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

On today's episode, we're building a storage project to cut the clutter around your back door.

But besides its practicality, this project features barnwood door panels and backboards.

It's a great way to add stylish storage to your home.

Let's get started right now.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- craftsman-quality stains and finishes since 1953.

Additional funding provided by... ♪ Titebond wood glues -- the pro's advantage.

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

Kreg.

And by... [ Up-tempo music plays ] ♪ ♪ [ Mid-tempo music plays ] ♪ ♪ If your house is anything like mine, the entryway, far from being necessarily welcoming, is a little bit of a dumping zone.

Let me think.

My house -- boots, leashes, coats, hats, gloves, you name it.

Yeah, throw in some school supplies in there, and I think you got it just about covered.

Mm-hmm.

This project is meant to solve all that.

And it's got a lot of things going for it.

Look at these two nice shelves up top.

We've got a big, deep, tall cabinet here.

Keep things out of the way and hidden if you need them to.

Out of sight.

Some hooks on the inside for hats and coats.

And look at all these baskets down here.

That's a great place for hats, for gloves, for those leashes and for tennis shoes.

But there's a little bit more going on with this project than just the storage and the practicality of it.

You know, most of the time we're looking at project pieces where we want things smooth and flat and square, but this project has a little bit of an accent with the back and the door panel.

Now working with barn board can have its challenges.

There can be nails.

There can be some dirt.

There can be a few other things.

And sometimes they're not always flat.

But the results are well worth it.

It'll be a lot of fun for you.

So on today's episode, we're going to show some tips and tricks for working with barn board to help it create a nice focal point for our project.

Now the original project that we built for the magazine, we made it out of solid wood and painted it.

We're going to try things a little different today.

Yeah, we're gonna use plywood, and we're gonna use edging, and that'll make for a project which is easy to build, inexpensive, but looks great.

If you'd like the plans to build one of these for yourself, they're at our website -- WoodsmithShop.com.

Well, I think it's time we tackled the case on this thing.

I think so.

Working with plywood instead of solid wood gives you some advantages like we were just talking about.

It's a lot easier to make up the panels, but that doesn't let you off the hook on some prep work that you can do beforehand, so instead of gluing up wide panels, what you can do is easily cut them to size.

The only thing is that you'll need to do something about those exposed plywood edges.

Even on a painted project, they're gonna end up telegraphing through.

So what I like to do is, before doing anything else, is to apply some hardwood edging to the exposed edges of all of the pieces.

Now I've already gone through and cut up a lot of the panels that I'm going to need for this project.

I left them a little bit oversized so that as we're going along, I can trim them to the exact size that we'll need.

Now, applying the hardwood edging does a couple of things for you.

One, it gives you that smooth edge that's gonna take paint really well, and it's also going to protect the edges so they're less likely to chip.

Now, one thing that you'll find that you can get the edging tape that's adhesive backed that you can just apply with an iron or just stick onto it, but I find that that edging tape is just a little bit too thin and too brittle.

I like using hardwood, and it doesn't have to be real thick.

1/8 inch or 1/4-of-an-inch thick is just fine.

Then sand it nice and smooth.

I applied hardwood edging to all of those panels and then sanded everything nice and smooth.

On a piece like this, you could screw all of the parts together.

However with as many parts as there are, I find that it's helpful to use some kind of joinery, and in this case, I'm going to use dados, grooves, and rabbets.

Not only is it going to give me a strong glue joint when everything comes together, but those channels are going to register the parts so that I know exactly where they're going to be, and everything is going to end up in its right place.

Now you have a decision here on how you're going to create those joinery details, and I get to show off a little bit of my bias.

Personally, I like using a handheld router and straight bits to cut dados, rabbets, and grooves.

I feel like I have better control over the process and better visibility than if I'm working on the table saw, but if you like using the table saw, then go ahead and do it.

The key here is sizing the dados so that they fit the plywood pretty closely.

Now you have a wide variety of choices from regular straight bits to specially designed plywood bits, and that's because plywood never really measures the exact thickness that it's stated for, so what I have is a sample piece of plywood that I have, and I've cut some dados across it using some of the bits.

