Miter Saw Tuning

Drum roll please…………

I did it.  It’s done all the pictures are done for the Miter Saw tuning post.  I can’t believe it. 

 

Okay So here we go. 

First and foremost when you start this process :

PLEASE READ, FOLLOW, AND UNDERSTAND THE USE AND SAFETY INSTRUCTIONS FOR YOUR SAW AND ALWAYS WEAR YOUR SAFETY GLASSES AND I RECOMMEND HEARING PROTECTION.

MAKE SURE THAT YOUR SAW IS UNPLUGGED DURING THE FIRST SEVERAL PARTS OF THIS TUTORIAL.

Okay now that I have that out of the way.  Seriously please take care of yourself and watch what you are doing. 

Squaring the Blade to the Fence:

You will need a speed square or some kind of accurate square that you can check 90° and 45°.

Make sure your saw is set and locked at the 0° take your square and lay it on the table to check for 90° make sure the it is flush against the fence.  You are looking to make sure there is no gap between the square and the blade.  Make sure that you don’t put to much pressure on the blade as it can cause it to deflect. 

 

 

Now once you feel that the blade is square find a piece of scrap wood and and make a cut with the widest side laying flat on the table.

 

Part of the reason I included a video here was to show some safety precautions.  When you are making your cut you want to start the saw close to the the material make a slow and steady cut through the wood.  Once you have made the cut leave the blade in the down position and let the blade come to a complete stop.  This does a couple of things.  It reduces the risk of you sticking your hand in there and trying to grab the wood.  It also keeps you from possibly causing the blade to catch the wood and at best chipping at worst possibly throwing the piece at you or across the shop.  You will also notice that I keep my hand on the piece through the entire cut, I also as the blade is slowing slide the “non waste” side away from the blade.  I don’t know if this is good or not it’s just something that I gave gotten in the habit of doing.  In my mind it helps keep the blade from catching the piece as well. 

Now once you have made your cut get your straight edge out and align the two pieces against the straight edge.

You will notice that I have labeled one part with a T(top) this is just for orientation.  Now take the one piece and flip it over 180° on its top. 

 

 

 

 

Now you want to check for any kind of gap between the two pieces. 

 

 

 

 

Fortunately for me I don’t have any gaps in my pieces so I don’t need to adjust the saw.  For this cut.  If you do need to adjust this please refer to the manual for your saw.  Typically there are bolts that will allow you to adjust where the saw stops.

 

 

 

Checking the 45° Miter Setting:

Just as we did with the 0° setting take your square and set it to check for 45°.  Again make sure not to press to hard against the blade and keep the square flush to the fence. 

 

 

 

 

 

Take a try square or a combination square and check the miter for square also check to see there there are no gaps in the miter itself.  We are looking good here no adjustments needed.  If you need to make adjustments refer to the manual for your particular saw for adjustment details. 

 

 

 

Checking Bevel

Like checking for square set the saw to 0° and make sure you are still square.  Now take another piece of scrap and place it on edge and make your cut. Once again take those pieces and align them against a straight edge and the flip one piece like you did before and check for a gap.

Hey guess what.  I have a gap.  I will be spending a little time adjusting this.  Again if you have a gap here refer to your manual to on resolving this issue.  Now I need to go find my manual. 

 

 

 

 

You will want to perform a similar cut when you put the blade on a 45° Bevel.

  Take your piece on edge and cut a 45° in this piece and another and set up the miter similar to what we did here:

 

 

 

 

  Again make sure to check for square and gaps and refer to your manual. 

 

 

 

 

Sorry to keep telling you refer to your manual but each saw is just enough different that it is important to refer to yours so you can adjust your saw accurately. 

I hope this helps you in setting up your saw and providing a little bit of safety and usage guidance.  Please feel free to ask me any questions or if you would like to see any other photos please feel free to let me know. 

After making the adjustment needed you should have a very accurate saw that will allow you to make nice square cuts and will allow you make the nightstand with ease. 

Have a Great Day!

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WIWW: Nightstand Materials list

I have finished the design of our first project an easy to build nightstand.  The nightstand is dimensioned for a room at the beach house I am helping makeover.  However you can make it any size you would like.  It is 13 3/4” Wide x 16” Long x 23 3/4” Tall.  You can build it with or without the bottom shelf.  I have designed this to use 2”x2” legs.  I have had a difficult time finding 2”x2” Pine Legs so I am going to use 2”x2” Poplar legs for mine.  I am going to be painting mine white so it doesn’t matter that the wood is different.  An option you could use would be to use 2”x4” Studs as the poplar 2”x2”x36” are about $5 a piece and you can get the studs for $2 a piece and get all 4 legs from 2 2x4’s.  If you use 2”x4” Studs you will want to turn the wide edge to align with the longest side of the table.  This way when you look at the nightstand from the front you get a narrower leg. 

