[ Power saw buzzing ] [ Mid-tempo music plays ] Welcome back to "The Woodsmith Shop."

On today's episode, we're finishing up work on our craftsman style sideboard.

And when we last left our intrepid sideboard, Chris had done a lot of work on creating some great looking legs that gives you quarter sawn faces on all four faces.

It's a really fun technique to learn, and then he also talked about mortising the legs for the remaining parts.

That's where I pick things up, and we looked at the pieces and parts that go into turning this from just four legs into a case.

On today's episode, Logan's going to start things off by building the drawers for our sideboard and using through Dovetails, and he's going to cut it all with hand tools.

And then I'm going to wrap things up by showing how to apply a finish that suits the arts and crafts style of this sideboard project.

If you'd like to make one for yourself, you can find the plans at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

So I think it's time to head over to Logan and let's get started on the drawers.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

Additional funding provided by... Titebond Wood Glues -- the pro's advantage.

And by... ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ So, now that Phil has the case done, we can go and talk about the drawers that go inside of it.

Now, if you look at the plans, they call for drawers with thicker fronts and backs, and those fronts and backs are connected to the sides with locking rabbet.

And it's a great way to build drawers.

However, with this case, they say it's a good time to whip out some hand tools and hand cut some dovetails.

To do this, I'm going to change it up a little bit.

What I mean by that is I'm going to use 1/2 inch material for both the front sides and backs.

What this is going to do is it's going to allow me to cut through dovetails on the front and sides, and then we'll come back with some thinner, essentially veneer, and cover those up.

And in essence, we're making a half blind dovetail.

It's just that the through dovetails are a little bit easier to cut in this hard white oak.

So the first thing we need to do is we need to mark some baselines around each of our parts.

These are the top drawer sides, and we will lay them out and I'll go and lay them all at once so they're pretty consistent, although consistency doesn't really matter because you're never going to have all the doors open at the same time, probably.

Huh?

So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to lay out basically full tails, and I'm gonna lay out one pin area that's going to be sawn out and then two waist areas, one on each edge.

Those will also be sawn out.

So let's start by doing the half pin first.

There you go.

Now we're going to see if we can figure out where to put this center tail.

So, use some dividers.

That looks pretty centered there.

So I'm going to mark a center mark and then make a mark on each side of that for our tail locations.

So to cut your dovetails, you can either cut them by hand, like I said, just freehand, either angling your saw or angling the work piece.

The other way to do it is with something like this, and this is a dovetail guide.

And I like these because they're magnetic, they hold the saw and it really just gives you a good starting point to start your dovetails.

You're starting nice and perpendicular across the end grain and it's holding the saw at the right angle.

It's pretty simple.

All you have to do is look down the edge of the dovetail guide, position it right where you want your saw curve to be and hold it in position and start your cut.

Now those baselines I made, this is where they're important.

We can pull that guide away now that we're started and we can saw down.

And it's important we don't cross that baseline.

We'll do that for all the tail areas, and then we'll cut away the waste with fret saw.

There where we go.

I want to cut those two shoulders way.

I'm going use my pull saw again.

Okay, so now that we've cut all of our tails, we have a little bit of cleanup work to do.

Now, with some perfect for fret sawing, there's going to be just a hair of waste along this baseline.

And that's what we want, because we want to be able to clean that up with some chisels.

These are dovetail chisels.

This will allow me to reach in there without dinging the inside corners of the tails themselves.

[ Hammering ] Okay, with these cleaned up, what we have to do now is cut our pin boards.

Our pin boards are going to be our front and our backs.

So we're going to need to lay out the shape of our dovetails on the ends of our pin boards.

So we're going to do is use my plane as a spacer and set the top edge flush with the top of this plane.

We'll tighten it down in the vice.

There we go.

Then we'll use the plane as a stand off for our part.

So we got Corner B here like that.

And we're going to come in with a marking knife.

So we'll hold it down, and we'll mark these locations.

So now it's a simple matter of bringing our dovetail guide back in, and when we call our tails, I cut it in this orientation.

