The chisel just before the marking gauge line and tap.
A lot of woodworkers do it visually by sighting down the saw, but I prefer to do it by feel,
with my fingertips. I can tell whether the cutter is hot.
Hello, my name is Jan Eakes and I want to talk about the table saw.
Probably one of the most basic tools in our whole shop.
Remember when you got your first saw and you took it out of the box, that's when you discovered
there's really not much to it.
You have a table and a saw blade, so you have some way to put the wood down and there's
something to cut it with.
Now you need some way to guide the wood into the saw blade.
So it comes with a fence.
In this case, we've actually taken off the original fence and added a much larger, more
precise fence that will give us a better job.
And then you have your miter gauge.
Miter gauge is really quite limited as it comes.
If you've read the instruction manual, you'll find out right away they tell you to add a
piece of wood, which gives you a larger, better bearing surface for carrying the wood across
the table.
Remember, when you tried to do angles at the beginning, everything wanted to slip along
this fence and so you got white knuckles holding on to it for 45 degree miters.
Here's a little tip.
Add 100 grit sandpaper to the fence here, self-adhesive sandpaper or contact cement.
It'll hold the wood in with minimum gripping or clamping and give you good miter cuts.
Still have some problems here is when you back off completely off the back end, well,
after a while you lose control.
Or if your wood is simply too long, when you're trying to move across, it wobbles as you go.
When you really want precision out of a table saw or any particular style of cut, you need
jigs that will guide and control the wood across the table.
I want to talk about three particular jigs that I use all the time.
That's square.
That's not easy to do with a board this wide and this long with a regular miter gauge.
It would kind of wobble all over the table.
You probably wouldn't get it that precise.
The sliding table or the cross cut jig carries wood very easily and nicely squarely to the
blade.
What is it actually?
It's simply a big piece of plywood with a couple of runners down on the bottom here
that lock into the table as it goes and keeps everything in position.
It's a lot easier to build than it looks like.
Really all you need to do is you get those two runners and they're just pieces of hardwood
that fit into a nice sliding fit in the slots here.
Put them into place in the table.
Take a piece of plywood a little larger than your table, lay it down on top, square it
out to some extent.
You pull the runners and the plywood out over this edge so that you can just get underneath
and drive two screws in.
Put it on the other side, put the screws down on the other side and the whole thing's starting
to come together.
Now, if I were to raise the blade and cut into it, it would fall into two pieces and
that won't help.
You add this framework on the back side to help hold it all together.
This doesn't have to be square to anything.
Just put it on there, approximately square.
That's good enough.
Now, we're going to cut through actually.
Turn on your blade, cut through, not all the way.
Let's go about three quarters of the way through this piece of plywood.
Stop, turn the saw off and back off.
Now we put the fence on.
I like to attach the fence with glue and then one screw on one side.
Bring the square in alongside the cut that we just made in the plywood and move the fence
back and forth on that pivot until the square's perfectly lined up with the slot.
Then you can screw it in the rest of the way to make it solid and our fence is now exactly
perpendicular to the cut itself.
Run the saw through completely and you've cut it in half but it doesn't fall apart because
these two sides hold it together.
You add plexiglass on the top as a dust protection, a solid block back here to literally stop
the blade from coming through.
Extension for my stop block here and we have a good sliding table jig or a crosscut jig.
It can do a lot more than just trim off the ends of boards that are awkward to handle.
It can do anything that classifies as a crosscut.
A good example would be a half lap joint like this and I'll show you how to do that.
There's really only two things we need to know to make this relatively simple joint.
That is to say how deep do we cut to get halfway through the wood and how far back do we cut
to get this shoulder.
I'm going to do both of them right on the jig without a tape measure.
Our first task is to find out what half the thickness of this blade is in the wood.
Drop the blade down a little more than halfway so that we know it's not quite enough cut.
We're going to make a trial cut, test it, trial test it.
It's really quite fast but you'll get precisely halfway through the wood this way.
