voiceover: the woodwhisperer is brought to you by powermatic, the goldstandard since 1921 and by rockler woodworking and hardware. create with confidence. marc:today we're going to make a very simple but incredibly useful project. it's a drill charging station. (drill running) (lively music)
i was cleaning up the shop recently. i realized there was onething that i haven't really addressed in terms of shop organization. that was a good way ofstoring not only my drills but also the charging packs. i've got two or three of them. if you guys are like me, you always run into this issue wherethe batteries are dead or you can't find the onethat has the good battery.
i'm going to do a few different things to address those issues. one key thing is tomake sure i have a home for all of the drills and all of the charging stuff. i built this very simple ... really it's a box consistingof six pieces of wood. i did use really nice wood. i had some scraps laying around.
it's really not that tough to build. let me just show it toyou really quickly here. what i've got, of courseon the bottom is the little cubby for the drills. you could probably fit maybefive drills there if you want to. on the top is where thecharging units are going to sit. interestingly enoughwhat i have is an opening in the back here so that the cords can go all the way through.
not just all the way through here, but down the bottom. on the underside i mayhave a surge protector or something to connect everything to. really really simple construction. we're going to use a special jig to do this construction. i've had the dowelmax in my possession for a little while now.
i just haven't had a chance to use it. i figured a very basicsimple project like this is a good place to trysomething that's new. you don't really wantto do it on something that's really supercritical or something that's a little bit more complexthan you're ready for. this project was perfectfor testing this jig out and just seeing how it works. i'll cut the parts all to size
and let's just jump right into it. for this project, i'm using two pieces of figured maple for theshelves, 16 inches long, five and a quarter inches wide, and five eights of an inch thick. two pieces of bubinga for the sides, 13 inches long, eight inches wide, and three quarters of an inch thick, and two pieces of babingafor the back supports,
16 inches long, three and three quarters inches wide, and threequarters of an inch thick. let's get started by attaching the bottom shelf to the side piece. our bottom shelf is going to go roughly in this location. it's going to be set up from the bottom and it's going to beabout i would say about a quarter inch in from the edge just to
give a nice reveal. the first thing i wantto do is mark that line about a quarter inch in. this is for reference later. the distance that thisshelf is up from the bottom, we'll adjust that laterwith the jig itself. it's actually very easy to do. the first thing i want to do is put these pieces together roughly in the orientation
that they're going to be. the idea here is to make a few check marks that are going to be goodreference points for us. the adjoining faces hereeach get a check mark. i call this a face eventhough right here we're working with end grain. that's okay because we're going ... it's just the type ofjoint that we're doing. it's still a reference face that will help
us line up our jig. basically check mark, checkmark, check mark, check mark. the only other thing i like to do, this is also something they recommend, is put an x on the faces that are going to receive your joinery. this way when the pieces are in the clamps and we don't have them together in this orientation to tellus where the holes go,
these reference lines will help us align our jig and wewon't make any mistakes. this jig is right up my alley. i'll tell you why. it doesn't let me screwup no matter what i do. it seems to have build inanti-marc screw up features. we marked our check marks on the face and the side here. if you look at the jig, there'sa check mark on the side
and there's a check mark onthe inside face right there. what that tells me is all i need to do is line up the two check marks i put on my work piece with the two check marks on the jig itself. these faces line up andthese check marks touch. that lets me know i'm in the right spot. all need to do is flushit up with my finger here, tighten the little clamps.
now i can drill. the drill bit has a stop collar on it that's going to make sure that we go the right depth. we don't even have to think when it comes to doing that. you also have the option of placement of these holes. i'm going to go all the way across.
i'm probably going to wind up with four dowel holes across the end grain here on this board. just to stop myself fromaccidentally drilling in the wrong place, i've removed the little, i don't even know what you call this thing, the little collar. i removed it from thetwo middle positions. i'm going to skip those.
i only want to drill in these three positions. you could leave them in there as long as you know not to use them. they're there if you need them. let's go ahead and drill. you'll notice we still have about two inches of board left. i want to get another dowel in there.
this is one of the coolestthings about this guy. i've got a little indexing pin. all i need to do, i'vegot my three holes here. all i need to do is line up the jig, take the indexing pin and drop it into the next hole. it's a very tight fit. that's not going anywhere. in fact you really don't even need
the clamps at this point. i'm going to use them anyway. this will have moved me over one position meaning that this final hole here on the end is freed up. i could add one more dowel hole. our top and bottom shelves are essentially going to have that same exact joinery on each one of them.
