to inlay pieces into pine, as it is softer and easier to cut and chop through the wood fibers. In fact, using this technique, there is little difference between pine and, say, soft maple that I showed earlier. The router does most of the work. If you're doing it all by hand, the pine would certainly be easier to work with. Another legitimate concern would be that with the pine grounding framed by mitered wing, a hardwood seasonal expansion and contraction of the grounding might pop the miter joints.

Yep. That's possible. But I found that today's climate controlled homes the wood movement, is held to a minimum. For example, here are a couple of tables with a good bit of inlay work, by the way. Made with number three common pine grounding wrapped with miter cherry hardwood molding.

They are several years old and I have not had any problems at all. Oh, and one last thing. Remember that stretched diamond inlay I showed you earlier? That was a bit of a disaster. Here's the same corner with a newly inlaid piece nicely fitting.

I used paper templates to form the inlay, mortises and inlay pieces. I drew the stretched diamond design and then you just my scanner a computer to make copies. Even though you will be fitting each diamond to its mortise, it makes that job much easier if the templates are exactly the same. Cut out the paper templates with care. I used a spray adhesive to attach the templates to the tabletop with the scratch diamond templates I currently attach to the tabletop.

It's time to start in sizing the perimeter of the shape. Start each cut at the terminal end of each individual line. Don't try to blend your cut in a terminal end. It's easy to cut past that point and that line can be seen later. Start in each point on the diamond and cut away from when you have incised the perimeter completely.

Use a pencil to highlight that cut line. That visibility makes the next steps much easier. Chopping deeper into the wood fibers. Folded chisel at 90 degrees to the surface with the flat face of the chisel to the outside of the diamond. This deeper cut will help the wood fibers from chipping out as you use your router to clear the inlay mortise.

I chose to use a mid-sized handheld router with an eight inch straight bit, set to just under one eighth of an inch deep, to excavate the wood fibers from the inlaid mortise. Some might prefer a trim router. The stability and the visibility provided by the mid side of the router, I think, makes it a better choice. Take your time and get as close to the edges of the diamond mortise as you feel comfortable doing. The more wood you remove this way, the less you'll need to remove with a chisel later.

Removing the material in this way is reminiscent of coloring inside the lines. It should be mentioned that if you do stray outside the lines, the fix is not a simple one. It would include routing way more material and gluing a patch in place. Although much more work, the results of that fix are almost always more invisible than using a putty or a wood filler after the fact. You could use a larger diameter router bit should you choose.

It will just leave more material at the corners for you to chisel away later. This eight inch bit from rocker does the job nicely. Getting way into the corners and does not really take that long per diamond to excavate the mortise. With this specific technique you can use inlaid pieces, perhaps up to one quarter inch thick. Again, the router is doing most of the work in removing the wood from the mortises.

It will be a bit more work to chop the edges of the mortise square in the corners, but a sharp chisel will make that easier. One advantage of a thicker stock is that it's not as finicky to work with. The thin stock can easily break, and the edges of the pieces are more likely to split off. Although I often use commercially produced veneer for my inlay pieces, I never use veneer that is less than 1/16 of an inch thick. I found it to be very hard to work with.

Clean up the edges around the mortise. Sharp, clean edges will make the next step of this inlay easier. Chop straight down with the chisel as you did before, and then sweep in from the side with the chisel to clear the fibers out. Make a nice clean mortise. By one inch wide.

Bandsaw blade was much better suited for resizing the wing into 3/16 of an inch thick slices from which to make the diamonds. I originally was going to use some fairly maple veneer to make the diamonds, but decided to continue the look with the wing. It's one of my favorite hardwoods to look at. Not so much to work with. I used the same paper templates to make the stretch diamonds from the reason Wingy.

Once again, I scribed around the template prevent the wing from chipping out when I cut them on the bandsaw. Notice that I put a piece of MDF on my bandsaw to create a kind of zero clearance situation to help support the material as it was being cut. Everything is now ready for us to start fitting the stretched diamonds. Thanks to the fact that we are dealing with straight lines, the fitting can be done by simply sanding away material that does not fit within the inline mortise. I use 100 grit sandpaper for the task.

Simply test the fit of the diamond. Identify where it is extending beyond the mortise, and sand away that material. Keep it up until the diamond fits tightly. Here's a little trick for you. When sanding, the edges of the diamond, angled them in slightly so that the diamond will be wedged into the mortise.

When you glue it in place. Like any woodworking task, you'll get better at this with practice, but sadly, a tight fit simply cannot be rushed. Gluing the stretched diamonds into their mortises is not difficult. I used an MDF clamping call with one face covered in masking tape, to keep the MDF from being glued to the surface by a thin coat of glue to both faces. Insert the diamond.

Place the call and apply clamping pressure. Allow the glue to cure for at least a couple of hours. No waste, no waste. On a side note, you may have noticed that I'm using wooden hand screw clamps. They may seem a bit old fashioned, but I find them quite useful for applying pressure to the center of a five inch wide board or these stretched diamonds.