To test the cut, you put the boards together as if you were making the joint.
It's still a little bit proud here.
We'll have to remove some more wood.
When you raise the blade, be careful, we're cutting into both boards and the effect is
doubled.
A little goes a long way.
There we are already flush.
That gives me the cut exactly halfway up through the board.
I have no idea what the dimension is but I know it's going to be halfway and that's
what I need to make the joint.
The next task is to cut this back to the shoulder.
How far is that?
Well, it's the width of the board that goes on this way.
Rather than measure and transfer the measurements, I'm going to use the wood itself to measure
it.
This time, we're going to use a stop block.
Stop block is simply a block of wood that goes on the face here.
I've got a slot just to let me put the clamp in.
This particular one has one little feature I should point out to you.
When you're doing repetitive cuts to length, you don't want to bind the loose piece of
wood between the blade and the stop.
It could kick.
You'll bring it in, push it over, then flip this up out of the way, which leaves this
piece really loose.
Cut through the blade.
This comes out freely out of the way.
Drop it down for your next one and off you go.
I don't need that particularly for what I'm doing now.
What we want to do is simply put this board in here as a measurement device to the edge
of the cut, because that's the left side here, the blade.
We'll bring the block over into contact with it.
You can even do it conservatively and adjust it later if you want to not cut too far.
Once you've got this blocked in right, you can do a whole set of these joints without
moving anything at all.
Now we're ready to simply bring this edge in that we had just prepared.
Do the same half cut here.
In fact, we can do them both at the same time.
In fact, with this sliding table jig, we could gang quite a number of them up here and do
them all at once.
Really quick, easy, and accurate.
Let's do it.
Now that we have the depth defined and the shoulders cut, all we need to do is to waste
wood out to the end of the board.
You can do it like I'm doing here with repetitive cuts.
You could also use a dado blade, which would take off more wood in each pass.
Some people prefer to make just a few saw cuts and take it out with a wood chisel.
You could also do it in a single cut with another jig on the table saw.
That'll make a good joint.
All I have to do is just barely touch the surface up with some sandpaper and we're right
in there.
Well, in one pass, I've cut the entire cheek here.
A second pass on the crosscut jig would cut the shoulder, and in two simple cuts, I'd
have the entire half-lat joint taken care of.
Let's take a look at the jig that allows us to do this kind of a thing.
It's real simple.
Basically, a piece of plywood here, higher than the fence, that slides along the fence,
and that's our main working surface.
There's another piece on the backside here that actually wraps around the fence to help
hold everything into place.
Over here, I've got another piece of plywood comes out at a right angle to the first one,
and that's basically to hold in place this plexiglass guard back here that keeps me away
from the blade as it comes out the backside, and this cam action clamp, which is basically
just a circle with a handle on it, a screw put in off-center, and you can see how it
moves over to clamp the wood into place.
Pick that up from Frank Kloss.
Over here, the brace is simply a very lightweight way to hold it all together and keep this
right angle.
When you have a blade that's as precise as this for cutting those cheeks, we can do a
joint that's twice as strong as a half-lap joint.
An open bridle joint like this has twice the gluing surface and better mechanical fit.
You have to do the tenon, cutting both sides, and the open mortise.
We start with the open mortise.
The very first task is to set the depth of the blade simply to the width of the wood.
We'll just check this out there.
That'll get it.
Now we need to adjust the distance between the blade and the fence.
We want it to be fairly close to the center of the wood.
That's probably about there.
You'll notice I didn't fuss with centering this cut because when I turn it around, the
second cut automatically centers the open mortise.
Now we have the open mortise cut approximately one-third of the thickness of the whole board,
and it's nice and centered.
Now to set up for the tenon cut, same depth, I'll actually use the one we just cut to give
me a rough line up.
That is to say, I want to position the fence.
Using the other piece, I'll move the blade over into the meat of this one, which is the
waist of my tenon.
Do it approximate.
We might do a couple of times to get it to exactly the right position.
