♪♪ Hi, I'm Phil.

It's time for another episode of "The Woodsmith Shop," and normally at this time of the show, I'm going to entice you with some really cool project that we're going to build, but not today.

Instead, we're going to take a deep dive into our tool chests and share some of our favorite tools.

Logan's going to look at a few hand planes.

Chris is going to talk about a mortising technique, actually a few mortising techniques that he uses to create strong joinery for his projects.

I'm going to look at some unsung hand tools that deserve a place in your own toolbox.

And then we're going to wrap things up with a little discussion on taking care of your bits and blades, so that your power tools are working the way that they should.

Articles, plans, ideas, and more are all at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

So rather than let's build, let's take a look at some tools.

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.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ You know, in the shop, I really enjoy using hand tools, and I think most of the hand tools that people think about when I say that word are these.

These are bench planes, and these are tools that we use to either smooth out a surface or make it flat.

But there's another type of plane that I really enjoy using, and that's these guys.

And these are what I classify as joinery planes.

They're planes that are designed to either help cut or refine joinery.

And I find that they're a super valuable tool in the shop.

So let me show you how I use some of these and where I think they're valuable.

So let's start with this guy here.

This is a rabbet plane.

What makes this a rabbet plane?

Well, the blade on this goes clear from one edge of the body of the plane to the other.

In comparison, a standard bench plane, the blade is inset from the sides of the plane.

So with this rabbet plane, you can get right into the edge of the corner of a piece of work.

And there are a couple other features that really help this plane do well.

And I'll show you what it does in a second.

The first is that we have a depth stop here that helps control the depth of cut.

So I can set that however deep I need.

And then once that comes in contact with the work, the blade is going to stop cutting so you can cut consistent size joinery on a multitude of parts.

The other thing that it has is this fence, and this fence slides on these two rails.

That way I can expose however much the blade I want to set a different width of rabbet.

Now, this is all great for cutting with the grain, but rabbet planes like this cut really well across the grain as well.

And that's because they have this little scoring blade... ...right in front of the blade.

And this guy is there to score those wood fibers as you cut across them.

That way they don't want to lift up and tear out past the edge of the blade.

So that feature makes it work really well cutting rabbets across the end grain of workpiece.

Alright.

Once I have the depth stop and this fence set, I need to hold my workpiece and I usually put that in a tail vise.

So it's pinched on both ends.

And the biggest thing here is to make that make sure that the edge is sticking out over the bench so that the fence is referencing off the workpiece and not the edge of the bench.

It's okay to reference off the edge of the bench as long as the workpiece is parallel to that, but I find it a little bit easier to make sure it is hanging over.

So now when I form a rabbet, what I'm going to do is I'm going to put my fingers on the bottom side of the fence, and I'm going to hold that tight up against the workpiece.

That's going to make sure that this rabbet that I'm going to cut is 90 degrees to the face.

And then I'm going to make short little passes.

And as I make those passes, you can see that that scoring blade, even though I'm going with the grain, that scoring blade is scoring this beforehand.

Now, as I make these passes, I'm working a little bit further and further back along the board.

And that's one thing you'll find with a lot of these joinery planes.

I start with shortcuts at the far end of the board, and then each successive stroke, I'm pulling a little bit further back to make the joint a little bit longer.

Okay, there we go.

So that's nice and clean.

And that's a great way to either cut a rabbet by hand or to fine-tune joinery that you've already cut on your table saw.

So, kind of an offshoot of the rabbet plane are these guys and these are shoulder planes.

Now, on the surface they look similar to a rabbet plane, but they are different.

Now, shoulder planes come in different flavors.

You can have new ones, you have vintage ones, but they all kind of share the same function.

And if we compare the look of them to the rabbet plane, we can see that, yeah, they look similar, but they are different.

The rabbet plane has the blade going clear to the edge, as does the shoulder plane, but what the shoulder plane lacks are those pre-scoring blades in front of the actual cutting blade, as well as lack of a fence.

So this is really designed to be guided by a pre-existing feature on the workpiece.

Now you can use your fingers as a fence to create some form of rabbet, but that takes a lot of practice.

And it's not as repetitive as having a fence like on the rabbet plane.

And the other feature that may not be real noticeable off the bat is the angle of the blade.

You can see on this shoulder plane here that blade is at a much, much lower angle.

