BEST First Woodworking Project for Beginners

the best first woodwork the best first would we would I command that’s tough the best first woodworking project you can build should be something you want to have that you want to build that you have the tools and equipment for I guess you’re here because you can’t check those boxes or you just you just don’t know you just want to build something that’s cool I have a recommendation for the second best then which I guess would actually be your best so it’s still the best whatever a table I think it checks all the boxes for a great beginner or even first project I think a great beginner project should be something that’s very approachable something that’s going to be useful for most people who can’t use a table that scales the principles we’re going to use and how we build this you can use to build a side table like we’re going to do or a sofa table a dining table principles all apply and get to exercise a lot of the fundamentals it should also be something you can build with a very basic tool set I’ve always sworn I’m never going to do this but leaving all my machines alone and I’m only going to build this with some really really common tools that you probably have can get very affordably or a very good chance you can borrow from a friend because they’re common first thing we’re going to do I’m just using some scrap here is I need to do a glue up to make my top which is a panel glue up very common in woodworking if for any reason you’re not set up the nice thing is you can either buy a board wide enough or a Home Depot open Lowe’s in the middle work section normally down low on the shelves both of them actually have pre-glued up panels of various sizes so get the size that fits for you or is it a little bit larger and then cut it down to the size you need if you’re not set up to do a panel the table I need in my house is a little triangular table to go in the corner by my back door because we’ve got dog collars and stuff and there’s no good place for them this top is going to happen to be White Oak and then the legs are maple this could all be Pine Poplar Cedar whatever you have whatever you can get I do recommend you probably don’t have Milling machines to work with rough material this is already surfaced on two sides I’ve already machined it at some point for a project so it’s smooth on both sides go buy wood that’s already smooth on two sides because otherwise you’ve got to go through the whole Milling process first thing I’m going to do is just cut this down closer or two the sizes I need if I had a little contractor table top table saw I would use that I don’t all I have is this table saw but especially since you’re doing a fairly small boards small table saw would be just fine even big boards no big deal just be careful man I just realized I did this probably the most inefficient way possible oh well it’s gonna be fine now if the material you can Source has perfectly straight edges and they’re really nice and square to the face so this is the face this is The Edge you can skip this also especially if they’re straight mine’s not so if it’s not a hand plane would be another option but you need to straighten them up and that’s what we’re going to do here at the table saw there is a little bit of a trick to jointing at the table saw when we’re going to do a glue up my blade is very very close to 90 but not exactly the more off the more obvious it is so what I’m going to do is Mark on the end of my board which side is going against the table and against the blade so I’m going to make a little nachi do so I’ve got a little indicator after I do all my cuts I’ll show you how I line these up after and when you’re using machines and power tools remember your PPE eyes and ears [Music] foreign [Music] happened to get cut on the outside edge this one didn’t doesn’t matter at this point because the inside is where we’re gluing not the outsides we have nice clean wood on the inside now now as far as the orientation you’ll see that they alternate this cancels out any air and the blade deviating from 90. I can show you because you kind of have three options here either your blade is somehow perfectly set up which is probably never going to be or you cancel out your error by aligning things correctly or you double your error making it worse so you either it’s perfect or Worse you’ll notice here if I line them up the same instead of alternating and what I did is I just cut these at a more severe angle so it show up see how instead of flat it’s like whoa that’s not cool at all but if I come over here and do the alternate it’s either I forget my geometry complementary I think that’s called complementary angles and now it’s flat on top so it cancels out now obviously you don’t want to do this willy-nilly and not care what your blade angle is because if I try to glue this and it’s too severe the clamps are actually going to make them want to you know slide apart so you do want to be close to 90. especially if you’re beginning you probably never want to glue up more than one Edge at a time the amount of air you see there might not even be noticeable but if you’re doing a larger panel where you have four five six seven eight glue lines and you’re kind of willy-nilly each time you know that error magnifies and magnifies and becomes more visible now I’m using a combination blade in my table saw which and it’s a little old so it doesn’t give me the absolute best Edge there’s some tooth marks and what will help minimize that is cutting really slow I was cutting a little fast and so I have all these ridges which come up with a fine glue