marc:the wood whisperer is sponsored by powermatic, the gold standard since 1921. and, by rockler woodworking and hardware. create with confidence. (lively music) marc:ok, guys, i just want to give you a quick update here on the progress i've madein the design phase here. i know this sort ofcontradicts what we've done
with the design video already. but just to give you an update, as you know, these things just kindof change as you go, even though i committed to video. so one big change here, notice that the unit is actually goingto have hinged doors now instead of the sliding doors like before. but still pretty simple,straightforward design.
nice big, fat, bevelson the top and bottom. this will be composedof 2 sheets of plywood glued together to giveyou a nice inch and a half or roughly inch and a half thickness. the other thing that i posedon the website recently was the question of how to deal with this really undersized plywood. let's say you're doing a dado, like this stop dado down here.
use a 3/4 inch bit, that'sgoing to be too big. use even an undersized plywood bit like 23/32, that's still going to be too big so you have to use a smaller bit and do multiple passes. of course, there's alot of jigs and little gizmos out on the marketthat will do that for you. and you could certainlymake something in the shop. but i really didn't want to focus
on building a jig for this. i wanted to come up with anothersolution that didn't involve, or basically amount to another episode dedicated to building a jig. so there was a suggestion in the comments, i thought it was a good one, and that's what we are going to go with, is trimming each of these pieces. this is one of the side pieces here.
you'll notice that wouldgo into one of the dados, the stop dados,in the bottom. or, also the top as well. what i'm going to do is trim a little bit of the material off of both faces, so that we are left with a tongue that's a consistent thickness. in this case, i have itmocked up here at 3/8".
so, of course i have a 3/8" router bit. i can do it in one pass andthis should fit perfectly. and of course, i'm going to cut these, the tongues, after mygrooves and dados are cut so that i can make surethey fit perfectly. so that system is goingto be used consistently all the way around this thing. since we are losing alittle bit of thickness as far as the width of what's being
penetrating the bottom and top pieces. what i want to do is get a little more stability and strength out of that. so instead of goingwith what i normally do, which is about 3/8" deepwith these dados here, i'm actually going to go with a full 1/2". and hopefully that will give me a little bit of extra strength. now, notice here too,
see the notch here at the bottom? these stop dados down there are going to be notched. ok, and this way thatkind of, just sort of hides the joint a little bit better. so it's got a little 1/2" notch back there that should fit in perfectly. the left compartment will have shelves as you can see, i haven'treally put the shelves in.
this is the center partition. i did kind of mock upsome of the locations of the shelves. notice that the center partition here is actually going to have to be, well you might see itfrom this view better. it's going to have to be adifferent width from front to back. see, the back panel spansthe entire distance. which, i don't know if you havelooked closely at the model
that i have over there, but i wasn't able to get it to look theway i want it to look. so the reality is, the back panel spans the entire distance as one full sheet. so this middle partition has to be dado'd into that back panel. so the actual width of this is going to be less than the two side pieces. so that's why i've got a side piece
mocked up here. and i've got a center piece and, on the side, i've just decided to play with sort ofdoing a general cut list, or a diagram so that i can see what this is actually going to cost me in terms of material. and, there's no way around it, you've got to use 2 sheets.
how you position these soyou get the most out of it so that you have some material left over for other projects. you might be able toplay with it and get it a little bit better than what i have here. but this is probably how i'm going to jump in the shop and go for it. i've got the back panel here. there's the 2 side pieces.
right here is the center partition. these are 3 shelves. this is 1 of the top pieces. there's a 2nd top piece. one bottom piece, anda second bottom piece. because remember, these are going to be glued together to getthat extra thickness. so this is what we're dealing with here. since this is odd-shaped plywood,
if you take a close look, what i've done here ismarked center points. i'm not so concerned about where the start of this groove, and actually this dado is going to be. i'm concerned about where the center is. this plywood is just nota consistent thickness. i don't trust it. so i want to know where is the center.
that's where i'm going to center my router bit, which is going to give me a 3/8" groove. and then when i put a centered tongue, at 3/8" thickness onthe end of these pieces, they should drop right down. and you know, there's a few things we're going to have toget the measurements for after we already construct some pieces.
