In this course, Frank will show you how to build a simple wall shelf using only hand tools. This well thought-out project will go in-depth and will help you hone your skills at cutting the dado and mortise and tenon joints that you learned in the Three Basic Joints course.
You’ll start by thinking through the layout of the project, taking grain orientation and such into consideration. You’ll learn how to mark all your pieces in such a way that they don’t get mixed up during the process of cutting all the joints.
Next you’ll cut your dado joints. In this project you’ll use two kinds of dados–a stopped dado and a stopped, stepped dado. Frank will show you several methods to cut these dados including the chisel method and the saw method. From there you will cut the mortise and tenon joints that connect the shelf supports to the sides. You’ll cut both through mortises as well as stopped mortises.
Frank will then show you how to cut an arch in the shelf support using just a dovetail saw, chisel and spokeshave! He’ll go over making a decorative chamfer with the hand plane and sanding before final assembly and glue up.
You’ll be using pine for this project, but you can continue to practice your new joinery skills using other woods such as cherry or walnut. Dado away!
Additional Resources
For additional instructions, see: Resources for the Online Wall Shelf Course.
Wall Shelf
Layout the Shelf
[MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, and welcome back. In this video, I'm going to go over how to lay out the shelf. Proper layout is very important before beginning a project. So make sure you pay careful attention to how we lay this out.
I'm going to show you here again. We've got the top and the bottom, which are a little bit wider than the shelf. So that's how you can tell the difference there. You see, this piece is a little narrower. That's our shelf.
Let's set that aside. We won't need that at the moment. Neither will we need these pieces here. So let's get those out of the way.
So we've got our top and our bottom, and we've got our two sides. So as I did on the box, I'm going to look at the grain orientation and see what looks the best. Of course, I do care about what the front looks like. I've got a little knot here, but you just got to work with the knots. I'm going to put that towards the bottom.
And this looks nice just like so. So we'll position it like this, this being my left, this being my right. Put that together. Then we'll configure the top and the bottom.
I've got a little bit heavy grain and a little wiry grain there in the back. I'm going to put that towards the back and this towards the front. And I'm going to put this, again, wide grain right there. I'm going to put that towards the bottom there and this towards the front. So there's our top and our bottom and our two sides.
One way to mark this, which makes it easy-- and I'm going to mark this here on the face, on the front. I'm just going to denote which is the left, which is the right and also put arrows pointing to the inside. And I can do that simply by taking my pencil and making an X like that. Now what that has done for me, as I pull this away, it has denoted which is the inside. See how those little arrows point towards the inside?
The next thing we're going to do is we're going to mark "left" and "right." So we can pick this up and we know which is left and right. And I also know that this is the top, right up here. And we could mark that. We could mark "top" right up there. But usually, there's not any need for that.
OK, so we've got our sides marked. Now we're going to mark our top and our bottom. We'll do that in exactly the same way. You'll see we've got this. We'll put a little arrow there like that, and we'll mark "top" and "bottom." So there we have it, the top and the bottom and the two sides.
Before doing any layout, you may want to dress your stock with a hand plane just to smooth any major undulations or mill marks from the planer. We will actually go back when we're done with all the joinery and lightly, lightly plane. But if you plane too much off, you can actually thin the parts, and they won't fit into the joints.
So you may want to plane this. I'll just surface the material prior to doing the layout here, using the smoothing plane. You can actually hear, when you run this over, you might hear some slight variation in the sound until it gets smooth all the way. And that's nice and smooth, prior to doing the layout.
And again, this is optional. We are going to smooth it after we do the joinery. So if the wood's already smooth, it's not a big problem to go ahead and just go on with the layout.
Now what I'm going to do, these are all stopped dados. What that means is they don't actually come through the front. You can see there's no dados that come through the front. They're all seen only on the back.
So what we're going to do here is we are going to flip this over and lay out the dados on this back edge. What I like to do is, I like to clamp this together in the vice or with a clamp-- clamp it together like this. Now that I've got it clamped in the vice, again, this is the back facing up. That's facing me.
I can also identify the back with that little X. That will tell me that that's the inside, pointing to the inside. Now I'm going to position the dados.
All of this stock is 5/8 of an inch thick. So I'm going to use 5/8 as my means to denote the different sizes. So I'm going to take the thickness of the stock, which again, is 5/8 of an inch. And we're going to position it flush with the end.
Now keep in mind, as I have these positioned in the vice, these ends are flush. I've got these lined up. In other words, they're not positioned off like this. They're nice and flush in the vice.
Now we'll just take this and position this flush on one end and put a little mark right there. Then we're going to move that over and position another mark right there. So you can see, this is where our dado is going to go. It's going to be 5/8 of an inch over from the edge. But you notice, what we've done here is we've marked both of these boards-- the top and the bottom-- simultaneously, so that these pieces, this dado, will run perfectly straight through. Instead of measuring, we've marked both of them simultaneously, just using the thickness of the stock.
We'll do the same thing on this end, the thickness of the stock, then move over. We'll mark another one. And that's where our dado is going to be, right there.
We'll set this aside, and we'll turn our attention towards the side. What we have here, we've got the front, again, putting them together. We'll flip this over. Make sure that the ends are flush, and put them together in the vice.
Now, what I'm going to do is, I'm going to use a tape measure to find the center of this board. These boards are 22 and 1/4 inches, so half of 22 and 1/4 is 11 and 1/8. And we'll put a little mark there. So we'll put that away.
And we'll now use the shelf, which is what's going to go right here in the middle, and just put this right there in the center. You can see, I'm basically taking that center mark, and I'm just positioning this shelf right in the center. And I'm going to mark either side.
And you'll notice, I didn't mark the line all the way across. Even if I was a little bit off here, it doesn't make a huge difference, because this line is going to be perfectly lined up. However, if I did measure one side and then measured the other side, and I got off slightly, then the shelf could be crooked like this. But by lining these two together and marking them simultaneously, ensures that the shelf runs perfectly straight across.
What we're going to do now is we're going to open this up like a book. We're going to carry that line across like this, using our square. So we're taking that and carrying those lines across.
And if you've watched our video on cutting a dado-- which I highly recommend. It's essential that you watch that video before building this piece of furniture-- you will know that these pencil lines are just a guideline. Once we start cutting these, we're going to use a knife to actually denote the perfect width of the dado. So that's our dado.
You'll also notice that I'm not running the line all the way to the front. The reason for that is this is a stop dado. It's going to stop before it comes all the way to the front. Even if you marked it all the way to the front, be sure to erase those marks because you don't want to accidentally run your knife line all the way to the front.
Again, here's our top and our bottom. Open that up like a book, and we'll find our marks right there on the back edge. We'll use the square to carry those marks across. Keep in mind, when using the square, you must make sure that the square is tight up against the fence of the square, that is, this part here, in order for it to work accurately.
Again, stopping the lines to keep them from going all the way to the front. So there we have it. And you can see, we've got the top and the bottom, and we've got the two sides right there.
I'm going to set my marking gauge to a quarter of an inch. Again, I could use the ruler for this, but I'll just use a quarter inch chisel. And as I mentioned in the previous videos on how to set this up, I want to make sure that the chisel is right there at the tip, set to a quarter of an inch. And this will be used to mark the depth of the dado.
So again, from the inside-- how do I know what's the inside? Well, there's my arrow, and there are my lines. If I have these lines drawn on the outside, that would be in the wrong place. The lines are only drawn on the inside.
So I'm going to put the fence against the inside, and we're going to mark the depth-- a quarter of an inch in the depth here. A quarter inch seems to work well. If I went much deeper there, it could weaken this, and I don't want to do that.
OK, so from the inside here, we're going to skip to the side. And we'll scribe that as well. The top-- poke that little line in there, and slide it up. If you're more comfortable making repetitive cuts, that's perfectly fine. It's actually maybe desirable to make one poke and then a light cut and then a heavier cut with the gauge.
So there we have it. We've got all of the depth marks marked with our gauge. The next mark that we want to mark with the gauge is the distance from the edge over here.
And we know that I've milled all the wood to where it's exactly 5/8 of an inch from the face, right there. A couple ways you could do this. I mean, I could put the side on here like this and put a little mark right there. But for speed, we can just take the thickness of the stock, which is 5/8 of an inch. And it should line up right with that pencil mark I just put there.
In fact, I'm going to make it a little bit greater, and we're going to go ahead and mark the stopping point. This is marking the stopped dado. And we're marking this from the front, that is from the face edge.
OK, let's just put it together and make sure that it's put on correctly. We've got our dados right there. We've got our top and our bottom. And that concludes the preliminary layout. I believe we are now ready to begin cutting dados.
