marc: the wood whisperer is sponsored by powermatic, the gold standard since 1921. and clear vue cyclones, clearthe air and breathe easy. (groovy jazz music) (jaunty piano music) nicole: marc ... (sigh) you know what, i really need a magazine rack.
marc:if i recall correctlyi think we talked about this in one of our live guild sessions. i explained that glen huey made this beautiful magazine rack. very simple, it's pocket screwconstruction and something that you could probablybang together in a weekend. i thought it would be a great project to go over with you guys. build the one that glen recommends
building based on his exact plan, and then also start thinking about ways that we can change that design. use that design as a template, and then take it fromthere and expand upon it. it reminds me of playingmusic. i don't know how many of you know buti'm actually a drummer, although i don't reallyplay very much any more. one of my favorite thingsto do was to take the basic
beat that someone had already created and elaborate on it, justreally go to town on it. it's a lot harder sometimesto make that original beat, that's really part of the challenge. as you're trying to buildup your design skills, sometimes it's easier to startwith a simple design that someone else came up withand then build upon it. you can always teach yourself over time, you'll start to get anidea how to start from
nothing and go to even that basic design. there's really nothing wrong with taking a simple template and just jazzing it up. the woods i'm going to use for this project are wenge and bubinga. i really like the contrast and i like the fact that despitethis huge contrast they're really both on the darkerside of wood color. i think this is going tolook really good together.
the stock that i have here i actually got from bell forest products. you guys have heard me talkabout them in the past. they have a great mail order service and honestly i do highly recommend them, especially if you're in an area where you have trouble getting certain hard woods. i get e-mails from youguys all the time on, "where do i go for this,where do i go for that?"
if you can't find it locally, mail order is a really goodoption, so check them out. the bubinga you'll notice here actually has some sap wood in it. see that light strip of color here? a lot of times you're goingto want to cut that stuff out depending on the project thatyou're doing but in this case i thought it might lookpretty cool to leave it in. i intentionally cut this board so that i
would get the lightercolored material in there. you'll notice this stuff is pre-cut. these are going to be thesides of the magazine rack. those are cut to threeand a half inches wide. all the wenge stock will makeup my fronts and my shelves. those are either cut to twoand three quarters, i think, for the shelves, and threeand a half for the fronts. i milled all this stuff ahead of time at the shop so that i wouldn't have to go out
and buy expensive fourquarter material here. if you don't have the planer and jointer that's what you're going to have to do. it's not the end ofthe world it just means that you're going topay a little bit more. but you get the stuff to your shop, it's already pretty much ready to go, you just rip it to width,cut it to length and then you could startbuilding this project.
(grooving synth music) i start by giving myself a nice clean 90 degree edge on each of my boards. since there are only twosides on a magazine rack, and i don't have long extensionwings on my miter saw, i'm going to clamp bothpieces together and measure to 34 and threequarters of an inch. measure twice and cut once, of course. then i cut both boards at the same time.
(sawing) for the shelves and fronts i set up a fancy bubinga stop block. see guys? nice and easy.just like the hair die. or is it shampoo? one or the other. i've got my three bottom pieces. that's the two and threequarter inch wide pieces. and my six wenge fronts. and of course the two bubinga sides.
now, duh-duh-duh! time for pocket screws. you guys know that i don't usepocket screws all that much. when possible i liketo use wood jointery in my projects but thatdoesn't mean that there shouldn't be a place forpocket screws in our work. there's times when it just makes sense. when speed is an issue. and there's really no questionto how strong they are. it's a screw. these thingsare seriously strong.
just to give you thebasic concept here if we were putting these two pieces together, and there's really nowood jointery here at all, it's really just a butt joint. if you can drive screwsat a very shallow angle, almost like toenailing with screws, but a very shallow angle into the other piece and lock them down, that is going to be incredibly strong.