A real good test is to rough off the waste on your first tenon to make sure the joint
fits perfectly before doing all the rest on your project.
Once again, the fact of making two passes, one on each side, automatically centers the
tenon.
That's the cut I'm looking for.
Rough off the shoulders on the cross-cutting jig, and the joint is finished.
Let's take a look at another joint, the box joint or the finger joint.
It's a great way for making boxes because there's a lot of glue surface, and it makes
a very strong corner joint.
It's quite attractive, and it's easy to build.
This particular one is made with eighth-inch fingers and slots.
It's just the size of a standard carbide saw blade.
I'm going to take a look at the same thing, but using a dado blade, approximately half
an inch wide.
How do we control it?
How do we get that equidistance as we go?
We're going to use the miter jig with a slight addition to it.
Very simple little jig we're going to add on.
Basically, it's just a piece of plywood high enough that we can support our material vertical
up.
We first of all cut a slot through the blades.
It gives me a slot like this.
Then I'm going to take and cut a piece of hardwood, use a plane to plane it down so
it fits exactly in there.
This is my indexing pin.
With that, a bunch of straight lines here are just to help guide me visually to keep
my boards vertical up later on.
Where does it go on here?
Take a look.
The blade itself cuts the slot, and that doesn't change because it stays in the same place
and the same width.
What changes is the distance between the indexing pin and the blade, and that's where the finger
is.
If I move out this way, we get a fat finger.
If you come in here, you get a skinny finger.
By moving the indexing jig left and right, you actually adjust the tension of the fit
on this joint.
How do we get an approximately good position?
Take a piece of wood that I just cut off of this one that I fixed up for the indexing
pin, so it's the same thickness.
Put it next to the blade, and that defines the space of the fingers the same as the slots.
In fact, I usually cheat it a little fat to start with.
I'm going to fine tune this by cutting into scrap wood, the same hardness as my final
wood but only about two inches wide so I don't have to cut for a long time to do my test.
The first piece comes up tight against the indexing pin.
I like to do them both at the same time, so I'll take my little spacer here again and
space out the second one so they're indexed over.
Eyeball with the pencil lines on the board to make sure it's vertical up.
Let's get rid of that, and then we'll be ready to cut through with our first cut.
The sliver on the left indicates that we've made the fingers a little heavy.
The depth of cut is simply the thickness of the board if you want the pins flush.
The pins are too thick to fit into the slots, so we'll loosen the clamps and move the indexing
jig over.
We want the indexing pin closer to the blade to make thinner fingers.
The sliver of the end is just barely there.
We're almost dead on the edge.
Now the fit is good and snug.
Now that we've got the joint just the right tension by getting the index finger in the
right place, we're ready to do the corner for a real box joint here, four inch wide
boards this time.
I've marked the outside faces and the top of the box so that I know where everything
goes.
That's important because what's useful is to collapse the boards back around face to
face, the outside faces together.
That stops tearouts on the visible surface.
Put them in here, index it as usual, and we're ready to cut.
My four inch boards and half inch wide dado cut will give me an even number of pins from
one side to the other.
If in your job you come out with an odd size pin on the end, if it's strong enough, leave
it.
It can look nice.
If it's a weak little sliver, you have two choices.
Either make your boards narrower, cutting off that odd size pin, or just add spacers
to your dado to make larger slots and fingers.
Oh that's a nice fit.
Jigs, they're really what give the table saw its full potential.
They can be as complex as the sliding table crosscut jig that we've used before, or as
simple as a piece of plywood with an indexing pin.
One way or the other, they give you predictable results every time.
Hello, my name is Frank Claus and I'm going to talk to you about dovetails.
Some people may think it's a secret of making dovetails.
It's never been a secret in my family.
Dovetails are very ancient joints and is used very widely for all kinds of constructions.
If you examine most pieces of furniture, it's probably dovetailed together in the corner.
If you look at these pieces, this top half of a chest on chest, if I remove the molding,
you can clearly see the true dovetails, the pins and the tails.
