[ Saw whirs, theme music plays ] ♪♪ It's the Woodsmith Shop.

Hi.

I'm Phil.

On today's episode, we're gonna be building an outdoor garden arbor.

There's a lot going on here.

In spite its impressive size, there are a lot of details.

The closer you look on this thing, the more you see.

We'll check out how to make some fine details that separate construction lumber from a great-looking project.

We'll also dive into some classic solid-woodworking joinery -- half laps, mortise and tenon, and more.

The best part about this project, though, is how quickly it goes from a pile of boards to a great-looking piece perfect for your yard.

If you're ready to build along with us, the plans are at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

I say it's time to build.

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, tools designed by woodworkers for woodworkers.

Create what inspires you.

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

♪♪ And by... ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Theme music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ One of the defining features of our garden-arbor project are the two lattice panels on either side of the archway.

Now, when we make those, we want to make sure that all of those interlocking joints are identical.

So it pays to set things up right from the start.

The way the plans are laid out, all the dados that we need to cut for those joints are exactly the same.

So what I've done here is set up a dado blade here and made sure that the width of that dado blade exactly matches the thickness of our parts so that when we create these half laps, they'll lock together securely without a lot of slop in them.

The height of the dado blade needs to match half of the width of all of our pieces.

That way, once those half laps come together, the inside and outside surfaces are gonna end up flush.

That takes care of the joinery part of it.

What we need to do, though, is also make sure that all of those joints are located consistently on the pieces.

So I have the short pieces for the lattice panel here that I'm gonna start with.

And I'm using the rip fence as an end stop.

Since it's not a through cut, this is gonna be a safe way to do that.

So what I'll do is butt the workpiece against the rip fence, make a pass.

Then I can flip the piece around and make an identical cut on the opposite side.

The final notch, or dado, that I'll need to make is right in the middle.

[ Saw whirring ] This arbor has approximately a bazillion dados you'll need to cut, so you're gonna want to lock in here and keep your parts organized as you go along.

The dadoing journey stretches out a little bit here.

We're working on the long vertical dividers next.

Now, other than the fact that they're longer, the process is the same.

What's a little different, though, like I said, is the spacing gets spread out a little bit more.

The first cuts are 9 3/4 inches away from the ends of the two pieces, and then each cut is 9 inches apart instead of 6.

So just make sure that you set your rip fence after running through each set of parts to keep all of these cuts consistent.

I mentioned earlier about keeping track of all of your parts so that all of these cuts can be consistent.

And I almost made it.

What I neglected to remember is these outside pieces for the frame of our lattice panel.

The long pieces have the exact same spacing and dados as the vertical dividers for the lattice panel itself.

So what I should have been doing was cutting these dados at the exact same time, working that into my flow.

I didn't do that, so I'm gonna have to work backwards here.

I have the saw set up for my last set of dados, so I'll use those.

And then I'm just gonna grab one of these guys, bring it back, and use that as a setup gauge to reposition for the other sets of cuts that I need to make on these parts.

Not a deal-killer, but I could've been done a little bit quicker.

[ Saw whirring ] The final pieces of our lattice panel are the top and bottoms.

These have a set of dados that roughly correspond to the original set of three that I did earlier.

The wrinkle here is on each end, I'm gonna reposition the rip fence and cut a wider -- basically a rabbet on each end that will accept those long vertical pieces that I cut just a moment ago.

[ Saw whirring ] After filling your shop with the pleasant aroma of cut cedar, it's satisfying to be able to do a little bit of assembly here.

I'm working on one of the lattice panels, fitting in each one of the crosspieces into the vertical dividers.

It's a good idea to double-check as you're going through here, just to make sure that they fit.

If things are a little bit tight, you could take a swipe with a block plane along here, just where the joint is, to be able to get those pieces together.

Now, at the assembly stage, if you wanted to, you could put glue in all of these joints, but that's a lot of glue and a lot of chance for glue to just kind of get all over the place.

And since these pieces are all gonna be held captive between the vertical uprights and these top and bottom pieces, I don't think it's really necessary, especially with the type of fit that I have here.

I'm gonna work my way down, fitting these pieces in.

Then I'll put glue on the outer pieces and fit those notches over the ends as I work along.

And then I'll do the same thing for the top and bottom.

Once those are all fit into place, then I'm gonna reinforce those with screws.

Here, I'm gonna drill a pilot hole and then drive the screws in to make sure that none of these parts will split.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Drill whirring ] ♪♪ The structure part of our arbor is a set of four big, chunky posts here that gets attached to the ground.

Between each pair will be those lattice panels that we just got done assembling.