that essentially is theconcept behind a pocket screw. we just drill the pocket, pre-drill, and then we drive the screw in. it makes it very easy toconstruct something like this. we do have to prep all of our parts but we're not going to jump right into that. i want to make sure that my pockets are actually drilled ahead of time. then i'll do my sandingand finessing of the edges
and any routing or anythingthat we need to do. i want to do the pocketscrews at this point. this is what a typical pocketscrew set up looks like. this particular one is made by kreg. it's got three guide holes in the top and you could use that for various spacing. and a little brass [neur-old] knob and you can raise this up and down. on the side is a gaugeand that gauge tells you,
basically corresponds to thethickness of the work piece. the thicker it gets you're going to want to change your angle of approach. well, the angle is the same but you change the height at which itpenetrates the wood. the idea here, what i've madeis a little compression system here so i can put my workpiece in, push this forward, locks it down in place andnow all i have to do is drill in this side andit's nice and stable.
the good thing about pocket screws is it's not all that criticalwhere they go because most of the time you'renot going to see them. that's when i like to use them, is if you're never actuallygoing to see the hole. as long as i have two here,and you don't want them close to the edge so iwould actually have two maybe spaced about thatdistance from one another. i'm pretty happy with the results.
i just look for which twoholes are going to give me the best results here and it lookslike the two outer holes, labelled a and c on the jig,those are going to do the trick. the other thing you wantto make sure is when you're using somethinglike this you want to remember which side is yourinside and outside face. if you have one that youreally like the design on, make sure you don't drill into that face because you won't be able to use it.
let's get this in placeand start drilling. (bouncing percussive music) now when drilling the holes for the shelf bottoms you only need three. it's a little bit narrow, youdon't necessarily need two side by side so put one outtoward the back end because you're going to have tofit a drill in there later. and one dead center that'sgoing to go into the front face. then another one, of course,on the side. a total of three.
now we're going to sandall the parts with 80 grit, move up to 120 and thenfinish off with 180. these are right off theplaner and chances are if you got your stuff pre-milled yoursis right off the planer too. it's a good idea to startwith a pretty low grit, i like the 80 grit, andthen move from there. that way you end up witha nice smooth surface. now before we start the assembly there's just a couple of things i want to go over.
first of all hanging this thing. there are a few different ways. if you look at thearticle glen has basically a back support on herethat you can use and you can screw it directly into the wall. not going to do that method. what i wanted to do was something a little bit more low profile. i was going to createa little keyhole slot
using a bit that i got from eagle america. the problem is i can'tfind the damn thing. i really wanted to show you guys that. the bottom line is it's a very specialized bit for that particular task. with an edge guide on theboard you would plunge down, move it about and inch upand turn the router off then pull the bit out and you'releft with one of those keyhole slots that you see on the backof frames and things like that.
put one on each side inexactly the same position. now you can lift the whole thingup and hang it on the wall. you could also use somethingthat's a little less elegant because you'regoing to see the hardware, but something like afigure eight fastener. you could put the one side ofthe figure eight on the actual back piece itself and then the other side, basically the top of it wouldget screwed into the wall. that's one quick way that you can do it.
the other thing is, let's talkabout breaking these edges. i've sanded all the flat faces and you're definitely going to wantto relieve the corners because they're reallysharp at this point. it's a little bit tricky right now to know exactly what's going to go where. if you just go across thiswhole front here and relieve both sides to smooth it out youmight actually go in a place where it's going to intersectwith one of the faces,
which then looks a littlebit funny where those meet. you don't want to do thatahead of time unless you mark out where each one ofthe shelves is going to go. i'm actually going to do myfinal sanding of the edges and all the corners afterthis thing is assembled. one more tip for you, if youuse wenge be very careful. this stuff is sosplintery it's ridiculous. god forbid you run yourfinger down the edge on one of these corners you're going toget a nice set of splinters.