And it's a box.
In a box, it's not a box, which is the drawer.
It's also dovetails.
If you think about it, we're not really cabinet makers.
We are boxologists.
And if you look at this little night table drawer, we can see also the back has the true
dovetails and the front has the half blind dovetails.
And the draw bottom is put in with a groove.
The back of a drawer is narrower so it can receive the bottom.
On this jewelry box, which is made by my son, the bottom is screwed on there.
And the lid is hinged on with hinges.
It is decorated with marquetry and banding.
And the dovetails is also for decoration.
Today, if we make dovetails, we like to display them.
And early times, the dovetails was there for strength and the craftsmen covered them up
with the molding.
It's another example of dovetails on the Shaker step stool, where we have the dovetails
for decoration and they're also very strong.
Let me show you how do I make dovetails.
Believe me, making dovetails is easy.
Anyone can do it.
You have to pay attention to the details.
The dovetail has pins and tails.
The pins going in to the tails.
It's a mechanical joint and it comes apart only one way, this way.
This way does not come apart even if the glue fails.
I make the pins first.
If there is any secret, maybe here is my secret.
I make the pins and these will be my templates.
I don't use any template, any gadgets, bevel gauge.
I don't even measure.
I make the pins by hand and then I use this to mark my tails.
To do dovetails, I use a marking gauge, dovetail saw, a couple of chisels and a mallet.
I don't use a router.
You don't need a router and a jigs, making dovetails by hand just as fast and hand cut
dovetails has character.
I have these boards here which I already cut to make a box.
If we put them together, we can see it was one board.
I sand it already because it's much easier to sand a board that is together.
I cut them to size.
I make this my box front, back and the sides.
I put a marking on it which is a scribble.
I mark the outside and the top edge on all four pieces, on the side, on the back and
on the other side.
The outside of the box and the top edge.
Next, I have to use the marking gauge to mark the corners before I can cut the dovetails.
I set up the marking gauge for the thickness of the wood.
Lock it.
Some people set the marking gauge so the end grain comes out a little bit or reversed.
I try to make them as flush as I can.
Since dovetails goes into each other, I have to mark the thickness of the board onto the
other board.
So we have to mark the boards on all ends with one nice stroke with the marking gauge.
This will be the depth of the cuts.
So it's very important to mark them inside and outside.
And do the same thing on the other end.
I put the two short on the side because these are going to be the tails.
I cut the pins first.
I clamp this board with the scribble outside into the bench.
Then I'm ready to cut my pins.
First I cut the half pin.
Cut straight down to the marking gauge line.
Now I cut another half pin.
If you look at that, we already have a big tail, which is bigger there and smaller here.
If I would cut this out, it would work, but it wouldn't have much glue surface.
So I have to divide this to more tails.
So next I cut a full tail.
Cut down straight to the marking gauge line.
Now this distance I divide by I in the middle.
This is not the middle.
You can do better than that.
This is the middle.
So I cut down approximately.
It's not very critical.
And come back to this first angle and put the saw there to the middle and cut down to
the straight marking gauge line.
And do it again.
So now I have the two half pins, the two full pins, and the three tails.
And do the same thing on the other side.
A half pin.
Another half pin.
And now a full tail.
The thickness of the wood in here approximately.
And now divide this space in half.
Right there.
Cut down to the line.
And now go back to this first angle and I divide these spaces again in half.
And I do this on both ends on the two boards.
The next step is to chisel it out.
If you look at my chisel, I am undercutting a little bit.
Means I cut this way.
Not square.
But undercut just a little bit.
And now I take a little chips and take them out.
And tap down more.
A touch undercut.
Turn it over and do the same thing from the other side.
Put the chisel just a touch before the line.
And then you tap on it, it will walk back to the line.
And do the same on all tails.
You can't force your chisel too hard.
If your chisel is sharp, it will cut fast anyway.
If your chisel is dull and you're hitting it too hard, it will break out the fibers.