Whereas this rabbet blade is closer to a 45-degree angle, this one's much closer to 20 degrees, and that gives us a lot more of a shearing cut when you are working on something like the shoulder of a tenon.

So how do I use a shoulder plane like this?

Well, the first is fine-tuning some joinery that is pre-existing.

So, much like the rabbet plane, where I could fine-tune joinery that has been cut n the table saw, I can do the same thing with the shoulder plane.

I can really tuck this guy in and clean up some corners of work.

I can lay it on its side to actually make a rabbet slightly wider... ...which is a really, really nice feature to have.

And the low angle of this blade allows me to go cross grain... ...and trim the lengths of shoulders.

Now, a shoulder plane is great to take care of a couple of things on a tenon.

The first is we have all these ridges that the dado blade has left, so we can easily take those off.

Now, those ridges don't really affect the joint at all.

But what I like to do is I like to leave those tenons a little bit -- a little bit fat.

And then I will come in with this shoulder plane and just clean up the ridges.

And that allows me to size this tenon down so it's a perfect fit in the mortise.

The other thing that I can take care of is it never seems to matter how precise my setup is at the table saw.

I always seem to be left with a little bit of a step where the shoulder cuts all meet up, and that's fine in most cases, but for a nice tight shoulder all the way around, what I like to do is I'll take this shoulder plane -- and here's where this name came in -- I like to trim that shoulder up just by making a couple little swipes here.

And I can remove that shoulder.

So there we go.

Next time you hear somebody talk about hand planes, don't think they're just talking about bench planes.

Adding one or two of these joinery planes into your workflow in your shop can not only unlock a new level of precision, but also a new level of enjoyment.

Let's talk a little bit about creating mortises.

So, there are four good ways to create a mortise.

One, we can go traditional and use hand tools.

Two, we can use a little bit of drill-press assist to get most of the material out.

Third, we can use a router.

And fourth, we can create a mortise using the table saw.

So let's start with the basic one, and that is cutting it by hand.

And if you've got just a couple to do, this is the way to go.

It's fast, it's easy, and for me it's a lot of fun.

A couple things -- One is I've got a wide and a narrow chisel.

And you know what?

They're sharp.

Yeah.

I took the time to sharpen those.

Two, I've got a sample tenon here so I can test my fit.

I've got a little square, and I've set it to the depth so I can use this to see how I'm doing as far as depth.

And you see, I've got some layout lines here.

So the first thing I'm going to do is going to take a chisel.

And I want to establish my ends, and I'm going to establish my edges here so that we don't split out any wood as we start to go down.

Once I've created an outline, I'm going to do a series of chops and steps and work my way across, and we're going to go back and forth and go down.

Now, as we get deep, I'm probably going to have to create more steps because it gets a little harder to angle the chisel and lever those chips out.

So we're going to have to change our technique a little bit as we go.

Well, as we work our way down, I do want to take my wide chisel and clean up those side walls a little bit.

Things tend to narrow up a little bit as we go down.

Okay, so there we go.

It's a lot of fun.

It gets the job done.

It makes you feel like you're really moving some wood.

But if I had a dozen of these to do, eh, might get a little old.

So next up, let's try a little power assist.

So, chopping the mortise out by hand was fun, but now we're going to use the drill press to make it a little faster a little more efficient.

So I'm using a Forstner bit, and I'm using a Forstner bit because I can overlap my drilling a little bit without having to worry about the bit drifting into the previous hole, and that's important.

If you don't have a Forstner bit, well, try a brad point, but make sure that the bit isn't going to drift and wander on you.

Cleaning up this mortise is going to be much like when we did it by hand.

I'm going to use my broad chisel for the faces, my narrow one for the ends, and I'm going to test fit with my sample tenon.

Alright.

I don't know if that's as fun as doing it all by hand, but it's a lot faster.

So if I've got a dozen of these to do, I'm going to head to the drill press.

For our next method of cutting a mortise, we're going to use a plunge router.

So I've got a plunge base.

I'm using a 1/2-inch spiral up-cut bit.

And they're great bits for solid wood mortising because they pull the chips out of the mortise, keeping it clean.

They're pretty aggressive.

Leaves a good finish.

I'm going to use a fence on my plunge base and that's going to guide the router against the face of our work.

And then I'm going to go ahead and use my layout lines for my beginning and ending point of the mortise.

Now, advantage -- hey, I'm using a router.