They are simple to use and quite versatile. Once you have someone you show up, you'll find scores of uses for them, from typical gluing and clamping to holding boards in a vertical position, to securing a workpiece to a workbench, and more. They're not overly expensive, and woodworking stores often have sales that feature them in various sizes. I can hardly do a job without them. Sanding the diamonds flush to the surface is the next step.

I start with 80 grit and work up to 220 grit, at least in my opinion. For a tabletop, the smoother the better. Sadly, this is a step where you may find out that one of your inlay pieces did not seat properly as happened to me. You just need to remove the bad inlay piece with your router and insert another disappointing, but not a catastrophe. Finally, I put a half inch thick by three quarter inch wide wings skirt around the tabletop and the job was basically completed.

Later, I attached the tabletop with the figure eight tabletop connectors. All in all, this was a fun build. It seems there are always more than one acceptable method to solve any specific woodworking problem. Attaching a tabletop to a set of legs is one that has been solved scores of ways. Old school ideas like wooden buttons, your typical dowel joint now upgraded to perhaps a domino joint.

For some lucky woodworkers. Many techniques take advantage of screws in one way or another. A simple and practical option for joining a Lego set to the tabletop would be pocket screws. Easy as pie. I chose another easy method.

Figure eight tabletop fasteners. It's a solid means of attaching the tabletop to the leg, said, and it allows for the top to be easily removed if it comes to some harm. And because this is a plant stand, excess water, spilled soil, gardening, chemicals it could all have a chance to at least harm the finish. If so, take the top off and get busy sprucing it back up. The figure eights will secure the top well enough to lift the legs with the tabletop, which is really about all they need to do.

Inexpensive. Easy to use and if I do say so, elegant. Applying a finish to a completed woodworking project is something that I have learned that many woodworkers find, if not annoying, at least not enjoyable. I get it. The fun part building the project is over.

Now you get to do something that will either make your project look like $1 million, or maybe completely mess it up. The finishing task starts with choosing a finish, as this was a project that I designed to be very accessible to home shop woodworkers. I decided to stay away from spray finishes. They are often quite odorous and products like lacquer build up slowly, requiring several stinky coats. I also wanted a finish that would enhance the figure of the wood.

When it is beautiful in color and in its figure. Nothing pops the grain of a piece of wood like an oil finish. Linseed oil or tung oil would be a great choice. The downside there is that they take forever to dry and several coats to build up. While I don't mind the smell, some folks do.

In the end, I chose a hard wax oil one made by Bry Wax. As the name implies, the product is a combination of oils and waxes. Soda oils. Pop the grain and the waxes help build up a protective coat quickly. One reason it is exceptionally good for this use is that it is super easy to touch up if the finish gets degraded.

A quick cleaning rub down with a synthetic abrasive pad and wipe on another coat of hard wax oil, and this is done. To apply the wax product. Stir the mixture well before using and simply flood on the oil with a cloth. Allow it to sit on the wood for several minutes and then wipe it off. Although some say it's not needed, I like to apply a second coat a day or so later.

I really enjoyed coming up with this project design, and I really enjoyed putting it on video to teach you a few techniques and maybe some information you haven't seen before, like building up legs or template routing, or doing some geometric inlay. I'm Rob Johnstone, thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed it. Keep on making sawdust. And.

A huge thank you to Rob for that last session. I really appreciate the patience and skill it takes to do those freehand cuts with the router, and then the work with the chisel in order to get your inlays to fit into those sockets that you're making. It's a very, very cool technique. Next up is this crazy kid with some furniture making tips and tricks. Here's what's going to happen.

We're going to watch that one about 40 minutes long. When that ends, I'm going to be right back here. And then I'll answer in this format. Any last questions that you have? Robert just posted a question asking, will all this stuff be archived so you can come back and see it later?

And that answer is yes. This will be forever available to you. So let's roll into this furniture making tips and tricks and, see what I have up my sleeve. Furniture making tips and tricks. A lot of cool stuff coming your way.

Joinery, tapered legs a lot more. Starting with looking for a table and a big pile of lumber. This is a very fun part of the project. Somewhere in this pile of walnut, there's a table and I'm going to see if I can find it. When I'm starting lumber for a project like this.

I've got a few things going through my head. One, a good Johnny Cash on two. What's the biggest, most visible aspect of the project? Three what are the smallest pieces in the project? Sequence of events I'm using the miter saw to rough cut the parts to size a couple inches too long, then the jointer to get one good reference edge on the parts I'm using.

Then at the table saw I'm taking off excess material taken off material that I can't or don't want to use in the tabletop. I'm looking for grain and color match, and that's why if I start with the table top, it gives me the most options and material because I haven't burned the material up making rails or legs yet. The rails and legs are small, and they'll easily come out of the parts that I don't use for the tabletop. It's definitely worth taking your time on this and exploring all your options here. I'm laying a part that I know I'm going to use against the boards I have left to see where I'm getting the best look this might include, as I'm going to do here, ripping edges off of the material so that I get access to a part of the grain where I know I have a better match and an edge to edge glue up.

