Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Hobbyist or Pro: Hobbyist

Experience: 0-2 yrs

Project Name: Cutting board lamination jig

Wood Species: Baltic birch 3/4 ply and hard maple

Project Description:
I made a very simple gluing jig for cutting board strip lamination. Basically a 20×30 inch piece of Baltic birch ply with a lot of grooves routed in for glue squeeze out and a back fence and side fence. You have no problems with clamping up the board pieces. They do not move around or slide out of alignment either vertical or horizontal. With the two rails you get a 90 corner and quick clamp ups.

Length wise is for edge grain glue up and short side is for the end grain glue ups. Although either would work depending on board dimensions. I have an easy time clamping up numerous pieces in this jig. I experience no troubles with squareness of the cutting board strips, no vertical movement with clamps in place and time to work prior to glue setting up. The end result is a very nice lamination that is square and mostly flat. A few passes through the sander or planer as it is still edge/face grain. Then you know the flips and turns for end grain and finally a few passes through the drum sander and it’s finished.

Check out this video tour of Geoff’s jig:

Interested in making your own cutting board? Check out the Wood Whisperer Classic: A Cut Above!

In the final part of this series, I do the final work on the stretchers and then its time for the glueup! The table top gets a special profile as well as a few cable recesses for the monitor and mouse cables. The top is attached via screws in elongated slots, and the counter sink holes are hidden using tapered plugs. Of course, the desk needs a good finish and Arm-R-Seal Stain fits the bill nicely!

Topics Covered:

• Milling the cross-members
• Cross-member joinery
• Small knot repair
• Final leg sculpting
• Sanding methods for cross-grain situations
• Using a special table top router bit
• Attaching the top to the base
• Making elongated screw slots the easy way
• Creating tapered plugs
• The Glueup
• Finishing and Sanding Strategies
• Dust Safety
• Finishing Justification: Color and Sheen
• Pore-Filling Products

Other Parts in this Series
Part 1
Part 2

Resources:
Table Top Router Bit #174-4055
3m 7500 Respirator
A Simple Varnish Finish DVD

My Shop Journal articles for this project:
Trestle Table – Playing with Curves
Trestle Table – The Dreaded Prototype

The absolute worst time to find out you’ve made a mistake is while the glue is drying. So this part focuses strongly on the importance of a dry assembly, which I consider to be an essential part of the glue up process. By the end we’ll have a partially glue-up entertainment center.

A few of the topics covered in this part:

• Gluing trim pieces.
• Using biscuits.
• Clamping strategies.
• Using a wood filler to hide miter flaws.
• Cutting the big bevels on the top and bottom trim.
• Sanding.
• Dry assembly strategy.
• Measuring and cutting the back panels.
• Initial glueup.

And this is the filler I recommended in the video. If you’ve had bad experiences with fillers in the past, you really need to give this stuff a shot. Shopping through this affiliate link will also help out the show.



Quick Links:
Low Entertainment Center Pt. 1
Low Entertainment Center Pt. 2
Low Entertainment Center Pt. 3
Low Entertainment Center Pt. 4
Low Entertainment Center Pt. 5

I have been at this hobby affectionately referred to as woodworking for about a year and a half now, and I’ve made some pretty decent projects. No substantial furniture, but some nice smaller things. I was in the process of making my most recent project, a box to hold pictures and sit on a coffee table, and I had an epiphany. Every project I have done has had the same problem. GLUE!!! I think I have been making the rookie mistake for WAY too long and thought I would see if you had any input on it. I ALWAYS use entirely too much in my joints. I use blue tape and allow it to skin over and scrape it away, but it is still normally a pretty big mess. I’m always scared that I’m not getting enough glue in the joints when I try to use less, so then I worry myself until I put more. So as a request, could you include a couple of close-ups of your next glue up so that I can get an idea of how much is the right amount? I know as of now that I am using too much, I just don’t want to use too little and have my projects fall apart. I’ve heard time and time again that a thin film is plenty on the joints and I realize that squeeze out will occur…but not as much as I am experiencing. Also, the word “thin” is relative. What I put on is a “thin” coat…until it squeezes out and runs all over my blue tape. Lol thanks for any help you can throw my way.

And here was my reply:

Hey Adam. In the Steamer Trunk Pt. 3, I believe I showed a good shot of a rabbet joint being glued up, and you can clearly see the squeeze out. If I recall, that joint was a little wetter than I usually like. But it was a pre-finished piece so the squeeze out was easy enough to clean. Now as a general rule of thumb, as long as each adjoining piece is coated completely, you have enough glue on the joint. You are right in that all you need is a thin film. And from what I understand, the thinner the film, the stronger the joint.

Now let’s talk about how thin the coating needs to be. Think of painting a wall. You don’t slop the paint on real heavy, right? Instead, you roll it out into one smooth continuous thin layer. And that’s what you should do with your glue joints. In general, you want to make sure each part of the joint has glue from edge to edge. And if you want to add a smidge more for good luck, go ahead.

