In honor of Get Woodworking Week, I decided to take a moment to cover a very basic concept: installing a drawer knob.

I made two Shaker Tables a couple years ago and unfortunately I never got around to making the knob for the cherry version. My mom lost patience with me and purchased a commercial knob. The very least I could do was install it for her.

So here’s a quick review of how I like to install drawer knobs in finished drawers. The key is to use our old shop favorite blue tape, a brad point bit, and a backer block. You’ll end up with nice clean holes and a perfect installation!

Update
Well that’ll teach me! I was in the middle of filming the Roubo workbench build when my mom came in and said, “put this knob on the drawer please!”. So I figured I may as well film it as a Mini. Not having my brain fully in the moment, I forgot about the old trick of simply running a straight edge from corner to corner to find the center point. I was really too focused on the concept of getting a clean hole. I also misspoke when I stated one of the measurements. My apologies for the errors.

Did you know you can join the Guild and get immediate access to over 5 hours of video content and detailed plans for this Shaker Table?
Or you can always buy the DVD in the Wood Whisperer Store.

If you’re not using marking gauges or some sort of blade to lay out your joinery, you are really missing out! I remember a conversation I had with William Ng at the William Ng School when he told me, “If you want to make good joinery, use a pencil. But if you want to make great joinery, using a knife!”

Marking gauges come in several forms but they are all fundamentally similar. They consist of a post, a moveable fence, and a blade or scratch pin. My personal preference is for blades and you can see a fairly standard traditional marking gauge to the left. So why should you use one? Keep reading.

Accuracy

When you cut with a knife, the resulting line is maybe a couple thousandths of an inch wide. Compared to a big chunky pencil line, its much easier to know when you’re exactly where you need to be in reference to that line. Additionally, marking gauges have fences which allow us to be consistent when marking multiple sides of a single workpiece for dovetails and tenons.

Tearout

No doubt you are very familiar with the concept of tearout. When you cut wood across the grain, you’ll inevitably notice small bits of wood tearing out at the end of the board where the fibers are unsupported. So if you actually cut that grain ahead of time with a blade and then cut right up to the line with your saw, you end up with a nice clean crisp shoulder with absolutely no tearout.

Tool Guides

If you use scribe lines, you’ll have a perfect place to lay the tip of your chisel or saw blade with absolute accuracy and consistency. If you try to line up the tool with a pencil line, you will almost always end up on one side of the line or the other. There’s just too much variability there. But if you have a little trough from a marking gauge or knife, you’ll have a no-brainer aid for locating the tool in the proper place.

One of my all-time favorite hand tools is the router plane. However, I very rarely use it to create joinery. In my shop, its sole purpose is fine-tuning. The blade can be set at a fixed distance from the base so it is incredibly effective at creating dados and grooves of a consistent depth.

When I cut dados in large boards or plywood, the pieces inevitably lift up to some extent. The scary thing is you might not even realize it’s happening. But when you go to assemble the case, you can’t figure out why the sides are bowing out! Chances are, your dados and grooves were not cut at a consistent depth. Enter the router plane! I make a habit of setting my router plane and quickly going over each and every dado in my projects. You’d be surprised at how much material this bad boy catches, and the subsequent headaches it can prevent. If you don’t already have one, you should definitely pick one up! They’re so choice!

Whenever I lay out my project parts in rough lumber, I find that there are 5 things that I always try to keep in mind. This video is a quick excerpt of those five tips from the Chest of Drawers Guild Build. And yes, this is clearly an advertisement for the Wood Whisperer Guild. But hey, if I am going to advertise to you I sure as heck should put something useful in there for you to enjoy. Sign up today and receive 15% off your 6-month or 1-year membership. Simply use coupon code WOODNERD at checkout.

The Discovery:

A few months ago, I woke up one morning, poured my coffee, and was incredibly disappointed to see that my cutting board exploded! OK so maybe it wasn’t all that violent but it was cupped like crazy and had a very large split. Upon further inspection, I noticed a bit of trapped water in the center of the underside of the board. Now the thing to remember about end grain cutting boards is that even after finishing, they will still soak up moisture like a sponge. So standing water is your cutting board’s Kryptonite!

What Happened?

