[ Power tools whirring ] [ Instrumental music plays ] Welcome to "The Woodsmith Shop".

The project for today's episode is The Sideboard, and it's a little bit different than the normal chunky, blocky sideboard that you're probably used to.

What we've done is opened it up a little bit.

Instead of a solid, massive case, there's a display shelf underneath the main top.

Even the main case's lifted up off the floor on some really nice looking legs.

Now the piece is made out of alder.

It's a hardwood that comes from the Pacific Northwest.

It's got all the warmth and color of cherry, but is much easier to work with.

So no burning from bits and blades here.

Inside, the sideboard has two doors that flank a set of drawers.

And those drawers run on solid wood guides.

All in all, it's a great piece to create a welcoming, warm environment, whether it's for a family meal or a big holiday get together.

The plans for this sideboard are at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

And we're going to kick things off with Chris who's going to make the main case.

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...

Here at Grizzly, woodworking isn't just our business, it's our passion.

We love what we do.

Thank you for the opportunity to support Woodsmith Shop TV.

[ Instrumental music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ To begin building the sideboard, we're going to start with the carcass, and that consists of a bottom, a top, two ends, and two dividers.

Then when we're all done with that, we're going to add a back with separate panels.

But for right now, we're worried about joinery on the top and the bottom.

So as you see I've got a plunge router.

And I am cutting the stopped dadoes for the ends and for the dividers.

And when I get done with that, we've got a long groove on the back edge of the top and the bottom to hold the spline, which will help hold our back in.

So let's cut a dado.

[ Gentle music plays ] [ Power tool whirring ] ♪♪ ♪♪ These are 1/2 inch dadoes.

So that's what I've got in my router, a 1/2 inch bit.

You can use a straight bit.

I'm using an up cut.

The main thing is it's got to be sharp.

♪♪ With all the primary dadoes cut, it's time to move on and deal with this long plough, which is going to hold a spline which will hold our back in place.

So I've swapped out that 1/2 inch router bit for a 1/4 inch, and I've got the fence on my router, so it's a pretty easy one-go.

We're only going a 1/4 of an inch deep.

♪♪ One nice detail that I'd like to add to the top and the bottom is a bullnose to all four edges.

And I'm doing that with a large roundover bit here at the router table.

The ends and the dividers both have 1/2 inch tenons on each end, but they are different.

Here I have an end piece, and you can see that I've cut a 1/2 inch tenon, but it's offset.

To do that I've got a dado.

It's buried in the table saw.

And it's a pretty easy operation.

The tenons on the dividers are going to be centered, so I'm actually going to cut on both sides of the board for that center tenon.

So I've dropped my blade a little bit and we're ready to go.

With tenons cut, it's time to form the shoulders on either side.

To do this I'm just going to use a miter gauge.

I've got a wood fence applied to it, a stop block.

I'm using my dado blade.

Pretty simple.

Well, our carcass is going to need a back.

And for this piece we're going to have a back that's special.

It's going to be all frame and panel.

So it's going to look sharp.

We're going to make the frame and panel using stub tenon and mortise joinery.

It's super simple and easy and a great way to make frames.

I've got a wide 1/4 inch blade in my saw and it's super for joinery work.

First thing I'm going to do is going to make -- I'm going to make some plow cuts in our styles, both sides, and a plow cut in one edge of our two rails, and that'll set things up for our joinery.

When I'm done with that, I'm going to make some tenons on the ends of our stiles.

I'm going to make the panels and then we'll be ready to glue things up.

Alright, with all the parts cut for the back, it's glue up time.

So pretty simple process with a stub mortise and tenon.

I'm just going to go ahead and put a little bit of glue in each of the tenons and on each of the mortises.

Slip everything together and we'll have a back.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ I'm going to go ahead and slip the panels in as I go, just to make things a little bit easier.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Parts, parts, parts.

It's time for it to all come together.

So I've got my glue bottle, my glue brush.