while the jig is set up for that position, it's not a bad idea todo them all at once, all four edges of the work pieces. if you decide to do that, just make sure that you do the set up once again and put those check marks in the right place. that'll ensure that youdon't make any mistakes. now we can move on to the side pieces.
this is where things getinteresting with the jig. if we look at the way this piece is going to sit in here, we need our dowel holes to be in the face of this board. we also need it to be set back a quarter inch from the positionthat these holes were. we need it to be set down aboutthree quarters of an inch. what are we going to do with the jig? the jig in its existing set up right now
is not really going to work. at the point that it's at now it's meant to secure the work piece like so. this puts the holes into the end grain. that is not what we want here. we need the holes in the face. that's not going to work right? fortunately theyobviously thought of that. we have some attachments that we can
put on here to change it over. instead of this wholeunit that we have here what we're going to do is replace it with this very simple right angle. what that's going to allowus to do is turn the jig this way on the work piece. we'll be able to reference from this top edge and secure it in place and get our holes on the face.
let's disassemble itand add the new fence. nothing really tricky here. we're just going to loosen these guys. you see a long thread here. the good thing is the threads are sufficiently loose that you can just zip these things right off of there. they travel a pretty good length in a short amount of time.
this whole contraption here, the clamping unit comes off. what we can now do isadd that guy back on. just tighten it up. now we can go back to the work piece. now let's see what we have. check mark here, check mark here. instead of going like this, we are now in this orientation.
we're able to satisfy the need to line up the check marks. we've got a check markon the edge of the jig, the check mark on theedge of the work piece, and here's our other checkmark there that's meeting the little check mark on the inside. by going right here like this, we're satisfying the requirements of those check marks.
i would just put aclamp down at the bottom to hold it in position. what's the one problem here? if we drill right here, our holes are going to be right up near the top. what that's going to do is bring our shelf piece in flush with the bottom. that's not what we want. we want it offset a little bit.
fortunately, the jigcomes with little spacers. this is where we had to measure at the front here to set this back. we won't have to worry about that for the offset coming up from the bottom. we're going to use this little guy. he's going to offset us aboutthree quarters of an inch. to add this to the jig, it's very simple. that's what these knobs are here for.
just loosen those up. pull that back. drop the little spacer in. tighten it up again. finally, we have the set up that we need to line up perfectly. again, if i go flushhere, what we're going to do is put the holes too far out. we want that offset.
that's why i drew that line. that line gives me a nice reference point. i'm lining up my check mark with that line instead of lining it upflush to the outside. just a quick reminder, if i went right to the outside, i wouldbe up front like this. i want a little reveal. i want this spaced back. that pencil line just givesme a nice simple reference.
let's clamp it up and start drilling. this bubinga is hard stuff. much like before, we can now use the index pin to give us that one last hole. i found that this is pretty secure. i don't feel the need to even clamp that to get the last hole in. very nice.
you can see how once you get this thing set up for one of the operations, you want to go throughand do them all at once. this way you're not changing things back and forth all the time. the top shelf is pretty much the same as the bottom shelf. it's not all that different. it's also going to beset back a quarter inch.
the only difference isthe set back from the top is a little less thanwe had from the bottom. this big spacer that we used here is going to be a little bit too much. fortunately they have multiple spacers that you can use. this is a much smaller spacer at about a quarter inch. pop that guy in there.
now i can do those top joints. as long as i have my check marks in all the right places, which i could do as the very first step on all of my work pieces, i can go back throughand get them all done and drill them all at the same time. there's no real need for you to see me do 20 or 30 holes.
we'll just jump right up to the assembly. actually one last step before assembly. i may as well sand allthe pieces to 180 grit. i'm going to ease all of the edges here with a little tiny round over bit, just to smooth them so there's nothing to catch your fingers onor anything like that. if you don't ease those edges, it can and will cut you.
use the router table for that. (router running) the glue up on thisshouldn't be too difficult. i'm just going to basicallyadd some glue to each hole. i'll start with one of the side pieces. i've got a little acid brush here. just push it in and then twist it up and down a little bit. make sure it spreads.
now i can grab some dowels, drop them in there. it's not a bad idea, ifyou have enough time, to get some glue on the dowels themselves. if you're in a rush, just make sure you get a good amount of glue into the hole. you should have enough glue going into all these little fine linesthat are on the dowels. the glue can travel up through those.
don't worry too much aboutthe glue squeeze out. that's just going to spread and give us a little bit more grip. even though it's end grain, we still want a little bit ofglue there if we can get it. now i'll move on to the other side piece. time is of the essence here. (calm music) four clamps should just about do it.