primarily, the centerpartition from front to back. that's a width that's only going to be obvious to us later. and that, also the totallength of the back panel from the one side to the other, is something that might have a little bit of variability that wemight have to watch out for. so we'll cut those roughand cut them oversized, and this way we don't chancecutting them too short.
so that's the plan as it now stands. it's friday night and mydinner is on the table and i'm going to go eat it. (lively jazz music) marc:so today we are going to start the wall-hanging tool chest project. the primary material for this project is going to be baltic birch. baltic birch, if you'renot familiar with it,
is an incredibly stable plywood, really, as far as a substrate goes, it's one of the absolute best. very stable, composed of a bunch of even and consistent thin layers of birch. and the faces are prettyclean, for the most part. so it's about $45, iswhat i paid for these 5x5, 5 foot by 5 foot sheets. kind of an awkward sizeto transport around
so you might want to bring a saw with you, depending on your vehicle. but at $45 bucks a sheetis really not too bad for something that is this stable. now, this stuff is actually really popular for cabinetry, mainly for kitchen cabinets in commercial manufacturing. because, number 1, it's widely available, it's very stable.
but the edge here, the end grain, does not look as ugly as it does in other types of plywood. because it's even andconsistent all the way across. and the alternating grains, remember plywood is typically 1 layer running this way, 1 layer running that way, 1 layer running this way,
but it also createsthis alternating pattern of light and dark on the end grain, which is certainly not the worst thing in the world to look at. so i want to take advantage of that, and use that in this project, with no solid wood trim on these edges. i just want to kind of leave it out there and see what it looks like.
hopefully it won't look like crap. (laughter) but we'll find out. so a couple of littlefactoids about baltic birch. it's also known as russian birch. if you see something called finnish birch. finnish birch is actually very similar to baltic birch. it's just that the adhesives used
to make the material make it better for outdoor use. they're water resistant. and the other variationyou might see of this is the american version of baltic birch. and it's usually referred to as apple ply. and instead of all birch, it's alternating layersof birch and alder. and you can have variousdifferent veneer faces
on top of it as well. now those are typically soldin a standard 4x8 sheet. so if you see that around, it might not be a bad idea to pick some of that up as well. because it's going to look very similar when you look at the end grain. so, there's a little bitof information for you. i think we are ready to get started
and jump into the project. alright, so the first order of business is to take our cut list and start chopping down that plywood into more manageable sizes. and in fact, we're just going to aim for what i consider to be the rough sizes of all these pieces. and then they're all done and ready to go
for later in the project. now, when i do this, i like to do it in the most back-friendly way possible. two years ago, i actuallyinjured my lower back, and it seems like if i just pull something a little too heavy, orpick it up the wrong way, i wind up reinjuring my back, and i know i'm not the only one. so let me show you how i handle this stuff
and hopefully it will helpyou out in your shop as well. so let's get started. so the first thing i'm going to do is lay down a couple of 2x4 supports. you can also use a bigpiece of foam insulation. i know a lot of people recommend that. but, you've got to have a place to store that foam insulation when you are done. i don't.
so i just go for the 2x4s. just get the piece in position here. this little contraption, by the way, is called a gorilla gripper. it's not that expensive. and this little thing isgoing to save your back. it's really simple, the way it works. it just hooks on and thenkind of grips on its own. and now you can use yourlegs to lift the work piece
instead of using your back. and let me tell you,this is really, really going to save you some back ache. so check that out. now, in this position, the good thing here is that i don'tever really have to lift the full weight of the sheet with my back. it's all with my legs.
and a lot of people like to cut on top of sawhorses, but you've got to get it on top of the sawhorses first, which can be a pretty big challenge, especially if you are alone. so at this stage, alli really need to do now is just let it down. and now i can work on my layout. (power saw sounds)
now you probably noticed in the drawings that the top and thebottom of the tool chest are pretty thick. the way we are going to get that thickness is by gluingtwo pieces together. now when you do this, make sure you mark two faces as glue so youdon't get them mixed up. with baltic birch, a lot of times there is one face that has sort of those
football-shaped repairs on them, and one side that's nice and clean. so of course you want the pretty side out and the two ugly faces together. now to glue these together, you need a nice flat surface. my workbench is perfect for that. but if i put the piece like this, i can't get a clamp to this inside edge.
