Author name: Enthusiast

Final Design Brief No. 6: The Danish Campaign Chest

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curly_oak_chest_635_IMG_5509

I don’t think much about the joinery for a piece until I have the form and details all settled. I do this because I want the joinery and the style of the piece to match. What do I mean by this? We have an excellent cabinetmaker in our area who builds gorgeous Shaker reproductions. But when you open the drawers, they are running on Blum metal slides. Open the doors […]

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Dowel Joinery Technique and Tips

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Using Dowels for Joinery

There are many ways to join two boards for case work. My favorite and easiest way is to use the Festool Domino. There’s also biscuit joinery, pocket holes and traditional methods such as mortise and tenons. All of these techniques takes expensive special tools or jigs. The method I’m about to show you doesn’t require any specials tools except a drill and a mallet. To make life a little bit easier you’ll want some dowel centers to help you place your mating hole. These dowel centers are very cheap and can be picked up for just a couple of dollars.

dowel joinery

Tools and Supplies Used

dowel pins

Step 1: Dowel Pins

Although you can use regular dowels for this method I find that many of the dowels bought from the home center is slightly under sized and I highly suggest using these dowel pins.

dowel centers

Step 2: Dowel Centers

Using these dowel centers will help you align the mating holes. These little guys will make life much easier and improve alignment.

flag your drill bit

Step 3: Setting the Hole Depth

With a small piece of masking tape you can set the depth of your hole by wrapping it around your drill bit and making a flag. I’m using a 5/16″ bit to go along with the 5/16″ dowel and 5/16″ dowel center.

drilling holes

Step 4: Drilling Holes

Drill the holes where you’d like the butt joint to be in one piece.

dowel centers

Step 5: Dowel Centers

Place in the dowel centers in the drilled holes.

dowel joinery

Step 6: Aligning Butt Joint

Align the mating pieces on the dowel centers and give it a tap with a rubber mallet. This will place a dimple on the mating piece.

drilling holes

Step 7: Drill Mating Holes

Using the dimples drill the mating holes in the second piece.

dowel joinery

Step 8: Add Dowel Pins and Glue-up

Add some glue and your dowel pins and tap the pieces together and you should have a perfect butt joint. Be sure to throw some clamps on and let it dry for a few hours.

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T-shirt “Brushes” for Shellac and Oil Finishes

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Finishing pad with oil 2

Every successful project should culminate at the finish line. And in the case of our seventh, eigth and ninth grade classes the finish (line) is made mainly of shellac. I like to use shellac because it is very forgiving for students’ mistakes. It dries fast and its components are mostly (if not totally) natural. To apply shellac successfully I came up with this protocol. Our shellac is kept in a […]

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Finish for Wooden Pens

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Mylands Melamine Lacquer. This is an older label

I got a question about finishes for turned wooden pens. Full disclosure: I’ve never turned a pen. Nor have I turned a bowl. My experience with the lathe has been turning parts for furniture I’m restoring. But I know a bit about finishes, so I think I can answer the question. The pen turner said he didn’t like using cyanoacrylate (CA) glue because it made the wood look too much […]

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Making a Workbench – Part 3: PVA Glue

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Squaring a Frame

In the third part of this workbench build I get around to gluing up the leg frames. I thought I’d take a moment to mention a couple of details about this phase of the project. Throughout this build I’ve been using bog standard PVA (polyvinyl acetate) wood glue. I’ve always gotten along really well with PVA glue, I know it’s limits, know the timbers that don’t react to well to it […]

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2016 PWM Excellence Awards – 8 Days & Counting

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Screen Shot 2016-06-09 at 11.47.57 AM

Have you entered you best work(s) yet in the 2016 PWM Excellence Awards? There are but eight days left to do so (the submission period closes at 11:59:59 p.m. EDT on June 17), then we’ll collect reader votes June 20-24. The grand-prize winner gets a check for US$1,000, the winner in each of the five categories, and the overall Readers’ Choice winner, get a gift certificate to ShopWoodworking.com – plus, […]

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