Woodworking Tips from Pop…

  The coping saw won’t cut your fingers off on the first pass!

Dante,  Sounds like you’re having fun!

Anytime I’m cutting funny angles, I always ask myself what’s going to get the job completed as fast, accurate and safe as possible! The miter saw is always going to give you the truest and fastest cut. In a perfect world! However, we live in a world of out of plumb walls and doors, crazy ceiling angles. All kinds of fun stuff to turn a ten minute project into a two hour headache. Or maybe longer if you’re not sure what you’re doing. That’s why the coping saw is such an invaluable tool to anyone considering installing moldings in there home.

The primary purpose of a coping saw is to cope the profile of an inside miter after the piece has already been cut with a miter saw. (whether hand miter saw or electric miter saw).
The advantage of using a coping saw over a miter saw when you have to make crazy little cuts. Is having the flexibility to cut the smaller and odd shaped cuts and notches that are either too dangerous or just impossible to make with the miter saw. You always want to be thinking about your fingers!

On all your outside angles, the electric miter saw is the way to go! This is going to give you the easiest and most accurate outcome. I’d definitely recommend cutting your crown a little longer and work your way down to the exact cut. This gives you the flexibility if you have to change the angle a little in order to make a tight fit.

Best saw on the market for cutting moldings

Goodluck….Pop

So you want to install crown molding the easy way!

 The first step would be to learn how to properly use a coping saw!  

The first question Pop would ask anybody applying for a job is whether or not they could use a coping saw. Only the dummies would lie about it and get run off!

 The coping saw is a small hand saw used by professional finish carpenters for making fine deep cuts when fitting moldings. The object is to cut the backside of the profile so two pieces will fit on an inside corner perfectly! No Caulk or glue. Once the proper technique is mastered, coping moldings and other various woodworking cuts will be a cinch. You’ll save time, material and a whole lot of aggravation dealing with out of square corners that are almost guaranteed to be in every house.

A coping saw can be purchased with a pack of blades at most local home improvement centers for about the same price as a twelve pack of Guinness. I just wouldn’t recommend drinking the Guinness until after the job is done. Or you’ll probably need more than caulk!

  When coping a piece of crown, you’re actually hand cutting the profile of the molding so it fits into an identical piece.  This does take a little practice so be patient, get some scraps and go to work, You won’t regret it.

The first step is to get the blade pointed in the right direction. I’ve witnessed two different methods of coping over the years, (the push to cut or the pull to cut). I’m a push man myself!

Here’s why!

The object of using any tool is to let the tool do the work. By standing above the work piece and using gravity to help push the blade through the wood to make the cut instead of pulling, you end up with a much easier and more controllable cut.(Let the blade do the cutting)

Pushing the blade into the cut also directs the burrs towards the inside of the piece and not to the finished outside. This will eliminate any need for sanding and leave a much finer cope.

When coping crown you don’t have to cope it in all one pass either, the object is to get the cope as accurate as possible and rushing will only lead to a lousy joint that needs filling. I’ve found that it’s easier to cut the piece out in sections and work towards intersecting points, rather then trying to round corners and bend the blade all to hell.

Undercutting is also key to getting tight coped joints. The more you undercut, the more forgiving out of square walls and wavy ceilings will be. Another trick to getting tight crown joints is to not nail the molding in the corners until both pieces are fitted. This will give a little play in the corner for twisting the crown molding into place. Click on some of the photos for more tips

Klingspor Abrasives
The Most Sanding Power For Your Money!

One of the first jobs I ever had as a kid was in Pop’s woodworking shop. I had two jobs-sweeping and sanding. Sweeping came pretty natural, much more than sanding did. One of my earliest memories is getting yelled at by Pop for turning a fine mantel top into a rustic shelf with the belt sander. We both learned valuable lessons that day. I learned how not to use a belt sander and Pop doesn’t assume (ass/u/me) anything anymore! Lesson learned!!
Another lesson that we have learned over the years involving sanding is to not cut corners when it comes to sandpaper. Life is frustrating enough without spending money on sandpaper that doesn’t last. That’s why we use industrial grade sanding products from Klingspor Abrasives.
For the past five years, Klingspor Abrasives has been helping to relieve some of our unnecessary frustrations by supplying us with excellent products and even better customer service for our business. For example, products like the Kling-On® (hook and loop) disc system for the 5&6″ random orbit sanders.