the good thing aboutusing a system like this, there's a couple good things in addition to it being a very simpleway to assemble a project, is with so many points of contact, there's really no room for error there. these pieces can't shiftforward and back at all. there's no wiggle room. another thing is if your pieces are all cut nice and square on their edges,
when you clamp them home, this thing should somewhat, especially with theseback pieces in place, it should almost self square. you shouldn't have to domuch to adjust it for square. in fact, it's dead on. both sides are rock solid. you can't ask for much more than that. it makes it nice and simple.
i'll give this a littlebit of time to dry, i'll let my squeeze out setup before i scrape that away. this is pretty much done. very simple project. here we are at the end of day one. believe it or not, i'vegot a completed project. everything is done. it's sanded, finished. quickly just to let you know what i did
with the finish, i wanted something that would dry fast. ultimately, this is just shop furniture. i need this thing on the wall so i can move on to other stuff. what i wound up doing with it is applying a quick coat of amber shellac, roughly about a two pound cut. the idea was to seal it.
it's also somethingthat drys very quickly. the amber shellac tends to bring a little bit of a color to the maple, which is something that i wanted, since it is a figured maple. what i did for a top coat is some of this new stuff by general finishes. it's their enduro-var gloss. i'm not sure if this is out yet.
i think it comes out sometime in march. i'll keep you guys posted on that. this was sprayed via hvlp. it sprayed great. the stuff looks pretty good. it's still curing. there's just a little bit of orange-peely texture to it. this was just sprayed today.
it's dry to the touch. you got to give it sometime to fully cure. that's what i'm going to do. i do need to hang this thing on the wall. it's going to go right over there by the electrical outlet. i mentioned in the beginning having the problems with the batteries not being charged and not leaving these things
plugged in all the time. a very simple solution for that. what i'm going to do toaddress it is use a timer. everything will be connectedto this surge protector. the surge protector will likely live on the underside here toward the back. the cords are all goingto drop down through the holes back here, pluginto the surge protector. the surge protector's going to be
plugged into this timer. this time is set torun for one hour a day. basically it just charges it, makes sure it's topped offand then cuts the power. i'm hoping that alleviates any of those concerns about keeping these battery packs charging all the time, which is supposed to be a little bit dangerous. i think i have licked that problem.
the interior dimension here is 16 inches. you may want to widenthat out a little bit. if you have 16 inch on center studs, you may have to angle your screws in a little bit at not the best angle. if you're going to godirectly into the wall. where mine is going, myscrews are actually .... i've only got one stud to work with. the good thing is i do have screw
surface on the top and the bottom. i'm just going to drivea screw in the top, one in the bottom. that should be enough to hold it. it's not going to be too heavy. that's where we're at. very simple one-day project. obviously, you can take this in a lot of different directions.
as simple as it is, using some pretty decent wood that's gotsome visual interest to it and a nice finish, all of a sudden something simple looks pretty elegant. just a few comments about the dowelmax. i don't really want to turn this into a commercial for a product. part of this project was taking the
opportunity to try this thing out for myself and see what i thought of it and use it on a relatively simple project so i can not push the limits too much on something i'm not that familiar with. what you need to know is that this thing is capable of so much more. what we did here just really scratches the surface of what this system can do.
that's really the key is to not look at this as a doweling jig so much as a joinery system. as a system, it can do a lot of stuff. frankly,if you wanted to use this as your primary joinery for every project, you certainly could. people have different opinions on how they feel about dowels.
that's your personal decision there. i'm not going to try to influence anybody one way or the other. if you do like dowel joinery, this is a fantastic way to make them with really really tight tolerances. strength-wise, i've seen conflicting information when it comes to numbers on how strong dowels are.
dowelmax's numbers lookreally really strong, certainly competitive with a mortise and tenon and more than enough than you would really need for normal furniture applications, which is cool. another thing that some people may not know is there are some craftsmen, very well-known craftsmen who pretty much use dowels exclusivelyfor their case joinery,
specifically james krenov. nearly every one of his pieces that i've seen, at least in books and things, was made using dowel joints. he favored them forwhatever his reasons were. we trust his opinion on a lot of things and take our cues fromhim in a lot of things. it's certainly something to consider. check it out if you have a chance.
dowelmax is pretty darn cool. basically this is going to be in the shop. i'll be able to watch this puppy and see how it holds up. honesty, we've got somepretty thick dowels, four per joint. i don't think thisthing is going anywhere. pretty happy with the results. check out the jig.
hopefully you'll be able tomake one of these yourself. frankly i hope you build upon this. this is really basic. think about a nice set of drawers at the bottom or something like that where you could put drill bits and things. there's a lot that you could do with it. i was in a rush. ba-da bing, ba-da boom,this is what we've got.
thanks for watching.