[ Saw buzzing ] ♪♪ This is "The Woodsmith Shop," and I'm Phil.

And today's episode I really wanted to call "Fun With a Router Table."

That's because what we're gonna be doing is taking a small handful of pretty ordinary router bits and turning them into something extraordinary.

What we will be doing is making a picture-frame moldings.

We're going to combine the molding profiles from these bits in a variety of different ways.

We'll throw in some veneer, some different-color hardwood materials, and what we'll end up with are some really great designs that you can use to be able to create custom picture frames of your own.

There's a lot to be learned here.

Chris is going to build two frames that incorporate veneer.

I'm gonna be making built-up moldings.

Each one uses two pieces to add depth and detail to your picture frames.

There's a lot to learn here, and it's time to start building.

-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."

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -The fun part of this project is all the work that we get to do at the router table, playing around with profile bits, which is why I'm here at the table saw.

Actually, the process starts here because what we need to do is create a variety of molding pieces or blanks.

So for the first molding that I'm going to show, I need a wider length of molding.

And then that's going to get joined to a narrower piece through the magic of the router table.

Now, what I'm going to do is start with this wide blank, and then I'll rip off a few strips in the wide width and then reset the rip fence and then rip off a few more strips.

The idea here is that since we're getting things set up at the router table, we want to have as many pieces as possible in long lengths.

That way, we can just have molding stock ready at hand, so whenever you need to create a frame, you can do so quickly and easily because you'll have some built up in your inventory, so to speak.

The first of our profiles that we're going to create is a concave profile on our wide molding blank piece.

Now, you can see here I'm using cherry.

And what I like about it is because this profile has a lot of curves and shapes to it, I want something with a relatively muted grain pattern, so the straight grain and uniform colors that are found in cherry work really well here.

Walnut would be a good choice.

You'll probably want to stay away from things like oak or ash, which have really distinct grain patterns, and that's going to get really crazy-looking once all the profiles get routed into it.

Although, if that's the thing that you want, you know, give it a shot, see how it looks.

For our first pass here with the concave profile, I'm using a core box bit set up in the router table.

Now, this cut will eventually be 3/8 of an inch deep, but that's a lot to ask of a core box bit, so I've set it low here, and I'll make a first pass across all of my molding strips.

Then I'll raise the bit up to its final height and make a second pass.

This will give me a better likelihood of creating a smooth profile that's free of burn marks.

The next step here is to make its reverse shape a round-over.

So what I've done is installed a round-over bit in the router table here.

And typically when we have this bit installed, we're creating just a smooth profile, so this part of the bit is flush with the table.

You can see here that it's actually raised quite a bit higher.

So if I bring my other piece in here, you can see what we're going to be creating, is there's going to be the round-over on this upper part of the blank, but then this lower corner of the bit is going to create a little step.

It's called a fillet.

And that is going to separate the round-over part from the cove part.

So we're having three elements now in here just by using two different bits.

On our first piece of the molding, we actually have the profile complete now, so you can see what this round-over, the fillet, and the cove section looks like altogether.

What we want to do now is create a pocket for the second piece of molding to get glued into.

And it illustrates here why we're using such a wide piece, because I'm going to create a groove that basically runs down the middle here.

And then that other piece of molding will get glued on the top of it.

And the reason for doing it this way is that now you can see when I flip this upside down, there are two pieces of the trim that are resting flat on the surface of the router table.

If it was just a rabbet, it would just be a narrow little leg for this to stand on and could very easily tip.

This groove is going to be 3/8 of an inch deep total.

So like I did before, I have the bit set low and I'm going to route this in two passes.

The second part of our molding bears a lot of resemblance to the first part.

It's just on a smaller scale.

And, in fact, the first two steps are going to be the same.

I have a core box bit installed in the router table.

This one's only a half-inch wide.

I'm going to route that core box profile on one edge of all of my small pieces here before switching to another round-over bit.

A first pass with the round-over bit finished off that bead and cove profile like we did on the other one.

Like I said, just smaller here.

What I've done now is taken that round-over bit and lowered it so that this shoulder is flush with the surface of the table.

