[ Saw whirring ] ♪♪ It's time again for another episode of "The Woodsmith Shop."

I'm Phil, and on today's episode, we're going to lead you through some of our greatest ideas for woodworking tips.

Whether you want to call them shop hacks or secrets or special tips and techniques, we got them all here for you today, so join us for this really special episode.

If you want to see a full listing of all the tips and tricks that were shown in today's episode, they're at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

So let's get started!

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters, offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

Additional funding provided by... Titebond wood glues, the pro's advantage.

And by...

Here at Grizzly, woodworking isn't just our business, it's our passion.

We love what we do.

Thank you for the opportunity to support "Woodsmith Shop" TV.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ One of my favorite features of wood is that it's a natural material, and that means that each piece is a little different, and sometimes you get stuff that has character in the form of knots, depending on how the tree grew.

So sometimes when we're using that in a project, those knots are fine, but a lot of times, we do want to fill those.

So I want to show you two ways to tackle knots with different fillers.

So the first one works really well for small little knots, kind of like this guy or even little wormholes that you get.

And for these, I like to use a colored CA glue.

This is just a super glue that is a little bit thicker.

And it has a pigment in it.

So instead of being clear, you can pick out color like brown, dark brown, or even black.

And then once I've spread that over the area, I'll come in with an accelerator and spritz it and let that cure.

Now, the one thing that you will find a lot of the times is after you've done this once, that superglue will soak down below the surface.

So a lot of times if you let that dry for a few minutes and flash off, you can come back with another layer right over top and that'll be a perfect finished layer.

Now for something a little bit bigger, like this guy, where there's a little bit of a void, I could probably fill it.

But what I like to do is I like to come in here with coffee grounds.

And I will push those coffee grounds.

Finely ground coffee seems to work a little bit better for this.

And I'll push those in, and I'll kind of clear away any excess just so I know where that knot was.

And once again, I'll come in with CA glue.

But this time, I'll use thin, clear CA glue, and then we'll just wick that right over the surface.

And those coffee grounds will soak up that CA glue and they'll harden in that knot.

Once again, a shot of accelerator really will help cure that quickly.

And once again, I'll wait a few minutes for that to cure before I sand it flush.

Either one of these ways is a great way to hide those knots, make them not noticeable, and add a little integrity to them.

You know, in the past, I've kind of shied away from using plastic laminates because it was always a hassle to get the big can of goopy, smelly contact cement out, pry open the lid, smear it everywhere, and so forth.

But now it's easy.

I've discovered spray adhesive.

Basically, the technique is about the same.

We want to coat both surfaces evenly with the cement, but with this stuff, it's just so easy.

It always reminds me of a silly string, but you want to go ahead and put a nice even coat.

I'm going to go back over it again.

It doesn't have to be 100% coverage.

That's probably good right there.

So I'm going to set this aside.

And now we'll go ahead and... ...coat our substrate.

You definitely want to put your work on some paper or do it outside because this stuff has a way of getting on everything if you don't.

All right.

That's good right there.

So now we're going to wait a few minutes.

Just like regular contact cement, we want to make sure that the surfaces are not wet.

They need to be a little tacky, but not wet.

Now, one of the heart stopping moments you can have when applying laminate using any kind of contact cement is if it's not positioned correctly.

Because you know what?

Once you start, there's no going back.

So what we want to do here is a simple little trick from the shops that produce a lot of countertops.

We want to put dowel pins down.

It just contacts the cement in a very small area, and it allows us to place our laminate safely over our substrate, and we can get it positioned just so.

Sometimes if you're working on a really big sheet, you may want to start with the center and work out.

In this case, I'm going to go ahead and just start by pulling my dowel here.

And I'm going to work my way from my right to my left.

I want to make sure we very carefully and thoroughly rub the material so we're taking any air bubbles out, any pockets.

You can use a roller if you like.

For a small piece like this, I'm just going to use my hand.

Keep working our way towards the left here.

And there we go.

All right.

It is ready to trim with a router now.

So easy, simple, a little messy, but so much better than using that smelly canned contact cement.

One of the final steps in constructing a table is attaching the base to the top.

Now, in the past, we've shown these metal Z clips, as we call them, for an easy connection.

They screw to the tabletop and then fit into a groove that you cut in the table aprons.

It's a great solution, but since we're already building the projects ourselves, why not go a step further and make your own shop made fasteners?