You need sharp chisel and patience.
Your dovetail will be beautiful clean.
Have to be careful because now they're popping out.
They're just straight going out there.
And do the same thing on the other ends.
And now I finished my templates.
And yes, they are all a little bit different.
But if I position them to the right place, they will be just fine.
So what I got to do is make sure the scribing is down to the bench, the scribble, and facing
each other just like that.
And now I put my pins onto the end with the marking outside.
Put it there, nice and flush on the outside and on two sides.
And mark it with one sharp pencil line.
The same on the other side.
With one pencil line.
And now I put this on the side.
I'm done with that.
And I flip this like that.
And I reach for the other piece.
There is no way you can make a mistake.
Flip it over.
And there you have it.
I cut down on those lines.
I chisel out for these two full pins and cut away these two half pins.
Now we're cutting the tails.
Cutting the tails you have to be more careful.
When you're cutting pins, a little bit this way, a little bit that way, it doesn't matter.
Here it does.
You have to be careful to cut down the line at the waist side to the marking edge lines.
Straight across.
And stop at the marking edge line right there.
Start on a backstroke.
Let's do the other side.
And now I have to cut off the half pins.
We're cutting straight across and straight down at the marking edge line.
Start on a backstroke.
Cut down on the marking edge line.
Same on the other end.
Do this on all four corners.
And now we're ready to chisel it out.
Put the two boards top on each other.
Clamp it down tight.
And chisel.
Put the chisel just before the marking edge line and tap it.
Notice my waist is full thickness on the end.
I need this to be a support when I turn it over so the fibers don't break out.
Chisel halfway through from each side.
So now I flip it over and do the same thing from the other side.
And now I have to push them straight out because the dovetail shape, I just push them out like
this.
So let's see how does it fit.
If your dovetail is too tight, you can chisel a little more or once the glue gets on, it's
swells up a little bit.
The wood is forgiven.
This is just right.
What am I doing is paying attention to the scribbles and I am lining them up.
The scribble facing that way, this scribble has to face that way.
So that should fit here just like that.
And here is our box.
After it's glued, it will need a top and bottom.
I already prepared these two boards.
Will be the bottom and the top.
It's bull nosed and it's sanded.
And the bottom will be screwed onto that.
Just like that.
And the top will be hinged with a couple of hinges.
Just like this.
And here is one of the many use of dovetails.
And you can do this if you try.
Good luck with it.
Hi I'm Mike Dunbar.
This is a piece of curly maple.
It's the backboard for a candle holder.
I'm hand planing it because the hand plane is the right tool for the job.
No machine, no sandpaper is going to give me a finish as smooth as well as hand plane.
You know if I was stranded on a desert island and I could only have one type of tool, the
tool I would take would be my hand planes because they are the most versatile tools
in my shop.
I have hand planes that do all sorts of things.
This plane will make rabbits.
This one raises the panels and raise panel doors.
This one makes moldings.
In addition to smoothing and shaping, let me show you something else over here.
This is the joint and square shooting board.
It's used for jointing and squaring the ends of small pieces of wood.
The shooting board consists of three pieces.
The bottom board, the ramp, and the stop.
The bottom board has a dust groove in it so that shavings won't gather under the plane
and push it out of square.
The ramp is sloped to distribute the cutting action over the entire width of the blade.
The stop holds the work at a right angle to the plane.
I'm going to use the shooting board in this plane to trim the end of this piece of cherry.
Most people would use a disc sander for this, but I think the plane is more precise.
Now I'm going to show you how to make a plane work this well.
The first step in making a plane work well is to begin with quality.
You wouldn't buy the cheapest table saw you could find.
You'd know you weren't getting good quality.
The same applies to planes.
This plane has plastic parts.
The metal parts are poorly fitted and they're poorly finished.
If you're going to buy a new plane, buy it from a woodworking supply house, not from
a local hardware store.
The other thing you can do is what I often do, and that is buy old planes.
You can get them at flea markets.