Cutting the Dados
I'd like to start with the dado on the two sides. The reason for that is if you are a little loose on these dados, it's not as critical as if you were loose on the top and the bottom. So in other words, it gives you a little couple extra practice pieces prior to doing the top and the bottom dados. Let's begin. I'm considering the back of the side here, the back of the shelf as my reference point.
And this is going to be my face. I'm going to put the knife straight in here, slide it up. All of this is covered in our three joint series where we talk about hand cutting the dado joint. You'll want to watch that prior to doing this, as we cover a lot of the techniques and stuff. You'll notice that I am using a little different technique here in this paring method, which I actually like to use. You may feel more comfortable coming in like this.
But I like to slide it along. It works fairly effectively. Once we've established our wall there, we can come back now with the chisel and the mallet and hit straight down like this. You can then come in with your mallet and cut in like this. So you can see how fast can actually cut one of these, working in this fashion. So there we have it. We're down to our depth right there. We can come in with our the shelf and position it just like this.
Angle the knife. Put a little mark right there. And if you're up to working like this, you just take it around. As opposed to moving this board, flipping it around, you could work it like this. Lightly at first, and then heavier with the stroke. Again, you can come in shearing it across the grain. Now, well, the trick here is to keep the edge of the chisel away from the wall there so you don't damage the wall.
Come back with a knife, angling it. It will follow right in that same cut. Again, if you're comfortable, you can just switch hands and work back this way. Course, if you're not comfortable doing it this way, you might be more comfortable just taking the whole piece, flipping it around on the vice like this. Angle the knife-- very important to angle the knife. That will keep the wall straight.
So I say angle knife. I'm not angling the wall. I'm just angling the knife, because it's a double bevel knife. And I'm trying to get that wall straight. Come back with the chisel like this. Follow along that knife wall, just like so. Follow it along. And then we come back even like this and remove that material like that. We'll make one more pass like this lightly. And now, we can pare away the waste in here, like this.
As I mentioned in the previous video, I'm cutting a stop dado. It's easy to go too deep like this. And the reason why, oftentimes is because one might have a shorter chisel, and it rides up on this beveled part. And it's easy to cut in like this. So you've got to watch for that. Make sure you don't go too deep. If you need to on a longer dado, you can even turn the chisel around, and come at it, like this.
Now, I'm going to clean this part up. Just make a few cuts right up to it. And we'll come on the side, like this. Hang that up. And then I'm going to clean it up with a router plane. So we'll set the router plane right to my depth, which I've already cut to the depth right at this end. Because I've got the layout line over here on this side.
And then we can bring this in and bring a nice, even depth all the way across. I'm just going to take the knife and just clean up right there. And right there, making sure that it's nice and crisp there. Let's just check it. Again now, if it's a little bit tight like this one is, there's a couple ways to deal with it.
One thing that I look at if it's too tight is I look at the walls to make sure that the walls are running perfectly straight. If they're actually canted in-- and a lot of times, this will happen, where you start out here, then they'll come in like this. The first thing that I would want to do is I'd want to come back with a chisel and clean that up. What it looks like I've done here with this one is it's a little bit on the tight side is I just under cut it a little bit too much with my knife.
So there's a couple things I could do. I could even go back and score this again, or I could just hand plane the end of this right here. I've put a little knife mark there. I'll show you how you can clean this up. Just take the knife right in there and slide this up to it. And score this lightly, angling the knife. Now, what I have is I've got a miniature knife wall here that we can just set the chisel.
The chisel should fall right in there. And we go straight in, just like this. And there we go. So that concludes the first side. The second side will be done in exactly the same manner. Well, I'm just finishing up the second dado on the side here. And we'll just test fit it. And it fits nicely.
So now, we can move on to the dado on the top and the bottom. Let's start with the top one. Again, the bottom one is probably the most critical one that's tight. So let's start with the top one here. Again, this is giving us lots of exercise and practice at getting our dados nice and tight. Now, one of the things that you want to keep in mind here when working on the dados here is that we've got this part here, which can be weak.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to actually start on both of these dados. I'm going to start on the inside. And we're going to cut that first. Thus, relieving some of that wood. Then we come over here, there's less chance of breaking this out. We still have to be careful of this so that we don't break that out. Well, let's start on the inside, right there. So I'll start by marking.
Remember to keep the knife on the good side. Rather, the knife on the away side and the square on the good side. Lightly-- now, what I like to do is I like to just bring the square around, like this, and mark both of these. So whatever cut I do on one, I'm going to do that exact same cut on the other. It just cuts down on wasted motion. Now, we can work it.
Again, I like to bring this chisel along, slicing it along the grain. And this technique works in hardwood, in soft wood. It does require a little bit of practice. Notice that the tip of it is away from the edge. And I'm shearing it along. This is jumping a little bit because of the grain. But we've got that.
And we'll come back here. And you'll also notice here a little technique I'm using. When I'm cutting with a knife, I'm actually supporting the tip, rather the end of the knife with my thumb. And then my fingers are braced on the bench. And that just adds an extra point of stability as I'm working along here. Now, back in with the chisel, just like this.
And again, you can use this technique as well, where you just come straight in, just like this. Comes straight in, just like that. Remove that material. Then come back again. See? See how I'm supporting this with my, my finger out here. And we've got a nice, established wall here. Here, we can come back with a chisel, keeping it flat up against the side.
Switch sides, and come right over here. And cut this one, as well. Then we'll come in here, like this. And the same way, over here. You notice what I'm doing here is I'm using an overhand. So I've got the mallet over, like this. Still, my fingers are low. So I'm supporting the chisel. Remove that material. You can again, come back with a knife and work it like this.
Now, I'm going to transfer the shelf to mark each individual dado. I want to make sure that I get the correct shelf for the right size. Because what we're doing is we're not using a measuring tape here. We're using the actual thickness of the side to match this dado. So this dado is going to fit right inside. This shelf, rather is going to fit right inside this dado.
So let's make sure we get the right one. We're working on the top. This is the left one. So this goes right up right in here, just like so. And again, make sure it's not angled over too far-- as straight as you can. And angle the knife so that it just goes in, just like this. Angle the knife. We'll get the other one and fit it right over here. And angle the knife just like this.
And now, we have both of these marked. Now, marking these with a square a little tricky, because we've got our square, like this. And if I position my square on this side, then I've lost my point of reference here. Because this is my point of reference here. And I'm assuming then that this would be perfectly parallel with this edge.
And I really want to work off of the continuous edge. In this case, I want to work off of this back edge. If I hold the square like this, there's no point that I can actually position it on. So that's not going to work, as well. And I don't want to put it like this, because then the knife is going to be on the good side and the square on the waste side. And it's not going to be accurate.
So I really have to position. This is really the only way that I can position it. But I've got to watch doing this, because the square may want to move. And I don't want to really drag the knife into the square like this. So what I have to do is I have to hold the square like this, put the knife in there. Hold it in there, and very lightly score it. Again, I can't stress enough how important it is that you hold this square.
Tie it up against there, and press very lightly, initially. Once you have that marked and you've marked over it a few times, you can move the square out of the way, and then come back and mark it heavier. Now I'll mark the other side here. Again, I'm going to hold it like this, put the knife in there. And again, this is a little awkward. But you just have to make sure that you press the square up against the edge here and hold the knife.
And press very lightly with the knife. If I pressed hard with the knife, there would be a tendency that I could move the square. And then we wouldn't really mess it up. So this is probably the most vulnerable part of the dado, right here. Because it's so close to this outside edge. So I've got to be careful. If you're going to use this method, just be careful that you don't press too hard and then end up breaking something off.
So we're going to come in like that. Got to switch hands, like this. We'll come back with a knife one more time and mark this again. And again, like that. And again, I can use this same technique here, where I slice it along. And this will minimize any pressure going in that direction. Of course, if you're not comfortable with this method, I wouldn't necessarily recommend you doing it, because you could also tear up that edge, right there.
Now, I've got an established wall. And if I was to go straight in with the chisel, like this, and hit this down, again, the chisel's acting like a wedge. And it may want to push the material out on this side. It's also pushing to that side, as well. And I can do that. I can do it lightly. Just come in like this. But I've got to be very cautious. There is another technique that you can actually use for this.
And that's actually using a saw. I can use the dovetail saw and cut along the side, right here. And cut down, right down to the line. Now, I can't cut all the way through. So I'm going to lower the saw. And you'll see, I'll be making short strokes, just like this. And the saw will dig in, right towards the edge, right there. And as long as we go down to the line, we should be fine.
So that's one effective way really, to do any type of dado. This is actually, in fact, the exact method that I use when I'm doing a long dado. So if I'm making a long dado or something similar, I'll create the knife line in exactly the same way. I'll come along and create that little wall with the chisel in exactly the same way. That forms a nice channel for you to be able to put the saw in and work it.