bottom line is it doesn't matterwhat you do with this stuff. if you hold it in your hand you seem to just walk away with splinters. not real painful ones but you just see them all over the place. this stuff sucks but it'sbeautiful so that's why we endure. since we're using pocket screws let's not gloss over that detail. when you go to buy yourscrews you're going to
find that there's a numberof options out there, even in the world of pocket screws. the first and biggest distinction i think you can make is the threads. you'll see fine threadsand coarse threads. coarse threads are reallyintended for soft woods and for things like particle boardand mdf, composite materials. the fine threads are reallygoing to be for hard woods. if you're going to stock up,
unless you use a lot of pineor alder, something like that, something that's got a relativelysoft texture, even mdf, you're probably going to want to stock up on your fine-threaded screws.at least that's what i do. the size that i'm going touse is an inch and a quarter, that's pretty much standard forthree quarter inch material. you might need to tweakit one way or the other depending on the thicknessof your boards but for the most part that'sthe one i stock up on,
inch and a quarter fine-threaded screws. assembling with pocket screws is pretty easy but let's not oversimplify it. if you just put the piecestogether and try to drive the screw in chances are,especially with wood this hard, you're going to have some problems. you'll probably tweakit out of position and screw the wrong way andyou won't get a perfectly flush fit at the frontof the magazine rack.
let's not do it that way. what we need to do is use some clamps. clamps are going to lockeverything into position so that we can drive thatscrew confidently knowing that it's going exactlywhere we want it to go. when you do a joint,let's say you're doing something like puttingtwo pieces together. maybe you're doing a faceframe or a cabinet door. the clamp that comes with the kit is
great for this because it's very strong. it's a vice grip style system and it locks everything in to place, ensuring that those twopieces are absolutely flat and flush and stayingin line with each other. i don't have anything thatworks that well in this case. what i'm going to do is just use a regular old parallel clamp here. the key here, you've gotto work on a flat surface.
if it's not flat you can't be sure that these pieces are going to be lined up. i'm basically going to put my first one into position here at the bottom, make sure it's flush at the bottom, turn one of my clamps sideways like so. line them up and while pushing down on both pieces i'm going to engage the clamp. once that's tightened i justpull the piece off and feel
with my fingers and make sureit's flush, because it's not. i need to tweak it just a little bit. once it's perfectly flush tighten down a little more and nowi can drive my screw. the whole process took alittle longer than expected. the biggest challenge was getting the drill in to the right position. per glen's recommendation i'musing spacers cut from scrap. this one is two and a quarter inches.
here's a second spacer that'sthree and a half inches. as you know drilling at a badangle can be pretty noisy. (drilling) here's the rest of theassembly at super speed. basically i just keep moving down the line alternating the two spacers. once one side is attached i put the entire thing up on clamps andi make sure that the top is flush and thentighten the clamp down.
i'll do the same thing at the bottom. i won't touch the middle ones just yet. after screwing in boththe top and the bottom fronts i start workingon the center pieces, just moving the clamp backand forth to each one as i go. as you can see it takes a little effort. now unfortunately as i wasscrewing in one of the shelves i heard and felt a little bitof a crack, which means that there may have just beena weak point in the grain.
the way we're assemblingthis here the screw's going in and if it's a little bitaggressive and just the perfect circumstance you couldwind up getting a crack. i feel a little bit of a crack down there, we're going to have to fixthat but i still need to drive my screw in there withoutcreating any more damage. what i've done is switched toa comparably sized drill bit. even those these screwsare probably not going to hold as good as therest of them there's plenty
more holding power inthis one. as long as it's locked down in position i'mnot too worried about it. i'm basically going to drill in there and free up some space in that hole. now i can go back and addmy screw very carefully. now when we flip it over we'll assess the damage and we'll fix it as needed. now i've got my three bottom shelves in position where they need to go.
make sure you double check yourself so you have your top set, your bottom set, you know exactly where your shelves go. these guys are really goingto be a pretty darn good fit. because we've alreadygot them attached down here chances are the sides of the magazine rack are going in just a little bit. you're going to have a little bit of a tight fit getting that in there.
if you want since we've got anice long grain to long grain glue bond where the shelfmeets the front face, you can use a little bit of glue and that will make that joint even stronger. just line it up, take thepressure off your clamps because if you don't you'llnever get that piece in. there we go. (tapping) (airplane flying)
between this great wavybeautiful grain here it may be a screw comingin at just a slightly more aggressive angle than i wanted it to because of the way iwas holding the drill. we've got a little bit ofcrack to deal with here. we know that the screw issecure, we handled that on the other side by pre-drilling andgetting the screw in there. like i said it's notgoing to hold as well as some of the other screwsbut not a big deal
because we have so muchother reinforcement here. let's just address this crack. here's what i'm going to do. if you have some ca glue you can use that. i'm just going to usea little bit of epoxy. fortunately the epoxy hassomewhat of a reddish color to it, it's going to be perfectto disguise this flaw. i'm using this little tiny injector, i got a big pack of these from amazon.