You might even have one sitting out in the garage.
This is an old Stanley number four, probably made during the 1920s.
Stanley made these by the hundreds of thousands, so they're inexpensive and they're very common.
You're going to see that it's not a lot of work to get a plane from this condition to
this condition, a tool that will plane curly maple.
Before we begin working on this plane, let's take a look at its anatomy.
This is the lever cap, the cap iron, the blade or cutter, the cap iron screw.
These are the frog screws.
This is the frog.
This is the lateral adjustment lever, the longitudinal adjustment wheel.
This is the plane body.
This is the frog adjustment screw.
First we'll take off the lever cap.
That allows us to remove the plane blade and the chip breaker.
The two are held together by this screw.
This is the frog.
Obviously there's a lot of rust buildup down here.
We're going to have to clean that up.
These two screws hold the frog in place.
When I loosen them, we'll be able to take the frog out of the plane.
That's just what you'd expect to find, a lot of old shavings under the frog.
Now that I've got the plane disassembled, let's clean it up.
The tub of mineral spirits, which is just paint thinner, takes off an awful lot of the
grime.
Rust will come off with some coarse steel wool, number three.
If there's any grime that doesn't come off in the mineral spirits, don't be afraid to
let it sit a little longer.
This is the lateral adjustment lever.
I'm finding that it's quite stiff.
I can work some mineral spirits in there to help loosen it up, and I'll loosen it up further
with oil later on.
Now on the other side of the frog is the longitudinal adjustment wheel.
It's on a left-hand thread, so I turn it clockwise to back it off the stud.
I can remove it completely, which allows me to clean it and the Y-yoke.
We're going to dry this off now.
Let it aside.
The next step will be to flatten the sole.
You know, it would make sense that a tool that's supposed to produce a flat surface
would have to have a flat sole itself.
However that sole is anything but flat.
The shiny areas are high.
The dark area is low.
That's the result of wear.
However, don't make the mistake of thinking that a new plane is perfectly flat.
I sprayed the sole of this plane with a red layout fluid and then ran it over the lapping
table.
The sole of a new plane is very seldom perfectly flat.
To flatten, you need a flat surface.
Some woodworkers use the top of their table saw, but I like a dedicated surface.
I use a piece of 3-eighths inch tempered plate glass.
To it, I glue a sanding belt with spray adhesive.
Let me show you how I use it.
Notice that I'm maintaining even pressure.
What I'm not doing is duplicating the action of hand planing.
I'm trying to eliminate the wear that that action has created.
You notice I put the frog back in the plane to create the same stresses as when the plane
is in use.
Now I've got a little bit further to go.
There are no shortcuts.
There, I'm done on the lapping table.
You notice there's a slight hollow here.
Not concerned about that.
The plane does make contact all around the edges of its sole and above all, right here
along the edge of the mouth.
I also lapped three other areas, the front edge of the lever cap, the front edge of the
chip breaker.
That way, it makes tight contact with the back of the cutter and shavings can't get
jammed in between them.
Notice too that I flattened the back of the cutter.
This is the first step in sharpening and it's unfortunately one that too many woodworkers
overlook.
I don't have time to give you a complete tutorial in sharpening, but I can't stress enough that
you must begin by flattening the back of the cutter.
It's very similar to flattening the sole of the plane.
Let me show you how it's done.
Be sure to maintain even pressure.
Above all, never lift the back of the cutter.
The purpose of this is to not only flatten the back of the blade, but also to remove
any imperfections.
Remember, a cutting edge is two flat polished surfaces coming together at an angle.
This is the first of those surfaces.
The second is going to be produced on the grindstone.
Don't try to grind too fast or use too much pressure because you'll overheat the blade.
Quench the blade periodically in cool water.
If you overheat the blade, it'll lose its hardness and it won't hold an edge.
For the gentle crested curve of a smooth plane blade, you can grind both the profile and
the bevel at the same time by rocking the blade as I'm doing here.
I don't place the blade flat on the rest.