Even a shorter saw like this will work on a much wider piece. So we're going to work the saw down. Now, I'm working, putting pressure here, at this part, cutting in right down there. And then I can come back and even remove some of the waste with the chisel, just like this, very carefully. See how my palm is resting against the workpiece? Come in like this.
I'm going to come back with a couple knife strokes, just to clean up-- especially right up in there, where the saw didn't really get right up in that area. Now, we'll come back with a half inch chisel and remove the waste. It's always important that you mark with a knife and cut those fibers going across the grain. Because if you don't, when I come back with a router plane, I could tear something, or it wouldn't cut all the way through.
So make sure that you score the fibers going this way. And then we'll come back with the plane, like this. Now, when we fit these, we want to make sure that they're not too tight. Course, we don't want them too lose. But if they're too tight, that's another opportunity for this to blow out and break out.
If it does break out, all you've got to do is simply put a little glue and a little masking tape, and clamp that down, and it'll be just fine. So just make sure it's not too tight. You can feel it. Wiggle it to the side. That's all a means to help. That's a little bit on the tight side. But that's fine. And that'll actually give me a little bit of leeway when I surface plane this.
I can plane this, and it'll fit just right. And it's going in enough that I can know that it is going to go in all the way. This is exactly the same way. This actually fits very nicely. And it's tight in there. So that concludes cutting the dados for the top. The bottom are going to be done exactly in the same manner. I'm just finishing up the dado here on the bottom, just cleaning it up with a router plane.
And then we'll fit it, make sure that it fits. Again, I want to make sure that everything is nice and crisp inside there. Can even come along with the one inch chisel, which is a broad chisel. And just make sure that that side is nice and crisp. One more pass with the router plane, and we should be ready to test fit it.
Here we go. And then we'll take the top and fit it on, like this. And as I mentioned, the top is a little bit tight. And we can use an assembly mallot to tap it in place. But I don't want to tap it all the way in place for a fear that I might-- well, I can feel it. You can see it's starting to go down. That's actually going down very nice.
And here we go. Now that we've got the six dados completed, the next step is to fit the shelf in between here. And as I mentioned earlier, I don't want to use a tape measure. If I use a tape measure, there's a chance that I could get the measurement off slightly, whereas if I put this piece directly up here and scribe fit it, it'll be much more accurate.
Now, before I do that, I want to determine which is the front, which is the left, right of the shelf. I've got a little bit of a knot right there. And I know this piece is a little long. So I'm actually going to cut it off right over there on this side. So being that the knot's over there, we're going to make this as the front. So I'm going to mark shelf on here. And I'm going to mark this as left, and this as the right.
So before I cut this end off, I want to make sure that this end is square. And it should be square. But we'll just check that. And it's good and square. If it wasn't square, you'd have to make sure that you cut it square or use a shooting board and a plane to shoot this nice and square. So we're going to fit this right inside here. Now, my goal here is to get inside this point and then to this point here.
So I'll put this right inside here, just like this. And just put a little knife knick right there, up against the side. Just a little knife knick, right there. So again, this is right inside that point, and then right over there. Now But I've marked this, I'm just going to come here with a square and carry that line across the entire width of the board using the square and the knife.
The next step is to remove this part, right there. It's not necessary. But I like to make a shoulder here prior to cutting it. And if you'll notice, I have this flat. I'm going to cut it like this. That way, if I was to saw it off on an angle, there's a lot less material that I'm going through, as opposed to standing it up right, like this, and sawing it down. Then I'd have to steer the saw perfectly straight as I traveled down the entire width of the board.
Plus, I may run out of saw width using a-- well, if I used a saw like this, I'm obviously going to run out of the ability to be able to cut all the way through. So by putting it like this, I can cut straight in, just like that. Now, what you'll notice, I'm listening to the sound, as I get towards the end. This is the beauty of using a hand saw here, is that I can listen to that sound, slow the saw down as I through, and it breaks right off without tearing out the back side.
Also, I've got that knife line on the backside. So that also helps keep it from tearing out. Now, one thing I want to point out here, that you'll notice that I've deviated from the line just slightly. Let's put a square on it. And that'll help us see that. If we put a square on it and held it up to the light, you can see that we've deviated from the line just a little bit. So how do we fix that?
Well, this is where a shooting board comes in very handy. A shooting board can be something very simple. I've made one here that's a little bit complex. But you can use really anything that forms a 90 degree corner here. So I've got a 45 degree angle here and a 90 degree one. This fits in here, like this. You can use any plane that has a square edge.
I like to use a low angle plane. Because a low angle plane tends to give me a shearing cut, which is what I want for cross grain cut. So you'll notice here, when I put this up here, you can see how far off I am. But a couple strokes, and you'll see how that pulls right up. See that gap right there? It's going to close up as I take material off on this side.
Here we go. I'm pushing with this hand, pushing in this direction. And we're closing that up. And I'm going to right to my line right there. And there we go. We can put a square on it, and it should be perfectly square. Very nice. A shooting board is quite simple, as I mentioned. It's just basically a piece of wood down here with another piece of wood right on the top.
The important part, though, is that we have a fence that's 90 degrees right here. The plane just simply rides on this part. And it only cuts into this piece of wood as much as the blade is sticking out. So there's a little recess there that's formed when the first few times that you run the plane on there. Very simple fixture to have in the shop. But absolutely essential, especially for jobs like this, squaring it up, and making it perfectly square.
Now, let's go ahead and fit the shelf inside of our dados, right here. It should slide in. If your dados are tight, you may have to take the whole thing apart. But let's see if we can slide this in. Sometimes, I'll even take this and turn it down, like this, and then slide it in from the top, just like so. Now, I want to make sure before I go on to the next step that this is secure, tighten the dado this way.
So if I hit it right there, it's obviously not going to work, because of this gap, right there. So what we're going to do is we're going to set this on the edge of the bench, making sure that it's flat on the bench right there. And we're going to pit it straight down, like this. That makes it good and tight this way. Nice and tight that way. Now, what we can do is we can come back with a knife. And we can mark either side.
So we're going to mark right there, and we're going to mark right here. And what I'm doing is I'm marking for my actual step. Because this one is going to be a stepped dado. In other words, this is going to come all the way flush with the front. So I'm marking my step. Again, notice here, I'm angling the knife in like this-- important. You've got to compensate for that double bevel.
So you've got to angle the knife in, like this. Once that's marked, I'll go ahead and knock this out. And you can do that by just simply putting it on the edge of the bench, like this, and then knocking this all the way through, just like that. Now that I've got that little mark right there, I've got to mark, how deep am I going to make this cut?
Because what we're going to do is we're going to make a little notch right there. If you remember back to the video that we did on cutting a dado, we talk about cutting this stop and this little step. But what we're going to do is we're going to put this up here like this. And we'll take a pencil and mark this, right here. So I'm marking this distance, right here.
And we have a little bit of leeway. So I'm not going to be super accurate here with this. This is going to be hidden inside there. I'm just making this as flush as I like. Nice and flush there, and putting a little mark, right there. We'll do the same thing on this side, as well. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this, put this in the vice, and use the knife and the square to carry those scribe lines across the face.
So we're going to carry it across this way and then down this side. Now that I've got the knife line scribed here, I'm going to use the same technique that we've talked about in our earlier videos where we use that knife wall. We'll come in here, and we'll just make a little cut, just like this, right on the top. And then we'll use the saw and cut straight down, just like this.
Now that I've cut down to my pencil line, which is facing me, I'm going to come in here and just chunk off the waste right down to the pencil line. We'll do the exact same thing on the other side here. We'll come in, making our little knife wall there. Then we'll saw it with the saw, right down to the pencil line. And then I'll chunk away the material, just like this.
Stay above the line, and work it slowly down to the line. I'll have to come back and just clean up that last little bit, working down. Now, we can fit the shelf inside our dados. And this will complete this part. Make sure I have the left and right configuration. There's the shelf, left and right.
We'll go ahead and push this down. And it should fit nicely. And now we have it. It's nice and flush with the front, and no gap there. So that completes the dados and the fitting of the shelf. Now we've got to mark for the mortise and tenons.
Cutting the Mortise and Tenons
The next step here is to lay out the position for the mortise and tenons. But before I do that, I'd like to just draw a little illustration to help clarify exactly what we're doing here by positioning the mortise and tenons in place. We've got these pieces, which are 5/8 of an inch thick. Let me draw a picture of a tenon here, which will, again, help illustrate this.
So we've got the tenon here. So this is what our tenon is going to look like. You can see here this is the width of the stock right here. There's our shoulder, right? Our shoulder goes across the grain. The cheek runs with the grain.
But this is what is referred to as a bare faced tenon. And what I mean by that is it only has a shoulder on one side. The other side, this backside, has just a bare face. It's just perfectly flat. Actually, this is a bare faced tenon on three sides, on the top and the bottom and at the backside. So it's only shouldered on the front.
