Read Time: 5 mins

Hits: 13678

Woodworkers are fascinated by dovetail joints and the art of dovetailing. No other joint gets anywhere near the amount of attention as the lovely dovetail joint. There are so many ways of making dovetail joints, by hand, by machine and the numbers of different tools and jigs and assorted accessories to make these joints is really quite remarkable. Guess What ... here is yet another.

Watch it on Youtube: https://youtu.be/ip91VtqCA9E

This is a new kind of marking gauge for me, and as one who is not proficient and making dovetail joints, hopefully, it will make things a tiny bit easier ... but I do know that the only real way of making good, consistent dovetails is practice, practice, practice ...

Read Time: 3 mins

Hits: 8633

For most woodworkers, the Reverse Glue Joint Router Bit is not one of the more common wood router bits ... in fact, few even know about it. For cabinet makers, this is one their more common router bits and in some shops, there are router tables dedicated to this bit because it is used so often. The setting up of this bit can challenge your patience, but once set will give quality joinery to your project.

Watch it on Youtube: https://youtu.be/QW02XiEBo08

In my case, I have not used this bit for many, many years so it was a good chance for me to give myself a bit of refresher in using this bit  ... 

Read Time: 3 mins

Hits: 11517

Clamping cauls have probably been around as long as woodworking, but they seem to come in and out of favor. New woodworking tools, attachments, jigs, and techniques come along on old ways are often forgotten.  But not everyone has the latest tools, jigs, and techniques, in fact many, especially in woodworking, like doing things the traditional way and what could be more traditional than Clamping Cauls .... 

Watch it on Youtube: https://youtu.be/OZ53CF7Gb1s

At one time, much earlier in my woodworking career, I used nothing but clamping cauls for all sorts of assembly and glue-up jobs. They worked great then and they still work great, I just don't use them much anymore, have fallen to another technique that I like, and that works well for me, the Dowelmax systems ... but that doesn't mean I have abandoned clamping cauls, they are still invaluable for certain jobs ...  

Read Time: 4 mins

Hits: 14551

As woodworkers, we often seem to be obsessed by how strong joints are, and in many ways this is good. Of course we don't want people to be hurt sitting on a chair that could collapse, but in many cases the joints are many times stronger than actually needed. This is in part because of the way we need to make them in order for them to be secure.

In the associated video, I put together a variety of joints, all of them with Red Oak, just to see how well each kind of joint holds up. All of the joints were end grain to long grain, with the exception of the lap joint (which I will talk about later). End grain to long grain are the hardest joints because end grain does not glue well to long grain, well at least with much strength, so other means of fastening must be adapted.

In order to be fair with each joint, all the end grain pieces are 3 inches wide. This was selected for a couple of reasons, first of all it would accommodate the largest wood biscuit commercially available; the other reason is that by using 3" viewers could use the info to associate it with both 2" or 4". I just don't have time to run all the tests of both 2" and 4" material, so 3" seemed like a good compromise.

The lap joint was slightly smaller because I felt it was unfair to have 3-1/2 inches of long grain glued to long grain so it is slightly smaller at 2-1/2 inches ...

Read Time: 6 mins

Hits: 26920

I love it when there are pleasant surprises in woodworking. Thanks to a few of our subscribers who have asked about using doweling jigs after a number of videos we released on using pocket hole jigs. Pocket hole jigs are great but, but there are alternatives. Not everyone loves pocket hole technology ... for a few reasons: 
1) it leaves visible holes (that can often be placed in the back or underside of the build, or they can be "plugged")
2) on rare occasion the screws will crack the wood
3) it can be difficult to match the plugs colors to the main wood.
There are also advantages to pocket holes, like ... you can take the project apart to repair, rebuild or re-use. The alternative to pocket hole technology is doweling, which has been around in one form or another for, well ... hundreds of years, and it works as well now as it did then.

There are 2 main advantages of doweling technology
1) joints can be completely hidden within the wood
2) the strength of the dowels is every bit equal or exceeding pocket hole or in many cases even mortise and tenon type technology.
I thought it was high time I got up to speed on doweling jigs.

As a bit of a newcomer to doweling technology, and after un-packaging my Dowelmax jig, I was very impressed by the quality of the jig. The number of well thought out accessories and add-on components was also impressive. It did take me a bit of practice to really understand how the jig worked but once I got on to it, with each joint I made, the jig continued to impress me ... what a pleasant surprise ...