i just don't have a clampwith a wide enough mouth. so, i've got my bench away from the wall, and i'm going to skew the piece so it's from the corner to this area over here. and now i'll be able toreach a clamp that far. there's a few other thingsthat you want to do, because gluing this surface down is kind of like veneeringwithout a vacuum press. you want to make sure you get a nice even
distribution of pressure. so one thing we're going to do is use another piece of plywood on top with no glue. and just by doing this alone, this helps distribute pressure wherever we have a clamp. but we still don't want to just put a clamp here,here, here, and here.
it's really not goingto distribute it well. the center is going to windup lifting if we do that. so what i suggest doingis using a cambered caul. cambered cauls are nothing more than a stick of wood with a nice curve in them. the idea is that the center makes contact, and as i clamp down the ends, it not only puts pressure on the ends, it then puts pressureon the center as well.
so when it's all said and done, you've got nice even clamping distribution all the way across with 2 clamps. so if you're kind of lazy like me and don't feel like making these, you can buy them. this one is made by the bow clamp company. i don't know if anyone elseeven makes these things. but they do a really good job.
they aren't that expensive. and if you'd rather just be building than making calls, thisis a good option for you. so that's what i'm going to try out today. so this is going to beone of those projects where we don't reallyhave all the information we need right up front. some of the stuff i'm going to have to get from the project itself
after some joinery is cut and we've got some partialassemblies together. so while the top and bottom are cooking in the clamps, the only thing we can really do right now is cut the side pieces. so i'm going to do that right here at the table saw. and i'm going to trim them to length
over at the miter saw. (power saw) now before making mycuts at the miter saw, i decided to take one last look at the cut list and makesure i didn't miss something. it's a good thing that i did, because i realized thatthe center partition piece has to be the same length as the sides. it just makes sense.
now we don't know the widthof that center piece yet. and we don't need it right now. but if i at least get the length cut exactly the same as the sides i'm going to save myselfa lot of headache. so when you are cutting pieces all the same size, you have a couple of ways you can do it. you can use a repeatable set-up
with a stop lock and cut each piece individually. or, in this case, i only have 3 pieces at 3/4" thick each. why not just bundle them together? i've already made one cut on each piece, on one side to square it up. i bundled those together. i used by fingers to determine
that they were perfectly flush. clamped them together and now i make one clean cut on the side and they'll all be exactly 24 3/4". now you may notice toward the back here, i got a little bit of tear out. normally on most miter saws, i will put a strip of material, typically like a 3/4" material sheet good,
on the back, and that supports the fibers in the back and creates a zero clearance. this saw is actually brand new and i haven't had a chance to really whisperize it yet. but i'll do that in future. the reason i'm notconcerned about it right now is that i'm going to be cutting joinery on the end here.
so any bits of tear out,they're going to be gone. so i let the top and bottompieces dry overnight. now we're ready to trim themto final length and width. but before i'm ready to do taht, i need to create one clean edge because i've got all ofthis glue squeeze out and the boards are a little bit uneven. i cut them oversized becausei knew they would slide around a little bit.
so i'm going to use thefestool track saw to do that. and you know that if you're getting your knickers in a twist because you don't have a festool track saw, remember that this iseasy enough to do with even just a piece of wood as a guide and a regular circular saw. i covered that in theentertainment center, the low entertainment center series.
i believe it was episode 1 that i showed how you could do a very similar operation to what we're doing here. but for me in my shop, i've got it i'm going to use it. it works great. but just know you don't necessarily need this expensive stuff to get the job done. now we're at a very criticalpart of this project.
we have to transfer our layout marks for our dados and grooves for the top and bottom pieces. so what i'd like to do heremay be a little different than how a lot of people do it. i like to go based on center lines. and some measurementsaren't quite known yet because they're dependent on the thickness of the material.
personally, when i see aplan made out of plywood, that gives you exact numbers, it's a recipe for disaster because if you follow those exact numbers and your material isn'tthe exact thickness of the person who wrote that article, you are going to wind up in a situation where things are either too big or worse case scenario, too short.