Up at the top, there's a big tenon that's gonna anchor the pieces that form the roof of our arbor.

You can see one of the tenons that I've laid out here.

And the process for laying it out is pretty simple.

Because these pieces are so big, I'm gonna do a lot of the cutting with hand tools here.

It's just too unwieldy to do over at the table saw.

The first step is to take a square and define the length of the tenon and then draw in the shoulder line across two of the faces.

You'll carry that shoulder line down the other two faces here, and then I'm gonna use a ruler that has a center scale on it to lay out a centered inch-and-a-half-wide tenon.

I'll draw those lines down the end of my workpiece here and then, with a square, carry them down the opposite faces.

Now, you'll see here that I penciled in the waste areas that I need to remove.

That's mostly for visibility for your sake, but sometimes I'll do that just to keep things grounded for me so that I'm cutting on the correct side of my layout lines.

Here at the bench, I'm gonna use a backsaw to cut these shoulder lines on each side.

And then I'm gonna take the long pieces over to a pair of sawhorses, where I can use a long handsaw to cut down the cheeks of the tenon, because that's longer than what my backsaw can reach.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ If there's any cleanup work, I'll do that with a chisel and a shoulder plane.

[ Mallet tapping ] It's time to bring our end assemblies together.

I have one of the lattice panels and two of the posts.

Before we got here, though, I used a palm router with a chamfer bit and routed a chamfer along all four corners here.

[ Router buzzing ] It gives it a nice finished look and takes away some of that construction lumber-feel to these post pieces.

Now what we want to do is center the lattice panel on the thickness of our posts.

In order to do that, I've put spacer pieces under each of the corners here on the sawhorses to get them in the right spot and then clamped them up.

What I also have is a little bit of a challenge in trying to get a pilot-hole bit and a driver bit into these squares.

The solution is to use a right-angle drill attachment.

So I have two drills set up here -- one for the pilot holes, and then I have another one with the driver bit.

That way I can just keep working down the line.

I'm gonna put a screw in every other one of these spaces on each side, and that'll wrap up this assembly pretty tidily.

[ Drill whirring ] ♪♪ So now that Phil has the sides of the trellis done, it's time to connect them.

They're gonna get connected on the front and back with an arch and then trusses up top.

So we have to figure out how to create an arched front.

That's gonna be our first step.

We want the arch to set the width of the sides, and then we'll build the trusses to match.

So to create arches, we're gonna use a template, and we're gonna create the arches in two halves.

I've already made the template here, and this is easy to do.

I simply used a trammel to set the two radiuses that are outlined in the plans.

I went ahead and swung that around to create the outline for this template.

Then I cut it to shape with the bandsaw.

I stay close to the line, but I leave a little bit extra room so I can fine-tune the shape with a spindle sander and a belt sander.

And what I'm left with is a nice, smooth arch that's exactly the shape we need -- at least for half the arch.

So now I can use this template not only to create the shape, but kind of outline where my parts are gonna go.

What I'm looking for is a piece of cedar that's nice and wide, but I want it to be really clean -- not necessarily clean on the surface.

I want it to be clean from knots, cracks, or any other defects, because the shape of this arch needs to have continuous grain for strength.

We don't want any knots or anything causing weak points.

So, positioning this on here, looks like I have good, continuous grain along most of that arch.

And now I can just outline the shape of this.

And there we go.

So that is one of four pieces of this arch.

I'll go ahead and lay out the rest of them, and then we'll come to shape with the bandsaw and meet back at the router table to trim these to size.

[ Saw whirring ] Now that all the arch parts are cut, we need to bring them down to the same size as the template.

And to do that, I'm gonna use a flush-trim router bit here at the router table.

I'm using a bit that has two bearings -- one on top and one on the bottom.

And that's because with a curved part, the grain switches direction halfway through the curve.

So when I attach the template to one side using double-sided tape, I'll go ahead and rout with the grain using that top bearing.

Once the grain switches direction, I'll take the part, flip it over, raise the bit, and then I'll use that lower bearing.

That's gonna keep us routing in the correct direction and keep that router bit laying those fibers down.

That's super important with something like cedar that's gonna want to chip out.

[ Router buzzing ] Now that all of our arch parts are to final size, we have to join them together.

Now, we're gonna join them at the top to create that completed arch.

To do that, we're gonna use a spline.

And to cut the spline, I'm gonna use a dado blade here at the table saw, and we're gonna hold the parts... ...vertically on end.

And I'm gonna hold them using this tenoning jig.

This sits over the fence, slides back and forth, and it provides a good, secure way to clamp that part in place so it's not gonna move as we make this cut.