Like this. I want to use boards that are 4 to 6in wide and the glue up. That's going to keep everything stable. I am looking at the best possible face grain match. I do not look at annual rings on the end of the board.

I never have as long as your material is stable and it's had a chance to acclimate to your shop before you use it, it is not going to copper work. As I create glue joints, I'm marking the joints so I know how I want the top to go together. And if those joints come together with hand pressure, I know they're going to come together in my clamps. Standard yellow glue in this case tight band original is perfect for this application, and it's hard to beat. Parallel your clamps to make sure that the glue up stays nice and flat.

I always glue just one edge of every pair in an edge to edge, glue up with enough glue that it's opaque and I can no longer see the wood grain through it after the glue is up. I tighten the center clamp first, making sure the material is flush right there. Then, before I tighten the outer clamps, I put small F style clamps and that bridge the seam that's holding the faces in alignment, then tighten that outer parallel jaw. Same thing here that F style clamps on so that they bridge the glue seam. And then do the final tightening on your paper plant bar clamp parallel Jack lam.

My approach to squeeze out is to let it dry to a point where it's rubbery 20 minutes or so, and at that point it easily slices off with a glue chisel or a reasonably sharp putty knife. If you don't have access to a big planer or a drum sander, this is a great application for a cabinet scraper. You can use it to remove any remaining glue residue, and do any leveling you need to do on the seams between the boards. Getting it ready for sanding. I got everything processed here, meaning I've got blanks.

Everything here is too long, too wide for what I need. I'm going to continue to make cuts in order to get them to their final size. A roadmap that's really going to help you is to take chalk and take the time to label the blanks. L is legs, long rails, short rails. It's much easier to label them now than take the risk of as you handle parts, you mix them up.

If you've got six quarter stack and you can cut the legs from that, cool. If you don't. If you've got four quarter stack machine to three quarters like I do, then there's a way that we can process these leg blanks to end up with really great legs like mine. If you want a great looking grain match on the outside of your legs, be methodical and follow this procedure. Set aside the first riff that comes off the board.

When you get the second rip, put it next to the first one and get a face grain match. Fold the faces closed and access the opposite edge market as leg number one, and I'm putting an arrow on there indicating which faces go together when it gets glued up. From there, it's rinse and repeat. I'm going to do the same procedure to every board. Again, I'm looking for the edges that were adjacent to each other when the board was still intact.

One negative to this is these boards would have yielded three rips, but because I'm going for the book match, I can only get two cuts from each board. I'm sacrificing yield in order to get that great book match. Look on the outside of the leg. Be sure to clearly mark every board so you have a roadmap. When you get to the glue up step.

This is where that chalk roadmap is going to pay off. It's telling me exactly which face goes with which face, so I don't get parts mixed up here and screw up the book match edge grain that I worked hard at the table saw to get a roller cap on a glue bottle. Make short work of covering a lot of area fast with glue like the top. These leg blanks end up being larger than the legs, inch and a half by inch and a half legs. I create a blank that is inch and 9/16 by inch and 9/16.

And of course it's an inch or so too long. Legs and rails. We have to have to have to have repeatability. Need all four legs to be the same length. Need them to be square.

Need them to all be the same size, same with the rails, the two shorts, the two longs got to be the same length. All got to be the same width. So let's look at some approaches. They're going to give us that repeatability on the legs and the rails. After the glue is dry the leg blanks go to the jointer.

The goal being the bottom face needs to end up perfectly perpendicular to the face that's against the fence. Do as many passes as you need to in order to get that cleaned up, and all the glue residue gone. Keeping in mind we're only about a 16th inch oversize, use that roadmap idea again. Mark the face there was jointed and the face that was against the fence, so we can keep track of them in the next step. These parts are quite small.

A push pad is imperative. One edge of every leg gets jointed. It doesn't matter which edge it is, it could be the book match edge or the opposite one, but one of the two edges must get jointed. Then do not forget to mark the jointed edge and the face that was against the fence. The legs.

You're going to the planer with two perpendicular faces indicated by the axes that were made at the jointer. The opposite faces will get planed at this step. The beauty of the planer for this is it's nice and safe, and it's going to make every leg exactly the same dimension. Back to the roadmap. Mark the face that was just surface.

Back to the feet side of the planer. Don't change the planar setting, but rotate the legs 90 degrees. There is one face that has no x on it. That's the face that gets surface at this step, as the boards exert once again, mark the face with chalk. There was just surface.

Now change the planar setting to remove a little bit more material. I'm only doing about a 64th per pass here and take another swipe, this time as the boards exit. Don't. Markham. In this case, it's the unmarked face.

It's helping us keep track. Rotate the legs 90 degrees. Looking for an X? Send that face through the planer once again as the boards exit. Don't.

Markham. After this pass, measure the legs. I like a digital caliper for this. They don't have to be an inch and a half. The process automatically makes them to the same dimension in both directions with four perpendicular faces.