We're going to call this the front right there. There's our shoulder. There's our cheek. Now, the top one here, the top one, this tenon length is only going to be a quarter of an inch. It's only going to be one quarter of an inch in length.
Now, this bottom one is going to be equidistant. So we'll determine that distance here in just a moment. So far as the width, we know that the overall width of this stock here is 5/8 of an inch. We know that's 5/8 of an inch right there. And then we know that this distance here, well, what we're going to make it is we're going to make it a half of an inch wide. So we're going to make a half inch mortise there, leaving only an eighth of an inch for this shoulder right there.
Being that the tenons are going to be only shouldered on the front, and they're going to be full width, we can actually take this actual piece to determine the width on the actual shelf. I'm going to actually mark the general location for these mortises right now. I want them to be towards the front, and I want to mark it while this is all together. This is important because it's easy to accidentally put a mortise maybe in this location and then in this location if it was taken apart.
So if I mark it while it's all together, I'm ensuring that I put the mortises in the correct location. So we're going to put a little mark, maybe just a little x right there in the front right there, one right there, and one right there. So mortise, mortise, mortise, and mortise.
Then we're going to take the width of this stock, which this stock is about 2 inches in width. And we'll take this and just position it right up here. So I'm going to mark right along there and right along there. But you'll notice that mark does not run all the way across. The mortise is just in this front right here.
We'll put it over here, and we'll mark right up along there and right up along there as well. We'll do the exact same thing on the bottom where these other second set of mortises are going, right there and right there as well. Now we can go ahead and take the shelf apart and begin marking the actual width of the mortises using a mortise gauge.
Before we mark the actual position of the mortise with the mortise gauge, I want to clarify something. This top mortise, it only goes in a quarter of an inch. So it does not go all the way through. This one, on the other hand, does go all the way through. So these layout lines that I just marked on here, I want to carry those to the other side. Let's do that now. We'll take this, and we'll follow this line around to the other side.
So we're going to have a mortise in this location. And then again, we're going to carry this line around to the other side. Great. Now that we've got that, let's go ahead and lay out the actual position of the mortise from the front edge here.
Again we're going to set our mortise gauge to the width of the chisel that we'll be using. In this case, it'll be 1/2 inch chisel. We'll set the two pins, just as we did in the mortise exercise, in the three joints video series. So we'll set the chisel to the distance between the pins, which is half an inch.
And then from the fence to the first movable point, it will be 5/8 of an inch. Let's just use the thickness of the stock. We'll bring that right up just like that, locking it down. And that'll be the measurement.
You can also test this too. Whenever I do a mortise, sometimes I like to just pick up a piece of scrap wood, poke two points in there or even move it along, and just see how the chisel falls in between there, making sure that the chisel falls smartly between those lines, right there in between those lines. If it's too wide, well then we're going to have a problem. If it's too narrow, conversely, there will be a problem as well.
Now we're going to mark the width of the mortise using the gauge. And this one is going to be slid all the way up here, just like so. This one here, I'm going to actually put two points right in there and then slide it right up to those two points. Flip this over and mark between those two points as well, popping at those two points.
Again, it's helpful to mark lightly. It's oftentimes a temptation to mark too heavy initially. You can always go back and deepen those lines. But mark lightly at first. That'll score the line. You'll be fighting the tool a lot less doing it that way. This one here on the other side is a through mortise.
OK, let's chop some mortises. I'm going to start by working on this top mortise here. And again, remember, this only goes a quarter of an inch deep. I don't mind if it goes a little bit deeper, 3/8 of an inch. I just want to make sure that doesn't go 5/8 of an inch. That would be a through mortise.
Let's start here. We're going to start a little bit away from the line. And we're going to slowly increase it, just as we did in our mortising video. You remember how we angled the chisel slightly this way, and I'm holding it with the precision grip, primarily because my goal here is not to go very deep. I only want to go a little bit more than a quarter here.
Now, when we get towards the end, you'll notice I've got a little bit of material right there. Now, it's very easy to chunk that out. If that part chunks out, don't worry about it. It's not a problem. It's just a challenge to get to leave it in there. Nobody will ever see it. But if you can leave that in there, it's a good exercise for working in this short grain right here.
Let me show you how I accomplish that. As we get closer, the goal is to take a much smaller bite. If I take the chisel straight in like this, I can guarantee that this piece right back here is going to blow out. So what I've got to do is I've got to come at an angle and follow it like this and then gradually increase the chisel to a vertical stand, just like that. You see how we just slowly work it up, taking off a little bit of material at a time. Now that piece is still intact.
Now I'm going to come over here and work this part, again, just as we did, coming in at an angle like this, and again bringing the chisel up to that vertical position. Now I'm creeping back to the line. And there we have it. We've got that-- maybe just one more hit right there.
Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to come back with a smaller chisel. A 3/8 chisel will work well. And we'll come back in here, bevel down. And we'll use this like a plane. You see how I'm wiggling it back and forth? I want to be careful that I'm not holding it back here, because if I'm just pushing like this, I can also blow through and break that part out there.
Come back this way and clean that out. If you used a small router plane for this, you can actually use that same setting on your router plane to ensure that it is the correct depth. One thing that I like to do is I like to check it with a square to make sure that it is indeed at least a quarter of an inch. 5/16 is actually better because the tenon length is a quarter of an inch, and I don't want it bottoming out.
So I'm just testing it along here. Let's look at that measurement, and it is 5/16 of an inch in depth. So I'm happy with that. I'm going to come back and just clean up the walls just a little bit, just because they're a little fuzzy from working it with the chisel. And that's what we want. So we've got that mortised out just like that.
Let's turn our attention to this lower mortise, which is a through mortise. So we get to go 5/8 of an inch on this one. However, I am going to work from both sides on this one. So we're going to come in, go halfway down, 5/16 down this way, and then go 5/16 up from the other sides. So we'll turn it over.
So again, it's the same exact technique. We'll start with a half inch chisel. Make a stop cut, angle the chisel in like this. You'll see I'm just going to kind of work this like this. Each time, I'm removing the chips. What that does is it enables the chisel to have clearance to be able to go deeper with each subsequent cut.
Now, this one I'm going to come all the way here to the top. You can see we're going to come all the way through into that dado. So I'll even sometimes score the side right there. Maybe come in with a 3/8 chisel and take that away.
Let's come back this way and then work this nice and straight. We'll come all the way up to that line, all the way up to that line. There we go. Now we can take the 3/8 chisel, bevel down, and work it just like that
I'm just going to come along with my chisel and just score along the sides, cleaning up any little of those what I call the fuzzies that are on the side there. Back in with this chisel, and now it's ready to come in from the other side. Before we flip this over to cut the mortise from the other side, I want to do one thing.
I want to take my half inch chisel, and I want to make an incision right here at the bottom of the dado. The reason for that is when I'm coming through from the other side, that incision is going to keep this piece of wood right there in the dado from chipping out. So I've made that little knife cut there, the chisel cut. And now we're ready to mortise it from the other side.
I'm going to come in here and make two stop cuts along the edge. Being that this is a through mortise, I'm going to actually use the method that I introduced there in the video we did on cutting a mortise, where I talk about making a little mini mortise. And that's just a nice way of outlining this outside edge. It keeps that edge from being torn, and it also makes a nice place for the chisel to be able to follow in a nice straight line.
Now, the pine can be a little bit spongy, so I've got to be careful holding this more at an angle, especially coming through, because I don't want to break it out. I really want to do more of a cutting action. By holding more of an angle, I'm kind of cutting with the fibers like this, as opposed to just more upright, where I'd be forcing the fibers straight down and breaking them.
Now I'll turn the chisel around. The bevel is facing me. And I'm going to come in like this and work in this direction here. Come back here. Remove some of this material, and then come back like this. Again, I'm just going to come in here and cut that in just a little.
You see how I'm really holding the chisel tight. The reason why is because I'm trying to take off as little of material as possible. If I was to hold the chisel loosely and hit this, it could go blowing all the way through and bust something out on the other side. Back in with the 3/8 chisel, we're just going to remove some of that material there. We can even come along with our one inch chisel and just slice it along the side and clean it up.
You'll notice that there's a little bit of material left in there. That will actually keep the tenon from fitting. So I'm going to clean that up. Again, very carefully come in like this and angle the chisel back like this. Again, really holding that chisel tight, pinching the chisel, and then coming at it like that. We're going to just clean the side up. You could even take the chisel and run it in there just like this. Run it back and forth, and that'll clean it up nicely.