I have propped up the bottom on a couple of blocks to make it easier for me to get clamps on it.

When everything's glued up and ready to be, have the squeeze put on it.

So I'm just going to start with one end.

Move to the other.

Well, now it's time to slip the back in.

And for that we have these Masonite splines.

And the back is going to float on those.

And I'm actually not going to apply any glue around the back -- one, because it's a snaking mess, and two, because it's trapped within a very strong structure.

And so I'm not really worried about strength.

It's going to provide its strength by being rigid.

No different than the plywood back of a cabinet.

I am going to add a little bit of glue where it touches the dividers, though.

I'd like those to be very well seated.

Slip that in on these Masonite splines.

I'm going to set the top of our back.

And now it's time to lather up all these tenons with the glue and the mortises at the top and join everything together.

♪♪ ♪♪ The second part of our sideboard project comprises the four legs and then the top of the piece.

And that's all going to get attached to the case that Chris just wrapped up.

So I'm going to show you the layout process that goes on.

The first thing to do is to lay out the location of a mortise that's on the inside face of each of the legs.

I'm going to use a setup block to mark the offset from the top, and then some squares to mark the sides of the mortise, and then another square to mark the end of it.

Then I want to take care of the profile of each of the legs with a long straight edge, I can make the outside angle.

This is a smooth, straight taper.

Just trace that in.

With a circle template, I can draw in a nice smooth radius to connect that straight line out to the edge of the leg.

I'll do something similar down on the bottom end of the leg with a circle template, align it there, and then connect the mark at the bottom of the leg to the edge of that arc that I drew.

What I can do now is head over to the drill press, where I'll take a Forstner bit and drill out most of the waste for the mortise, and then clean things up with a chisel.

I'm going to take care of shaping the leg here at the bandsaw.

What I want to do is remove as much of the waste as I can from these little cutout sections on the inside edge of the leg, so I'm going to start in from the end, come down, and then curve my way out here.

♪♪ Then in one long continuous pass, I'm going to cut the taper on the outside edge of the leg.

♪♪ You can see right here I have just a little bit of waste material left to remove.

And I'm going to do that with this edge sander here.

What I like about it is that it has a rounded ends, so that I can tuck right into those curves as I'm working along.

Instead of just grinding away at it, I want to take light passes working along there to get just to the layout lines.

My big thing here is to just straighten the edge and make a nice smooth curve.

Now this long back edge you could do here at the edge sander as well.

But for me that's a lot of fun with a few swipes of a hand plane back over at the workbench.

The next step after the legs are taken care of is to connect them with a pair of rails.

Now these will sit at the very top of the legs and fit into those mortises that I cut there.

I've installed a dado blade and have an auxiliary fence on the rip fence, and set it to match the length of the dadoes.

I'll make passes on each face and adjust the height of the dado blade until I can get the corner of that tenon to fit into the mortises in the legs.

The assembly on this part is pretty easy.

I'm just connecting two legs and one of the rails, one for each end of the sideboard here.

You can see one other step that I did was to notch out the upper shoulder on the tenons so that it will fit in the mortises, and then the top surface of the rail and the top of the leg are going to be lined up.

I have it set right now so that the tenons are actually a pretty snug fit here.

So what I have is some liquid hide glue over a cup of warm water, and I'll brush that onto each face of the tenon.

The advantage of liquid hide glue here is that it will lubricate the joint a little bit in order for me to get them put together.

♪♪ ♪♪ Those cutouts on the legs are more than just pretty details.

You can see how they allow the leg to wrap around the overhanging top and bottom on the storage case.

That also complicates how we are going to attach these end assemblies to that case.

So you can see the arrangement that I came up with.

What I've done is clamped, a stop to the legs to locate the end assemblies up and down on the case.

Then in between the legs back here is a spacer that keeps the two legs parallel with each other.

Last thing to do is to make sure that this whole end assembly is centered on the width of our case.