joint this would still come together fine as is but I want it to be a little bit better and I do have hand planes and I feel like hand planes are pretty common so I’m just going to do a few swipes just to smooth this out some I have a video out and about these specific planes these are great for beginners because everything that intimidates you about normal traditional hand planes like I have over here you know I haven’t have a sharpening setup learning how to sharpen how to set up the plane dial it in and then use it that all goes away it’s literally one little lever and the blade self registers and they’re very affordable so this hurts my heart but In fairness to you my beautiful parallel bar clamps we’re going to stay right here and I’m not going to use them glue any PVA glue is fine for wood this is tight Bond too and I just like these little upside down condiment squeezers for the same reason they’re awesome when they finally started putting ketchup and upside down bottles it’s just there that was honestly way more glue than I needed and here’s something I used to wander can you glue just one put glue on just one side or do you need to put glue on both sides well I’ve only put glue on one side for a long time and I’ve never had a glue joint fail and the reason besides my experience that I felt fine with that is I was listening to a podcast with the CEO or president of I want to say gorilla glue and he was asked that question hey you’re a glue expert you may glue what do I need to do do I need to do both sides or one side and he said you only have to do one side that’s fine but they do like people who do both sides more because they use more glue so you sell more glue if people use more glue so do with that what you will so I’m just going to use these F clamps because I don’t have bar clamps anymore so those a while ago when I built out my parallel clamp collection this is not at all what these clamps are for but it’s going to work that’s the point use what you’re got all right once I got these together I’m just going to give them a little shimmy really help let’s work that glue in you might be thinking oh but you know I’ve been reading and I know those are expensive but one of the things that makes parallel bar clamps so awesome and rather expensive is how much clamping Force you can get you can really get a whole lot of force on there and doesn’t glue you need just an absolute ton of force no it really doesn’t you only need a ton of force on your glue UPS if your boards are milled improperly if these aren’t nice and straight and you’re trying to force the boards together because they’re not straight that’s when you need tons of clamping force and that makes a much weaker glue up just a little pass hand tight is all glue needs to set up well and give you a good glue Bond what these F clamps are good for is to help with alignment fortunately everything’s pretty flat and everything’s staying together I don’t have any big lips but on the corners I am a little off so I’m going to use these just to help bring these joints plush and since my boards are flat just doing the edges here will be all these need to stay flat just about the whole way across and whatever isn’t can be dealt with with the sander something you’ll hear and see talked about a lot with glue UPS is your squeeze out honestly this much squeeze out it just means I used more glue than I needed to but the other thing it does tell us is this is nice and flat if we have even squeeze out that means we have equal pressure across the across the whole joint but you really definitely don’t want to see is like a lot of squeeze out in some areas and then no squeeze out or even gaps between them that means your boards aren’t touching and PVA glue most wood glues really especially PVA polyvinyl acetate is not a gap filling glue what it does is help Bond surfaces together so as long as they’re physically in contact with only a little bit of glue kind of be in the medium it’s going to have a fantastic Bond but if there’s a gap and it’s trying to span that Gap PVA does not do that it’s not going to be strong but so long as they’re touching you don’t need anything else on a long grain edge to edge glue up like this wood glue is plenty strong for any purpose actually clamp this up at the end of the day yesterday so it’s had overnight to sit which I tried to do with with my glue ups and if you don’t have a lot of room in your shop that’s always a good tip because then you don’t have to worry about trying to you know your glue up being in the way especially if you do it on your work surface or something if that doesn’t work for you though then realize most pvas only require about two hours of clamp time and then you can unclamp it and especially on three quarter inch material like like this I have definitely many times when I’ve been in a hurry only done the two hours pulled it out of clamps glue does take upwards of 24 hours to fully set for regular working two hours is fine and I’ve been able to run it through my planers through my sander start cutting it down and reshaping or whatever what you don’t want to do is after two hours take it off and then start like beating it against stuff we’ve got a panel now let’s do some scrapage and then get some initial sanding done on this [Music] foreign this is pretty rough so I’m going to start with 80 grit paper on my sander that’s pretty aggressive and will help smooth things out pretty quick now if your glue up isn’t perfect got any issues and this will fit through your planer and you have a planer you can by all means do that to smooth things out but you can also do