voiceover:the woodwhisperer is sponsored by powermatic, the gold standard since 1921. (lively music) marc:now gluing on ourtrim pieces is no easy task unless you do yourself afavor and get a little help. you can just use glue and clamps but keep in mind that once the glue gets on that surface, it's going to want toslip and slide around
and that's going to be a real problem if this doesn't come out right. what i like to do is use biscuits, these are just number 10 biscuits, we're going to go along and put maybe, i don't know maybe fiveacross this whole distance. i'm really only using them tohelp me register this piece at the right location alongthe front of the piece applied. let's go ahead and put our marks in first.
the thing i love about biscuits is there's no measurement necessary. as long as we have this work piece in the location that it's goingto be for the final glueup, we got it made. i need a little help here,i'm going to use blue tape. just like an extra set of hands. going to get my trim lined up here and wrap the tape around so it's secure.
i'm just going to put one on the other side for good measure. now that's secure i'm going to go along and just make a pencil markin a few strategic places and the pencil mark covers both pieces, spans both pieces. with the biscuit location set, all we need to do is cut our slats. now gluing on the trimpieces can be a tricky affair
depending on your climate, what the temperature is in your shop. now here in arizona it's hot and it's dry, pretty much the worse conditions possible for doing something like this. i would love to slapglue on all four sides, put all four pieces of trim on and go inside and take a nap but unfortunately it lookslike i'm going to be reduced
to doing one side at a time. to be honest with youby the time i get glue on both of these surfaces and then i go back to the other side and do the second surface, it's going to start drying on me and i won't have any time to make any last minute adjustments. one side at a time, slowand steady unfortunately
but it'll be worth it in the end. first thing we're going to do is coat glue on the trim piece, make sure we got some good glue coverage on our biscuits and also put glue on theexposed edge of our ply. you should be able tojust line everything up and let the biscuits do the work. biscuits will allow you alittle bit of side to side play which is nice.
we can make those final adjustments. okay now if you have a lot of clamps this is the time to use them and if you don't, you may want to use some of your scrap material or actually these are just the sides for this actual piecehere, use those as calls. now if you do have moreclamps it's not a bad idea to run some in the oppositedirection, like this.
just in case there's anyslight difference in pressure as this clamp applies pressure to the top and the bottom of the trim piece, this balances that out. all right, that should do it. now i'm just attachingthe second piece of trim. one of the questions i get a lot, people ask, "hey marc whydo you have so many clamps?" this is why.
if you're doing this for a living and you're trying to get the stuff done as quickly as possible, don't forget there'sanother panel over there. this is just the bottom piece,we still need to do the top. now if i have to do this method and wait for each of these pieces to dry before moving on to the next piece, this is a lot of wasted time here.
it's very important to be able take allthose clamps off the wall and use them whenever i need to. so i've emptied or i have a lot. i've emptied about a quarter of my wall but i've got a whole another panel to do and i might have somethingelse that i need to do today. it really is true when they say you justcan't have too many clamps.
now before the glue sets up, you want to pay specialattention to the groove in the back for the back panel. when we place the trim up against it, essentially what we createis a full two sided groove because it was a rabbet before but now that the trim is up against it, it becomes a full scale groove but there is a little bit of glue
that's gotten up intosome of these areas here. i did my best to avoidit as much as possible so i use a nice skinnychisel to clean that up. now when clamping up the side trim, you're going to need some long clamps and fortunately i do have some. now if you don't have longclamps you do have other options. well first of all youdon't necessarily need a big long parallel clamp like this.