They're called tabletop buttons, and they work just about the same way.

You can see that there's a short tongue on the end that fits into that groove and a hole to attach it to the top of the table to secure everything in place.

What I like about these is that these allow the top to be able to expand and contract with seasonal changes in humidity.

Now, while they end up pretty small, you're going to make them starting with larger blanks.

So I'll take a narrow blank over to the table saw and use a Dado blade to cut a rabbit on one end.

The size of the tongue that you're creating should just fit into those grooves.

From there, it's a trip over to the drill press, where you will drill a pilot hole to attach the buttons when you're done.

A quick stop back at the workbench, and a handsaw, and you can cut them to their final length.

Now you can make them as you need them.

Or since you have everything all set up, why not just batch out a whole bunch of them, keep them in a bin in your hardware cart, and then you have them ready for your next table project.

It's a shop made solution that works great with handmade furniture.

So I just cut some rounded corners on this little top, and what I need to do now is sand them nice and smooth.

And if I were to grab a regular sanding block and start working on this, I'll tell you what would happen.

Yeah, I'd get it reasonably round side to side, but I'd end up rounding it quite a bit top to bottom, as well, and it's not going to look good.

It's going to look kind of sloppy.

So to keep things looking true, I've got a little sanding block here that's got a lip on it, and that lip is going to ride on the top of my work, and it's going to keep that sanding block perfectly straight up and down.

And it's going to give me really clean, crisp corners.

And that's what I want.

So easy tip, easy to make.

Sanding block with a lip on it.

Plywood really is a wonderful material.

It's great for creating large panels for cases or shelves or whatever.

The only thing is that you need to do something about those exposed edges, because they just don't really match the rest of the project.

What we'll often do around here is to glue on strips of a matching hardwood.

So I have cherry plywood here, a strip of cherry that just gets glued or nailed in place.

When we do that, I like to make the strips just a little bit wider than the thickness of the plywood.

That way we can sand it or plane it down so that it's flush.

The trick is knowing how to do that.

The veneers on the plywood are super thin nowadays and it's really easy to sand through.

So if you ever are sanding on plywood and notice a black spot starting to form, don't keep sanding.

It's not going to go away, it's just going to get bigger.

So our solution to sanding the edging is a custom sanding block like this.

Now, this one is glued up from three layers of hardwood and then shaped for comfort.

I even have a cove routed on each side, just to make it easy to hold on to.

On the bottom side, though, is a pad that's hardboard with a layer of cork, and then I can apply some adhesive backed sandpaper to that cork.

It slips into the sanding block, and the sanding block also has a fence here, but I can adjust the position of that sanding pad so that it matches the thickness of my edging.

Now, in a few strokes I can sand just the edging, getting it nice and flush with my panel without worrying about damaging the plywood veneer.

When the sandpaper is all used up, I can just peel it off and apply a new piece.

Now, if you're interested in building a sanding block like this, or any of the other tips you're seeing in this episode, they're at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

I like using water based finishes for small projects.

Practically any project that I do, I'll apply a few coats of water based finish on it.

I like the clear color that it provides and that it dries super fast.

The only thing that I need to do is figure out what to do with the brush in between coats because I don't want the brush to dry out, and frankly, I don't want to go through the whole process of having to clean out the brush just to wait a couple of hours before I put another coat on.

Here's your easy solution.

Just get a jar and fill it about half way full of water.

Then on your brush, drill a hole through the handle.

That way, you can run a dowel through that hole, and now suspend the brush in some water.

That's the right solvent for a water based finish.

It seems kind of obvious.

And the nice part is, is that the brush tips are suspended off the bottom of the jar so that you're not going to damage the brush over time.

Now, the brush can just marinate here for a little while.

And when you need to, you just come back, press out the excess water and you're ready to go for your next coat of finish.

This process also works for oil based finish.

Just replace the water with mineral spirits or another brush cleaner.

It's a great way to keep your brushes in top shape and you ready for the next coat of finish.

One of the things I like about turning is that with a lathe, you can get a lot of work done in a small space.

But one of the things that I think a lot of people find is that if they do have a small turning setup, they're lacking a place to work.

And one thing that's important to remember is that the bed of our lathe is not the place to do it.

It's part of the tool, and those lathe ways need to stay nice and clean with no finish on them, no rust and nothing else.