But here, I'm going to flip this around to use it in this orientation.

That way it sets the matching angle to the tales we've already cut.

Now, this process would be the same.

I'm going to cut down to the baseline on one side, angle it to cut down on the baseline opposite.

So sawing away the waste on the pin board is pretty much the same as we did on the tail board.

Only one thing we need to keep in mind is that these curves are angled.

So instead of ending up with our saw blade perpendicular to the faces, we just need a match at curve angle.

And to do that, I'd like to bring the curve in on one side that I can see.

Just like that.

And then I'll tilt the saw and I'll match up the saw blade with the curve on this side.

Let's go ahead and see how these fit.

You can kind of tell if it's going to go together or if it's going to be tight in some areas.

Well, you know, this one looks pretty good.

There are a couple of things we can do to help ourselves get this together a little bit easier.

I mentioned before that the corners are generally what cause issues when you go to start putting these together.

So what I like to do is on the insides of my tails, I like to take a chisel and I start in from the end.

If I went all the way to the end with this chamfer, you would see it on the end of the tails.

So I started about -- it's called an 1/8 inch in, and then I just cut a little bit of a chamfer there.

So these tails and the pins are slightly proud, which is perfect.

I want a little bit of extra room on here.

So once I assemble this joint with glue, I can go ahead and come in and either plain or sand those flesh.

So now all I have to do is clean up the rest of these tails, get everything put together, and cut some grooves for the drawer bottoms, and then we'll be to veneering the fronts.

So we've come this far with hand tools making our dovetails.

We could cut the groove for the bottom at the table saw of the router table, but we might as well pull out a plow plane and make the groove here.

What a plow plane is, is a plane that has a narrow cutter.

I have a 1/4 inch one installed to fit the 1/4 inch bottom.

It has a depth stop and a fence to position the cutter.

And as I am using this, I'm going to keep the fence tight up against the bottom of the work piece.

And I start at the far end, and I'm going to make short little strokes working back along the length of the work piece until I'm making full length throughs.

Then I'm just going to keep cutting until the depths stop engages and limits the cut.

Then we can go and get this draw glued up.

So assembling dovetails doesn't have to be super tricky.

What I notice most people pounding them together, the biggest issue they have is too much glue on the joint.

Inherently, dovetails don't need that much glue.

It just needs to hold the joint together.

The mechanical strength comes from the joint itself.

So what I like to do is I like to use some form of spreader.

It can be a dowel or a bamboo skewer that I just flatten the end.

So it's kind of like a little spatula, and I will start the joint together very much like this.

Then I'll just use this guy to get in here and spread a little bit of glue on the insides of the pins, and we'll do the same thing on the outside of the tails.

Now we can tap this joint together.

Okay.

Now, we'll do the same with the other side.

And now slip the bottom in.

So glues all dried.

And I went ahead and I fit the drawer into the opening, and I did that just by plaining down the protruding pins and then getting it nice and tight.

And then I chamfer the edges, so it sits in there well.

And I think sanding will bring it down to a perfect fit and a little bit of wax, of course, will help that.

So now we can apply our veneer to the front.

What I have here is just a piece of white oak that has been planed down to about a quarter of an inch.

And it's a little long and a little wide, and that's perfect.

We'll go and glue it on, and then we'll trim it down later.

So we're going to apply some high glue here.

Alright.

We got good glue coverage there.

So now we will go in place our veneer.

And for even clamping pressure, I'm going to use an oversize plywood call just to help keep some good even clamping pressure over this whole thing.

There we go.

Now, once that's dry, we'll just go and flush it up, and then the draw is done.

Now let's go ahead and work on the top.

So the top of our sideboard is made of solid hardwood.

And this is a panel that's going to simply get glued up.

Once the panels all dried and trimmed to size, it gets installed with either cleats, as the plans say, or you can use figure eight fasteners.

There's also a back crest rail that you could add or you can leave it off.

But if you decide to add it, the plans call for adding some false ends on it.

