Charles Mak, Author at Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To

Fence Rail Support for Sheet Goods

Charles Mak — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 15:00:07 +0000

A professional cabinetmaker friend of mine shared a simple way of supporting and handling a large sheet on the table saw by making use of the front rail of the saw’s rip fence. Just build an L-shaped support to fit into the hollow square end of the front rail.

This way, you can slide the support in or out to suit the size of the plywood you need to cut. He has used this adjustable support to handle 4 x 8 sheets in his commercial shop for years, which is a better way than trying to find and place roller supports on the side of the table saw.

– Charles Mak
Calgary, Alberta

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Square Drive Nailset in a Pinch

Charles Mak — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 16:00:26 +0000

A Robertson “square drive” driver bit of the right size can become a makeshift nailset on a jobsite or if a nailset is not around. Simply put the bit in a magnetic bit holder for drill/drivers or impact drivers and tap on the hex end of the holder with a hammer to recess the nail head. It’s not an ideal substitute, but it sure comes in handy in a pinch.

– Charles Mak
Calgary, Alberta

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Office Supply Blade Guard Aid

Charles Mak — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 15:00:09 +0000

From time to time, I need to raise and hold my miter saw’s blade guard up, such as for checking the blade for squareness to the saw fence. Some woodworkers use a bungee cord to do the job, but I have found a much simpler way. After unplugging the saw and raising the guard up, I clamp a binder clip to the blade to keep the guard retracted. Alternately, a spring clamp can also do the trick. Be sure to remove the clip or clamp and let the blade guard return to the “down” position before plugging the saw back in for use.

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Sanding Block Support for Edge Sanding

Charles Mak — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 15:04:17 +0000

It’s easy to round over the corners you want to stay crisp when you’re hand sanding a narrow edge with a sanding block. Here’s how to avoid it. I support the sanding block with a square-edged piece of scrap underneath it, and I move the scrap back and forth with the block as I sand. The scrap serves as an edge guide against the workpiece to keep the sanding block square to the surface I’m sanding. When the sandpaper dulls or loads up, simply reposition the scrap guide under the sanding block to expose fresh sandpaper.

– Charles Mak
Calgary, Alberta

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Rubber Band Skimmer Keeps Finish Can Rims Tidy

Charles Mak — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 15:23:13 +0000

To keep excess stain or finish off the rims of my quart-size cans, I stretch a thick rubber band around the can from top to bottom and across the opening. That way, with each dip of the brush, I can skim the excess liquid back into the can without ever touching the bristles to the rim. I keep a couple of spare rubber bands on my finish cans for this purpose. The rims stay clean so the lids are easy to install again.

– Charles Mak
Calgary, Alberta

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Surgical Glove Improves Grip Strength

Charles Mak — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 19:40:40 +0000

I often find wooden clamp handles too smooth to grip tightly when applying clamping pressure to a glue-up. Here’s a simple trick that gives me some extra purchase on the handle: I put on a disposable surgical glove. Its rubbery surface instantly improves my grip so I can give the handle the extra twist it needs.

-Charles Mak
Calgary, Alberta

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Save Those Chisel Caps

Charles Mak — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 14:00:44 +0000

Installing or removing mortiser chisels is a clumsy job, and it can lead to poked fingers or damaged points if the bit drops down and hits the mortiser’s metal table. My cheap fix is to protect the sharp points (and my fingers!) with the plastic cap that comes with most new mortiser bits. I install the cap to help push the auger and chisel up into place. Then I put it back on when I’m through mortising to prevent the bit and chisel from falling as I’m removing it from the machine.

Charles Mak
Calgary, Alberta

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Storage Option for More Driver Bits

Charles Mak — Tue, 30 Apr 2019 13:08:34 +0000

Cordless drills provide only one or two slots for storing driver bits, but you can carry even more of them on the tool by attaching a rare-earth magnet to the driver bit stored in the slot. Then load the magnet up with as many bits as it will hold.

-Charles Mak
Calgary, Alberta

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Photograph Your Dry Assemblies

Charles Mak — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 13:37:00 +0000

After dry fitting an assembly, I will often take a photo of the setup with my cell phone before dismantling the clamps and cauls, especially if I am not carrying out the glue-up right away. That way, I’ve got a quick reference so I can replicate the arrangement of all of the components without having to remember the details. For instance, here’s a photo of a recent dry assembly for a task that I didn’t get back to until a couple of weeks later. These photos have streamlined countless complicated assembly jobs over the years. So, grab your phone and take a photo — it will last longer than your memory will.