Apply a similar idea to the rims. When you make the rails, rip them 1/16 inch oversize, gang them up face to face and send them to the planer. Kind of like a cutting board and three quarter inch stock. Like this. I'll do this on material up to three inches wide or high, bigger than that, and it starts to get to check the dimension.

They don't have to be exactly two and a half. They need to be identical. First step of the miter saw is a square and cut with the legs. For this step they can get ganged up and I'll cut at the same time. Because of their size, it's easiest to cut the legs one at a time against the stop block, rather than trying to cut them in a group of four.

They need to be identical, and the stop block will guarantee that when making these cross cuts, cut through the material. Keep the saw down until the blade comes to a complete stop, then lift it. If the blade is still spinning and goes past these small offcuts, it's very easy for the blade to grab those parts and zing them around the shop if you don't. Always start with a square and cut sequence of events, I cut the long rails to length first. The reason being, I could accidentally turn long rails onto short rails if I grabbed the wrong parts.

I can't accidentally turn short rails into long rails, so once the long rails are cut to size, I can label them, set them aside, then move on to the short rails. A bunch of rinse and repeat going on here, set the stop. Start by doing a square and cut on the end. Now with the rails it's very easy because they're small to stack those in a pad and cut them at the same time. Much easier than trying to do that.

Same thing with the legs. Getting consistently size parts is all about being methodical. It's pretty cool. With all the parts cut to size. It's starting to look like a table, an upside down table, but still a table, which means we can look at joinery, specifically mortise and tenon.

Before launching into making a mortise and tenon, we need to understand some rules of the road and how they get dimensioned. The mortise, of course, is the negative part that's in the leg. The tenant is the positive part sticking out of the rail. Tenons are commonly one third the thickness of the rail they're being cut into. For this project.

That means a three quarter inch rail gets a one quarter inch thick tenon. Ten in length is two times its thickness, so quarter inch thick tenon is a half inch long. A shoulder will get cut on three sides of the tenon, two faces and the bottom edge. So as a result, in our 2.5in rail, we're going to end up with a tenon that's 2.25in wide. The caveat to all this is a little shop logic.

Don't plan on making a point. Two seven tenon and 13/16 rail stock round to the nearest cutter. A router bit, drill bit or mortise chisel will be used to make the mortise in the leg, so even a 13/16 rail will get a quarter inch mortise and tenon. The style of mortise and tenon that we're doing on this project is open ended. That makes it very easy to make the mortise and tenon.

From a strength perspective. It's fine for this table, but it wouldn't be suitable for a chair and a chair, or any other piece of furniture that will get heavy use. It's best to leave the end grain intact over the top of the mortise. That makes the leg much stronger. Lay out the joinery on the legs by looking for the grain.

That's book match. That's going to be an outside face. Mark that face the ax also indicates the top of the leg. I like to see any flame pattern in the grain pointing up. When the leg is done.

Position the four legs as a group so that all the book match faces are pointing out, and they're on opposite faces. The axes that have been made so far show us the book match faces. Another set of axes are made on the adjacent faces. These four faces, then, are the four outside faces of your final set of legs. The talk provides another very simple roadmap that's going to help with success.

At the router table, I always make the mortise first, then make the tenon to match the mortise. Make the mortise slightly deeper than the length of the tenon, about 1/16 inch. To prevent the tenon from bottoming out in the mortgage. Half inch bar stock is being used here and can also be used to position the fence. It's exactly a half inch between the fence and the bit in order to provide a quarter inch for real.

Rotate the router bit by hand to get one of the flutes pointing toward the end. Feed side position the end grain of the leg against the flute, and then measure to the stop log to establish the length of the mortise. In this case, remember it's 2.25in. I'm using a quarter inch up cut spiral, but a straight flute bit would work as well. Another roadmap inbound.

Mark the end grain to show the approximate position of the mortises. This is such a great visual reminder and will easily prevent you from cutting the mortise in the wrong spot when you get busy with the router table. This is a great example of the chalk making things obvious. The ax is the outside face, the line is the mortise location. So with this setup there is only one way this leg can be cut to get the outside face against the fence and the mortise in the right spot, move the leg from right to left until it bears against the stop, then back out.

This setup works for four of the eight mortises, because the mortises aren't centered on the width of the leg, you can't simply turn the leg 90 degrees and cut a mortise in the adjacent face. The axes in the mortise layout line show that this setup won't work. For the next mortise, reposition the fence by again using bar stock with a flute of the router, but now pointing out, position the bar stock to us between the flute and the outside face of the leg. This creates a half inch offset between the face and a bit, resulting in a quarter inch reveal. After the rail is installed, lock the fence and position.

Make these cuts with the completed mortise against the face of your router table fence, once again pushing from right to left until you bear against the stop, then back out. The remaining four mortises can be cut with the setup resulting in matching joinery on all four legs. Next tenons anyone? The tenons are being cut with a three quarter inch straight bit, set slightly less than a quarter inch above the table and three quarter inch stack. This will result in a tenon that's a little too big.