you could always use a pipe clamp. the pipe material is pretty inexpensive, you can get the clampingmechanism relatively cheap as well so it's a good cost effective solution. if you happen to have asmaller set of parallel clamps, you can put two clampstogether head to head and have them hook on toeach other in the middle and use those to span abig distance like this. obviously if you've got the clamps,
this is the time to use them. now that the glue ups are done, it's a good time toinspect all of the edges, all of the corners and see if there's any slight little flaws that we need to take care of and if there are it's no big deal. we're only human, imean with eight corners, eight miters like that
it's actually difficult to get every single one of them perfect. let's just hope that the ones that are little less than perfect are in the back of the piece. right here i have an example for you of a slight opening in one of the miters and that is not really a structural issue because all the pieces are firmly glued
and connected to the panel itself. it's really more aestheticsand just the look of the piece. i have walnut filler herethat i'm going to use to put some material into that crack. if the crack were actually bigger i might take just a littlesliver from the miter cuts that we did earlier, justmake another miter cut and take a tiny, tinylittle sliver of wood and press that in there
and that actually couldmake it nearly undetectable. for now this is going to do the trick. it's a good idea to put some masking tape on both sides of a crack like this and that stops the filler from getting in to the surrounding pores. there, okay now we couldbe a little bit messy if we need to. once this dries, we'll remove the tape
and then we could proceed withsanding the entire surface. now one of the cool design elements of this entertainment center is the bevel on the outside edge which is optional. you could leave it as it is now, just clean everything upand give a slight round over and ease those edges andit's going to look beautiful. my idea was to have a beveled edge
on both the top and bottom. the top piece will slopein toward the piece from the top down and the bottom will slope into the piece from the bottom up and they oppose each other and it gives aninteresting visual balance. now we're going use our circular saw to make those cuts with a straight edge,
like we did to trim thepieces in the very beginning. what we need to do though,because there may be little glue droplets here and there that you want to take care of. either sand those away or if you've got some really big clamps, you can use a flush trim saw and just carefully knockthose big pieces off of there and what we're looking foris a rough sanded surface.
we're not doing our finish sanding here so i'm going to use about150 grit and go around it. just make sure the edgesare all nice and smooth so that the circular sawruns through and straight without any wobble because that will be verynoticeable in the bevel that we're about to cut. before we actually cut the bevel, i want to make sure everythingis drawn on the side
so i have a visual referencefor what i need to do. the way i do that is imark in three a seven inch from the edge and i just put a pencilline here at the bottom. that marks the mostinward point of this bevel and i connect that dot whereit intersects the bottom here up to the top corner and that pencil line representsexactly where i want to cut. now that comes out to be about 75 degrees
if you measure from this point here. it's about 75 degrees. to get that cut done properly we're going to need to setthe saw here for 15 degrees and run it along this way. now keep in mind that whenyou set your saw on an angle, you actually change thedistance from the blade to the end of the base plate. if you had a measurement, before that
measurement is only goingto get you close now, it's not going to be exact. i use that again, mine was five inches so i'll set my straightedge here five inches back from the edge but then i'll make the fineadjustment actually by eye. i'm going to use my reference on the end and i'm going to sight down from the back and line everything up
and make sure it's exactlywhere i want it to be or you could simplytake a new measurement. mine is now less than the five inches that it was before. of course move the blade guard back. mine with this 15 degree angle has moved about an eighth of an inch so just make those adjustments and you'll know exactly where
the straight edge needs to be placed for you to make this cutsafely and accurately. well that went reallywell and turned out great. just do that on all four sidesand the top piece is done. when cutting the bevel on the bottom piece the angle is exactly theopposite or the mirror image of the top, so we couldkeep the saw set where it is but we have to be pretty careful about how we're going to cut this
because now we have toride with the small end of the saw's base riding on the surface. we have much less supportthan we had before but it's still doable just be careful. i think the biggest dangerhere is tipping the saw because the motor now isresting over the edge. as long as long you're careful,keep your wits about you, it should be a pretty safe cut. now before we get started on the assembly,
this is the perfect time forus to sand all the parts. i like to start withthe inside parts first so that when i flip them over,i could work on the sides that are really going to show the most at the top of the piece and don't have themmoving around on my table which could potentiallyput a scratch in there. you could also lay downsome moving blankets or something to cushion it a little bit.
what i'm going to do isall of the ply surface is going to get sanded with 180 grit paper and i've got my random orbitsander outfitted with that. the trim on the outsides has some, probably you could see are somepretty good saw marks there. if i start right away with 180 grit, i'm going to be there for a while and it also isn't a badidea to use a sanding block to hit those areas becausei really want to make sure
it stays nice and flat. sometimes with the sander you could tend to tip one way or the other and maybe give it a slight round over and we don't really want that. i use the sanding block and maybe 120 grit and work my way up to 180 grit. once all that's done, allthe flat surfaces are done, you're going to want to ease the edges.
okay you've got a sharp edge right here, you've got a sharp edge here and a sharp edge at the top so you want to take your sanding block and with nice even strokes,round that edge over and that's going to avoid any problems if anyone puts theirhand underneath there, it's going to stop it from splitting and causing any splinters later on.