– Charles Mak
Calgary, Alberta

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PROJECT: Krenov-inspired Shop Cabinet

Charles Mak — Wed, 09 Jan 2019 20:11:19 +0000

James Krenov was renowned for his elegant cabinet work, and he used mostly knife hinges (custom-made by a small shop) for hanging cabinet doors. In The Fine Art of Cabinetmaking, he notes that such hinges “are easy to fit neatly, and give me a wide choice in the way I fit and hang my doors — which in turn allows me more freedom in composing cabinets and the like.” When I build heirloom quality cabinets, I follow his knife-hinged approach, but I only use double-offset knife hinges because I prefer inset doors, a hallmark of fine cabinetry. The trick to mastering the knife hinge installation is to use a pair of marking gauges, as you will see.

Here is a Krenov-style cabinet I recently made using mostly hand tools — just like Krenov when he built his — to give a proper home for my spokeshaves and carving chisels. In my spare time, I teach a seminar on knife-hinged cabinets. Here you can learn the basics of my cabinet boot camp without leaving the comfort of home! The only power tool you would need, if you prefer a hybrid tooling approach, is a drill press or a palm router.

Design Considerations

The cabinet is sized at 5″ x 12″ x 27″ — big enough for a dozen tools, but small enough to fit in the wall space I had available. Holders for the shaves and chisels are screwed to the back panel, which can be replaced if the cabinet is reorganized for other uses in the future. I included a middle shelf to provide even more storage space.

When joinery was not a design feature, Krenov often chose dowels to assemble his cabinets. I, too, went with dowel pins for this shop cabinet, and I used a French cleat system so the joint tension won’t be in line with the dowel pins when the cabinet is mounted.

Preparing the Stock

Select flat, stable stock for the door panel. When gluing it up, clamped cauls can help to level the joint.

Cut all the pieces to their final sizes, except the door and the rear panel. The door is a glue-up of two panels, and it is slightly oversized for final fitting after the carcass is completed.

Drawing cabinetmaker’s triangles ensures that all the parts will go together in the correct orientation, eliminating potential cutting and assembly errors.

The back panel is cut oversized for the same reason. The next step is to mark out all the workpieces in their proper orientation. Skipping this step is a recipe for all kinds of blunders, similar to gluing up an assembly without any dry fitting.

Making the Carcass

A doweling jig is a modest but valuable investment.

The carcass consists of the top, bottom and two sides. Here, the top and bottom are joined to the sides with dowels. I used a doweling jig to bore the end grain holes. Make sure the holes are located away from where the rabbet will be cut.

It guarantees perfectly centered dowel holes, and you can drill them by hand or with a drill/driver.

I insert dowel centers into the end grain holes of the side panels to accurately align the workpieces for proper dowel placement. The trick, however, is to ensure the mating boards are flush on the front and on the side as well as being perpendicular to each other.

Lining up the stock for marking with dowel centers can be tricky. A shop-made right-angled brace can help minimize your margin of error.

My foolproof solution: use a right-angled brace so the mating boards are held flush and at a right angle when the indentation marks are made.

The author cut a small notch on a teaspoon to turn it into a prying tool that helps him remove the metal dowel centers more easily.

Unless you have more than a pair of dowel centers, mark the three dowel holes in each joint in two steps.

A pair of dowel pins hold the mating boards in place while a dowel center precisely marks the middle dowel’s location in the joint.

First, mark and drill for two of the dowels in the joint parts, then dry assemble the joint with dowels so you can mark for the last dowel placement with one of your dowel points.

Cutting the Rabbets

You can drill out the stopped rabbet’s waste, or hog out some of the waste with a rabbet plane before chiseling the ends.

To recess the back panel, cut through rabbets (3/8″ wide x 5/8″ deep) on the cabinet sides and stopped rabbets on the top and bottom pieces.

Clean up the rabbet’s bottom with a paring chisel or a router plane. Using a palm router skips these steps.

I rabbeted the sides with a skew rabbet plane and the top and bottom with a router plane and chisel.

Check the dry-assembled carcass for squareness — the author uses both a tape measure and a square for this job.

You can, of course, cut all the rabbets with a router or remove the bulk of the waste on a drill press, then chisel them the rest of the way.

Then trim the rear panel for a snug fit in the back rabbets.

Once all the rabbets are cut, drill holes for shelf pins before a dry assembly. Then cut the rear panel to the exact size of the back opening. Set the carcass aside for now.

Installing the Door Hinges

Center the hinge, butt it flush with the door’s edge, and scribe the end of the hinge leaf.

To install the door hinge leaves (the ones with pivot holes), first clamp the door vertically with the front face toward you in a vise.