What that's going to do is complete the profile and create the cap of our molding by creating a full round-over.

There's one final step left on these two blanks, and that's to head over to the table saw where we're going to cut our wide blanks down to their final width.

And then we can glue these together.

And we'll see when we put them together here just without glue real quick to see not only do we have this really dramatic stacked profile on here, something that you wouldn't be able to do with a solid, thick piece.

But there's one other thing here.

And you see right here this little rabbet that's created by the two pieces coming together.

That rabbet is going to be on the inside edge of our picture frame and creates the pocket that'll hold the artwork, the glass, the backer, the mat, all of that stuff.

So we don't have to cut that as a separate step.

It's built right into this process.

For the assembly, I'm going to run some glue right on this ledge.

And I want to brush it out for good coverage and to minimize squeeze-out.

But the only challenging part of this whole process with these complex shapes is clamping them.

But this is where that collection of spring clamps that you have comes into play.

I can just squeeze them from below, and that applies just enough pressure to close the joint and hold these parts together.

Once the glue is dry, we'll tackle the cutting part.

My second profile that I'm going to be creating is a variation on the theme.

It's a built-up molding, this time using slightly narrower pieces.

So the overall look is going to be a little bit trimmer.

And the profiles that I'm using are a little cleaner, too.

So it provides a nice counterpoint to that first one.

Now, in order to create it, I'm going to be using two bits.

Well, and a third one, which we'll get to.

The first one is an 1/8-inch round-over bit.

It's a small, tiny little profile.

Next we're going to be adding detail using a half-inch core box bit.

The final bit that we're going to use is a rabbeting bit, which, naturally, is going to be used to create the rabbet that will hold our artwork once the frame is assembled.

For this first pass, I'm going to route that round-over on the corner of my piece here, holding this one vertically.

The second part of our profile uses the core box bit, so I've set it so that it's 1/4 inch up and that the fence is right at the midpoint of the bit, creating a cove profile.

I'm going to route that on the side opposite the round-over, and I'm going to do that by just laying it down flat.

Before turning our attention to the other part of our molding, I want to cut the rabbet on the backside of our wide piece here, so it's going to get formed just below that cove profile that we created.

It's going to be 3/8 by 3/8, which doesn't sound like a lot, but I'm going to cut this in two passes just because we have a relatively small piece here.

Another thing that I have is a feather board that I've attached to the router table.

That's going to provide a little bit of pressure against the router fence so that I have a consistent depth of cut.

Final step in our process here is to grab our thin piece of our molding profile that we're creating and going back to the 1/8-inch round-over bit.

This time, I've installed it so that we're going to create just a smooth round-over with no shoulder down on the bottom.

Again, the fence is set flush with the bearing.

For this, I want to create kind of a bullnose profile on this thin piece, so I'm going to route a pass on each face.

So route one across one face then flip the piece upside down and route a second pass.

From there, it's back to the bench where I can glue all of these up.

♪♪ -Well, for my first picture frame, I wanted to do a combination of both solid wood and, for a little more pizzazz, a piece of veneer so we get that color difference between this walnut and the maple.

Veneer is a great way to add a wonderful accent to any picture frame, and it's easy to do.

One of the tricks, however, of using a veneer is how do we handle it?

Now, this happens to be a paper-backed veneer, and so it's very stable.

It's easy to handle.

It's not as brittle as a plain piece of wood veneer.

One of the issues, though, is how do we handle this material to cut all the different strips that we're going to need?

Now, of course, we could use a straight edge and a knife.

I find that a little tedious.

So I wanted to show you a simple way on the table saw to cut a basketful of this veneer quickly and easily.

The first thing we need to do is I'm going to go ahead and set my fence to the desired width, and I'm actually going to cut my veneer a little bit narrower than my maple because if I cut it full width, once we glue it on, I'm going to end up having to do a lot of edge trimming before we go to our final routing.

If I just cut it a little narrower, it saves time.

Once I've done that...

I'm going to drop my blade.

And I'll use a little bit of double-sided tape, and we're going to create a zero-clearance situation here.