it all with the sander obviously I’m blessed to have a really nice sander from surf prep whatever sander you have if it has any kind of dust port and it might have a bag take the bag off and sometimes there is a vacuum attachment in there even if you don’t have a dust collector just hooking a sander up to even a shop vac goes a long way in improving your sanding performance because what happens if you’re not moving the dust out from under your sanding pad here as you collect a pile of dust which builds up heat and then your energy and work goes into just putting heat into that pile of dust instead of moving it away and heat is the enemy of sharp so you dull out and wear your paper a lot faster and you’re not cutting as well because you’re just re-grinding dust instead of cutting your surface [Music] all right now I can see my wood got a good feel for it I see anywhere I need to fill let’s get some filler on it [Music] while the putty dries I’m going to go ahead and get started on the legs now eye thickness here three quarters of an inch perfect I know I want the top of my table to be 26 inches for this little side table so that means 25 and a quarter is the length I need my legs to be if you’re doing like a dining table or anything like that 30 inches is pretty typical like 30 to 32 normally 30 side tables anywhere from like 18 to 26 just depends just go measure where where you want it to be I’m just using scraps as I mentioned so none of these are the right dimensions I need so just use the circular saw table saw to break them down to leg shapes and again if you don’t have the tools to do that just buy wood about the size you need so for a table like this some two by two be great size four legs or since you can do a glue up and those clamps are great for it you can always get two one by twos and glue them together to make a two by two or something lots of ways to tackle it God I’m an idiot there is plenty with this because I can do side by side I was I was [Music] thank you foreign [Music] so I took the stock I had now I have four squares I only need three legs another great trick is you have the material make duplicates of Parts you can sub in in case you mess up one leg you’ve got an extra leg blank or you know I have way more material here for the aprons which is going to go between the legs and under the top then I need so that way if I mess up a piece I have extra ready to go two tricks I kind of use at the table saw here was to make my squares instead of relying on any measurements you know as I stood it up on edge and set my fence to the thickness of the board so then when I laid it over and cut it I have a square also you notice I use the table saw to resaw this make it thinner and I could have cut all the way through but I left a little paper here that helps make sure the board doesn’t like bind on the blade or Flop around create a hazard but with that thin little paper it just snaps right off but it holds it together Quick Pass with the sander and that little Ridge will go away putty dried everything is sanded now to 150 so pretty much finish ready now we just need to bring it all together now if you didn’t have saws and you wanted to take the super easy route this is basically where you’d start go to the store buy wood the right dimensions and now you’re ready to start bringing things down to final size I did Rip these down I want to say they were originally three and a half then I went to two and a half that still didn’t quite look right did a little math and ended up cutting them down to two and a quarter because these are about one and three eighths with one and three quarters to two and a quarter that is very very close to the golden ratio 1.62 so if you’re ever like I don’t know what size things are going to look right or things don’t look right use a golden ratio so all they did was took this is a square so it is one and three eighths inch wide so took one and three eighths multiplied that by 1.62 it gave me just under two and a quarter I just rounded up to two and a quarter for ease and now when I hold these beside each other I’m like it looks balanced that looks right so that’s I use the golden ratio to solve any dimensional problems a lot of time when it comes to Aesthetics so keep that one in your pocket as I mentioned we’re doing a triangular table and obviously this is in the Triangle so the next step is going to be marking out our triangles and I I think I want to try to work a lower shelf into this so Mark out the triangles for the top and the bottom shelf how am I going to join the bottom shelf here’s my secret I don’t know yet don’t worry about having everything solved when you build sometimes just get in there and if you have 90 of it figured out you’ll figure out the last 10 when you get to it so I’m just deciding what part of this I want to be my top and front and I kind of like this little defect here so we’re going to leave that it’s figure not a defect now in my experience true triangular tables are just really too harsh with all those sharp Corners so we’re going to ease that up a bit by giving us let’s say a little inch on the ends that will come in okay so now I have a one inch Mark and I actually don’t know what this Dimension needs to be for the front edge what I do know is my two back legs are 13 inches but just using my Big O framing square here I can just put 13 and we’ll put this there I was actually really close to where I need to be so yeah just put both the 13s on here perfect now for my bottom shelf I’m not going to add that little bump out because I have a feeling it needs to be a little smaller anyways to fit