Carefully mark out where the hinge’s elbow crosses the edge of the door.

Center the hinge leaf, making it flush with the door’s end.

Make knife marks to register the front and back edges of the hinge leaf before removing it from the door panel.

Scribe out the perimeter of the hinge with a marking knife.

Set the two marking gauges a hair narrower than the hinge knife marks in order to define the mortise lines.

Use a pair of marking gauges to complete the front and back edges of the hinge mortise.

A pair of scrap blocks clamped to the door support the thin mortise walls during chiseling.

Keep the gauge settings, as you’ll use them again to mark out the carcass hinges later.

When chopping, always finish the cross-grained end first to avoid splitting the wood.

Chisel or rout out the hinge mortise to depth.

Mark for the hinge screws with a self-centering Vix bit.

Finally, drill pilot holes for the hinge screws before installing the hinge leaf.

Drill their pilot holes. The author bores them by hand.

Repeat the same process for installing the other door hinge leaf.

Using a Rabbet Plane

Begin at the far end with short forward strokes, extending them progressively until eventually you are making full-length strokes along the edge.

– Start the cuts from the far end of the stock in short strokes. Lengthen them progressively until you can make full-length passes.

– Place your non-dominant hand on the fence rather than on the front knob, which is used only when making scoring cuts across grain.

Hold the fence tight to the work and extend your index and middle fingers forward to prevent tilting the plane as you push it.

– Set the blade for lighter cuts, especially if cutting against the grain.

– Remove the shavings often and wax the sole to reduce friction.

Installing Carcass Hinge Leaves

Set and scribe the carcass hinge slightly away (1/32” here) from the hinge side wall. A plastic gift card makes a handy spacer.

The carcass-side hinge leaves are the ones that have the pins and washers on them. The pin hinge leaves are to be mounted slightly away from the hinge side to leave a gap between the side and the door. For most cabinets, I set a gap of about 1/32″, which is about the thickness of a plastic gift card.

The marking gauges, previously set for the door hinge leaf, are re-used to mark the mortises on the carcass.

With the carcass still clamped in place, insert a gift card between a pin hinge leaf on the bottom piece and the side where the door is to be hung.

A palm router will get the mortises cut in no time, but careful chisel work keeps one in tune with Krenov’s methods.

Hold down the pin hinge leaf and scribe across the end of the hinge, and also across the elbow, to mark the hinge location from the side.

Remove any dents with a clothes iron and wet rag — a step that should be done before final surface planing or sanding.

The next step is to mark the pin leaf location from the front face with the two marking gauges used in the door hinge steps. After mortising the hinge recess on the bottom, drill for screws and install the pin hinge leaf. Repeat the same steps to install the other hinge leaf.

Gluing Up and Installing Holders

Clamp the spokeshave holders together, and rasp or hand-sand them to a uniform shape. This small detail will give your work a neat look.

Inspect the cabinet parts for any dents that might have occurred during the construction process, and fix them before final assembly. They’re usually easy to steam out with a household iron and damp rag. Glue up the carcass (but not the rear panel), and install the door temporarily.

Nail or screw a French cleat to the side rabbets so the cabinet’s weight will be supported by the side panels, not the top.

Here is my secret to getting a perfect side reveal on cabinet doors: Close the door and trace along the inside edge of the side to find out how much to trim the oversized door for the reveal.

After the finish dries, nail or screw the back panel into place. Notice how the rabbeted depth leaves room for recessing a pair of hanging cleats.

Depending on the seasonal wood movement in your setting, a reveal of 1/32″ to 1/16″ is about right. You can, of course, unhinge the door and shave more off later, if it expands across the grain.

Install the bottom door hinge to the carcass, followed by the top hinge.

I use a wooden strip with rare-earth magnets glued to it to serve as a chisel holder. Screw it to the lower part of the rear panel. An elegant way to display the spokeshaves is to hang them between two slotted posts, which are likewise screwed to the rear panel. These are just ideas, of course, because how you parcel out the internal areas of the cabinet will depend on the hand tools you plan to display.

Finishing Up

Ease all the sharp edges if you prefer, and apply finish before assembling everything. When the finish cures, install a door catch and knob. Voila! You have just completed your first-ever handmade knife-hinged cabinet. Now choose just the right wall space for it — a task that can take as much deliberation as the building process! Install the cleats, and hang up a cabinet that Krenov himself would be proud to see!

Click Here to Download the Drawings and Materials List.

Hard-to-Find Hardware:

Solid Brass Precision Knife Hinges (1) #26278
Solid Brass Knob (1) #27755
Brass 1/4″ Pin Supports, 16 pack (1) #30437

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