Oh and here’s another way to think of it. I just love food analogies! Let’s talk bagels: butter vs cream cheese. When it comes to butter, most folks like a nice thin coating of butter from edge to edge. And with cream cheese, people tend to like a more generous helping. Some crazy people actually like so much cream cheese that its more like having a bagel with their cream cheese instead of the other way around. (I am qualified to speak on this topic because I spent a full year working at a My Favorite Muffin in Princeton, NJ). So glue should be spread more like butter, instead of like a schmear of cream cheese. Now I’m hungry! Lunch anyone?

In this episode, I go over some pre-finishing tips and finish the inside of the trunk. I then go through the entire assembly and glueup process from start to finish. I then discuss the trunk’s lid, which is different from the original plan. You can download a Sketchup plan for the lid below. Once the lid is glued up, I realize that rushing through this project has resulted in a number of errors. So I fix them. I know how you guys love it when I make mistakes so you won’t be disappointed in this one, haha.

For the Sketchup File of the new revised top, click here. For a PDF version of the new top, click here.
And if you would like to donate to the cause, please check out the following links:
American Cancer Society
James Cancer Center

Steamer Trunk Plan and Hardware This plan shows you how to build your very own classic trunk… Steamer Trunk Plan and Hardware

Quick Links:
Steamer Trunk, Pt. 1
Steamer Trunk, Pt. 2
Steamer Trunk, Pt. 3
Steamer Trunk, Pt. 4

In this video, I glue the back panel strips to the shelves, add an extra ebony adornment with a slot-cutting bit, and give a relatively lengthy tutorial on chopping the resulting mortise nice and square. I finish up by creating the ebony strips for the front of the top and bottom case pieces and then I finally glue the case together.

This series is now available on DVD! Order your copy today!

Links:
Gadget Station (Pt. 1)
Gadget Station (Pt. 2)
Gadget Station (Pt. 3)
Gadget Station (Pt. 4)
Gadget Station (Pt. 5)
Gadget Station (Pt. 6)
Gadget Station (Pt. 7)
Gadget Station (Pt. 8)
Gadget Station (Pt. 9)
Gadget Station (Pt. 10)
Gadget Station (Pt. 11)
Gadget Station (Pt. 12)

And here was my reply:
Hey Luke. Not doubt that 3″ strips would stack the cards in your favor in terms of stability. But wow, does anyone really want their table to look like a gym floor??? The bottom line is, if the wood is kiln dried and properly seasoned, it should not cause you any unexpected MAJOR issues over the course of time. Not to mention it will be secured to the base which will help keep it flat. And on a table of this size, I think the 3″ strips would be completely unnecessary. Think about how many beautiful dining room table tops are out there with nice wide boards and overall widths of about 4′, and those are nearly as flat as the day they were glued together.

I always use the widest boards my jointer will allow. And if I find a nice wide plank of 12″ or more, it would be a travesty to cut that board down under the hopes of increased stability. Wide boards are harder and harder to come by these days so furniture made with wide boards is more elegant and more appealing, in my opinion. So if I were you, I would go with your gut and assemble the top from three 6″ boards. And as long as it doesn’t make the face grain look bad, go ahead and alternate the growth rings. Conventional wisdom says that will keep the top balanced. Good luck.

My most recent project as I’ve mentioned to you before is a baby crib for our first child. This crib will later convert to a day bed and then a full size bed. Therefore there are several legs that must be built first, 6 in total. These legs are built up of 3 pieces of 3/4″ maple laminated together. The center piece is planed slightly thinner to match the thickness of 3/4″ maple ply for the rails that will be mortised into the legs. Once I began to glue the boards together I realized I have some difficulty when it comes to clamping, more specifically knowing how to clamp properly.

I recently purchased some of Rockler’s F-style clamps. I love them and started with them however I quickly realized that they were probably not the right clamps to use for this application. I then grabbed some of my hand screw wood clamps. They seemed to give me a better spread across the boards which are 2 3/4″ wide. I supplemented with the f-style clamps using wood blocks to spread the clamping pressure evenly I do not own any small parallel jaw clamps or I would have used them for this job. What I ended up with was some of the legs went together well with no gaps in my glue joints while others has small gaps in the glue joints the full length of the legs that will have to be filled. How can I avoid this in the future? I’m not concerned that they will come apart because there will be some fasteners that go through the legs to attach the railings, but I would like to have tight glue joints when laminating several boards together so I don’t have to do so much gap filling before I go to finishing.

And here was my reply:
Hey Mike. Excellent question. Using “less than optimal” clamps is something many of use have to deal with. And there really is no big secret. It just comes down to lots of clamps and lots of pressure. I would recommend using cauls that are at least as long as the leg is wide. Then, I would use the F-style clamps to clamp down over the cauls. And since one clamp in the center of the caul may still not apply enough pressure at the edges of the leg, I would recommend putting two F-style clamps at the ends of the neighboring caul. So in effect you will alternate: one centered, two on the edges, one centered, two on the edges, etc… Do this across the leg every 4-5 inches (the closer the better), and you should have enough pressure. From your description, it really sounds like you had enough pressure at the center of the leg, but not at the edges. Of course this means you need a lot of clamps! But as they say, you can never have too many. And kust so you know, the way I do this: I use the parallel clamps and alternate the sides they clamp from. Then I actually reinforce the clamping with F-style clamps in between the parallels. Good luck.