inside the legs so I’m just going to do 13 and 13 right off the front edge now I’ve got two triangles ready to go now I’ve already said it take the principles not the design here you can take these principles and make any table with any number of legs any size Etc I’ll give you a hint though if this is your first table a three-legged table always sits flat four-legged tables can rock so then there’s some tricks on making sure every that they sit flat and use adjustable feet or play some tricks on the table saw or just sand them the problem is not all four floors are flat so even if all your legs are the same if the floor isn’t flat you are into issues so adjustable feet is good but three legged tables always sit flat since these aren’t rough Cuts these are my finished Cuts two Dimension and I’m not going to be making any more Cuts I want to be really good this is where a friend that can hold things is really handy but if you’re working alone just break out whatever clamps and find a way to hold your piece look at that we got two triangles [Music] so figure out my locations on all the legs to figure out the locations of all the legs I just flip the piece upside down because this is where the legs are going to go you want to make sure the reveal is all the same I start with a three-quarter inch reveal which is pretty common but I normally do larger things and it just didn’t look right and everything was way too close oh it needed to be smaller duh golden ratio the thickness of my table is three quarters of an inch so I did three quarters of an inch instead of multiplied by 162 I did divided by 162. that was just under half an inch so about my combination squared a little under half an inch set everything to just under half inch reveal and this looks really good and now I can move these out of the way one of the tricks in woodworking is to measure as little as possible so having laid everything out this way I can actually take my board and make my marks directly in place and never worry about what any of these numbers are because I bet they’re really weird fractions but if I just Mark exactly in place it’s going to be right another thing that really helps how your projects come together is remembering the relationship between the line and your cut because these lines because my pencil lead has thickness are marked on the outside and I transferred that exactly when I cut this I actually want to make sure that pencil line is still there I don’t want to cut it away the way I help myself remember that is I put an x on the outside of that line and now I know that line needs to stay if I put an x on the line that means I need to cut exactly on the line and the line goes away if I want to be on the other side I put an x on the other side because if I cut that pencil line away this would actually be a little shorter than when I need it to and I’d pull in my legs a little bit this is a construction tool and I know if I use that to make these fine Final Cuts I’m not going to be happy with how clean it comes together sawing straight by hand is not hard the biggest thing is you want to just make sure your body is out of the way here it’s easier to move straight and the trick to being square is actually to use the reflection in the blade if the reflection of this corner lines up perfectly with the corner on the other side I’m straight as I move away from straight I can see that in the reflection the other thing that helps not be intimidated by sawing is realizing you really only need to be super concerned about the first inch as we get deeper you notice I have a wide blade so once enough of the display is in the cut it’s going to keep itself going straight because it can’t really twist much it’ll bind up all you got to do is really worry about that first inch or so and the rest will take care of itself [Music] as far as bringing this all together we’re going to use the infamous Craig pocket hole jig the only thing I’m going to make sure I do is do the pocket holes on the inside of the aprons so that way they’re not visible from the outside and we’re going to do pocket holes everywhere the aprons meet the legs and then a few to attach the top [Music] foreign [Music] I haven’t attached it yet but I got the lower shelf cut out and notched in here I just kind of won it and here’s the way I did it it’s possible my legs are not perfectly 90 through the top so I measured where the legs need to be and then I set my shelf down put the legs on top of it so I can mark the depth for the legs and how the notch need to fit as well as where the back leg needed to be cut and then because I wanted these to be fairly precise cut those out with the circular saw and then just slipped it in here I literally just stood here wiggling up and down until it looked pretty good I like this I think it’s six inches from the bottom to the top and I cut three little spacer blocks from scrap to hold it so it’s the same on all sides now as far as attaching it goes I could do some pocket holes on the bottom side this just really doesn’t need that kind of strength and it’s going to be a pain in the butt because I’ve got a dull bit for that jig because the friend has my good jig right now so I’m just going to use some Brad nail to pop in here and that’ll be just fine I always forget the stupid thing has a power button it’s like my own list only cordless tool with a power button so you don’t just put the battery in and go like you’ve got to turn it on after you have a battery it’s really weird [Music] foreign all the edges with some sandpaper from one very important step on tables is whenever your legs are make