This is really up to you, as you can orient them any way you would like, however typically when building furniture you want to balance the symmetry or the piece so wider widths tend to line up with each other and likewise for the narrower widths.  If you are interested in seeing a diagram of this let me know and I will draw it up and post the picture.  Just let me know.   I am going to suggest you build this with pine to keep costs down and the pine boards from a Lowes/Home Depot tend to be straighter than the cheaper whitewood you can also get.

Okay let’s get to the materials and tools list.

Materials:

2 – 1”x3”x72”(6ft) Boards
2 – 1”x2”x72”(6ft) Boards
4 - 2"x2"x36"(3ft) Poplar or Pine if you can find it or 2 - 2"x4"x96(8ft)" Studs

Suggested tools:

10” Miter Saw
Random Orbital Sander (ROS)  You will also want 120grit, 150 or 180grit and 220Grit.
Speed Square or Framing Square

Image Courtesy of Wikipedia.org

 

 

Kreg Jig

*If you are going to use a Kreg Jig on this project you will want to use the coarse screws since pine is a softer wood.

Wood Glue: I use Titebond III but I know a lot of people use Gorilla glue.  I have yet to use it.  Maybe one of these days I will break down and get some and give it a try. 

** Clamps:  How could I have forgotten these….    You will want to have at least 2 - 24” Clamps.  We will need these clamps to keep the top tight while the top glues.

***If you would prefer not to use clamps I can show you how to use the Kreg Jig to edge join the top boards.  Clamps can get expensive but you will need them if you are going to do lots of projects.  I don’t think you can have to many clamps.

I believe that should get us started with this build. 

If you have any questions make sure to comment below or shoot me an email.

Have a Great Day!

 

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Happy Easter

I would like to wish everyone a Happy Easter today and hope that you find all the eggs you are looking for.

I am off on another tool hunt today at a local antique show in Charlotte, NC.  I hope this time is better than last month.  This is supposedly the “BIG” one. 

Coming up this week we will have our first official “Women In Woodworking Series” post.  I can’t express how excited I am to get this going.  I am getting a lot of good response on the series.  In our first series we are going to start out with two tools that you will see me use over and over during a lot of projects the Compound Miter saw and a Kreg Pocket Hole Jig.  I will be working on a 3D Sketch of the table over the next several days and will provide you with a Materials and tools list.  I hope that you will come back later this week to check out the post.  If you are interested in this series please become a follower of the site or subscribe via email so that you can stay up to date on all the latest information and tutorials.

I am almost finished with the Jelly Cupboard.  I have a first coat of paint on the inside of the cupboard and will painting the outside this week as well as building the door and getting Mrs. Grover setup to do the punched tin panels for the front.  We are using milk paint for this project and I will go over my thoughts on milk paint as we close out this project.

Have a Great Day!

Technorati Tags: Women in woodworking,miter saw,End Table,Kreg Jig

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Mirror Makeover

A mirror, a stick of lumber, and a saw walk into a workshop…..

The other day I mentioned a series of projects that are about to begin at Grover Woodworks.  One project I failed to mention was a mirror makeover.  No this is a different one that the shutter mirror, we are getting to that, this was a quick makeover and I am not totally finished with it.  Tomorrow night I should have it totally painted and ready to install.  We decided we wanted a new mirror for our downstairs guest bathroom.  We looked around and found several that we like the cheapest being $40.  Being cheap frugal my wife and I both new I could build a better mirror for less.   We took a trip to one of our favorite bargain stores Big Lots and found this…..   It’s a little uglier in person.  Big Lots had this for $10.  I removed the mirror from the frame without killing the frame or the mirror.  We will reuse the frame for another project it will be modified as well. 

So tonight I decided it was time to make the frame for the mirror.  I took some extra sticks of lumber that I had left over from the shutter mirror project and built the frame using a miter saw and a Kreg Pocket Hole Jig.  I really like my pocket hole jig.  I need to upgrade to the K3 at least.  Anyway I digress..  After a little bit of planning, measuring and cutting I started to see the frame come together.  Here are a few of the pieces cut out for the frame.

 

 

 

 

Here I have drilled some of the pocket holes and have started to assemble the frame.  One thing I forgot to mention is the rabbet that I cut on all the frame boards.  I did this on my jointer as it has the ability to cut rabbets.  It’s a handy feature, you can also cut the rabbets on a table saw or use a router to cut the rabbets.   The frame is finally

complete and it’s actually pretty square.  There looks to be something a little wrong in this picture however.  Do you see the huge gap at the bottom.  Are my measuring skills really that bad can I not read a measuring tape.  The answer is probably yes no I planned it that way.  I planned it that way because I knew I wanted to add that shelf to the frame.  Wait there is still a really big hole.. :)  Oh yeah the mirror goes there.  Anyway..  I used some scrap wood to fill the gap at the bottom and a little more of the extra lumber to create a small simple shelf.  To make the corbels I took the same lumber and took my speed square and drew out the 45° angle.  I did however slide it over so that there is a small flat front on the corbel.  I used a small nail gun to attach the shelf and corbels to the frame.  Here is the mirror frame after a quick coat of paint.  I am happy about how it turned out.  We are going to try it in the guest bathroom and see how we like it.  If not I am sure we can find a spot for it somewhere in the house. 