I get more flexibility by using the rest as a contact point.
Grinding is a matter of practice.
I've ground hundreds of plane blades, so I can do it freehand.
But if you're not comfortable, spray some layout fluid on the back of the plane blade
and trace the profile you want and grind to that line.
Grind the bevel to about 35 degrees.
The important word here is about.
You don't have to get crazy about it.
This is a good uniform bevel.
Remember, a sharp edge is a result of two flat polished surfaces coming together at
an angle.
Before I ground the bevel, I flattened the back of this cutter on the lapping table.
Now I'm polishing it.
The degree of polish that's necessary is a mirror finish.
I started on 330 grit wet and dry sandpaper on the lapping table.
I'm now using a medium grade ceramic stone, and I'll finish here on the white, fine ceramic
stone.
Until I'm done with this process, I can't even begin to talk about honing the bevel.
There, I like what I see.
Now I'm going to hone the bevel.
I'm going to create a fine line of polish along the entire cutting edge.
I'll do that by holding the cutter at the same angle as the bevel.
I'll polish by moving the cutter in small circles and rocking along the slightly crested
edge.
That's it.
It doesn't take much.
I don't want to hone so much that we remove the hollow created by the grindstone.
Let's reassemble the plane.
Before we assemble the plane, I want to show you an adjustment that we won't be able to
see later on.
It's the frog adjustment.
It moves the frog forward and back.
It's important because it regulates the size of the mouth.
It's done with this screw down here underneath the longitudinal adjustment knob.
Now as I turn this screw counterclockwise, look down here in the mouth and you'll see
the frog being backed off.
Now that the frog is backed off, we need to assemble the chip breaker and the blade.
This is the way to do it to avoid any damage to the cutting edge.
Set the chip breaker back about 1-16th of an inch.
That gives the cutting edge plenty of support so it won't chatter.
The assembly fits on the frog.
With the chip breaker and cutter in the plane, you can see the lateral adjustment.
The longitudinal adjustment, the movement of the blade back and forth, is done with
this knob here.
I'm going to adjust the knob until I can feel the cutting edge resting on my fingertip.
Now I'll put on the lever cap.
It fits over the lever cap screw and push down the cam.
Now I can make the final frog adjustment.
The distance between the cutting edge and the front of the mouth should be no wider
than the shaving that has to pass through it.
Since this is a smooth plane used for very fine work, that's going to be a very narrow
opening.
Now I can tighten the frog screws.
They should be snug, but not so tight that you risk breaking the cast iron frog.
Now we can make the final adjustments.
A lot of woodworkers do it visually by sighting down the saw, but I prefer to do it by feel
with my fingertips.
I can tell whether the cutter is high on one side or the other.
I can also tell whether or not it's set deeply enough.
That's just about right.
Let's see how it works.
That works as well as the plane we began with.
You know, I've been working wood for 20 years.
Making a well-tuned hand plane is still the most satisfying experience.
Hi, I'm Joe Truwini, and I'm going to show you a quick and easy way to route rabbit joints
using a simple shop-made jig.
A rabbit is simply an L-shaped notch that's cut in the edge or the end of a board.
It's sized to accept a mating board.
It simply fits into the rabbit.
The depth of a rabbit is typically half the thickness of the board, and the width of the
rabbit equals the thickness of the mating piece.
When viewed from the front, the board is concealed within the rabbit joint.
The two pieces can either be glued together only or, as fasteners use, they're driven
through the rabbeted board.
Rabbit joints are popular in all types of cabinetry, all sizes and styles, including
small jewelry boxes like the one we have here.
Rabbit joints were used to join the front and the back to the sides.
Rabbits were also cut in the bottom edges of all four pieces to accept the plywood bottom.
The plywood bottom sets into the rabbits and leaves a nice clean look to the box.
If I were to orient the box this way, you could see that the same joinery could be used
for building a wall hung cabinet, which is what I'm working on today.
The drawing I have here on the wall shows the cabinet we're working on.