so what i like to dois focus on the layout of the center lines. because most routershave a little tit mark or something on the base that indicates where the center is. so it's really easy to line up your bit so that it's dead center. it's a lot harder toline up a bit directly to the outside of that line.
it may be a bit personal preference, but it just seems to makea lot of sense to me. so with a plywood plan, i would build it so that the user has to use their head to decide, ok here is the center line now depending on thethickness of your material. that will dictate the length of the shelf that goes between these 2 pieces. it's something you just can't know
until you have thethickness of your material down and you've got the material on hand. so based on that, i've got some materials here that are going to help me line up my cuts. some things i just couldn'tanswer until right now. so first of all, let's lookat the side partition piece that's going to go in right here. i want that located in an inch and a half
from the edge. so i'm going to draw that in real quick. and then this piece is going, let's just say thisrepresents the side pieces, that's going to lineup right on that edge. so now what we need to istransfer the center line. we know exactly where the side needs to butt up against. but i want to make sure that we get
the center of this piece so i can line up my bit. so what i've done istaken a piece of scrap and drew an arrow and a linethat represents the center. the good thing about this baltic birch is there is a center ply. that's pretty much the deadcenter of the work piece. so i just marked it with a pencil. put a little arrow there togive me a visual reference.
line this up with my pencil mark. in fact, if you want, you cango ahead and use a square. make sure it's nice and straight. right on the pencil line. and now i can very easilytransfer my center line to the work piece. now when extending this line instead of putting my square in the back or in the front,
and extending the line all the way down, i'm going to set my adjustable square here to the right spot, and i'm going to use that, and i'll show you why in a second. i'll extend my line this way. perfect. the reason i do that, is because on this side,
i don't want to go to the trouble of remeasuring, then usingthis center guide piece to place that mark there. what i want to do is have an exact repeatable mark. see that process hassome natural variability and error built into it. once i lock this down, this is a metal square,
this is not going to havea lot of variability. so i can take that over to this side and i can put my mark there without any measuring. so now let's look at the location of the back panel. the back panel is going to be set in approximately 3/4". but it's not exactly 3/4.
what it really is is the thickness of one piece of this material. the french cleat is going to be made with this material. so it has to be exactly this thickness. so i use this littlescrap piece as a guide. i place that straight up against the back. and that represents the cavity, or the area of the back
where my french cleat would live. then i grab my work piecewith my little arrow on it. and this is all by hand. you'd be surprised at how sensitive your fingertips are. and when i have it perfectly flush, now i can transfer that center line to the work piece and extend it all the way across.
for the center partition, all we need is the deadcenter of the board. so that should be 21 and 5/8. what i like to do is put a pencil mark. representing from the left side, i'm going to measure. also from the right side. so if there's any variability there, we'll be able to see it this way.
and this one looks dead on. and now i'm just marking the locations, the front basically, of the stop dado. which is going to be 4inches from the front, and 7 inches from the back. this is just the visual guide to let me know where to stop when i'm doing the routing.
i'm also going to make thosemarks on the other piece. and that way i have my visualreference there as well. and most of these cuts, after i make them on the front piece i'm just going to take that same set-up and go over to the 2nd piece. so i don't necessarily need layout lines other than lines that tellme where to start and stop for the dados.
and now the last thing i'm going to do before we actually make our cuts is what i like to call the sanity check. i'm just going to take my work piece and i've drawn my littlenotch on the bottom and i want to line it up with the work and make sure everything looks alright. at this point, you just don't want tomake a stupid mistake.
and it's very easy because really it's allconcepts and theory right now because it's all lines drawn and paper diagrams and things like that. so putting the work piece on to the piece you are about to cut is really the best way to give yourself a little sanity check. so there's our stop dado.
that's where our notchis going to be located. and i feel prettyconfident to move forward. when you're sizing thebit for the work piece, if you're creating a tongue and using the joinerysystem that i'm using you want that bit tobe as wide as possible without exceeding thethickness of the material. now for me, i would say 5/8is going to be appropriate. now here's the problem...