As soon as we have it mounted in its permanent location I will post some final pictures for you to see.  To recap this project I am going to estimate that I have about $8 to $10 wrapped up.  The frame was $10, the wood was $1.97 a stick and I used just a little over  one stick and a little bit of paint, so I split the cost of the mirror $5 for this project plus lets call it $2.50 for wood and .50 in paint and screws.  All in all I am pretty pleased with the outcome.  I am getting more confident in my ability to use my tools and had a really good time tonight it was very relaxing.

Let me know what you think or if you have any questions feel free to comment or shoot me an email and as soon as I can get this thing done I will get the last couple of pictures posted. 

Have a Great Day!

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Shop Clean up Reorganization, Projects, Projects and more Projects……

Well I have not had a lot going on in the shop lately.  That is getting ready to change.  I have a few new projects that are hitting the plate here.  So in an effort to prepare for them I spent a little time last night with my new shop helper wife cleaning up the shop.  Man can that woman can clean.  Now the shop is nice and clean and you can walk out there again.  Okay back to the projects.  I have a couple in progress that we will finish up, 1) The Restoration of the 5 Drawer Dresser should be coming to a close very soon.  I need to finish the stripping process and then repaint. 2) The shutter mirror is assembled and should be getting a few coats of paint over the next several days. 

Now on to the new projects.  I will be doing a build of a Rustic Jelly Cupboard with Punched Tin panels, I will be finishing out our downstairs  windows with the curtain shelves that I started.  These are super simple and look awesome when they are in place.  I will share some tips that I learned building the first two.  This is the first one that I built.  I know my wife is going to be excited since we get to go curtain shopping.  IKEA here we come.    I designed these using dimensioned lumber from the big box stores so that you only need a few basic tools.  3) I am also going to take the shop to the next level.  I am going to be building a Portable stand that will hold both my Lunchbox planer and Compound miter saw.  The top flips 360° so that one tool is on top and one tool is on the bottom out of the way, with it being on wheels I will be able to move it out of the way when not in use.  I also am going be building Cabinets for the shop to provide some needed storage for our tools as well as to get all of my wife’s stained glass out of harms way.  I plan on building these from plywood and lumber from the big box stores using a Kreg Pocket hole jig that I reviewed a few weeks ago.  Do you think that is enough?  Yeah I don’t either. 

So I am also going to be doing a review of the Kreg Crown Pro they are supposed to be available at most Lowe’s stores now.  It is supposed to simplify the process of cutting and installing crown molding.  We shall see.

This leads into the remake of one of our guest bedrooms, the 5 Drawer Dresser and Shutter Mirror are parts 1 and 2 the crown molding will be part 3 and the finale to the guest bedroom makeover will be a modified Farm House Bed designed by Ana at Knock Off Wood. 

Oh yeah and I am going to do a series on learning to hand cut dovetails.  Time to go buy some new tools.  I’m sure I will also get brave in all of this and add more projects. 

Okay well I have put it out there so I guess now I need to follow through.  Honey get ready it’s going to get dusty.

 

Have a Great Day!

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Shutter Mirror: Building a custom mirror

So a few weeks ago my wife mentioned to me that she would like to learn how to use some of the tools in the shop.  Today she saw the following mirror http://shanty2chic.blogspot.com/2010/02/cheapo-but-chic-full-length-mirror.html

and this was the project she decided should be her first.   Tonight we started the project.  She seems to be a natural.

Here she begins measuring her first board. 

 

 

 

Everything is marked time to  line up the blade and make the first cut.  I showed her that you want to cut on the waste side of the line.

 

 

 

Double checking her alignment.

 

 

 

 

Starting her first cut.  She repeated the same process on four more boards and man I got to tell you she was spot on.  For a first time at the Miter saw she nailed it.  All the boards were perfect.

As we started to put the boards up to each other as I figured they were badly cupped so what the solution.  I taught her to use the Jointer.

Once again she proved to be a natural with the jointer.  I saw no sniping at all on any of the boards. 

 

 

Tomorrow night we should finish the project up and I will introduce her to the nail gun…  Nothing like a little firepower.

Have a Great Day!

Technorati Tags: mirror,miter saw,shutter,woodworking,jointer,wife,project,custom

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