One last thing that I want to do is I want to make sure that this line is in line with this line. And I can do that by putting the square, again, starting from the inside here. And we'll drop it down. And make sure-- now you see, there's a little bit of a gap right there on the outside. What that's telling me is it's telling me if I was to fit the tenon from this side, coming in like this, that I'd have a gap right out there. And it's also telling me that this is a little bit high right there. So I'm going to take this and chisel that back just slightly. The way I'm going to clean that is by taking the half inch chisel, taking it and-- I know I've got to take a little bit of material off, only as much material as the gap is showing. So we're going to just take this and come in like that. Again, you see how I'm really holding that chisel back. If I let the chisel go, it could blow out the other side, and we'd really have a mess on our hands.
Now we'll test it again, and you can see that the square is nice and tight right up along that edge. Let's test it on the top. It also is good. Now I can move on to mortising the second side. I'm just finishing up the second side here. We're just cleaning up the edges, making sure it's nice and crisp and clean inside.
We'll check it with our square from the inside, making sure that it's good and tight. And I think we're good to go. The next step would be cutting the tenons. So we've got to reassemble the shelf, and then we'll mark and cut the tenons.
Now that we've got the shelf fit back together, the next step is to determine which of these we want to be the top and which to be the bottom. I've got this one here that's got a little knot on the end. And I think I'm going to put that towards the top because it's long anyway, and I could cut that knot off.
Another thing that I want to consider when I position these pieces and mark which one is left and right and top and bottom is the grain orientation. And that is we know that there's going to be an arch that we're going to cut into this. So if your wood happens to have some sort of arching grain already in the material, configure the piece to match the actual shape so that the grain follows that arch. In other words, right here there's a very, very subtle arch here. So I would want to put that to where the arch that I cut in follows that grain line. It's especially important if you have a very pronounced grain. You certainly wouldn't want to reverse it.
So I'm going to mark this as the top, and I'm going to mark this as the left and the right. And this one here is pretty straight grain. Let's just mark this one. We'll just call it mid, and then we'll call it left and right, middle. And there we go.
So I'm going to start here with this left side because I want to cut this off. I'm going to show you how I layout that tenon just on this one side. So we know that this top tenon is only going to be a quarter of an inch long, which is-- most tenons are usually longer than that. But this is an exercise here that we'll do.
Quarter of an inch long. Again, no need to use a ruler, although you could. I just simply get a quarter inch chisel and position it right here on the end. And all I'm using the quarter inch chisel for is just the length, to determine the length of the actual tenon. So we position it like that, put the little knife mark there. Take the square and square that line across.
Now, it's extremely important, as I've mentioned in previous videos there, that the shoulder is square. That's what's going to determine whether this whole entire piece is square. As you can see, we get a little movement like that. Because as I mentioned in the dado video, most of the dadoes have-- their strength is down in this direction. So when combined with other joints, as you'll see here with the mortise and tenons, that will give this rigidity, and it will help ensure that this is square.
But the squareness comes in here in the shoulders. So make sure that those shoulder lines are perfectly square. So we've got that mark. We're only going to mark one side right now. Now I've got to reset the gauge. And back to our illustration here, we know that this is a bare-faced tenon, so it's only shoulder on one side. So instead of using the mortise gauge. where it has two points, we're only going to use the single point right here. We're going to set that to our half inch chisel, right to the point. Half inch chisel right to the point there. And we're going to scribe this from the backside. And that will make the actual tenon width a half of an inch.
You could do this free hand like this. The problem with doing it free hand is that it's easy to get off and move it around. So you can simply put it in the vice and help support the gauge with your left hand and guide it like this. So I'll just take it and run it along like that. Again, just a few strokes there.
Now you can see we're going to go ahead and cut that little bit off. That's all we're going to remove, is that little bit. That'll leave us with a quarter inch this way and a half an inch that way. And again, we're only cutting one side. Make your shoulder cut here.
And we're only going down an 1/8 of an inch. So it's not very many saw strokes. Make sure that you stop it before you go all the way through. And being that we're removing so little material, oftentimes just use the chisel along the cheek there to just split off the material.
You can even set the chisel right in the line and take that right off. I can come across the grain and clean that up. So there we have it. We've got one shoulder complete for the upper piece right here.
Let's go ahead and lay out the bottom tenon. Now, the easiest way to measure this one is to position this just like this and make it equidistant and actually stand it up on edge like this and make sure it's equidistant. That is, it's the correct measurement from side to side.
You can even take a ruler to help you measure that. In this case, let's see, it is 3/8 of an inch over there and a little over 7/16. So I've got to actually come back this way just a smudge there. 7/16 there and about 7/16 there.
Now what I've got do is I'm going to mark this right up in here. We're going to mark just one side only. We're just going to mark the left side. So I'm going to take the knife on the inside here and just put a little knife mark there. Again, I'm marking the shoulder line on the inside.
So there's our knife cut. Now we're going to score that across, marking our shoulder using the square. Lightly, then heavier. Put it in the vice.
Working from the back side, we'll use the exact same measurement. Make sure we use the single point here and mark it from the back side. Slice it. Slide it down. And now we can remove that material. Let's go ahead and cut the shoulder line. So always make your little knife [? wall ?] cut there, which helps guide the saw. Remember, we're only going 1/8 of an inch deep, so we've got to be careful that we don't go too deep.
Now, there's two ways to remove this material here. I could chisel it off, but before I chisel it off, I want to inspect the grain. And I can see right here that the grain is clearly making a downward dive. And if I was to chisel that, I could ruin that tenon. So I'm fairly certain that the only way to remove this material is to saw it.
I'll put it upright like this in the vice. I can use the dovetail saw and just put it against my thumb, put my thumb there on the side, and saw the cheek off. Listen as you get towards the end. You don't want to run the saw into the shoulder. You'll hear the tone change. And there it is right at the end. It's off.
Now, I want to make sure that it's nice and crisp right there in the corner, and that there's no debris right there in the corner. So we'll just come back with the chisel and clean it up going across the grain. If you work it across the grain, work the chisel across the grain, you don't have to worry about the grain diving down because we're working across those fibers as opposed to with the fibers.
Now that we've got the upper one cut and the lower one cut, I'm going to now mark the other side using the scribe method. What we're going to do is we want to determine now this distance from inside here to inside there. That's the measurement that's important. Again, of course, I could take out my tape measure, and I could try to define that distance. Just take this and say, OK, that is 13 and one, two, three, four, 5/16 plus maybe a 64th of an inch. And then come over here. You go over here, and you say, OK, that's 13 and 5/16 plus a 64th and mark it. But there's some variation, both in the end of the tape measure and even in our marking, our ability to mark.
It's much more accurate to use the scribe method. So what we're going to do is we're going to actually put this right inside here. I'll turn this around so you can see it. There's our tenon shoulder right there. We're going to put it in there nice and tight.
Now, if you'll notice, I can push this to one side. Now you can see right in there I've got a gap right in there. If I go ahead and mark this other side with that gap in there, then this is going to be loose because that's not an accurate distance from side to side. So what I've got to do is I've got to pull this to where there's no gap right in there. It's nice and tight all the way in there. And we'll use our knife to scribe this other corner. Again, I'm not scribing the entire width of this. I'm just really angling the knife, putting a little mark right there in the corner.
Now we're going to do the exact same thing on this lower one. Again, we'll put it down here. Making sure that it's good and square and snug in there. Now that we've got both of these marked, we can use our square to scribe that shoulder line. Again, the square is the most important thing here to obtain a perfectly square shoulder.
Now, you'll notice on this top one, we only have a tenon that's 1/4 of an inch in length. But we've got all this extra material here. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take my 1/4 inch chisel and add to this shoulder line. Add to it, put my knife mark there, and scribe it again.
See what happens? I just pressed too hard with the knife, and the knife actually slid away from the square. So very important you press very lightly with the knife, and then go back heavier. So I've added a quarter of an inch to my shoulder. And this all is waste. So we're going to cut that off.
This is only on the upper one. Now let's go ahead and mark the tenons in the exact same fashion that we did earlier, using the marking gauge. Again, from the back side, we'll put this in the vice. Defining the width of the tenon, which in this case is 1/2 an inch.
We'll do the same thing on the lower one as well. This is the lower one that we've marked the longer tenon. Again, I'm going to mark this right here. If you're using a marking/mortise gauge, it's important that you make sure you use the right end. So I've got the two points on this side, and the single point on this side.
In this case, we're using the single point. So don't make a mistake and flip it over and mark it like this. You want to make sure that you have and use that single point right there. That's the one we set our chisel to. Let's bring that same line down like this.
Now we're going to cut the shoulder using the dovetail saw here. You could also use a cross-cut saw for this, but I like to use the dovetail saw. The teeth are fine, and it cuts just fine. This grain is actually going nice and straight, and I could just chisel away that cheek material right there.
So I'm going to come in here, starting above the cut, and work this in. By starting above the cut, just in case the grain dives down, I'm still safe. But if I take off too much, I can get in trouble.