That's what we want. Use half inch bar stack to position the fence, so it's a half inch from the face of the fence to the flute of the router. Bit cut tenons and test pieces. The test pieces must be exactly the same thickness as your project parts. Use a backer board to prevent chipping on the exit side and to stabilize your material.

Check the fit. As expected, the tenon is too big. If the tenant has 1/16 inch too big, raise the bit only 1/32 inch because we're cutting from both faces. Continue making test cuts and scrap until the tenon fits the mortise. It should slide in with hand pressure, not require a mallet, but there should be enough friction for them to stay stuck.

In order to do the remaining ten and work, the fence needs to be zero clearance. This means pushing the infield and outfield fences over the spinning router bit. Don't do this until you know the fence position is right and the depth of cut is right. Using a piece of eight quarter stack is a bag or block. Cut the bottom shoulder on your test rail.

This establishes the overall length of the tenon. It won't be a perfect fit yet. We'll tweak it some more later. When cutting your project rails, cut the bottom shoulder first. It's easiest to do this now before the tenon is cut, because you still have a wide surface three quarter inch bearing against the router table fence.

After all the bottom shoulders are cut, grab your scrap board and start cutting away the face shoulders. After all the tenons are cut, check every fit before changing the set up on the router table. If dust gets between the face of the rail and the router table, or you simply don't push down hard enough, the tenon will be too big. Right now. It's very easy to fix that by making another pass over the router bit.

If you realize the tenon is too big after you've changed the router table, you'll have to clean up the tenon with a shoulder plane or bench chisel. Here's the tweak I mentioned earlier. We currently have a round hole and a square peg. The bottom corners of the tenon are square. The bottom end of the mortise is rounded from the router bit.

It's much easier to round the tenon than it is to square the mortgage. Use a sharp bench chisel and pare away those bottom corners. It's okay if the tenant ends up a little bit narrow, meaning less than 2.25in. It's not okay if it ends up too wide. That would cause the rail to stand proud of the end of the leg.

It doesn't have to be a perfect radius, it just has to fit into the mortgage. If you're looking for a mortise and tenon alternative, here's a great one. It's be black, which is so bi rock would be like. As a drill guy, there is a loose tenon tool aligning with the registration lines that were created on the rail. In the leg, three holes are drilled, then the drill guide is moved to the next position and two more holes are drilled.

This results in sort of an oddball snowman kind of a shape. A shim in the jig creates the quarter inch reveal. The shim is removed when drilling the rail, but the premise is the same cursor in that window is placed on the registration line, and a total of five holes are drilled, two of which overlap to create that snowman type shape. A loose tenon material, also available from Rattler, then slips into the mating holes. There are currently three different sizes of tenon material available.

This is a great alternative to traditional mortise and tenon. Let's turn the clock back to when the router table was still being used. That's a great time to add a couple of details to your rails. Using a one quarter inch round over bid, I round over the bottom outside corner of all the rails. Eventually, I'll use this same bit on the outside corner of the legs and the top corner of the tabletop.

I like the look of the round over and I think it makes the furniture more functional. Something bangs into the legs like a vacuum in the corner is sharp. You'll see that right away. If the corners already been rounded, you won't even notice it. You can also round both bottom corners of the rails if you like that esthetic.

Here's an alternative. This is kind of beading bit. More specifically, it's a 3/8 beading bit and I also really like the detail. This adds to table rails. It's best to do this work in a router table and there's a look it provides.

I like that a lot on the bottom edge of the rails. When the whole table gets assembled, the solid wood top is going to want to expand and contract seasonally across the grain. We have to make an allowance in the short rails that will allow that to happen. You can't stop mother nature. Let's look at doing this two ways.

First, with this commercially made tabletop fastener and then with a shop made fastener. Check the specs on the fastener you get, but typically you set the height of the blade to 3/8 of an inch. This is another great application for bar stock. Use the fastener as a gauge to position the fence. Slide the fence over until the top flange of the fastener is kissing the right side of the saw blade, and as always, make test cuts and scrap before you work on your project pieces.

The goal is to cut a groove or curve with the top edge of the rail against the table side fence. This groove only needs to be cut into the cross grain rails. When this is done correctly and the tabletop fastener is inserted, there'll be a slight gap between the fastener and the surface that's being fastened too. You can see that here between the fastener and the table. Side two.

For shop made fasteners, start with a 3/8 wide Dado head in the table saw set 3/8 from the fence and 3/8 deep plane the fastener material to 11 16 inch thick. More of the data ahead and cut a 5/16 deep, 3/8 wide rabbet on both ends of the board. When this is done right, the tongue in the board will easily slide in the groove, and the face of the board is 1/16 inch away from the edge of the rail. Rip the fastener board into 1.25in wide strips. Crosscut the strips of the fastener is 1 in 5 eighths long mark center of the one and a quarter by 1.25in square, and drill and countersink a screw all there, just like the commercially made fasteners.