The cabinet measures 16 inches wide by 28 inches high.
The sides of the cabinet are rabbeted on the ends to receive the cabinet top and bottom.
All four pieces are also rabbeted along the back edge to receive a quarter inch plywood
back.
Now let's take a closer look at how the jig works.
It consists of four pieces, two side rails, a fence and a stop block.
In use, the fence rides along the edge of the work piece.
The router sits in here and is held tightly against the stop block.
There are two main advantages to using this jig.
The first is that you only need to make one adjustment and that's the depth of cut on
the router.
In this case, it was three-eighths of an inch deep for a three-quarter inch stock.
Another advantage is that you only need to use a standard straight bit.
You don't need to buy a more expensive rabbeting bit and you don't have to fuss with changing
ball bearing pilots.
The width of cut is determined by the distance between the fence and the edge of the stop
block.
In this case, the width of cut is three-quarters of an inch.
I typically use this jig in conjunction with two others.
The only difference being the distance from the fence to the stop block, which varies
by one-quarter inch from one jig to the next.
This allows me to cut a three-eighths inch deep by three-quarter inch rabbet in three
stages rather than trying to plow out all the waste in one single pass.
The alternative to building all three jigs is to simply build the widest cutting jig
and then make two shims.
One is half inch thick and the other one-quarter inch thick.
Insert the thicker shim and make the first pass to cut a quarter inch wide rabbet.
Then replace it with the second thinner shim to cut the second pass and form a half inch
wide rabbet.
The third and final pass is made without any shims to complete the three-quarter inch wide
rabbet.
Now, let me show you how I made the jig.
First I cut the parts to length and then I notched the side rails to accept the one inch
wide fence.
I usually make the fence out of hardwood.
If you use plywood, I recommend covering with plastic laminate to create a durable surface.
I also notched the fence before I attach it to give clearance for the bit.
The fence is attached with glue and finishing nails.
The distance between the rails is a couple inches wider than the base plate on the router.
Then you cut the stop block to fit between the rails.
To determine the distance from the fence to the stop block, you must measure the distance
from the cutting edge of the bit to the edge of the base plate.
In this case, it's two and a half inches.
Then you add one-quarter of an inch or whatever you want your width of cut to be.
You add that.
In this case, it's two and three-quarters of an inch.
That's where you fasten the stop block.
Clamp it and make a test cut in a scrap board to make sure it's in the right position.
Then simply trim off the rails and glue and nail the stop block in place.
I've got one more cut to make and that's for the plywood back.
For that, I'll use the quarter inch jig.
I start with the jig held firmly against the edge of the workpiece and the router against
the left-hand rail with the bit clear of the workpiece.
I advance the jig and the router across the board to approximately the middle.
Then I switch hands and use my left hand to push the jig and router through to the end
of the cut.
If this were an end rabbet cut across the grain, I would have begun by making a small
back cut to prevent tear-out.
One other thing that these jigs are great for is routing hinge mortises.
Let me show you how I set up for that.
For this cabinet, we're going to be installing an inset door and I've selected a hinge that
has a three-quarter by two and a half inch wide leaf.
First thing you need to do is mark the position of the hinge on the cabinet side about three
inches down from the end of the board.
To route the mortise, we're going to be using the three-quarter inch jig.
You'll notice on the fence here, I've got two marks that represent the width of cut.
You simply align the first mark with the hinge line and then clamp it in place.
Since the travel is two and three-quarter inches and our hinge is only two and a half
inches, we need to reduce the width of cut by one-quarter of an inch.
I do that by inserting a quarter inch shim and clamping it in place.
Now when I route the mortise, the result will be a three-quarter inch deep by two and a
half inch long mortise.
If your hinge is wider than the travel between the jig, what you need to do is clamp two
stop blocks to the workpiece on either side of the jig.
And the travel between the stop blocks will cut the desired length mortise.
I hope that these jigs prove as useful to you as they have to me over the years.
Thanks for watching.