You see here, the grain is actually diving in slightly. So I've got to be very careful where it's diving in. So I'm going to actually come across and work it across the grain, and that should save me there.
Now we'll cut the shoulder and the cheek on the upper tenon. Now that our tenons are cut, we can actually test fit our shoulders prior to taking the shelf apart. The way you can do that is you can just simply put this in place right here, and it should fit right in between there. You can see how it fits, almost fits.
There we go. You can see that the shoulders are now nice and tight right between these two points. We can test that as well on the lower one. And that's good and tight.
Now we need to fit the actual tenon into the mortise. I'll have to take this apart prior to fitting the tenons into each corresponding mortise. Let's start with these upper mortise and tenons. We know that this one is the right side, and this one is the right tenon. So we'll go ahead and position this right in here like this.
Now, there's two dimensions that this has to fit. It has to fit both in the width, and it has to fit in the width in this direction. We'll call this the height, and we'll call this the width. So it's got to fit in the width this way and the height that way. So I'm going to start by fitting it like this. Let's fit the width. And you can see as we fit it in there, it fits nicely.
Now, if it was too tight, I would either trim the mortise or the tenon. I would look at the mortise first, making sure the mortise was nice and clean and crisp if it was too tight. And then if it was a little ragged, I'd clean that up. Then, if I was happy with the mortise, then I would look at the actual tenon and see how close we were to the line. And you can pare it accordingly.
Now that we fit the actual width, now we need to fit the height. So we can fit it like this, again, laying this down at an angle like this. And you can see that's going to fit nicely. So now you see by isolating these two dimensions here, we have made it easier to locate any potential problem.
Now we can fit the whole thing down in there, and it should fit nicely. There we go. That fits nicely. One thing I'm looking for is to make sure that there's no gap right in there. If this was sticking up like this, there could be two reasons why it would do that. Let's just do a little illustration to help show you what could be the potential problem.
So I'm going to draw a tenon on the board here. So here we have it. This is a tenon like this. Well, let's just draw a tenon how it looks. There's our bare face right here. And this is the shoulder.
Ideally, we want the shoulder to be perfectly square like this. What can happen sometimes is you can start out square, but then have some ragged junk right there. So when the actual-- when it goes into its mortise, it'll hit right up here, and you'll have a gap right in this area right there.
So you need to make sure that this is nice and clean. The other problem, potential problem, is it will bottom out right here. So when it's going into the mortise like this, it'll bottom out here, thus having a gap right there. So that's something that you can check pretty simply by sticking your square inside that mortise just like this, then taking that measurement-- you don't even have to know what that measurement is, you can just take it right here and make sure that that distance is greater than the actual length of the tenon.
Now that I'm happy with that one, I'm going to turn my attention to the other one. And the process is exactly the same. We'll start by fitting the width. I'm happy with the width. Feels good. Let's check the height.
Height seems all right, although I see a little bit that I would like to clean up in there because I don't want to blow that out. So I'm just going to clean up a little bit in the height. Let's fit that in there. Nice. I will say, pine does have a little bit of a compression factor. So don't worry. If it's a little bit too tight, the pine will actually compress slightly.
Now that we fit the upper mortise and tenons, let's fit the lower ones. So again, the process is pretty much the same. However, if you remember, when we did the mortise, the through mortise and tenon in the three basic joints video series, you'll remember that I fit the through mortise and tenon from the outside first.
So I start here on the outside, making sure that it fits. Again, let's do it the same way. We're going to fit the width first. That's a little bit on the tight side. It's a little bit too tight. Let's check the height. Again, it's a little bit tight that way.
So there's a couple options. I could either clean up the side of the mortise here, or I could clean this tenon. Let's look at the tenon. I can see a little bit of the line left from my marking gauge. So that tells me that I can pare down and still have the integrity of a nice straight tenon. There's also a little bit of a ragged edge right there.
So let me start here on the mortise because I don't want to have a ragged edge here. I'm going to take the chisel and just pare it along the side. And then we'll come in, test it again. Ah, just that little bit. Sometimes it just takes the tiniest, tiniest bit.
Now let's check it in the height. Again, that was a little tight as well. There's a couple things we could do. What would actually be easier than actually increasing this distance, because I'd be chopping along this end grain, I should actually take a little bit of material off the bottom of the tenon right there. And that's pretty easily done by just putting it in the vice.
I'm going to make a knife line right here and just take a little bit of material off using the chisel and just pare it off. Essentially, we made a little shoulder here on the bottom. So we're just going to pate that, pare that off right there on the bottom. And now it should fit nicely. That's what we want there, a nice squeaky tight fit.
We'll test it from the other side. Again, that shoulder needs to be to the front. This is the left side. Let's go ahead and fit it in. Now I'm hitting here. So I've got to overhang it off the edge of this board because this is a through tenon.
Nice. And that is what we want. Good and tight there on that shoulder and tight all the way around there. I like that. Let me go ahead and take that out and very carefully take that out, and we're going to fit the other side in exactly the same way.
And that's it. All the tenons are fit. Now I know that they fit shoulder to shoulder. I know the tenons fit. So I know that the whole shelf should go together, although I would like to dry fit the whole thing together before I glue it up.
But before we glue it up, we need to mark the arches on these pieces, and we need to cut those. We're going to introduce a new tool, which is a spoke shave, which is a lot of fun to use, and I think you'll find many uses for it.
Carving the Arches
[MUSIC PLAYING] In a disposable world, essential items of lasting beauty are increasing in worth. Experience the fulfillment of creating heirlooms for succeeding generations with your own hands.
Hi, my name is Frank Strazza with the Heritage School of Woodworking. And in this video, I'm going to show you how to cut an arch using nothing more than a saw, a chisel, and a spokeshave.
If you don't have access to a bandsaw, this is a great way to cut an arch. In this shelf here that I'm making, I want to incorporate an arch. It gives me strength out here, but it also gives me a lightened look.
So I'm going to draw the arch in place. I'm going to start by coming up by about 5/8 of an inch, half an inch up. We can even find the center, which we can measure.
Always double-check your measurements that way. And now I've got a center mark right here. This gives me the high point of the arch. You can actually draw the arch with your hand, like this.
So I'm using my arm as an arch. And just draw that on there. Now this may not be perfect, but you'd be surprised at how the spokeshave, which is the other tool we'll be using, will fair this curve.
Whenever I'm making a piece of furniture and I need an arch, I'll typically make a pattern prior to doing the arch. So what you can do is you can actually make a half pattern and then flip it over. You could even draw it like this-- draw it on there, then flip it over, and draw it on like that. And you can see whatever inconsistencies there may be in your arch here.
Let's go ahead and cut it. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to put in a vice and take a dovetail saw and make a series of cuts that actually stop about 1/16 to 1/8 inch above my pencil line. The cuts are spaced about every 3/4 to an inch apart. And what we're doing here is we're creating stop cuts. And as you can see, they're varied in height right along the entire length of the board there. The next step is to come back with a chisel and remove the waste.
I've turned the piece around so that you can see my chisel following the line. You'll notice what I'm going to do here. I'm going to take the chisel with the bevel down, and I'm going to follow along that line. Also notice how I keep the chisel engaged in the cut.
Now as I work this along like this, I can raise the chisel. If I want a deeper cut, I can simply raise the chisel. If I want a more shallow cut, if I bring the chisel down like this, I'll get more of a shallow cut. So I can actually adjust the chisel as I'm working it along just the depth of cut.
Now as I get towards the center, you'll notice the grain is going perfectly straight, but the arch is going up. If I continued hitting the chisel like this, what would happen is it would actually split out right there and ruin my piece. So I'm going to come back from this side and work back this way, again, adjusting the depth of cut by how much I raise or lower the chisel.
I'm watching that angle as I go through, watching that edge of the chisel. Work it. Work it. And there we go. So that's how we cut an arch using the stop cut method.
Now this is somewhat rough. And even if you did cut this out with a bandsaw, you'd still want to smooth it out. And that's where the spokeshave comes in, which is essentially just a mini plane. Of course, it needs to be sharpened. And it's sharpened in exactly the same way the plane is sharpened.
I've got the blade which goes in. And this is bevel down. This is the angle. So this is bevel. Here's the bevel, and it's facing down. So it goes in the shave like this.
There's a couple of different models of these. Most of them are based after the Stanley series-- a Stanley 51 or 151. The 51 did not have any adjusters. The 151 has little thumb screws to adjust the blade in and out.
The way I adjust it is I loosen the blade ever so slightly to where there's still tension on the blade. And I can push it with my thumb or my forefinger here. And push it in and out and adjust it just right. Now that it's nice, I tighten this down.
Let's go ahead and start shaping this with a spokeshave. The way to hold it is one finger here, one finger there. Your thumbs go right up at the top. And you can actually skew it like this.