Now what I've done is I've matched these up so that they look good, and I've marked the faces.

And as I clamp them in place, I'm gonna make sure that the face that I've marked is towards the face of this tenoning jig.

That's gonna make sure if this groove is a little off center, everything's still gonna line up nicely.

Now, the spline material for this arch is gonna be cedar as well.

And it's important to make sure that that grain is running across the joint.

If it was running along the joint, it's not gonna add a ton of strength.

That's what we're looking for here is strength in this spline.

So you can kind of see how I put those two parts together and how that spline is gonna hold them.

Clamping this is gonna be a little tricky, but this hand screw here is gonna kind of give you an idea on how I'm gonna clamp these together.

I'm gonna put a hand screw across each part.

Just like so.

And then, once I have that spline glued in place, I can go ahead and use clamps across the hand screws to pinch that joint together.

And really all we're doing is holding it together and tight while the glue cures.

With our arches drying, we can go ahead and work on the trusses.

The trusses are a three-layer lamination.

The center layer is notched to fit over those tenons that Phil left on the ends of the posts.

So I'm gonna cut that here at the table saw.

I have a single blade installed, and I've raised it to the appropriate height.

I've also clamped both of the interior trusses together and laid out the notch area.

I'm gonna cut them both at once.

I'm not gonna worry about taking out the waste in the middle.

I'll just remove that with a chisel at the workbench.

Being cedar, it will knock out really easily.

So I'll go ahead and line this up, make a cut to define both sides of the notch, and then, while I'm here as well, I'll go ahead and bevel the ends of each of these truss pieces.

Then we can go ahead and put them together at the workbench.

[ Saw whirring ] Now, to remove the waste out of these notches, we're just gonna grab the biggest chisel that we can find, and we are going to lay it along the imaginary line connecting those notches.

Then we're just gonna give it a couple good whacks.

And just like that, it's gonna pop out.

Now, this is because we're using the grain direction for us, and that allows it to get a good, clean break with minimal effort.

There we go.

[ Mallet tapping ] There we go.

Now those notches are gonna fit over the ends of the posts.

And now we can create our truss sandwich.

And to do that, I'm going to just spread glue over this guy.

And then... ...we're gonna position this outside lamination in place.

I'll flip it over.

Perfect.

And I'll stick a couple clamps on here just to hold everything fairly tight.

There we go.

And now I'm gonna drive screws from this inside lamination into the outside one.

[ Drill whirring ] Okay.

Now we'll put the other side on.

And...unfortunately, there has to be screws visible somewhere.

So this will become the inside face, because we're gonna attach from the outside in here.

[ Drill whirring ] Okay.

Now that these trusses are built, I'm gonna bring in a pair of sawhorses and we'll get this thing assembled.

There we go.

So those sides fit into those notches nice and snug, but I still am gonna attach them with a couple of leg screws from the inside.

But at this point, with the sides on, attached to those trusses, we can go ahead and install the arches.

Those are simply gonna get glued in place and attached with screws.

Then a couple of filler strips get attached to the insides of these posts as well.

That completes the look of those arches all the way down.

Then we can flip it over and add the top.

Now that the arches are installed and the trim pieces are done, we have to address the top.

You have a couple options here.

You could leave it open, as is.

Or you can cover it with a bit of premade lattice.

I've even seen some people use clear corrugated plastic to create kind of a roof, and then it'd be nice to stay out of the rain as a little bit of an outdoor reading nook.

Of course, you could follow our plans and create these sort of trusses.

These are made exactly the same way as we made the interior of these trusses.

They're just notched out and beveled on the ends.

And spaced out, they offer a little bit of shade but also let a little bit of sun through.

Once they're spaced out and installed, you can go ahead and set this thing outside and apply a good coat of outdoor finish.

♪♪ One of the big advantages of building a project like this is, well, frankly, how big it is.

You really get to see results in a short amount of time.

But the other thing is working with cedar makes it really easy to improve your hand-tool skills.

It cuts smoothly and cleanly.

You can work on your hand-sawing and chiseling and planing skills.

And the joinery that we used on this project -- half laps, some simple mortise and tenon, and lots of glue and screws -- mean that you can get a project done in a short amount of time and have that satisfaction of completion.

If you're ready to build along and make your own arbor, the plans are at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

It's the place that you'll find all kinds of inspiration for furniture projects, shop upgrades, tools and techniques, tips, and more.

And then we'll gather right back here.

We'll build another great project right here in the Woodsmith Shop.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Announcer: 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.

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, tools designed by woodworkers for woodworkers.

Create what inspires you.

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

♪♪ And by... ♪♪ ♪♪