So what I do when I'm finishing is I use something like this.

This is an auxiliary top.

This is made out of a couple layers of Baltic birch plywood, and over top, I applied a piece of plastic laminate.

What that does is it allows me to mount it to the lathe either using a pair of carriage bolts if I'm using something like a router jig on here, or I can just slide the tool banjo right up against it and pinch it in place if I don't want to go through the hassle of bolting it down.

And now what I have is I have a large work surface that allows me to not only put materials here as I'm working here at the lathe, but it also protects the lathe bed from finishes.

So as I'm applying like a CA finish on this pen, any drips land on the plastic laminate protecting my lathe bed.

Adding an auxiliary table like this is a great way to expand your workstation at the lathe and keep your lathe protected.

Oftentimes I like to work turning projects into furniture projects.

That could be something like turning legs for a table or making a batch of chairs.

But the one thing that a lot of people struggle with is making consistent parts.

We got to make four legs that look the same.

And a lot of the times, I'll mark out my parts using a pencil, so I'll mark out some of the details, like maybe we're tenon goes or some of the details on the leg, like a swell or a cove or a bead.

But when you're doing that over four parts, 8 parts, 12 parts.

A lot of times you'll get parts that look slightly different.

So when I do have to turn a batch of stuff, I like to make myself a story stick.

And all this story stick is is a scrap piece of wood.

This is plywood that I've installed some wire nails on the edge.

Once I've hammered those nails in, I use side cutters to cut the heads off.

That leaves me with these little sharp nails sticking out.

And now I can use this to actually mark my work pieces.

That way, as I'm turning multiple pieces, each one is marked exactly the same, and then it's just up to me to cut the shape the same every time.

This is a great way to get consistent parts at the lathe.

Cutting joinery here at the lathe is pretty simple.

If you're working on something like a chair leg or a table leg, generally, we're going to turn a tenon that fits into a mating part on whatever your project is, but getting a consistently sized tenon between four legs can sometimes be problematic.

We want to make sure that each one of those tenons fits its mating hole nice and snugly.

So to cut the tenons, generally I will use calipers.

But there's a lot of times where I have other details on my leg that I'm turning that my calipers will be set to those diameters instead of my tenon.

So a good, easy way to size tenons consistently is to use an open ended wrench.

You can select a wrench to match whatever size mortise you're going to drill.

In this instance, it's three quarters of an inch.

So what I'll do is I'll use this as a sizer.

As I'm cutting the tenon down, I'll gently rest that wrench right on there.

And as soon as it slips over, I know that tenon's exactly three quarters of an inch, and I can do that for all my legs.

That way, I don't have to reset my calipers and I can leave them set up for other measurements.

A draw knife is an historical, traditional tool that is used to shape wood, whether its curves or straight edges or long facets on chair legs and things like that.

I got this one from my dad and have fixed it up and enjoy using it in a lot of my projects.

The issue with a draw knife, though, is that you have this really long exposed blade.

So if I want to keep this in a drawer in my tool cabinet, that blade can get dinged up from other tools that are stored there.

And it's also pretty easy to end up cutting yourself, reaching in to grab something else.

So what I want to do is protect both myself and the tool.

The way that I've done that is to make a case for it using some scrap wood that I had laying around.

Here, I'm using some white pine because I like using it, but you can use whatever you want.

There's a thick base piece here that I've cut out to accept the shape of the blade so that it just nestles right in there.

Then on each side, I added two...

They were oversized ears that just get glued on here.

Now, what you want to notice is that they're angled in and then tapered this way.

Now, when I have the cover, you can see that it's both angled in and then beveled on the edges.

That creates kind of a sliding locking dovetail joint so that the more I slide the cover into place, the tighter it gets.

To hold the cover to the base, I drilled a counter board through hole, and then just have a brass knurled knob that I can drop in place.

Now I can know that my drawer knife is protected so I can put it in the drawer of my tool cabinet or take it with me whenever I do work outside of my shop.

It's an easy way to customize your tools and also to keep yourself and them safe.

In the course of building a project around here, we end up changing from a combination blade to a dado blade quite a few times, and the only issue is all the little bits and pieces that are involved in switching out to a dado set.

Don't get me started on the janky cardboard box that they come in.

What you need to do is make yourself a dado blade caddy, like this one right here.

It's pretty simple.