Now it's set a little aggressive. I'm going to back the blade off just a little bit to where barely any is coming off. Now let's try it from this side. Again, I've got to work from the top down to the center. And we just smooth that curve right down there.
The great thing about a spokeshave is you can use it for fairing the curves on a [? cabriolet. ?] You can use it for shaping the curves on any sort of headboard, or even the back of a violin. You can use it for shaping the curve on the back of a violin.
So this technique is very useful. You can also pull it towards you just like so. And we can use it for cutting the edges-- that is rounding the edges-- just slightly like this, again, working from the top down to the center.
And now let's check it. Let's look and see how fair this curve is. We'll put it on here like this. Line it up. And we'll mark it. So I'm going to mark it like this. Then I'll take it and flip it over just like so, again, lining it up with the shoulders.
And you can see that it is almost perfect. There we have it. We've got our arch that's mirrored on both sides. And we're ready to cut our second arch.
Now I've finished cutting both arches. And the next step is to put a chamfer on the ends of these through tenons as well as on the top and bottom of the shelf pieces. So we'll cut a chamfer on there. We'll cut a chamfer on the end of the tenons. And we'll clean up all of our parts with a hand plane prior to final assembly, dry fitting, and then glue up.
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Decorative Chamfers and Sanding
In this video, I'm going to show you how to chamfer the ends of the tenons as well as the top and bottom edges of both the top and the bottom. We'll also clean up the outside surfaces and prepare for glue up.
We'll start by chamfering the ends of these through tenons. You could do a roundover. You could do a chamfer. I think a chamfer looks nice. A little bit of a challenge too. One thing that we want to make sure though, is we don't chamfer too far back.
So you could even put yourself a little guideline there to make sure that you don't go too far. I'm actually not going to chamfer all the way back to that guideline. It's just there to help me know that I can't go beyond that.
I'll show you how far we're going to chamfer. Let's just take this apart. And I'll actually draw some guidelines on here by taking this and dividing the end of the tenon here into thirds, or thereabouts. We'll divide that just like this, using that same technique that we used earlier when we did the box.
So we've divided the end of the tenon into thirds. And these are just guidelines here. You want to do a lot of it by eye, too. I'm going to put this in the vice here. And we're going to start by chamfering this part.
Again, I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but it is extremely important to make sure that you remember the straws. Remember those fibers. So here's those fibers. Those colorful straws here. We'll put them out like this. And I want to make sure that I work this way. If I try to chamfer it like this, they're all going to break. If I come across like that, they're all going to break. So I've got to come back like this.
So I'm going to use the chisel here. And we're going to come straight in like this and chamfer. You see how clean that cuts it? Just nicely. Right there. We'll turn it over. We'll do the other side. Here, again, working like this.
Now let's put it up on edge and we'll work this. Now there's several ways to do this. You could use a chisel. You could use a plane. You could use the plane using the same technique that we used when we started by chamfering the edge of the box. If you are going to use a chisel, takes a little bit of control.
You take your hand back here like this, hold the chisel between your thumb and your first finger, and you just bring it along just like this. This does require a little bit of control with the chisel, but it's a good practice. Good exercise here. Bringing that along. Then I can come along like this, shearing it. Just like so.
Now I'm being very careful as I get towards the end because I want to make sure that I don't blow that part out there. So I'm going to turn this around so I can get a lower angle of attack here. So I can bring this in like this, get a lower angle of attack and actually come up like that.
You could actually use a block plane for this, which is a small plane. Generally a low angle plane, which works nicely for end grain work. The reason why I recommend a block plane for this is it's a little bit smaller. You can hold it in your hand. It's easier to see what you're doing as you work this along. The technique is exactly the same. Shearing it across the grain.
And you can see we've got that nice little even chamfer to our little line there. And I'm trying to make sure that I get all the corners lined up there. And we'll do the exact same thing on this other side here. There we go. That'll make a nice end of a tenon. That'll fit nicely in there. And you can see the look that we're after there. Nice little chamfer right there.
Before we start hand planing all of our parts, it's important that you mark which one is the left and which one is the right because at this point, we're going to plane away those marks. So I'm going to start by marking this one as the left. And what I like to do is I'll just transfer the marks here. I know this is the left. I'll just transfer those inside the joints.
So I'll just mark this as left and this one here is right. Of course you could probably pick this up and you'd be able to tell where it's most important is on the shelf here. And I can mark that as left on the end and right on this end. This is important. Don't forget to do this because we're going to plane this off and then you won't know which way to put it. And this distance might be different because this is all scribe fit.
Again, I've got the lower arched rail here, which it's quite obvious which is left and right but for the sake of making this simpler, we'll just mark left and right on the part that's not going to be seen. Again, just at a glance, we can pick it up, left and right.
And then the top and bottom. That is also very important because it'd be easy to get these confused, which one is the top, which one is the bottom. Very easy. Let's just mark this here in the bottom. Right there, bottom L, we'll call it. That means bottom left. And this one here will be the top. And this is the left side, so we'll mark it right there inside there as top left.
Now we can go ahead and chamfer the top and the bottom. And we'll start by just dividing this up into thirds. Again, I'm just using my eye and these are just general guidelines. Now you see how I've locked my pencil between my thumb and my middle finger there.
And you see how it's pressing up against there. That's the exact measurement that I want to use here. That will provide a perfect 45-degree chamfer. We'll do the same thing over here. We'll carry that line, again, just like this.
You can even do this without putting marks on there. But the marks are helpful. They're just helpful as a guideline. We'll do the same thing here. Again, my thumb is-- rather my middle finger is resting against the workpiece. And we'll do the exact same thing on the bottom as well.
The next step is to chamfer the end grain. This is the exact same process that you did on the box. I'm assuming you've watched the videos on the box and you have both watched the videos and built the box. So now we're going to chamfer this end grain here using the 4-1/2 plane.
We'll set the plane a little bit deeper because we're moving more material. Shearing across the grain like this. Shearing it just like so. We'll work this side as well. Good start plane is very helpful, but also this technique. If you're getting these little curls like this, then you know you're shearing across the end grain. And that's exactly the cut that you want. Those nice little curled end grain shavings. We'll go ahead and do the other end in the same exact fashion.
Now I'm going to do the long grain here. Remember when you're using a hand plane, don't put all your fingers in the plane like this. This cramps up your hand and all the fingers are not meant to be in the plane. At least point this finger out. Occasionally, I'll even point my pinky out like this. That relaxes the grip.
You could even point all of your fingers out and just push the plane like this, especially for a more delicate cut. Now the goal here is for these chamfer lines to line up perfectly right there and right there. I'll come back here. We'll do the same thing on this one.
I'm going to back the blade off. Back it off. So I'm just taking a very, very fine cut. And we'll just come in here and clean those pencil marks up. Right there. Nice and clean. Nice chamfers right there. You can even come across the top as long as the blade is backed off. As just taking a super fine shaving and shearing it across the top.
You see how it's just whisper thin. Sometimes in order to keep it from breaking off, I'll stop it and then come back from this side. But again, I'm shearing it. And now we'll do the other end. We'll do the exact same thing on the top as well.
I've chamfered both the top and the bottom, all three edges. That is the front and the two ends. Now I want to surface my material. One thing I want to keep in mind here, though, is that we have fit this side into its corresponding dado. And it fits.
If I hand plane it, I'm going to reduce it in thickness. So I have to be conscious of that. At least all of the areas where there is going to be a joint. In this case, a dado joint. I've got to make sure that I don't reduce it too much in thickness. And I'll show you how you can keep from doing that.
I'm going to start here. I know that the dado comes in right here. So I can start the actual cutter, the iron, right here. Not off the board but right in this area and work it forward like this. And then stop it before I get off the edge of the board.
So I can actually come in like this and then lift up before I come off the edge of the board. And again, you can hear the plane is just taking a very, very, very slight amount off. It's easy sometimes for the plane to become dull, especially towards the end of a project. We're working in pine and the blade doesn't tend to dull as fast.
But if you're working in a hardwood, I've found that I'll have to sharpen oftentimes several times during the making of one project, even though it might be a small project. It really depends on how hard the material is which will determine how often you have to sharpen your plane.
How do you know when your plane needs to be sharpened? Well, you can feel it. You can feel if the surface is still smooth, silky smooth, and you should be fine. If the surface is a little bit rough textured then you might want to stop and resharpen.
I'm going to go ahead and do all of the flat surfaces. Of course, the shelf is another one that I've got to make for certain that I don't thin out the ends too much. I've actually already hand planed this stock before doing the joinery So I'm just really just touching it up at this point.
I don't have to worry about thinning out the ends on the top and the bottom because the dados are cut into the top and the bottoms. So I can run right across the entire width, or the entire length of the top and the bottom. A few little nicks there that I want to take out.