It's going to go pretty fast.

Disadvantage -- I've got to hold that router tightly up against my workpiece, and I've got to really pay attention to where that bit is going.

Alright.

As you can see, this router made a great-looking mortise.

It's deep.

It was pretty easy to do.

It wasn't perfect because I overshot my lines just a little bit, but hey, it's pretty close, isn't it?

If you want to, you can use the chisel and square up the corners.

Or another option is using a rasp, file, or a knife, go ahead and round up the corners of your tenons so it'll drop right in.

So that's another option.

Now, when you've got a project where you've got dozens of mortises to cut, well, now it's time for us to incorporate a jig that will help us be more accurate and more consistent.

And so same router, same bit.

But with this jig I'm going to place this over our workpiece.

And you can see this little slot right here.

That's going to be the mortise.

That's where our bit plunges through.

And I've got fences and I've got stops.

So it's consistent.

And I don't have to worry about the router moving inadvertently or losing contact -- the fence losing contact with the face and causing a problem.

With this jig, our mortises are all going to be consistent.

And when you're doing production work, consistency is everything.

So these pieces here simply slip over our work.

I put a couple of pencil lines for the front and the back of my mortise, and I'm just going to line those up a little bit using my cutout as a window.

I'm going to add two clamps and we're ready to go.

Now, I mentioned earlier this gives plenty of support.

When you're doing doors and the mortise is right up on the end of a rail or a stile, well, that's when this really pays off because the router is not going to tip over the end.

You got lots of support.

♪♪ ♪♪ There we go.

Fast.

It's easy, it's accurate.

And all it took was some Masonite or plywood and a few strips of wood to create a fence and to create some strips that we could clamp onto our workpiece.

Well worth the 15 minutes it took.

So, our last way to create a mortise is to use the table saw.

Now, this is for special applications.

But what I'm thinking about is for instance, a trestle table or trestle bench or any of the arts and crafts styles where you've got one piece going through another.

So a through mortise and tenon.

And very often it will be pinned in some fashion.

Yeah, you can chop those out and you can route them.

But this is actually the easiest, most accurate way.

So, I've got my blank here, and I have a mortise laid out in the center of it here.

What we're going to do is I'm going to use my table saw, and I'm going to cut to the outside of my line here, the outside of my line here.

And I'm going to divide this board into three pieces.

The center piece that's left should be the same width as my tenon.

With that done, I'm going to take that center piece, and I'll go ahead and clip the top and the bottom of my tenon, giving the room for the width of this tenon.

Well, we're all set to glue things up.

Now, as you'll note, my layout lines came in handy here because I've got the right pieces in the right spots, so our grain is going to match up.

Now, since we want our mortise to remain free of glue, I'm just going to put the glue on these -- on this inside filler piece only.

Okay, we're all glued up.

So let's see how we did on our fit.

That's what I like.

Not too tight, not too loose.

And it's going to look great on the other side.

So if we've got a big tusk tenon wedge or something like that for our trestle table, it's going to look great.

Easy, straightforward.

A mortise done with your table saw.

Logan talked about some of his favorite hand planes.

And those are kind of the fancy hand tools that are out there.

I want to talk about some hand tools that don't get the same kind of love but I think are just as important in a workshop.

They're called rasps and files.

Now, they come in a wide variety of styles and shapes and profiles, all that kind of stuff.

I don't think you need very many of them.

I have four here that I want to talk about, and then we'll show how they get put to use here.

Now, I have two rasps, and rasps have a long blade with a handle and individual teeth that are punched into the steel on there.

So, this first one is a coarse rasp, and what I like about it is that it has a half-round profile, so one face is totally flat and the other one has a gentle curve to it.

Makes it easy for both flat surfaces and for inside curves to be able to smooth and shape those.

Now, with these really big teeth on here, it's pretty aggressive on its shaping ability.

So it removes a lot of wood fast.

From there, we'll step down into kind of a medium or a finer rasp.

You can see that the teeth are much smaller compared to the other one.

They have a much more random pattern on it, so they're less likely to leave like real noticeable stripes and tracks on your workpiece.

Again, the half-round profile is the way to go here.

Stepping down in fineness, we're going to move to files.

Now, a file is made by having teeth that are formed by lines that go at an angle across the steel instead of individual -- basically fangs like they have on the rasps here.

Again, half-round profile is the way to go for the most versatility.