That way, I can take one of the scrap pieces from the plywood from the project and then see how it fits in the different dados.

And what I have here is that up here at the front is one from one of my 3/4-inch bits, and I have a nice, snug fit with the plywood, so that's what I'm going to be using.

Now, speaking of the bit, you need a way to be able to guide the bit and the router to make straight cuts.

Now, this bit that I'm working with has a bearing on it, so that means I can use just a straightedge guide and have the bearing on the bit follow that straightedge guide.

Now I made one out of a piece of plywood that was left over from the project, so what I can do is just line up the straightedge right on the layout line and know exactly where I'm going to cut.

Now, to save a little bit of time and ensure some consistency through this whole process, I have the two side pieces for our entry bench, and I've clamped them back-to-back.

That way, I can cut all of the dados on both pieces at the same time knowing that they're going to be aligned.

♪ ♪ Well, after taking care of the router joinery, I shrunk my saw horses, and I'm ready for some assembly now.

But before putting away the router, I took care of a couple of details that I want to point out.

The first is a stop dado up near the top on one of the side pieces.

It's going to hold a shelf later on, and with a handheld router, making those stop dados is pretty simple.

Then I used a chisel to square up the end.

The other thing I did was cut a rabbet along the back edge to hold the barn-board backs that we're going to add later on.

Now with a project this large, frankly any project, it's always a good idea to do a dry assembly to help you fine-tune the process, get all of the clamps you need and the glue and anything else, and with a project with this many moving parts on it, I found that it's a good idea to do things in stages, so what I'm going to do here is assemble the two sides which I have over there, the bottom and the top.

That's a good framework, and then I'll be able to add other pieces as we go later on.

Now, doing a dry assembly also teaches you a few things about what you're going to need.

Now, what I found... ...is that the bottom is going to sit in a dado, so I can put some glue in there, brush that out.

And with the dado, that captures the bottom piece so that I can get it positioned, and it's going to stay there all on its own.

Now, where the top is going to fit is a rabbet, and there's really nothing to hold that in place, so once I put it in there, you can see it could just fall right out.

So, what I'm going to do instead is I'll put a little bead of glue in there.

Now, to register the top, I've clamped a plywood cleat in place.

Now the cleat has a strip of tape along the top edge because I don't want to glue it in place.

What that lets me do is take a clamp, and I can set the top in place... ...line it up and then add the clamp, and that'll hold it there.

Now with the top secured, I don't have to panic trying to get the other side installed.

So at this point, Phil has the hall bench case pretty much complete.

Now we have to fill it out with some dividers.

So let's take a look at what we have to contend with.

So the first thing we have are two dados on the bottom side, and those are going to be for these short, little dividers.

What that's going to do is divide up that lower section into three cubbies, and that's perfect for baskets to hold shoes, sports equipment, or all those other things that you kind of dump in the entryway as you get home.

Moving on up, we have a tall partition.

That's going to break up the center of the bench into two different sections.

One section will have a door, and the other section will have hooks for hanging coats, and into that, we're going to install a horizontal divider and another vertical partition, and that just gives you two more cubbies to store stuff in, but before we install any of these, we have to go ahead and notch them out so they'll fit into those stop dados that Phil cut, and we're going to do that over at the table saw.

So to get all of our panels to slide into the case, we're going to have to notch each corner.

This is easy to do at the table saw.

Here I've set up a dado blade, and I've set the height in the fence to make a notch that matches the case exactly.

The biggest thing here is just to cut a test piece or two and make sure you dial in a fit.

Then it's a simple matter of keeping each workpiece in the right orientation so you're cutting the notches on the front edges.

♪ ♪ ♪ All right, once we have all of the notches cut, you're pretty much ready to slide everything in place, but if you've ever tried to slide dividers into a case like this, you know they can get hung up and get a little stuck, so I have a couple tips to help everything go smoothly.

The first thing I like to do is I like to clean up any fuzz that's left over from the router when you were cutting those dados.