it wasn't really that expensive. i can't remember the exact price. maybe i'll put a linkto it in the show notes. these are great for puttingthat epoxy in places you normally can't get it, itjust flushes it in there. i'm going to let this epoxy seep in, let that dry and we'll come back, sand it flush and see how we did. normally it would havetaken about a half day
for that epoxy to cure,but it is hot in here. boo-ya! (igniting fire) clearly the epoxy is curing a little bit faster than it might normally cure. all i need to do at this point is go back to the random orbit sander. i'm going to clean this upand sand that epoxy flush. i'm also going to go overthe rest of the front pieces
here just to make sureeverything is nice and smooth. let's take a closerlook at that little fix there and see if we can even see it now. you can see a feint littleline right here but to the casual observer and anyonewho doesn't know that just looks like it's part of thegrain. mission accomplished. my final step before finishing is to basically ease all the edges by hand. i've got a little block that i can use
and just a scrap pieceof 180 grit sandpaper. make it as rounded over as you want. you can even come back with arouter if you're so inclined and give yourself a full roundover but i want to keep thingsrelatively square here. i'm just going to go with a little bit of a piece of sandpaperand just ease that edge, stop it from basically splintering on me. (scratching)
now the areas that i'mreally concerned about are where the hands are going to go in. there's going to bemagazines going in here, magazines going in here andmagazines going at the top. when someone reaches therehand in there you really don't want them to come incontact with any sharp edges. pay some extra special attention to the inside edges of those particular pieces. here's the final result.it came out pretty good.
i really like that colorcombination and the white streaking on thesap wood, i love it. some times doing things likethat really makes a piece pop. on this side i actually have the rendition that i made just beforei left the old shop. i made a few changes hereand aside from the visual aspects there's somefunctional reasons for it. i could show you usingthe original design. you've got your magazinehere, you can see the title of
the magazine and you can pullthe magazine out this way. i felt that it would bereally nice if i had a little bit more clearanceabove the magazine to fit my fingers in, that'dbe a nice improvement. then also i'd like tosee more of the magazine if i could because rightnow i just see the title. i don't really see the contentor what's on the cover, at least not much of it. i figured we might be able toimprove on those two things
and make it look cool at the same time, or make it look more to my personal taste. what i decided to do here,the most obvious thing you'll notice is the whole piece islightened up a little bit. the reason is because we only have three fronts instead of havingall of these fronts. the top one on each section here was to block the magazine from falling out. you guys know i like toput metal in to my projects
some times, at leastdowel rods when i can, so why not use stainlesssteel dowel rods across here? now i can still see a lot of the cover and it doesn't fall out. it's a very lightweight, visually lightens the piece up quite a bit. you only really need one but i thought two would look a little bit cooler there. the other thing i did was thefronts themselves i've got a
pretty significant curvewherever you're going to need to put your handto grab the magazine. that gives your knucklesa little bit more room. on the top i did an opposingcurve just for the heck of it. you might not evennoticed that it's curved, it's that slight on the top here. another thing i did, andthis was just for looks, on the outside edge upat the top here there's a slight curve at thetop, just a slight arch,
where on the original designthey're nice and square. this one i just have it slightly arched. i don't know why, ithought it would look cool. regardless of what you do, the key here, i just wanted to pointout first of all glen made a great magazine rack,i think this is awesome. but because it's in the i cando that series it's very basic and it's a great opportunityfor you to take a look at it, and see how you mightbe able to put your own
personality in to itand make it all yours. hopefully you'll beable to pick up the pdf, i'll have it in the show notes. you can make one of theseyourself and i would love to see your variations on this thing. (acoustic blues guitar)