Few useful joinery tips. part 1
Blade Check
If your gluing work is less than successful, check your blades. If the blade in your saw is getting dull, it can loosen (but not remove) a layer of fibers on the edges to be joined. Later, glue may not be able to penetrate through this debris to solid wood, resulting in weak joints. A signal that this may be the problem is if ruptured joints are coated with fibersWhen clamping long or wide panels with bar clamps, a dowel inserted crosswise between the jaws of the bar clamps and the wood will help center the pressure and keep it uniform. Use dowels about as thick as the thickness of the wood you are gluing up.
Clamp secret.
Before you glue up wood for a project, examine the parts. If at all possible, start out with cleanly cut, perfectly straight boards of the proper thickness. Take out any bow or warp before you begin your gluing work. By using straight and true stock, you won’t have to force the boards in one direction or another, and you won’t have to get into tricky, complicated clamping set-ups.
Dowel Sizes
When using dowels, select a size half the thickness of the wood being joined. For example, for 3/4-in. stock, consider 3/8-in. dowels.; for 7/8-in. stock use 7/16-in. dowels. The length inserted should generally be three times its thickness. Thus, a 3/8-in. dowel should be about 2-1/2 in. long to penetrate into each member 1-1/4.
Clamp Helper
When clamping long or wide panels with bar clamps, a dowel inserted crosswise between the jaws of the bar clamps and the wood will help center the pressure and keep it uniform. Use dowels about as thick as the thickness of the wood you are gluing up.
Drill Signal
When drilling a hole, such as for hardware in a cabinet, use a back-up board of a wood that is different in color from the wood you are drilling through. By doing this you will know immediately when the drill is all the way through the cabinet wood because the wood chips coming out will turn a different color.
Driving Nails
As with screws, a little paraffin or beeswax will make driving certain nails, especially casing nails, much easier. If you are driving a cement-coated nail, always keep it going all the way once you start. Friction heats up the nail’s coating and if you stop midway it cools down and tries to glue the nail in place.
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