A little fuzz can kind of fall back into the dado, and as you're pushing a panel into place, it can get stuck and bind.

So a quick sanding will knock that off, and then you're going to make sure you want to clean it out of that dado.

And then I like to pay special attention to anything that I had hit with a chisel, such as these ends that we squared up.

That's where the fibers really like to get hung up, and it's that last 1/4 inch that you're trying to get a panel in that it can get caught on, so make sure you clean those up as well, and the final thing I like to do is to knock off the corners of any of the tongues that are going to slide into dados.

Those corners create a little bit of a pressure point, and they can really bind up a panel as it's trying to slide into place.

It doesn't need a big chamfer.

Really, you're just trying to knock off that sharp corner.

The one thing that you're going to want to note here is if you're doing this on dados that are going to be exposed, you want to stay away from that front corner because you want that to stay nice and crisp.

There we go.

And the last thing that I like to do is I like to apply glue in two different places.

And here, just like Phil did, I'm going to use hide glue because it helps lubricate the joint as it slides together.

And what I'm going to do is I'm going to apply glue on the front half of the dado.

It's going to be the half that's closest to me right now.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ So once we have all of the clamps in place in the case and that's drying, we can turn our attention to the coat-hook holder.

Now, in the plans, this is connected into the divider and the side using a mortise and tenon.

Now I think that's a little bit of overkill because it's not going to hold a lot of weight, so here I just cut it to fit, and I'm going to pocket screw it in place, and while I'm talking about deviations from the plans, I also went ahead and added the lower front blocking, and I'll add the back once I pull these clamps off.

Again, in the plans, those were connected with a mortise and tenon, but because they're really just support for the case, I went ahead and pocket screwed those in place as well.

So once the lower blocking is installed and the coat-hook back is installed, there's really only one thing left to do on the case of this bench, and that's going to be to add two sets of moldings.

The first set of molding is on the bottom edge, and that's just cut to size, and it's mitered at the corners, and then there's a chamfer routed around the top edge, and that just gets installed to the bench with glue and nails.

That's into the side and that front blocking.

Then on the top edge, we're also going to install molding, and this is going to be flipped over so the chamfer is along the lower edge, as opposed to the bottom where the chamfer is along the top.

Now on the top side of here, there's not a whole lot to nail into, so I went ahead and added some blocking, and I've simplified this down a little bit from the plans.

This is just some 2-by stock that I glued into place.

Couple things to note -- You want to make sure that it's flush to the front and the side of the case, and I left it a little short so there's some room in the corners.

That's because I want the molding itself to make that corner, and that miter to be nice and tight, and if those are butted up to each other, they could interfere with it.

But once the blocking is in place, we can go ahead and get the molding installed and glued and nailed.

With this upper molding, you just want to make sure that the reveal along the top here is pretty much the same that you have on the bottom.

♪ There you go.

Once the molding is in place, you can turn your attention to making the door and adding the barnwood accents.

Well, we've made good progress on the hall bench so far.

What's left is to make the door and the back panels.

Now, the door is going to be fun.

It's fun because I'm using a rustic piece of barnwood for the panel, and that's going to make it very interesting.

Now, the construction for the frame around that panel is simple and straightforward.

I'm using stub mortise and tenon joints.

It's easy, and it works.

I've got my stock here ripped for the two stiles and for the rails.

They're all cut long.

My first step is going to be to use the table saw, and I'm going to cut a groove that's a 1/4 inch wide and 3/8 of an inch deep along one edge of each of these three parts.

From there, I'll cut things to length, and we'll start in on the tenon.

♪ Well, I've got the stiles and rails cut to length for our door.

The next step is going to be to cut the tenons on the ends of each of our rails.

Now, to do that, I've got a dado blade, set up our table saw.

It's buried in auxiliary fence.

I have the width set at 3/8 of an inch, and that's how deep I need my tenon to be to fit precisely in the groove we cut earlier.

Now in order to get the thickness of the tenon to where I need it to be, I'm going to carefully sneak up on the cut by raising the blade a little bit each time and checking for our perfect fit, so that's what I'll do now.