i only have a half inch. it's not too bad. it's not the end of the world. and i need to get this project moving. so i don't have time to order one and go through that whole thing. so i'm just going togo with the half inch. but if you think about it, if you go too thin, on that tongue
you are really going to weaken the joint and weaken the tool chest on the whole. so go as wide as possible. if you have a 5/8 go for it. but again, i'm just goingto stick with the half inch. so, let's mangle some wood. so now we're going to cut the tongues. now remember, there are actually 2 different tongues in this project.
one, corresponds to anything that is going into the bottom or top piece. those are extra deep but they're actually at a half inch. so basically the top of the side panel the bottom of the side panel, the top and bottom ofthe center partition, and the top and bottom of the back panel all get that half inch long tongue.
the other tongue will be 3/8 of an inch. those are the ones that arein the horizontal dimension. this is thinner, so i don't want a full half inch tongue going into this. so this only goes in 3/8. we'll start by making the half inch. then we'll make the 3/8 after that. the one thing we have to dial in is the thickness of that tongue.
we'll start with the half inch long ones. so i'm going to make sure we are set and what i've got here is my dado blade and i've got enough chippers in there to bring me just over a half inch. and this way i can bury it into the fence using the sacrificial plastic fence. and then i can run my pieces right up against the fence and get that nice rabbet
on the edge. so i just made sure i have half inch of the blade exposed, and now i just need to make sure i make some test cuts with scrap. and what i'll do is slowly but surely sneak the blade up. and remember every timeyou raise the blade, you've got 2 passes.
so each time you raise it, you've actually doubled what you are taking off the material. so i will make a cut and test it, cut again, test it. and that's why i've got everything here so i can make sure i get it exactly where i want it and i don't over shoot.
so let's start making some test cuts. now i know we already measured and marked for the back panel. but i didn't actually cut the piece yet. and part of the reason is that you can wait until the dry assembly to get an even more accurate measurement. and that's what i'm going to do. so i just have a metal ruler.
i butt it against the inside of one piece. and measure the distance tothe inside of the other piece. that inter-dimensionisn't the length we need because remember we've got these grooves and we need to cut that joinery there. so what i like to do is add 3/8 per side since it's 3/8 inch deepgroove on both sides. so take this total number and add a total of 3/4 of an inch to it
and you've got the exact width. i really don't know of a moreaccurate method than this. so now i'm going to workon the 3/8 inch tongues. it's really the sameprocess as the 1/2 inch. i just butted the fence in a little bit so i don't take quiteas much off the edge. and i adjusted the height slowly until i get the perfect fit. and i've got one of my side pieces here,
just for testing. this is a little pieceof scrap that i used. and that's perfect. it's a slip fit. and in case we nevertalked about this before, a slip fit is basically something a joint that goestogether without a hammer but holds itself together against the force of gravity basically.
that's a slip fit. so we're ready to go. now at this point, this joint gets put onto the sides of the back panel and the back of the center partition. now the back panel isgoing to receive a dado in the dead center. and that's for that center partition. now to do this, you can use the router,
set up the straight edge, and go that whole route. but since i've got the dadostack in the table saw, all i had to do was resizeit to an exact 1/2 inch and get the blade to the right height, and with one pass i could have this dado all the way down the center of this panel and it will be nice andconsistent all the way through. so it's kind of the lazy route,
but the results aregoing to be just as good. so let's make that cut. alright, we'll justtest the fit real quick. that's nice. now i know i just said "perfect". i lied. i want to show you what happened. the dado is perfect to aboutright about in this area here. i think the board mighthave just a little bit
of a bow to it and it lifted a little bitat the back end of the cut. and that's ok if you havethe right tools to fix it. you can just take anotherpass at the table saw. but the problem with that isthat if i'm even slightly off, i'm actually going to widen this dado and make it a loose fit. and i don't want to take that chance. so this is where one of thesehand tools really helps.
the router plane is probably one of my most used hand tools in the shop. so all you really need to do, is set it to the depth you know is right, and this is dirt simple stuff here. really, no user erroris even possible here. just keep pushing forward. (scraping) ok, and when it's all said and done
it should be nice and even now. now when dropping in the back panel here i'm doing one last dry assembly because i want to make sure that the center panel is cut perfectly. (hammering) there we go. so now that we have the backand the sides installed, we can measure for the center panel.