When this is inserted in the groove, there should be a slight gap between the bottom of the fastener and the table. Both styles of fasteners must easily slide back and forth in the groove, because they slide and allow the top to expand and contract, but will hold the top firmly to the rail. With the work that's been done so far. I have nice legs. Hopefully you do too, but we can give this project, this table, a more delicate look.

By introducing a taper to these legs, it lightens up the esthetic a lot. I'm using micro jigs, micro dial, taper jig, but I'll taper jig set up about the same. You'll need to know the angle of the taper you want to produce, or the rise and run of the taper. A fairly common rule of thumb is to start the taper one half inch below the bottom of the rail, and end it with a foot that's half as thick as the leg. With that information, you can set the angle of the jig.

I very intentionally cut the mortises before I cut the tapers. This is a great visual. The tapers are only cut on faces that have mortises in them, and it would be a pain to cut the mortises if the tapers are already there. Cut the first taper with the mortise on the adjacent face down on the table saw. After those tapers are cut on all the legs, rotate the leg 90 degrees so that the freshly cut taper is up and taper that adjacent face.

These cuts all have to be cleaned up after the table saw work, so set the table saw fence to leave this leg about 1/16 oversize. I like using a 40 tooth alternate top bevel blade for these cuts. It leaves behind a surface that doesn't require much cleanup. Check your PDF for more information on making tapered legs. I love how these look.

Bandsaw provides a good alternative to doing tapered legs on the table saw. The downside is you have to manually lay out the taper on both sides of every leg. Yes, I've got a mechanical pencil with white LED that I use on dark wood like this walnut. Check your PDF for that. I use a one half inch four tpi blade for this.

And here's part of the challenge. You're trying to cut a dead straight line freehand on a bandsaw. Stay on the way side of the line and there will be an opportunity to clean up these bands on marks. Put your layout lines on the outside faces of the legs. That way when this taper has been cut off, you can just roll over to the adjacent face and cut the next taper.

I find it a lot easier to start at the foot of the leg, rather than at the top of the leg. Any time legs are getting two tapers, those tapers appear on the inside faces of the legs. Not as clean as a table saw, but it works. A jointer is far and away the easiest way to clean these tapers up. Set the jointer for a very light pass 32nd of an inch or so.

Use push pads and push sticks and make sure it's the tapered face that's down on the jointer, but it only takes a couple of passes to clean this up. And there's a point of diminishing returns. If you make too many passes, you reduce the length of the flat at the top of the leg that later receives the rest. If you reduce the length of that flat enough, you'll be able to see that when the leg and rail are glued together, there will be a gap between the end of the rail and the face of the leg. It's very important that these cuts are made downhill relative to the taper.

The top end of the leg always needs to lead the cut to make that happen. Count the passes. Do the same number of passes to each leg to keep them consistent. The top is looking really good. I'm very happy with it, but kind of like tapering the legs to give them a lighter look.

There's a step we can take with the top to give it a lighter look. Really adds a lot to the table before undercutting the top, let's back up and look at a great trick for crosscutting the top. If the miter gauge on your table saw does not provide enough capacity to make this crosscut, use it backwards. In many cases, flipping the miter gauge around will give you enough capacity to crosscut wider panels like this. Put the squeeze on.

Hold that panel tight against the face of the miter gauge fence to make sure it can't pull away. This is an effective way to crosscut wide panels on your table. Saw you wouldn't otherwise be able to do. If the panel is so wide that here on the outfield side, it's causing the miter gauge bar to fall out of the slot. You can't use this approach, but when you can do this, it's a great trick.

Undercutting the top starts with adding a tall auxiliary fence to the table saw. Mine is made out of melamine. It's three quarter by 16 by 43. Adapt that to fit your table saw. I use micro jigs match fit clamps to secure the auxiliary fence to my table size rip fence.

The match fit clamps engage in dovetail slots that were cut into the back of the auxiliary fence. These clamps are great to have in your shop for a wide variety of jigs. Determine the angle that's required for the undercut on your project, and set your table saw blade to that angle. For this project, it's a little over 26 degrees. Set the distance between the auxiliary fence and the table saw blade.

Set this a little bit strong so there's room to clean up. The soccer final dimension for this project is 3/8. I'm setting to 7/16. Repetitive theme here. Roadmap label the bottom of the top.

That is the face that gets the undercut. Position the tabletop against the auxiliary fence and add a feather board. Keep in mind the feather board needs to press the material against the fence, not against the blade, so the front to back position of that feather board is critical. Use a push pad to hold the material against the fence and push it over the side blade. I'm again using a 40 tooth alternate top bevel blade to get great quality out of this.

My sequence of events is to cut end grain, long grain and grain long grain. The resulting cut looks great and again like the tapered leg, it just lightens up the overall esthetic of the project. I'm not a huge fan tool guy, but yes, this work can be done with the hand plane instead of a table saw. Specifically, a low angle plane should be used low angle. Because of the way that we have to slice across the end grain on both ends of the tabletop.