a lot of sanding to do, let's get started. all right, so in preparation for our first dry assembly here, i just put the top downonto scrap pieces of wood. the reason i do this is iwant to elevate the piece so that i can actuallyget clamps in and under without having to move anything around. otherwise we're shifting thingsaround at the last minute and it's never a good idea.
upside down, top down first and we could start puttingin our partition pieces. now if you have yourpartitions and panels numbered, this should actually be apretty easy thing to accomplish. let's sand that last side panel. all right and well now it'stime to put on the bottom. if you got a friend to help you out, this is a good time to get them. i'm trying to get all these dados lined up
and not going to be an easy task but there's still some flexibility there so i'm kind of wigglingthem around a little bit. just kind of pull the partitions forward and that puts them in the right position. now it's seated. now there's a few reasons why we want to do a dry fit like this and the first of which is just to see
if everything is going to go together, you could develop a clampingstrategy at this point. see what's going to work because the last thing you want to do is find out that something iswrong, that needs to be re-cut or you realize that your clamping strategy isn't going to work andyou've got glue drying. it's a worst case scenario so what i like to do at this point is
take a good square and just check, make sure everything is square and obviously there'sa little bit of racking that can happen here. i don't have the back panels in place yet but i just want to make surethat everything can be adjusted for a perfect fit. all the joints look nice and tight and if so you're in really good shape.
the other thing that we're going to take this opportunity to do is tomeasure for the back panels. now you could probably calculate that from the measure drawings and have an idea of what those back panels are going to be but for me when it comes to back panel i really like to wait to the last minute and take an actual measurementoff of the piece of furniture
and then go make my cuts, just tends to be that much more accurate. let's do exactly that. measuring for the back panelis pretty straight forward. i just measure the insidepoints between these two panels and all we need to do is add a half inch. we've got a quarter inchrabbet on this side, a quarter inch rabbet on that side so that makes a total of a half inch
that we add to that number and we've got the width of our panel. just do the same thing for the height, just get the distancebetween the top and bottom and add a quarter inch forboth the top and the bottom, add a total of a half inch. we cut the quarter inch stuff down the same way that we didwith the three quarter inch. i've got my two by material on the floor,
everything is elevated,straight edge clamped in place and we just make our cuts. now all three back panels are cut and i'm putting in the third one, just to test the fit, that looks good. okay so with the back panels in place, i started to do a little bit of thinking and realize that we mightneed to change something here.
what i anticipate doing ishaving electronic components in both outside compartments which means heat buildup and cord management. two things that we haveto really think about in order to make this thingas functional as possible so i considered maybe drillingholes in the side panel and i started thinking, maybe we can kill twobirds with one stone. instead of having a completesolid back panel like this,
let's split this panel in half and remove maybe two inchesof material in the middle so each back panel at leastthe far right and far left will actually be two panels each. you'll have the top portionand the bottom portion, now that big gap that'sthere is going to allow a lot of air exchange to go in and out and it's also going to allow us a area that we could pull the cords around
and into the compartment where the surge protector will live. i think it's probably the best approach and the best of both worlds. what our alternativesare would be use things like those grills, littleplastic grills and grommets and things that just look very not wood so for me i want to keepthis as much wood as possible to give it a nice custom madelook that we're looking for.
i think that's the way we're going to go and it will start with splitting this into two smaller panels. i have the panels cut and i'll show you how it's going to work. we'll install that one first and then the next onewill be installed when ... well again this is upside down so when the bottom is in place
this one will be installed like so. what that's going to dois give us this gap here, it's in the back, it will be dark, you won't be able to see it but it's going to provide a functionality that we're looking for. i think that's the way to go. now the final thingthat we need to consider before we actually startgluing this thing together
is the sliding door. what i'm using is thesame quarter inch material as we use for the back and you can use anything you want if you want to go with acontrasting color, go for it. it's the place to get creative and to put a decorative element there. now as far as the length it's going to be exactlythe same as the back panels
because my groove onthe top and the bottom is also a quarter inch deep. the idea here is for thepanel to go bottom first into the grooves and once seated it shouldslide nice and smooth, back and forth. now of course once you getit all the way to the end you need a way to pry it out of there so we need some sort of a handle.