That way, the back legs of the sideboard look like they protrude through the top.

One of the hardest lessons to learn in building projects like this is being able to slow down and take your time and get the surfaces right before jumping ahead.

Whether it's building other parts of the project or getting to the staining and the finishing of a project and having the realization that you've missed something.

So while we've been building this, we've tried to keep the surfaces smooth and sanded as we've gone along.

When we get to this stage, we want to take a step back, take a deep breath, and start going over the assembly with a fine tooth comb to ferret out any of the problems that we have.

So let's talk about something that you'll encounter here, and you can see several of the things over on this side of the sideboard.

Here we have a little bit of glue that oozed out during the assembly process and dried, and that's really going to affect the stain and the finish once it goes on, so I want to remove that.

There's also a little bit of glue in the corner here where the rail meets the leg on this one.

And on this one, my tool of choice often is to use a card scraper that I've put a fresh edge on.

Now on these flat surfaces.

I can get nice shavings to clean off that squeezed out glue.

And by flexing the scraper, I can target where it's going to cut.

And get down to bare wood.

The same thing because it's so thin I can go scrape right into those corners or I can come straight down and scrape out.

Then we want to put an even surface on all of our visible portions of the project.

So for that, I like to use a sanding block.

Now I have this shop made one here that has a real long pad on it.

And what I like about that is that it's flat and straight... to take care of all of those wide, flat surfaces, whether it's the legs or these rails.

So I'm not going to create any divots.

The sandpaper is going to last longer, and I'm not going to scratch up or burn my fingertips from sanding aggressively.

Now, the reason that I'm sanding is like if I'm using a scraper on several parts here, that's going to leave a different surface sheen than just the other sanded parts.

And that's going to affect how stain gets absorbed and how finish goes on.

So no matter what I do, I want to finish up with a sanding of the same grit.

Here I'm using 180 grit.

And then on surfaces like these rails, once they've been installed, is I don't want to leave them sharp like that because they're prone to chipping.

And it's also just a sharp edge to catch on, whether you're moving the piece into position or just using it in general.

So I'll just sand a very slight chamfer on all of those edges.

Now there are going to be times when you get to something like this middle section right here where we have vertical style and then some horizontal rails, and we don't want to get sanding scratches there.

So I'll start again with the scraper... working away from it, and then I can even scrape.

Scrape that vertical piece.

But again, I want to finish things up with a consistent sand and pattern.

So for something small like this, I will just use a piece of sandpaper that's just doubled over.

Then just use my fingertips as a very focused sanding pad to be able to get down into those corners without causing cross green sanding scratches.

Then I can come back with a with a smaller cork sanding block.

And then deal with creating a nice little chamfer on each side just to ease those edges.

Once you've taken care of a lot of this work, there's a couple other steps that we need to do over on the sides and the back to deal with the frame and panel work.

All the same principles apply here on the side assemblies of our sideboard.

But when you have a plywood panel recessed in a hardwood frame, you add a couple of other wrinkles.

Now, like before, wanted to keep the panels fairly smooth, which we have, but again, we want a consistent scratch pattern over all of them.

So I have that caulk sanding block again.

And I'm going to hold it sideways.

And I can walk up and down the panel getting it smooth.

Now, the issue here is that when I get into these corners, both on the top and bottom edge and along the edges, that sanding block just doesn't get enough coverage.

It may not seem like a big deal, but when you put the stain on, it's going to absorb differently in the field than it is on those edges.

To get down in there, I'm using a putty knife, and I've put some adhesive back sanding paper on that putty knife because it's thin and I can cut the sandpaper right to the edge and it's flexible.

I can get right into all of those corners.

Now, one thing to pay attention here, when you want to get along this edge, don't go this way because you'll start sanding across the grain and get those really noticeable scratches.

Just go along along with the grain, and then come back from the other direction.

And very easily you'll be able to determine just by feeling those surfaces whether you have that same scratch pattern all the way throughout.

Once you've done with all of your sanding, blow off or vacuum off all the sanding dust, and then we're ready to start applying the stain in the finish.