The final tool to round out your collection is to get a round one, and this one has a nice small diameter so that I can use it in enlarging mounting holes for projects to help deal with expansion and contraction for seasonal changes in humidity or in tight curves to be able to work on those as well.

So, I kind of use at least these three when I'm shaping parts.

And here's a good example of it.

We recently did a sideboard project that had these curved feet on them.

Now, I've cut this out at the band saw.

So what I have on the inside of the foot is this curve that needs to stay flat.

But I have the band saw blade marks that I want to remove.

On the front or the outside of it, same thing.

We want to remove these band saw blade marks, but I also want to add a roundover to it.

And I can do that with these rasps and files.

We'll get started on this inside curve of the leg.

Now, one of the things we need to do is to secure the workpiece so that it's not going to move around while we use the rasps and files on it.

And then I also want to have it fully accessible so that the tool isn't going to bonk into the benchtop or the vise.

So what I've done here is clamped a hand-screw clamp into the front vise, which raises it up to a nice comfortable working height.

And when I lock it in here, you can see that I have free access to the surface that I want to work on without getting in the way of anything else.

Now, on this inside curve, I just have a few blade marks to remove.

So I'm going to start with my medium rasp here and get to work.

I can start -- Because it's a shallow curve, I'll make strokes pushing the tool along, across, and along the length of the workpiece.

What I'm looking for is to remove the band saw blade marks and create a uniform scratch pattern from the rasp.

Now, if I'm not getting into some of these areas, I'll flip it over to the round side and do the same thing.

Alright, so here's the work complete with the rasp.

You can see that it doesn't have the band saw blade marks in here.

And I have a relatively uniform scratch pattern on it.

That means I can switch to the file with its much finer tooth pattern.

Still going with the half round here.

And now my goal is to remove the scratch pattern from the rasp and replace it with one from the file.

So you can see and hear how differently the file cuts compared to the rasp, and in a very short amount of time now, Now I've replaced that with a relatively smooth pattern from the file.

You will notice on the edges here, there's a little bit of tearing that you can get from the action of the teeth.

That can be easily cleaned up with just making like a small chamfer with your file.

So at this point, I can now go to a sanding block and finish out the surface to whatever level of smoothness and sheen that I'm looking for.

Let's flip this around and look at that other side.

Now, here what we have going on is I still have those band saw blade marks, but I'm trying to get an even curve, and the band saw blade kind of jumped out of the cut at the end.

So I have this little flat spot.

So I want to transition that so it's a nice fluid curve.

And then like I said, I want to add a roundover.

So I have some guidelines that I've drawn in on the edge here that show the extent of what that roundover is going to look like.

The other thing that I want to do is to draw more or less a center line.

So that as I shape that roundover, I'm going to keep it as symmetrical as possible.

For this one, I'm going to start with the coarse rasp, and then I have the foot in the clamp here set up so that I'm working downhill with the grain.

You can see the grain on my piece running this way.

And then as I'm going, I'm going to be working downhill so I'm not going to tear out big chunks on here.

Now, this surface from the coarse rasp is going to look a little gnarly, but we'll smooth that out with the next steps.

Alright.

There's what I want this surface to look like after using the coarse rasp.

If you go past your center line or on the edge, like here, redraw those pencil lines because those are your guides for limiting your work.

So I've stayed away from the center line for the most part here.

Now I can go back to this medium rasp and then clean that up and start refining the surface before doing the same thing with the file.

There we have it.

In just a few minutes' work, we've transformed this cut edge and this leg into something that's ready for some sanding and the next stages of our project.

Files and rasps may not be something that's at the top of your mind when you're working with hand tools, but they really come in handy and give you a lot of options for shaping and smoothing a wide variety of parts.

There's a saying that we shape our tools, and after that, our tools shape us.

And that's really true in woodworking.

By incorporating a few of the tools and techniques that we've talked about in today's episode, you'll begin to work in different ways, and because of that, your projects are going to look better and better as you go along.

It's all about gaining skills rather than just piling up new stuff into your tool chest.

On today's episode, we looked at shaping tools, joinery tools, techniques, and even how to take care of your most important bits and blades.

If you want more of this kind of information, there's videos, plans, ideas, and inspiration at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

Then it's time to spend a little time in your own workshop, maybe working on a project or honing a new technique.

Then we'll gather right back here for a great project in 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.

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.