The layer lines again made by that white pencil I told you about, indicate where the taper is going to stop on the end grain, and where it's going to stop on the face cream. Do the grain cuts first, because that will probably result in a little bit of chipping on the adjacent long grain edge. That'll clean up when we do the long grain cuts. When I start, I'm quickly scrubbing cross grain, but as I get close to being done, I'm cutting down hill on the taper to get the best cut quality. When the end grain is done, turn the board 90 degrees and go after the long grain.

This is a much more pleasant experience because it's so easy to plain long grain if you're not a handling person at all. An alternative here that could produce good results would be to use a power plane. I would definitely experiment with that on scrap before trying it on a big project piece like a walnut tabletop. The table saw is certainly faster, but I will admit there's something very satisfying about producing that taper and getting a nice cut quality with a hand handling. Now that all the parts are machined to the right size, it's time for the S word.

Got to do sanding before we put everything together. And I've got some tips for you. They're going to make your sanding processes on your projects go better and help you get better results. When you're saying small parts like these, pair them up there gets more efficient use out of the sander. We're sanding two surfaces at the same time and it prevents the sander from rolling, leaving a rounded surface.

That's especially important on these flats on top of the legs that will eventually receive the rail end grain. And on my projects, any corners that don't get rounded with a router bit do get eased with hand sanding. One of the best lessons I ever learned in college was in a finishing class. The instructor said finish can't stick to a perfectly sharp corner. By easing the corners slightly, we get a better finish build on that corner.

It also makes the project more pleasant to touch and feel and hold on to, because there aren't sharp corners bearing up against your hands. Hand sanding is also my method of choice on these undercuts. It would be too easy with a random orbital sander to get away from being perfectly flat, perfectly parallel to the taper on that undercut that would result in this nice crisp taper turning into kind of a big round over instead of the crisp edge taper that it currently has. So the hand sanding starts with the block flat parallel to the angle of the taper. But as I get close to being done, I am going to soften the corners where the taper meets the horizontal bottom and the vertical edge.

Get all the rails together. When you're ready to sand those and sand them like one big flat panel, sand the edges by standing all of the pieces on edge, getting them up face to face, and sand all the edges at one time. It might look like a table, but it actually is not a table yet because it hasn't been glued together after a dry fit is done to make sure all the parts are playing nice with each other, we are ready to glue the legs and the rails together and assemble the table. Prep for assembly by making a road map. Mark out the mortises you'll be using at this stage.

Acid brushes, also called flux brushes, worked great for spreading glue around, but the tips of them are pretty big. We want to make sure we get glue distinctly inside the mortise, not all over the place, so spend a little time with sharp scissors, trimming the bristles of the brush to a more defined tip so it's easier to get glue exactly where it needs to go. Whenever possible, it's best to assemble projects in stages. In this case, I'm going to do two legs and a short rail and the other two legs in a short rail, and then when that glue is dry, bring it all together. It's easier for me to be precise with the glue by putting glue into a tray, dip in the brush in it, and then applying it inside the mortise rather than try to pour it in there with the glue bottle.

Any time a mortise and tenon are being assembled, glue goes in. The negative glue goes in the mortise, not on the tenon. Putting glue on the tension is going to cause it to just squeegee out all over the place. As you try to push the tendon into the mortise. The strength in a mortise and tenon joint comes from the bond between the face of the tenon and the inside face of the mortise.

That's where the glue needs to go. Another good reason for cutting the mortise one sixteenths to deep is it allows a glue pocket at the bottom of the mortise. Slide the joints together, paying close attention to the edge of the rail being flush with the end grain of the leg. Double check. Make sure that long grain and grain are still aligned.

Adjust as needed, then gentle clamp pressure when you're closing the clamp. As soon as the joint closes, you're done with clamp pressure. Repeat this process with the other leg. In rail assembly, the beauty of carefully preparing your parts is that if the end grain of the rail is square, when you cut the tendon, it will still be square. When you draw the legs up against the end of the rail, it will automatically self square.

As you close the clamps and complete the assembly. It's not impossible that you'll see a little squeeze out where the face of the rail meets the inside face of the leg. If this happens, allow the glue to dry to a rubbery consistency. Then grab a sharp bench chisel and slice it out of there. Timing is everything.

If the glue is too wet, you'll smear it all over the place. If the glue is set too long, it'll be too hard to slice out. When the glue on the stage one assembly is dry, you're ready for stage two. Same overall procedure. Apply glue inside the mortise and then push the tenons into the mortise.

Doing this, step with the table assembly upside down and a nice flat bench is a good idea. That helps keep the long grain of the rails aligned with the end grain of the legs. Cover your bench with rosin paper like I have here. Rosin paper is readily available at home centers. It's a great thing to have in the shop any time you're gluing or finishing to protect your bench.

It kind of goes without saying, but I'm going to say it anyway. Make sure you have the inside faces of the rails facing toward the inside, and the short rails that's made obvious by the groove that the tabletop fastener goes into long rails. It's a little less obvious. So double check the goal of the roadmap that was made when the assembly process was started is to get all the book match faces in the same orientation on my table. All the book match faces are facing out on the long side of the table.