After that final bit of sanding, I'm going to put on some stain.

And I have a couple of objectives here.

One is I want to bring out those grain patterns from this burr oak that Logan sawed up.

But I also want to blend it in with the plywood panels.

There's a little bit of a color variation there, and I want to make sure that I even that out.

My solution for that is to use a gel stain.

What I really like about the gel stain is that it's really easy to control.

It's got kind of the thickness of sour cream or yogurt and it goes on really easily.

And I have a lot of time to work it around to get that color that I want.

The overall process is I'm going to apply it pretty liberally along the top, working in sections, and then once I have that done, I'll wipe it down to get the color and smooth out any drips or globs that might appear as we're going along.

And then I'll work on the front section of the sideboard and then take care of the two sides and wrap things up with the shelf down below.

When working with gel stain, you want to give it a good day or two to dry before you start applying the clear coat.

And I've done that on the sideboard here.

On the case pieces, the legs, the front sides and back.

I've put on two coats of my clear coat finish.

I've done the same on the top, but since this is going to get a lot more wear and tear, I want to build this up to probably 3 to 5 coats just to have that extra layer of protection.

In between coats, you want to sand the surface with a really fine grit sandpaper.

Here I'm working with 320 grit sandpaper, and I have it wrapped around a cork sanding block because that's going to help me keep the surface nice and flat as I'm sanding back and forth.

Now I'm working with the grain and I'm sanding so that I get kind of a white powdery residue from the finish on here.

Now, I didn't start sanding until after I've applied two coats, and that's because I use the stain and I don't want to sand through the finish and sand through the stain as well revealing bare wood, because that's really going to stand out.

So once I'm done sanding the entire surface, I want to remove all of that sanding dust.

So I'm going to pick up a tech cloth that you can find at the paint department of most hardware stores and home centers, and it's just a little sticky to wipe off all of that residue because I don't want it effecting the next coat to finish.

There we go.

So we have a nice, dull look here for the finish and we're ready to apply its next layer.

And I've been sticking with the same gel family here, so I'm using a a gel polyurethane and you can see it's got that same thick pudding like consistency as the gel stain.

It just doesn't have any pigment in it.

So I can apply it here with a foam brush and I want to put on a thin coat.

I want to make sure that I get adequate coverage across the entire top.

I like to set up the finishing so that I have a light on the far side so I can see to make sure that I have a good amount of coverage all across the project.

I'm not really concerned about the look of it right now, because just like before, with the finish or with the stain, I'm going to go back and rub it down to wipe off all the excess so that I'm leaving just the barest thin film of finish over it to build up.

When you're done, the top should look wet, but you shouldn't see any obvious streaks or puddling on there.

I'm going to allow this coat of finish to dry overnight, and then we'll be ready to wrap up the project.

So now that the finishing process is done, we can concentrate on adding the hardware to this project.

And we found some nice arts and crafts pulls for the drawers.

Installing them starts with putting the pulls on the upper drawers first.

And the reason for that is that I want those centered, and then we can use that same location to attach the pulls on the lower drawer, because I really want those lined up just for the geometric symmetricalness of the whole thing.

What we're left here is a project that's ready to take pride of place in your dining room and for your next family gathering.

If you'd like to build one for yourself, the plans are at our website WoodsmithShop.com.

It's also the place where you can find other great finishing tips, videos and project ideas to keep you busy in your shop.

And then let's meet right back here in the Woodsmith Shop.

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Every week, you'll receive an e-mail with a video tip to get more out of your table saw, router table, and more.

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Everything in today's show comes from the newly expanded Woodsmith Guild Edition with shop projects, plans, tips, and techniques.

To get a free preview issue of the Woodsmith Guild Edition and a free Woodsmith book, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

In addition, past seasons of "The Woodsmith Shop" are available on DVD, or you can watch them online from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

For more information, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

Additional funding provided by... Titebond Wood Glues -- the pro's advantage.

And by... ♪♪ ♪♪