sure you put a little chamfer or round over on the bottom I’m using a plane just because it makes me feel like a real woodworker and I have one you can totally do this with sandpaper though and the point is when this gets scooted drug move around the floor if you don’t have that and a little Pebble dirt anything catches it it can easily grab those fibers and you get a big tear and by break the corner and edges I really mean something this simple just that’s done and all we’re doing is taking the sharp edge from being machined and just knocking it down a little bit with sandpaper this is 180 just so it’s not sharp so when you touch it it’s like oh that’s that’s Pleasant and not worried about getting up not paper cut but a wood cut and before we finish we’ll make sure we get all dust off a damp rack does well but then you gotta let it dry I’ve got air so that’s what I like to use all right time to finish I’m using a not very common product but I have I had to order it in a gallon for another project and it’ll be fine on this one so I’m just trying to use it but you could use any kind of polyurethane walnut oil boiled linseed oil spray lacquer beeswax Butcher Block conditioner whatever you want to finish this with especially a small utility table is fine now if you’re making like a dining table or someone’s going to use see a lot of use polyurethane would definitely be a good a good route just like sanding and wood filling I have an in-depth video on finishing the real meat of it is basically read the directions on the label manufacturers want you to have a good experience and those are best practices follow the best practices you’ll probably get the best results well you get to check out the beautiful oiling shots I’m going to talk about possibly the most important step which is coming up very soon and that’s when we’re done and we take this inside and it’s visible to the public now this is something that plagues beginners and professionals alike when someone sees your work that’s finished they’re going to be very tempted to correctly and appropriately say whoa that’s beautiful that’s great that’s amazing you did such a great job and your intuition will tell you to say hold on I’ve got to point out every single flaw you falsely complimented me and that is not acceptable how dare you complement something that is not perfect let me correct you actually that’s totally wrong what you should say this might be tough is thank you they already knew it wasn’t perfect believe it or not the other thing is they don’t care because nothing’s perfect and they don’t expect Perfection what is amazing and is perfect and is beautiful regardless of whatever flaws are in your piece just like the flaws I have and you have and everyone has is that you took what was raw material just stuff scrap that might typically be seen as basically just a firewood or landfill and brought it to life and gave it purpose right this all these pieces were just junk outside eventually going to rot and probably get burned if they didn’t get a purpose promptly enough it’s now a table that’s going to serve a use and purpose in our house and fix a slight problem for us that is beautiful that is really cool that doesn’t change with any gaps in joinery that are present or if the Finish isn’t completely even or if there’s a spot that I didn’t perfectly sand that I missed well enough it’s still amazing so you say thank you you just say thank you that’s all you have to say because if you’ve ever complimented somebody and they come back with oh you’re wrong you know look at my acne or the hairdresser didn’t do a great job or but look at this crack and look at that Gap and how these two things aren’t even in blah blah blah if you’ve ever had someone do that to you you instantly go from thinking I’m really impressed by what’s happening here to I I don’t know what to say this just got really awkward you know what I lied it’s total crap you should never try this again like what are you looking for it’s not about you think about something paying you a compliment they just want to hear thank you and everything they’re saying is true because it is beautiful that you took junk and then brought it to life and gave it a purpose you made something exist that didn’t exist before and similarly right if you have someone in your life who just doesn’t know how to take a compliment instead of trying to force them to there is a better way especially if they make stuff to pay a compliment that they can’t crack down and that’s just to Simply give it differently so instead of when you see something saying oh you look great today or that’s a great piece that’s beautiful that’s amazing whatever or they’re going to be like oh let me show you all the flaws right especially if they made something the way you can pay a compliment that they can’t shut down is to say I’m so blown away you took what I would see as junk and gave it purpose that’s so cool in a second I’ll show you what this looks like all finished and it’s home and you know as a table should live not upside down getting brushed to death in the meantime if you’re the kind of person who likes to like comment subscribe maybe even share videos whoa thank you so much that goes a really long way in enabling me to continue making these videos instead of just building furniture for people who pay me thank you so much for that and if that’s not your jam thanks for joining the ride anyway I hope you learned something we’re inspired or at least entertained and either way until next time make time to make something foreign [Music] …

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