We all know that veneer can be very brittle, and a table saw can just tear it up to pieces, but by using a zero-clearance overlay here... ...we can use our table saw and cut veneer.

So I've got my blade down, and I want to go ahead and raise the blade back up through.

Now, when we're sawing a thin material like veneer, it's going to want to ride up on top of the blade.

Well, we need to stop that, so what I've got here is a block of wood that I'm going to clamp to my fence, and it's going to trap the veneer down against our table.

And that's going to keep it down on the blade, and it's going to keep it from rolling up on top of it.

And that's all there is to it.

With this setup, we can safely and easily and accurately cut lots and lots of veneer.

So let's go ahead and cut about 4 or 5 strips of walnut veneer for our first picture frame.

Alright.

Well, it's time to glue the veneer on.

Now, there are any number of glues that we could use.

And because I'm using a paper-backed veneer, they'd all work pretty well.

I'm going to choose to use a cold-press veneer glue because that's sort of universal for a paper-backed, wood-backed, or just plain wood veneer.

So I want to put on a nice, even amount.

And important that we have enough... but not too much.

And to spread it around, I've got a couple of options.

I can certainly use a little disposable foam brush.

One of my favorite things is to use a roller.

Got a rubber pressure roller here.

Yes, I'm going to wash it when I'm done.

But it really does work well, I think, once it kind of gets a little glue on to put a nice even coat.

Makes it fast.

Makes it simple.

One nice thing about this glue, as well, is that it has some color to it, so it's going to be a really good choice for this walnut veneer.

Make sure we don't get some yellow line between it and the wood we're laminating to.

Well, here at the router table, I've got a half-inch-radius core box bit in place.

And that's going to make a nice cove on either edge of our frame.

After I get done with that, I'll put a straight bed in and we'll cut the rabbet.

My second frame is going to have two parts to it, and both of them have veneer.

The inner portion of the frame, I've put maple veneer on cherry, and this time I ran the grain with the cherry.

For my outer piece, I've got maple, but it's running perpendicular to my cherry, so I'm hoping that that'll be kind of a nice yin and yang, and we'll have a little more color differentiation once the finish goes on.

The first thing I'm going to do is take my inner portion of the frame, and I've got a half-inch core box bit set up -- 1/4 inch up, 1/4 inch out.

And I'm going to go ahead and route my inner edge of this piece.

The outer portion of our frame has two profiles.

One, you see here, is a cove.

And it's the same cove we applied on the inner frame.

What I'm going to do now is apply a round-over to the outside edge.

There are two rabbeting operations that are needed to complete the millwork on our frame.

One is going to be a rabbet on the inside of this outer frame that will house the inner piece.

Alright.

Our parts are all milled out.

It's time to glue things together.

You see they'll go together just like that.

So I'm going to go ahead and get a little glue in this rabbet.

And it's just a picture frame, so I don't really need or want glue squeezing out all over the place.

We use just enough and not too much.

These spring clamps, if I squeeze them real hard, are just the right size.

A lot easier than fumbling around with a screw clamp.

♪♪ Well, our moldings are finished, and now it's time to make a picture frame.

I think the easy way to make a picture frame is at the table saw.

Table saws will give good, accurate cuts with a little help.

And that help is from this jig.

This jig is simple.

It's a piece of half-inch plywood for the base.

Of course, there's a runner on the bottom.

I've got two pieces of half-inch plywood to form this bridge in the back.

And I've got two solid-wood fences.

The fences are screwed on with some round-head screws in holes, and that means that I can adjust the fences for perfect accuracy.

Now, when I set my fences up, I used a good framing square, one that I haven't dropped too many times, and I've made sure that I have a good 90-degree corner right there.

That's imperative if we're going to get good miters.

First thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and make one miter cut on the end of each of my four pieces.

To mark the dimensions on my frame parts, I'm going to go ahead and hold them against a steel ruler.

That way, I can see exactly where that edge is of the end of my miter in relation to the ruler.

And there we go.

Everything is marked.