And then I can clamp that down.

Now I just need to drive some screws up through from the inside of the case into the legs to hold everything in place.

My part of this project wraps up right here with the top of the sideboard.

It's really just a glued up panel, cut to size.

And then I went over to the router table and put that same bullnose profile that Chris used on the top and bottom of the storage case.

So now you can see we have our sideboard up on its legs, looking great.

It's time to fill the inside with some storage components.

Now, at this point, the carcass of the sideboard is complete, and we're ready to fill out those three cavities with two doors and a set of drawers.

I'm going to start with the doors first.

Our doors are going to be made up of a center panel, and then we have a pair of rails and styles that are going to capture that.

To cut these, I'm going to use the same 1/4 inch flat top grooving blade that Chris used earlier.

The cool thing is, with this one blade, I can pretty much do all the joinery for the drawers and for the doors.

I'm going to cut grooves on the insides of all of these rails and stiles.

With those grooves cut, now we have to get everything to fit together, and what we're going to do is we're going to create a tongue on the ends of these rails.

And I've cut a test piece here just to dial in the fit.

That one was just a hair too loose.

This one I got just right.

So what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and put these rails up against the fence, and then use the miter gauge to guide them through the blade.

Now this is about 1/4 of an inch long tongue.

So I'm actually going to make two passes on each because that is 1/4 inch wide blade, just to make sure we don't leave any little niblets on there.

And then for this panel, we're going to create a rabbit all the way around the outside that will slip into that same groove.

We're going to cut that rabbit a little wide.

So there's a nice shadow line around that frame.

There we are.

So those two doors are finished up.

They look good and they're pretty much ready to glue up at the workbench.

But while we're still here at the table saw with that same 1/4 inch blade installed, let's go ahead and work on the drawers.

Now there's going to be a bank of four drawers here.

All the joinery is the same and that's going to be a tongue and dado joinery.

So the first thing we're going to do, I still have this blade set up at 1/4 inch away from the fence.

We're going to cut grooves in all of these parts for the bottoms.

And then we're going to go ahead and cut the dadoes in what is going to be the sides.

After we're done with that, I'll reposition the fence to cut the tongues on the front and backs and we'll see how they go together.

So those tongues fit really nicely...on those side pieces.

And the bottom is a really good fit.

It's not super snug that we're going to be fighting it when we glue this up.

So I think that's the next step is we will go ahead and glue up both the doors and the drawers.

Now, because these are hardwood panels, I'm not going to apply any glue to them.

We're just going to let them float.

We want them to expand and contract over the seasons.

So we're not going to glue any of that tongue here.

We're just going to glue these rails and stiles together.

Now with these drawers, same thing applies.

The bottom is an MDF panel, so that's not going to expand and contract really.

But I'm still just going to go ahead and let that float in there.

So here we're just gluing the tongues, putting those in the dadoes.

Now these tongue and dado joints are pretty self-squaring.

But because this drawer is set into that wooden carcass on wooden drawer runners, we want to make sure that this is nice and square.

That way, if there's any twisting, we're not fighting it.

So I'll just take a moment to take a measurement and then apply a clamp if necessary.

The bank of drawers gets installed in this center section.

Now I've already installed the wooden runners.

Those are simply pieces of wood that have been planed to a precise thickness and width, and installed in the case with screws, and I just used MDF spacers to install those so they're even.

And for the drawers to slip over, I've routed this groove along the edge.

I did this at the router table.

I installed a 3/4 inch straight bit and then ran the drawers on edge against the fence to make that groove.

Then I rotated it around, keeping the drawer opening facing me, that way I make sure that groove is even on both sides and route that second one.

And now you can see using the spacers and that router technique at the router table, those are spaced out nice and evenly, which is going to make it easy to install these false fronts in a little bit.

But before I install those, I want to make sure I get both doors installed.

Now I've already installed one over here.