There are two plywood sides joined to a bottom, but the real piece here is this insert on the inside.

It's got a number of slots to hold all of your chippers as well as the two scoring blades, but there's more that goes with the dado blade set.

Back here is a dowel that can hold all the shims that you could ask for, so you can dial in the width of a dado set whenever you want to.

Now, the nice thing is, is that I can bring this right up here on the saw, get all the pieces that I need.

Better yet, when I go to switch back to the combination blade, I can put all of those pieces right back where they belong and they're not going to get lost.

You could simplify your dado blade switch overs with a simple caddy like this.

You know, with a pair of sawhorses and a piece of foam insulation, you can turn just about anywhere into a workshop.

Now all you need is a way to supply power.

Cordless tools are great, but for something like a track saw, a shop vac, and even a sander, you need to be able to plug those in.

And I don't really want to stretch a bunch of spaghetti extension cords around trying to get power where I need it.

Here's an easier solution.

You can just attach a power strip to one of the legs of your sawhorses.

But we took this a little farther.

The power strip is actually attached to a plywood backer.

And then on either side are these hardboard brackets that allow you to wrap the cord from the power cord around it for easy transport at the end of the day.

Now what I can do, plug in all the tools that I need and I'm ready to go.

With one flip of the switch, I can activate them all or shut them down for the evening.

It's a great way to power up your portable work surface.

The bandsaw is my favorite shop machine, and you can do a lot with it.

It cuts angles pretty easily.

You can tilt the table in order to do that, but that can be sometimes a little problematic to control the workpiece and use the fence well.

So the other option is instead of tilting the table is to just tilt the workpiece.

So if I have, you know, a table leg or a chair leg that I want to turn from a square into an octagon, or even just to knock away the corner.

In order to mortise into that edge, I've made this V-block jig that attaches to my rip fence with double sided tape, and it has 245 degree strips on it that cradle the piece and hold it secure throughout the cut.

The key thing here, though, is this notch on about the midpoint of the jig that allows the blade access on here.

So now with the rip fence installed, I can slide the jig and move it around until it's right where I want it to be.

So I can line up the blade with a layout mark on the end of my workpiece, and then I can make consistent cuts on all four sides or across multiple pieces.

It's a great way to help you to get even more out of a versatile shop machine.

When crosscutting wood, I like to use my table saw, I always get the best, most accurate cut here rather than on a miter saw.

But I need to be careful when cutting short parts.

I can set my fence, but I can't use it for the part to register against because it's combined between the fence and the blade, and that's dangerous.

So the usual thing we want to do is to put a block of wood clamping on our fence, and that way I can register my part against the block of wood, carry it through the blade, and it's not going to bind.

But, you know, it's always kind of a hassle to get those clamps out and look for a piece of scrap wood.

That's why I love this tip, because it's so simple and easy and it really works.

It's a triangular piece of wood here.

And I've got a magnet.

And so all I do is when I get my fence set, I drop it into place.

What could be easier?

Now I can slide my workpiece up against it, and I'm ready to go through the blade for a perfect dagger cross cut.

My part's not going to bind against the fence, so I'm playing it safe.

Accurate, safe, easy.

Can't beat that.

In addition to all the great projects that are in every issue of Woodsmith, a reader favorite section are the tips and techniques.

A lot of them are submitted from readers and viewers, people like you, who are interested in sharing your great ideas with us.

If you want to find more, the plans are at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

There you can find out all kinds of other great tips and techniques, project ideas, videos, and more.

And then we'll tune up our shops, build some projects, and then meet right back here in the Woodsmith shop for another great episode.

If you'd like to get more video tips and techniques, sign up for the free weekly Wordsmith eTips.

Every week, you'll receive an email with a video tip to get more out of your table saw, router table, and more.

Sign up at WoodsmithShop.com.

Everything in today's show comes from the newly expanded Woodsmith Guild Edition, with shop projects, plans, tips, and techniques.

To get a free preview issue of the Woodsmith Guild Edition and a free Woodsmith book, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

In addition, past seasons of "The Woodsmith Shop" are available on DVD, or you can watch them online from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

For more information, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters, offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

Additional funding provided by... Titebond wood glues, the pro's advantage.

And by...

Here at Grizzly, woodworking isn't just our business, it's our passion.

We love what we do.

Thank you for the opportunity to support "Woodsmith Shop" TV.