now my tongue is already cut here, so when i remove materialfrom the center partition, i'm going to remove it from the front. and i kind of jumped the gun, i put the notches there already. but we can just use a chisel or small saw and remake those notches, so that's no problem. so i'm going to push it all the way
into the dado. and i got a neat little trick since i want all thefronts of these pieces to be even, equally distant from thefront of the work piece, all i need to do is put a steel ruler up against the two sides, tilt the ruler up, and then transfer my mark.
and that's how i know where to cut. now just because we're notputting up any solid wood on the exposed edges here doesn't mean we shouldn't do something to beautify them. so what i'm going to do is put a double chamfer, one on each side, just a very little chamfer across the edge
that eases it and makes it look a lot more attractive as you're putting yourhands into the cabinet you don't have any sharpedges to worry about. and it also makes it less likely that that veneer on the outside layer will get caught on something and peel off. so a very simple operationat the router table. but before i do it,
i'm going to mark all mycorners with a sharpie just so i don't get mixed up. and the reason is, i don't want to do the outside edges of the side pieces, because i have to put a hinge there and the whole thing isgoing to get kind of weird. so i really just want theinside edge to be done there. i'm going to mark that, so i just can't screw it up.
and it's not a bad idea of course to do the back as well and that way it's just alittle easier on the hands if you move this thing around. so let's talk about these big honking bevels here. now there's a couple ofways that you can make this. it depends on what toolsyou have in your shop and what you're comfortable doing.
first of all, you cantilt the table saw blade to 45 degrees and youcan cut them that way. you're going to have to be very careful when you cut the ends though. you're probably going to have to use some sort of a miter guage and clamp it all down and make your cuts that way. you can also use the miter saw.
put the bevel down to 45 degrees. just make sure you markthe fronts and backs so you know exactly whichway to make that cut because you don't want tomake it on the wrong side or the wrong angle. you can also use a circular saw. most circular saws, well, all of them, should go to 45 degrees.
this can create kind of a tricky cut because we're not going right to the edge with our cut here. we've got that little 1/2inch lip at the bottom. so that may be a little bit tricky. but there's at least 3 or 4 ways that most of us arecapable of making this cut in our shops with a standard set of tools. so it depends on whatyou are comfortable with.
but either way, just get the best results you can, and then come back witheither a block plane and maybe some sandingto clean up that edge and make it look real nice and stop any of the little splinters that might have resulted, from poking out and grabbing your finger. so let's turn outattention to the shelves.
the left hand side is the only compartment that is going to have shelves in it. so what i have to do is concern myself with the joinery onthe left hand side wall and the inside of the center partition. now originally i was goingto put the shelves in and dado them all around the back panel and sides and everything. that would have beena huge pain in my butt
and i'm glad i figuredout a better option. and part of the justification for this is the fact that sometimesi don't even know what's going to be on those shelves. so wouldn't it be nice tohave them be adjustable. and guess what? adjustable shelves are a heck of a lot easier to install. so what i'm going to use is standard
quarter inch holes. and i'm going to use theseindustrial little shelf pins. and they can hold a lot of weight, they sit in there really nice. it's going to look fine. it's going to be fully supported. and i have the addedadvantage of adjustability. what i'm going to use to make them, you've seen me use them before,
is the little rockler jig. it's really not that pricey, and it's a great investment. so all i have to do is reference off of one side, and do that consistently on both pieces and i'll have my shelf pin holes in the right place every time. (drill)
so now we need to sand everything. and keep in mind when you sand, you are going to lose allof your reference marks you may have written on your boards. so here's a little tip. mark them on your tongues and tendons and then they'll still be there even at the point when you are assembling and adding all your glue.
and then you won't screw anything up. so for the sanding, i'm going to start with 80 grit and move up to 120, and finish with 180. the good thing aboutbaltic birch is you've got a nice thick layer of veneer on top. so you don't have to bequite as careful as you do with most hardwood veneered plywood
that you might burn through. with this you don't reallyhave as much of a risk. but clearly, don't go crazy because you can still burn through it. the other thing i wanted to mention is that i am going to assemble the case and then worry about thedoors after the fact. i want to get the case together and just get a visual for how things work
because i haven't 100% decided what i want those doors to look like yet. so let's get our dustmask on and start sanding.