This is simply installed with butt hinges, but butt hinges do need mortised into the edge of the door frame.

And to do that, I did that at the router table with the same setup that I used to route the grooves in these drawer sides.

I just lowered the bit a little bit to match the thickness of the leaf of the hinge, and then I routed it until the hinge just slips into that mortise.

So now we can go ahead and install this other one.

I always find this a little tricky installing butt hinges into a case like this.

But the easiest way I found is to use a spacer.

In this case I have a little steel ruler.

And then I'll just slip that door in place.

And now I'll mark the hinge location on the edges.

So now I have a little bit of a guideline on the carcass.

And when I install these I like to open up the hinge fully, and they'll stop at about 90 degrees like this.

And then I use that as a reference to kind of position that knuckle of the hinge.

So then I'll hold it in place and I'll use one of these self-centering pilot bits to pre-drill the holes.

[ Drill whirring ] And now, because I've already mortised this door, I can hold it in place here... ...and adjust any of these mortises if necessary, but that looks like that fits pretty well.

So now it's a simple matter of going ahead and pre-drilling the edge of the door and installing those screws.

Alright, now, once the door is hung, we can go ahead and look at the reveal all the way around and make sure it's even top to bottom.

And it looks like it's a little bit tighter on the bottom, which is okay for now.

What I'll do is when we take this apart to apply finish, I'll go ahead and shave off just a little bit off that bottom so it matches the top.

But now this gives us a guide to start installing our false fronts on our drawers.

Now what I'm going to do is use the same steel rule just as a spacer... ...to place the drawers.

Now to install these, I am going to have to take a few of these drawers out, and I'm going to put some double sided tape on the front of the drawer.

Now we can take our false front, slip it into place, and position it so it's even between those two doors, and then kind of squeeze it into place.

And here I found it's beneficial to add a couple small clamps just to hold that false front in place.

And once it's on there, we can pull it out and actually attach it with screws from the back side.

Okay, so now we'll remove the ruler... ...and slip this guy back into place.

There we go.

It's pretty much a perfect reveal around the drawer.

So now we're just gonna work our way up, referencing that same steel ruler off the top of the drawer below it.

Now, with the drawers fitted, the only thing left to do is install hardware, sand and finish it.

So for these doors, it's pretty straightforward.

What I've done is I've just marked the center of this style, and then I've drawn a line that continues on from the bottom of that rail.

And that's usually where I'm going to position something like knobs on these doors.

There's really no set fast rule on where these should go, but I find that that usually looks pretty good.

And because there's only two of those, I can mark that pretty easily and get those holes nice and accurate.

But for something like these drawers, however, there's four of them, and because they're in line, you're going to notice any variance on where those knobs are attached.

So for something like that, I like to use a hardware insulation jig just like this guy.

This one's adjustable.

I can position these holes up and down, left and right.

And what I'm going to do is use the center hole that is currently positioned in the dead center of this drawer face as a guide to drill my holes.

And because this is referencing off the top and the side of the drawer face, it's going to put that hole in the same position every time.

[ Drill whirring ] There we go.

Now with that hardware installed, the sideboards ready for sanding and a finish.

As you can see, there are a lot of woodworking lessons to be learned here, even when you're making something as simple as this sideboard, with its solid wood construction.

We talked about gluing up panels, creating dadoes and rabbits and grooves, and then making legs that break the mold of straight and square.

Logan talked about making doors and drawers and doing that in a way that's accurate and consistent.

Now, all we have left to do for this one is some sanding and finishing.

There's a video of it on our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

It's also the place to find plans for this project and more.

You'll also find other great project ideas as well as videos to help you become a better woodworker.

Then you can spend some time in your shop and then we'll get back together right here in the Woodsmith Shop for another great project.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ 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 -- 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...

Here at Grizzly, woodworking isn't just our business, it's our passion.

We love what we do.

Thank you for the opportunity to support Woodsmith Shop TV.