now you can go a simple as can be and just use a forstner bitand drill a circular hole somewhere in the face of this piece that you can just put your finger in there and pull it across. it doesn't have to be anymore complex than that. what i'm going to do isuse a contrasting wood, i'm going to use alder. alder once it's finishedhas a creamy, milky,
caramelly look to it. i think it really willaccent and blend in nicely with the walnut withoutbeing too starkly contrasted. what i've done is limitthe 15 degree angle that's on our trim. i'm using the same anglein this handle here so get creative, maybeturn something on a [lay], if you want to do this exact thing is as easy enough to do at the table saw
just tilting the blade to 15 degrees. get creative, have fun with it, it's your piece of furniture and it should really identifywith your personality. this work really well for my vision of where this piece isgoing, nice and simple but i think elegant. now the glueup is pretty straight forward. fortunately the way this is situated
we can do one at a time, makesure it's nice and square, clamped down and it'salready going to start drying by the time we're readyto move to the next one. you can do them all at one time but you're really goingto raise your stress level if you do that. whenever i can break itdown into smaller glueups, it's much better especiallywith the temperatures as they are now, it'sgoing to dry pretty quickly
so any more than one you'rereally asking for trouble so let's get this one glued on. now to distribute thepressure from the clamps, i can really only get clamps in so far so i'm going to use thisblock of wood on the top and that's going to helpme distribute pressure along the whole top end. i've also got one on the bottomthat's already taped there. what i like to do issecure this ahead of time
because you don't want to really worry about trying to balance everything and get that in the rightplace at the last minute while glue is drying,you wind up making a mess and rushing to beat the clock here. i just get that nice and centered and that's really going tohelp distribute that pressure a little bit for us. you might even be ableto get away without it,
with this because it'sreally not that deep but just a nice precautionary measure. let's start with some glue in the dado. i don't know if you guys haveever done anything like this, this are just little rubber made container with some water in itand a hole in the top so whenever i'm done with my glue brush i just drop it in there andkeeps it nice and clean for me. just have to change outthe water once in a while.
okay, nice bit of glue and there's so much in there, we're just going to use the excess to coat the partition piece. let's get this guy inplace, get it clamped up. it is looking good soone clamp in the front, one clamp in the back. this one doesn't gives us much reach that's why this is going to come in handy.
just snug it up, i don't really want tohammer it down just yet. we want to make sure we're square and usually, you're not so youneed to make an adjustment. now if your clamps aren'tcenter vertically on your panel, you are definitely goingto skew it in one direction or the other so just be aware of that. that's looking much better. now if you need a little help
keeping that panel nice and square, you can get this 90 degree clamping blocks that will really help keep those in place and all you do is put a clamp on this side and a clamp on that side and it locks it down 90 degrees so these are handy to have around if you can't seem to get the knack of getting that angle just right.
this is the same process we'll be using for all four of these and we'll talk about the next step once we get to that point. now i got a really good amountof glue squeeze out here, i was a little bit heavy handed with the glue bottle i guess. as tempting as it is to wipe that away and maybe even get a dump rag or a sponge and wipe that away, idefinitely do not recommend it.
resist the temptationand just leave it alone, wait about 20, 25 minutesand come back with a scraper or a putty knife or something and you can get that guck off of there without doing any majordamage to the wood itself or causing yourself problemswith finishing later on so those are some prettybig bubbles of glue that i've got there and they were just really best left alone
until it's skinned over and you can safely peelthem away from the surface. now installing the back panelis pretty straight forward, we're just going to slide it in place with a little bit of glue and then i'm going toadd a couple brad nails just to secure it at the top. remember we're doing two halves now and i'm only going toinstall one side at the time
when i flip the unit over, i can install the other side. also notice before, see ifi have any examples here. you see the color here in the middle, the back of this walnut plyhas a generic wood on there and then it's in the back of the piece so it's really a question of how much you want to worry about it but for me it was going to be a problem
and i wanted to make sure the back at least blended in a littlebit better with the piece so what i did is pretty straight forward. i just used a walnut colored stain, it's a water-base stain and one coat just gave itenough of a darker color that once finishes on the entire piece this is going to blend in really nicely. it's a little bit darkerright at the moment
but add some finish to everything and it will come out really nice, so that's the reason for the color change. all right so let's start byadding a little bit of glue to the groove here and you can also add a little bit of glue to the inside lip of thetrim here if you'd like, definitely not a bad idea. put in the back panel.
might need a little coercion and just two or three brad nails angled into the materialshould do the trick. let's go this way. (happy music)