So now it's time to turn the table saw on and clip all these to the final length.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -For all the fun that we've had in making our four molding profiles, we come to the part that causes woodworkers a little bit of anxiety, and that's turning these four pieces of frame stock into an actual frame.

The reason for that is the nature of the miter joint, because it's 45 degrees to the edges of the piece.

So when you start applying clamping pressure in one direction or another, those joints can slide around.

In a past season, we did shop-made clamps, and one of those was a set of frame clamps that Chris designed.

So this one consists of four plywood corner blocks that have a length of threaded rod that's glued into one side, goes through, passes through the adjacent corner, and then is locked in place with these adjustable knobs so that once you get to the point, it'll lock up and tighten down, applying pressure.

So with these corners here, now I can nestle the corner of our frame pieces into those pads here and apply pressure from all four directions.

And we can get a pretty solid glue-up.

Before we wrap this up here, there's something I wanted to talk about in terms of cleaning up our moldings.

What you can do with the long molding blanks is to go over them and use a chisel or a scraper to remove any glue squeeze-out that might get into some of the nooks and crannies on there.

But there's some things that I do until after the frame has all been glued up.

So I have a sample corner here of the more complex profile that I routed just to show what we want to do.

Because a lot of times there's some minor inconsistencies, and you won't notice them until you get some corners glued up, where, you know, the inside might look okay, but the outside is a little bit misaligned.

Router bits can sometimes leave ripple marks along the edge of the piece, so we want to clean those up.

Here's some of the tools that I use to do that.

The primary one for me is to have a shoulder plane, which doesn't seem like it would make much sense when you have a lot of curves on here, but the shoulder plane being narrow allows me to make shavings and passes on the convex profile so I can just keep making facets as I plane along the edges here to clean up any parts that overlap or just level off joints.

And then in these fillets that we created, you can run the shoulder plane from both sides... ...to add some definition there.

You can even run it on its side to trim up the edges of the bead profile at the top.

So that's one of my favorite tools.

Any light faceting that you get from some of the work there, you can just clean up that with some sandpaper, squish it around to match the profile.

And in very short order, you can get rid of those facets.

Another thing I like to have is a card scraper.

This is just one of my favorite tools for refining surfaces because I can use that to get into edges... ...and into corners.

Especially if there's a little bit of glue squeeze-out that I want to take care of on those sharp corners there.

A cork sanding block usually has, like, a rounded side on one part and one that's a little bit sharper.

If you use the rounded side, wrap the sandpaper around it.

That'll get into those cove profiles.

So I can clean up those for any stray marks there.

And then, like I said, last and certainly not least, is to just wrap it around either your finger or to fold it over multiple times to clean up that top bead.

And then do any other final blending on there.

You can fold it in nice and tight to be able to get into the inner cove profile, as well.

Just to make things nice before you put the finish on.

And then also, let's be honest, give ourselves a little bit of grace.

These are handmade items, so there's going to be some variations that are just going to reflect the maker.

And, also, most people are going to be looking at the contents of the frame and not the frame itself.

So let's talk a little bit about the finish on the cherry frame that I made and then also the walnut one.

I used a tung oil varnish.

I like the color that it applies to it.

It brings out chocolatey browns in the walnut color.

You just flood that on with a foam brush... ...and then wipe off any excess.

And that will give you a really nice look.

A couple of coats of that makes everything look great.

♪♪ ♪♪ Here are our four frames, all completed and assembled with a little coat of finish on them just to pop out the colors on it.

You know, sometimes when I come back in from working out in my shop, my wife will ask me, "Hey, what did you do in your shop?"

It's really easy to just say, "Eh, I made a few frames."

But on today's episode of "The Woodsmith Shop," you can answer that more completely.

We looked at cutting small pieces safely and accurately, how to get the most out of your power tools and a smaller range of router bits.

We also looked at measuring accurately, creating strong joints on mitered pieces.

Oh, and, by the way, we made a few picture frames, too.

If you're ready to make some of your own, the plans are at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

Then it's time for your own adventure out in the workshop before heading right back here to "The Woodsmith Shop."

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."