Learn Woodworking

Transcript Half lap joints are a simple joint, in that you’re only removing half of the material from each piece and then just overlap with each other, but it’s also a very strong joint. It helps in a lot of different wood working type of projects, form anything like frames, to small tables. Marking, measuring, …

Transcript Surface planer is one of several tools that you’ll need in a shop if you’re going to mill and square up rough lumber, but it also has a separate function which is just to reduce the thickness of boards so you can use it as a thickness planer and also as a surfacer. If …

Transcript Another important thing, of course, with the plane is having a sharp blade. So, sharpening these blades can be done in a variety of different ways. Some people use sandpaper, like I was using for flattening the sole, working their way up through the different grits until you get into the thousands. Oil stones. …

Transcript The other saw that you might use is a circular saw. And, of course, the circular saw excels at doing straight cuts. So you’ve got your curve cuts on your jigsaw, straight cuts on your circular saw. This is a radial saw, just like a table saw or a chop saw. The blade’s spinning …

Transcript There’s some general rules about working in a shop regarding health and safety that everyone should follow, whether you’re working in a garage or a full shop like this one. Most of these have to do with your own health and safety. Ear protection, for example. Many of these machines operate at high decibels. …

Transcript Hand planes can be a useful to way of smoothing and squaring boards in the wood shop when you don’t have access to a planer or jointer. And, so I thought it would be useful if we looked at a couple different types of hand planes that we have in the shop here. These …

Transcript There are many different types of chisels that you can use for woodworking. One of the best sets to get as a beginner, though, are these bench chisels. Sometimes they’re called beveled edge firmer chisels. And, what these are used for, many different tasks. Everything from raw hand tool work, to cleaning out machine …

Transcript One of the first things you’re gonna have to do when you get a hand plane, whether you buy one at the store, or a flea market, is flatten the sole. And, if we look at the bottom of the plane, this big, flat surface here is called the sole. This is what you’re …

Transcript If you don’t have access to a whole workshop of woodworking machinery like we do here, you can still get a lot done with some handheld power tools. And I’ve got two of those right here. One is called a jigsaw, and the other is a handheld circular saw. First, let’s look at the …

Transcript The smoothing planes, the jointer, the jack plane, these have a few more parts and pieces in them, and it’s useful to look at these, too, just to understand how they work. The one extra piece that these have is a chip breaker on top. That’s an extra piece of metal that sits on …

Transcript Okay. We’re at the drill press, and we’re getting ready to remove the material for our mortise. We’ve marked it out. And, the one thing you want to set here is, first get our Fortstner bit in here. A Forstner bit is a drill that creates a flat-bottom straight-side hole, and that’s perfect for …

Transcript One of the first steps you’ll have to do in any woodworking project is squaring out and milling the rough lumber. All of our woodworking machines rely on straight, square edges to do accurate work; The table saw, chop saw, band saw, any of the tools, the router; need straight, flat edges and square …

Transcript All right. We’re fresh from the jointure, and now we’re over at the surface planter. I’ve marked the faces that I jointed just to keep track of them. We can now pass these through the surface planter with the jointed face down and it’ll flatten the top surface where it’s ready to go through. …

Transcript My name is Robyn Mierzwa . I have been doing woodworking since I was a kid, and discovered the joy if it in my dad’s shop in our basement. Ever since, I’ve been making things out of wood with a limited set of tools such as a jigsaw and a circular saw in my …

Transcript When you’re first getting started in woodworking one of the basic skills you’re going to want to get under your belt is working with hand tools. These are some basic tools you’re going to start with: one of them is a back saw, another is a set of bench chisels, and the third is …

Transcript The mortise and tenon joint is a classic woodworking joint for joining rails and styles and frame-style construction of furniture. So, this has been used in tables, chairs, you name it. And it’s a very strong joint and you just make two pieces. There’s a tenon, which is basically a stub that’s sticking out …

Transcript Having a band saw in your shop adds a lot of different cutting capabilities to your arsenal. And, you know, the table saw gives you right angled cuts. The band saw can add curved cuts as well as resawing and even safer ripping than you can do on a table saw. So, let’s look …

Transcript Joinery is the art and science of how you join two pieces of wood together. In woodworking, that’s actually not as simple as it sounds. When you’re joining two pieces of wood, you have to consider a couple factors. One is, wood is like a sponge and when it gets more humid out, it …

Transcript Box joint is second only to dovetails, in terms of the amount of glue area you get. And it’s great for, that makes it great for drawers or anything that’s going to get a lot of force put on it. So, the idea behind box joint, though, is, you can see, is it’s equal …

Transcript Miter joints are a very common way to join two pieces of wood that come together in a corner. Whether they’re faces of wood, as in a cabinet, or a picture frame like these pieces of wood would come together. And, the basic idea behind a miter joint is very simple. You’re just cutting …

Transcript Now, once you’ve got the back flat, and the front sharp, you’re pretty much ready to go. Using these chisels is very simple. There’s basically two operations you’re going to do with chisels. One is called paring, which is a horizontal, slicing motion. The other is a chopping, or mallet work, where you’ve got …

Transcript So, when you’re done putting together your woodworking project and you’re ready to finish it, put on some final finishing or stain or oil, the first thing you’re going to have to do is get it all smooth. And that involves getting the wood to a level of smoothness that the finish will take …

Transcript Routers are one of the most versatile tools in the shop. They can do a variety of tasks, including putting edge profiling on, like in moldings, they can create different types of joinery by removing material and creating slots for different shapes, and they can even cut out templates. To give you an idea …

Instructions FACT: The main cuts of a table saw Even though a table saw is capable of performing various cuts, it’s best at 2 cuts in particular: the cross cut and the rip cut. FACT: Understand cross and rip cuts Understand what a cross cut is: cutting across the short dimension of a wood plank. …

Transcript Putting bits in is the other thing, though, you’ll want to know. And, if I were going to put in one of these router bits, this how you do it. I’m basically feeding it into the collet. You’ll feel it bottom out and what you’ll want to do is just tighten it up slightly …

Instructions Step 1: What is a jointer? Understand what a jointer is: a machine for leveling off pieces of rough wood. Step 2: Locate the high corners Determine the high corners of the planks and mark them–these are the points where you will apply the most pressure to level them out. TIP: Using a push …

Transcript Whether you’re making fine furniture or decorative birdhouses, there’s a process in woodworking that you go through on each of the machines to get the lumber that you’re using into the shape that you need. And, that could involve different cutting operations. Boring operations with the drill. Material removal with a router to create …

Transcript When you need to joint two pieces of wood end-to-face like this, there are not a lot of options for joinery if you don’t want to see the joinery on the edge. You could do box joints or dovetails, any number of things, but you see all those joinery options. If you want the …

Transcript Cabinet scrapers or card scrapers make a great shortcut to get around using sandpaper to get your wood ready for final finishing. The basic idea behind these is that you hone an edge onto these so that they can function as almost like a plane on the surface of the wood. So using them …

Transcript Back saws are a special kind of saw that are used in fine woodworking for cutting joinery. And there’s two different styles. You can see them here. There’s a Japanese style and there’s also a western-style saw. The thing they have in common, though and what makes them back saws is that they have …

Transcript In addition to plunge and stationary routers you may want to have a table router set up in your shop. Table router brings a lot more functionality to the router. And all it is though is really just a hand held router mounted upside down in a table. As you can see this is …