There's no right or wrong as far as which direction the book match faces point, but you want them all consistent and the four legs are interchangeable, so it's not impossible that they go in in the wrong spot if you don't pay close attention. Measure the diagonals of the leg assembly to make sure they're the same. Adjust as necessary and let the glue dry. Apply finish of the project, finishing both faces of the top to keep it stable. Position the leg and rail assembly on the top.

Center it using a combination square. When the leg and rail assembly is in perfect center, hold it there by clamping the rails to the tabletop. And now you're ready to make use of your tabletop fasteners. Pre-drilled for the screw that's going to hold the tabletop fastener in place. I love my cordless tools, but this is a great application for using an old fashioned screwdriver.

It's important that there's tension on the tabletop fastener, but not so much that it can't move in the groove, the commercially made fasteners being metal, it would be very easy to over torque. These and the metal fastener embed into the wooden rail. If that happens, it could limit movement and you could have some kind of failure later. I like to use a self centering drill bit on these metal fasteners itself centers on the screw hole and it has a depth stop, so I can't possibly punch all the way through my tabletop with tension on that last fastener. This is a big moment.

It's time to take off those clamps, flip the table over, and check out your project. This table was a fun build and it's full of practical furniture making skills. Get in your shop, practice those skills and you'll be able to incorporate them into your next furniture making project. Thanks for joining me. That, folks, was our final session.

So one, a huge thank you to you for watching. Sticking with us on a lovely Saturday. The weather here is beautiful to watch a bunch of woodworking and I remind you of a few things. One all six of these sessions are forever archived so you can come back and watch them any time. Two the PDF that comes with this is extensive.

Lots and lots of information in there. In my case, that table that I just built on the video, if you want to build that table, grab the PDF and the dimensions, the plans, everything you need to replicate that table are in there. Before we get too much further, a big thank you to Lainey, Ben, and Jess, who spent their Saturday making sure all of this stuff goes okay. They're behind the scenes over here, and without them, we would not be streaming because I'm not smart enough for that. I'm going to hang out just a little bit.

If you've got any more questions, I will answer them as we go here. Another big thank you to our sponsors for this, which are Miles Craft Miter Set, Jet Tight Band and Arbor Tech. And you can thank them as well because without them, this event would not have been free for you to watch. So I'm going to tap dance a little bit. And, not literally, you know, figuratively.

See if any more questions come in. Here's one from Jim. If I was building that table, but doing a patterned if I was building that table but was doing a pattern veneer type, anything different I should be doing on the prep or fastening of the table type? So I don't think so. So if I understand this correctly, rather than gluing up a solid wood type like I did, we're talking about a substrate.

And I know this concept of veneer over substrate came up a little bit during the, glue presentation. So a veneer over substrate, you don't have to be if that's the case, if it's veneer over MDF, MDF won't expand and contract. So you could skip the table type fasteners like I used because you don't have to worry about that. But other than that, if I'm understanding your question. Right.

I think everything else, the table construction itself would be pretty much identical to what I did. But you could go as simple as pocket holes through the rails in order to be able to drive fasteners into the bottom of the tabletop, in that case. And then, I'm not a huge veneer kind of a person, but I do know remember that when you veneer, you want to do both faces so you don't get some kind of a reaction where if you only veneer one face, your substrate is going to bow. The veneer on the back face doesn't have to be the same beautiful birdseye maple that goes on the top. That can kind of be anything, but you need some veneer on the back in order to keep everything stabilized.

Like thanking the sponsors in the behind the scenes people. A huge thank you to our content creators who got involved with us, which are Ramone, Rob, Bob, Brittany and Adam. They have lots and lots and lots of time also behind the scenes to put their videos together and get that stuff edited. And then again for them to be available today on a Saturday in order to bring all this information to you. And Robert says very nicely, a great looking little table.

Thanks to everyone who put this together. I hope to watch the replay soon. And Jim says okay, thanks. Just trying to match a coffee table gifted to me. So I think that's in reference to the veneer in question.

So again, thanks to you folks for watching. I'm going to look one more time or two for last minute questions that come in. And, Douglas says, George, a big thank you to you, your staff and all the presenters for a great day of woodworking. One, thanks to you folks. If you weren't watching, we wouldn't be doing this.

So we had quite a few viewers. Between the combined viewership on YouTube and WW goer. And again, the archive version of this, along with the PDFs you'll forever be able to find on WW goer Jim says, I really enjoy today what I was able to watch today. Thanks for this collection of very informative videos. I'll have to catch the archive of what I missed.

Thanks again. Jim is chiming in. Thanks again. I really appreciate it. A day well spent.

Well again, thanks to you folks for doing this. Comment from Adam about participating and, and, and the way this always goes is as soon as we log out and there are two more questions. That's why I'm tempted saying a little bit, but I think, folks, we can wrap it up. So as I always say, at the end of many years of lives worth just just I think you can punch us out.