You'll also notice that I'm cleaning the shavings out. Sometimes if a stray shaving gets left in the plane, it'll leave an indention on the workpiece. There's a slight indention here that has been left due to a stray shaving. So I'm going to plane that out. Back the blade off just slightly, taking too much of the shaving off. There we go.
Now that I've got all the surfaces done, I'm going to do the edges. In fact, I forgot here we've got to do the surface of both the upper and lower arched piece. On the side with the shoulder, I could run all the way across. On the side that has no shoulder, I have to be certain that I start the plane in and then I stop the plane before going off the edge.
Now that I've got all of the surfaces done, I'm going to go ahead and do the edges. I've got some pencil marks and layout marks and such. So I'm going to put this in the vice and do the edges. Nice and clean.
As I've mentioned in some of the previous videos, I like to use a little bit of 220 grit sandpaper to just bring a consistency to all of the surface. And there might be some slight undulations in the surface. 220 sandpaper brings a consistent scratch pattern to all the surfaces, which does help in the finishing process.
So you can just use some 220 grit sandpaper wrapped around a block of wood, working with the grain. And we'll work both surfaces here. And we'll work all of the surfaces.
Fitting and Glueing Up
Hi and welcome back. In this video, I'm going to go over how to glue up the shelf. We've planed all the surfaces, we've sanded them with 220 grit, and I believe we're ready to glue up. Before I glue up, though, I like to always go through a dry run-- that is, dry fit it together. That way there's no surprises when there's glue on the surfaces.
So I'm going to go ahead and dry fit this together. And even in the dry fitting process, you can see it's a good practice run for you to be able to go through when there's a glue on the surface. So we're going to start by putting the two sides together with the middle shelf and the arched pieces. So this is pretty much the same way I wood glue it up. I'd start by putting this shelf in place. Then I'd come back here and I'd put in this upper arch here, just like that. Put in this lower arch here. Then we can put this piece on. Make sure there's no junk inside the joints there. We'll put that on, just like this.
You might have to set this up on the edge here to tap this through because it is the through tenon. Make that lined up there. And go ahead and fit this together-- this needs to be driven down more. There we go. Squeaky tight.
Now that that's fit together nice and tight there. Now that that's fit together nice and tight, now we can put the top and the bottom into place. I'm going to go ahead and tap this in here like this. And we'll dry fit it here. It's all dry fit together. And it looks good. Nice and tight.
I'm going to check this to make sure that everything is nice and flush and tight. Shoulders look good. This is pulling up tight, right here. This is pulling-- well, there's a little gap right there. But if I pull that, it looks like we could pull that a little bit. In fact, I might want to actually trim a little bit on the top there to pull this up tight up against here. So other than that, I think we are ready to glue.
I can even just fit just this joint here to ensure that it comes together by coming in like this and putting in the shelf just like this. And I can see now that that comes together right there nice and tight.
Let's go ahead and glue. As you can see, I've cleared the bench off. And I want to make sure that I lay everything out in order. What we'll need to glue is you'll need two long clamps. And you'll need a couple of these smaller clamps, here. You'll need two of those and then two of these, here. Got some white glue, a rag to wipe off any excess, a couple popsicle sticks, and of course, an assembly hammer. I've got some cauls to help distribute the clapping pressure and to protect the clamp from marring the wood.
I do have some pads that are already glued on to the ends of the bar clamps, which do help make it easier, especially if you're gluing it by yourself. Holding the cauls and trying to balance that and clamp it can be difficult. So I've just pre-glued these little pieces of cardboard on to the end of the clamp, and that works well to protect the clamp from marring the surface. I think we're ready, here.
Left-- make sure the left goes, there the right goes there. Lay everything out so all you have to do is reach over and put it right in. Let's see, this is the bottom one. So this one we'll put over here. And this is the top one, so we'll put that right there. Let's put a little glue right here in the dado.
Now, pine is somewhat of a porous wood, so you've got to use a fair amount of glue. Of course, you don't want to use too much glue. And I'll put this piece right in here, like this. Then I'm going to take and put glue right inside here. You can even use a popsicle stick to spread the glue out.
You want to work fairly fast because the glue will tend to swell up the joints. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a little glue on the tenon-- on this one. Being that this is a through tenon, if I put the glue on the mortise, what would happen is when I pushed it through, it would push the glue out the other side and make a mess. Of course, this will squeeze a little glue out, but it won't be as bad.
So I'm putting the glue just on the tenon, here. And I'm also going to put it along this top edge. And this will squeeze up tight, strengthening this middle shelf. And I'll just put this on the edge right here and slide this on all the way in like that. And there we have it.
Now let's put some glue on the right side, here. Again, we'll put the glue inside this mortise, here. All along the side there, as well as on the cheeks of the tenon. There's not much holding power on the shoulder with the glue. There's most of the holding power with the glue is on the cheeks.
Being that this is a through tenon, we'll just put that right up on top there. We'll take this and position it right here and work it down on there. And across like this. There we have it.
Just leveling up the back to make sure that it's nice. We'll check the front. Of course, the front is what needs to be tight. Now we'll go ahead and glue the top and the bottom. Let's start with the bottom. We'll put a little glue right here in the bottom. Just spread the glue, making sure that you get it on the sides as well as the bottom. The sides of the dado. And then just take this. Make sure there's no material that's going to get caught there-- any little chips of wood. And we'll put that right inside there. And a little persuasion.
And then we'll glue the top. And then I'll glue along this top edge, right here. Now I'm going to take it and go ahead and drive these in nice and tight there. You can see there's a little variation right there. Not a problem. We can plane that off afterwards.
Making sure this is good and tight. We'll flip it over. One final inspection before we clamp. This is flush. Those are tight. We're good to go. Let's go ahead and put a clamp this way. That's what we're going to use the long clamps for. So we're going to put a clamp right of the center right here. Just like this. And another clamp right here, as well. Tighten those up. Equal pressure on each side.
Then we'll take a couple cauls, which are basically just pieces of scrap wood. And they're going to straddle the entire width here. We can then put one of these clamps right here, and the cauls will help distributor the clamping pressure as long as we make sure the clamp is directly in line with that shelf. And we can tighten that up. And then we'll come back with this clamp. Just turn this around like this.
And the cauls, the main purpose for the cauls here is to help keep the clamp from damaging the actual pine surface. You can use a wooden clamp for this, but a metal clamp will work. You just have to protect the surface. And you can see, we'll just bring that in together nice and tight, like that. And we'll do the same thing over on this bottom one.
Again, I want to make sure that the pressure is in line with that joint. So the clamping pressure is directly in line with where I am intending to clamp it tight. I'm fairly happy with this glue up. I'm just going to check the clamp pressure. I'll even turn this around and just check it from the other side and make sure. I can always put additional clamp right here, in the back. I've got the clamp here. And that'll help squeeze any little gap there that I have right here on the backside. There we go.
One last thing that I like to do is I like to just test it for square. On the shelf like this, it really doesn't matter, but it's more important when you're making a cabinet where your fitting a door and you have multiple parts-- say a chest of drawers or a cabinet with a door and such where you're trying to fit that door into an opening. Really important there that everything is square.
Everything should be square on this because I've squared all of the shoulders. And as I mentioned earlier, the shoulders define this shelf as being square. It helps maintain the squareness of the shelf. But sometimes the clamps can pull it out of square. So it's fairly simple to test it for square. We can just take a tape measure and measure from corner to corner. So we'll just take it from this corner.
As long as it's a consistent corner-- of course, I've chamfered these corners. So it might be a little bit difficult. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to put the tape measure on the inside, and then go to a consistent point. Let's go to the inside, here. So I get 25 and 1/4 citing straight down like this. Will do the exact same thing on this side as well and we'll see what we get.
I'm about 1/16 of an inch off. That's 1/16 long in this direction. That means I'm only 1/32 of an inch out total in both directions. I could take it squeeze it a little bit in this direction like this and maybe take up a little bit. Let's try it and see. Again, I'm not terribly worried about it because I don't have any doors that fit in this. And now we're about-- I've moved it maybe 1/32 of an inch. Let's check it this way. So I would say maybe it's 1/32 of an inch out. So I'm happy with that.
And that pretty much concludes the making of this shelf. Of course, once those glues dry, which I like to let the glue dry overnight, if possible. Four hours is fine. Once the glue is dry, then I like to come back with a chisel and just clean up any extra glue that may be left in the corners. And then you can choose to finish it how you'd like. I prefer to use a deft spray lacquer, which works as wonderful finish on the pine. You've got to be careful staining the pine because it can blotch and such. But a spray lacquer or a shellac works nice.
So I hope you enjoyed the video series. If you have any questions in regards to making the shelf or any other questions, please comment below and we'll answer your questions. Thanks for watching.