With the joinery complete on our doorframe, it's time to turn our attention to the panel.

I've gone ahead and cut the panel to final size, and that size is just a little bit smaller than the interior dimensions of the inside of the groove on each side of the stile and the inside of the groove on each end of the rails.

And so what we're going to do now is use our dado blade with the buried fence, and I'm going to cut a rabbet on all four edges of the face and on the back so it'll be a centered tenon protruding from our panel which will nest into the groove in the interior of our door.

♪ ♪ Well, it's time to glue up our door, and all of the usual rules apply.

I've carefully dry fitted everything so I know it goes together.

Now, one thing you have to watch out a little bit for here is that I'm using this barn board as the interior panel, and reclaimed wood, barn boards, they're not always flat, so they can be a little bit difficult to work with, so just something to think about as you proceed.

So to begin my glue-up, I'm going to go ahead and apply a little bit of glue to the tenon of my rail, and I'll apply a little bit down in the groove of my stile.

Want to make sure we get glue on both surfaces.

Now because I've got this somewhat unruly panel to deal with, I'm going to go ahead and put it in now.

All right, with my panel in place, I'm going to move to the other end of my door and proceed to glue up the other rail.

♪ ♪ Well, I think it looks pretty good, so I'm going to let the door dry, and we'll be ready to hang it in the cabinet.

Well, it's time to install the back on our cabinet.

Now, to prepare our boards, I sent each one through the planer and made it 5/8 of an inch thick.

Next, a rabbet was cut on two opposing edges, but the rabbets are different.

This one is 3/8x3/8, and this one is 3/8x1/4.

Well, why the difference?

Well, the difference is that I want the front of each board, where you're going to view it, I want that joint line to be tight, but I'd like it to be more relaxed in the back to allow for some movement and so that the two opposing edges aren't fighting each other as we try and install the boards.

Our backboards are going to be screwed down, so what I'm going to do is go ahead and strike a couple of lines to help me as a guide for where to place the screws.

Now I've got lots of material down here, so I'm just going to come up the width of my straightedge.

Up top, though, I need to hit right in the middle of the plywood top of our cabinet, so I'm going to position my rule about 3/8 of an inch down.

Now, there are two intermediate locations that we can place screws.

One is where the seat is.

And before I laid my boards down, I went ahead and gave myself a center-line reference mark on either side just for what we're doing right now, so that I could lay out these screws.

Up top we have a shelf.

But remember that the shelf doesn't run the full width of our cabinet.

It stops about right here.

So pay attention before you put your boards down and remember where things are.

So with those lines down, I can go ahead and drill holes at approximately the center of each board, and that way each board can float off that single screw.

And once we're done with that the boards will be tight, and we'll be ready to go ahead and install the door and move on to final details.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ There we go -- one barn-board back on one hall cabinet.

I admit I have some mixed feelings about using barn boards in a project like this.

As a Wisconsin boy, I'd rather see those barns stay standing, but instead of them falling apart into decay, it's nice to see the boards having a new purpose and being able to tell their story in someone's home, so on today's project for "The Woodsmith Shop," we added some storage to your back door but also accented it with those barn boards.

As we finished up, you'll notice that we didn't get a chance to paint the project, but you can see on the one that we made for the magazine how a fresh coat of paint really livens it up and allows those barn boards to stand out.

Now, one thing that you'll want to do is to coat the barn boards with some kind of a clear finish.

That's going to lock in any splinters and any of the dust that may still be trapped inside.

All in all, you'll find that it's a great project.

If you want to make one for yourself, the plans are at our website -- WoodsmithShop.com.

There you'll also find other project plans and videos to keep you busy in your shop until we're back right here in the woodsmith shop.

♪ ♪ ♪ Phil: If you'd like to get more video tips and techniques, sign up for the free weekly Woodsmith eTip.

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

Sign up at WoodsmithShop.com.

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 -- craftsman-quality stains and finishes since 1953.

Additional funding provided by... ♪ Titebond wood glues -- the pro's advantage.

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

Kreg.

And by... [ Up-tempo music plays ] ♪