So how does the split actually occur? Well let’s think about what happened. The water soaked into the center of the board and as a result, the center “squares” swelled and expanded. Because the moisture was in the center only, the wood in the outer perimeter did not expand. So something had to give. The resulting crack is really nothing more than pressure relief. Think of it like surrounding a piece of solid wood in a frame. Eventually, the joints in the outer frame will open up if the board in the middle expands.

The Epoxy Fix:

The first step in repairing this disaster simply involves waiting. After a few weeks, the board flattened out and the crack closed up almost completely. But the gap was still big enough that I wanted to use a gap-filling glue, so epoxy did the trick. Now I know what you are thinking. Is epoxy food-safe? While I have heard that food grade FDA-approved epoxies do exist, I have never seen them. And I can definitely say that the West System Epoxy I use is not FDA-approved. So why would I use this on my cutting board? Generally speaking, its the same logic I subscribe to when discussing the safety of film finishes. That is, once cured, the product is inert. In other words, its not chemically reactive and its not actively leaching chemicals under normal room temperature conditions. Furthermore, the crack represents such a small area that actual food contact would be absolutely minimal. Now while I am not prepared to tell you epoxy is completely food-safe, I will say that I consider cured epoxy safe enough to use on a small crack on MY cutting board. Ultimately, the final decision is yours.

Want to make an end-grain cutting board like this? Check this out!

A quick Whisper Mini tour of my recent 6-panel cabinet project. Want to learn more about how these doors were made? Check it out!

Outtro music provided by El Saxofonista! Thanks Horacio.

This video is an accompaniment to my column in the April 2009 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine. The article serves as a general review of common woodworking glues and when to use them. The video, however, focuses specifically on urea resin glues. These glues definitely have their advantages: low water content, gap-filling, long open time, and rigid glue lines just to name a few. But keep in mind the one big disadvantage: safety. These glues are pretty nasty and you might be best served considering other options. But with proper precautions (gloves, goggles, and respirator), this glue can be a nice addition to your shop. The two brands I use are DAP Weldwood, and Unibond 800.

Download the PDF of the article.

This video is an accompaniment to my column in the Aug. 2009 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine. The video focuses on pillowing ebony pegs, an adornment commonly found in Greene & Greene style furniture. The method is adapted from Darrell Peart’s techniques. Now although the video focuses on the pegs, the article shows you how I built my John Hall frame reproduction. And if you want to build one yourself, you can download the article and the full-size templates below.

Download the PDF of the article and the full-sized patterns, courtesy of Popular Woodworking.

There is sure to be some deja vu here. Some of you may remember me linking to this when the original article was released. But once again, this is an opportunity to add this video to my site archive, while giving you an opportunity to download the PDF of the article for free. Guild members will have even more deja vu since I produced a similar but more in-depth video that now lives in the Guild Archive.

This video is an accompaniment to my column in the Feb. 2009 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine. The video focuses on using center lines to accurately locate hinge mortises. But the article goes into depth on a more general concept you have probably heard me mention before: relative dimensioning. The idea is simple: let the pre-existing parts of your project dictate the size of subsequent parts. And in many cases, this is much easier and far more accurate than measuring with a tape or ruler. I first learned about relative dimensioning way back in my WWA forum days from a guy named Dave Knipfer. Anyone heard from him lately? Anyway, he was an amazing craftsman and his work methods really resonated with me. And so relative dimensioning has been part of my work ever since.

Now some may think of this type of building as common sense. Others may say, “this is nothing new”. And for the most part, they would both be right. Ever hear of a story stick? Cabinet-makers and installers have been using them forever. But I know how much of an eye opening revelation this concept was to me when I was starting out, so I think its important that I pass it on to my fellow woodworkers who may not be familiar with it. So like the article says, “Throw Away Your Tape Measure”!

Download the PDF of the article, courtesy of Popular Woodworking.

I am curious how many of you use this system in your woodworking. Or are you purely a measure and mark type of woodworker?

Ever find yourself short on material and that one board you really need has a nice open knot in it? You could always go out and buy more material, but sometimes its just easier and faster to stabilize and repair the knot. And instead of trying to hide the knot, sometimes its just better to embrace it, and make it look look resinous and natural. And that’s the goal here. I use an epoxy/dye mixture to create a stable and decorative knot.