This sanding disc is much more superior than any of the sticky back sandpaper we’ve used in the past, and in our business we do a lot of sanding. They last longer, do a better job, and save us money and aggravation almost daily. Older pieces are great for hand sanding also. They mold to fit profiles and corners and don’t tear apart like paper back. This is just one of the industrial grade products we order from Klingspor. Other products include belt sandpaper, oscillating spindle sander paper, sheet paper, flexible sponge pads, and much more. We have been more than satisfied using these products and would feel very confident referring them to friends and competitors alike, and we’re not alone in saying this. Check out the reviews from customers on their website.

Klingspor has been around for a long time (over a 100 years) supplying sandpaper products to the automotive and woodworking industry. They must be doing something right! Here are some of the projects we’ve sanded with Klingspors products.

For businesses looking to lower their cost and experience a better product, visit Klingspors professional website at klingspor.com

For you part time home wood junkies, visit Klingspors woodworking shop and use what the pros use.

For Atlanta Area Contact Jeff Parish at jparish@klingspor.com

This has got to hurt!

I’ve got an idea!
Build a house upside down, get a band, charge admission. Brilliant! Just look at the people lining up to get inside this thing. The video at the bottom of this post explains that the builder built this house to make a statement about the times in which we live. I think it goes to show that home builders are making way to much money!

The one thing about this that gets me thinking is how long a house like this will last. Does it have some elaborate gutter system to keep the water from sitting in the eaves and gables, and are those real stones on the roof (or foundation)? I wonder if they are going to build an upside down garage to match. There is one thing for sure, hanging Christmas lights would be a lot easier.

Hear it from the man himself.

Here are some more crazy houses I found searching around.

Building a custom bar…..Page 6

 If you’re going to spend the big bucks on a bar, it better have some custom moldings!

No matter what kind of bar you’re building in order to have a true classic bar, you need to have some kind of moldings to finish off the details. Crown molding above the back bar, heavy molding along the bar front, and the moldings with keystones around the arched openings are a must if you’re looking to create depth in the overall appearance of the bar. Even the small bead molding we milled for the columns changes the appearance of the bar drastically. It is the moldings that add the touch of class that make the difference in having a real bar or a kitchenette.
The molding that makes the biggest difference is the 6 ½” bar molding along the front bar. This heavy molding creates an arm rest that I’m sure everybody that is interested in a bar has bellied up to a few times (except for Pop). This wide bar molding is the piece that will tie the front bar cabinets together and create that authentic bar experience. It can also be one of the most expensive components of the bar, if you can even find it. This was one of the determining factors when we purchased a William & Hussey molder. Although not a high production molder, it definitely has enough to handle what we’re doing. We’ll typically run enough of this molding for a few jobs (about 100′) and store it on racks until it’s time to build another bar.

If you’re looking for either a large quantity or long lengths of this molding, you might as well invest in your own molder and make it yourself. Although be prepared, buying any type of equipment like this is not like buying a car where you get in and drive away. In order to become efficient with this type of machinery, it takes experience through trial & error. So be patient, which is something I try and tell Pop when he’s trying to body slam a machine. The best way to learn about machinery is using the internet and connecting with woodworkers who have experience with these machines first hand through woodworking forums like Woodweb & W & H forum, or ask us and we’ll do our best to help.

Some of the other moldings we’re using for this bar are custom crown with a dental molding. The crown is 4 ½” wide and will be mounted on part of a 2 ½” dental molding to create an even larger two member crown. This process can be repeated multiple time to create an even larger crown. This is mainly done on extremely high ceilings. We milled the crown on another inexpensive molder, the jet planer / molder combo. This machine we dedicated strictly for moldings to save time switching from planer to molder, and it has paid off many times over. We not only make the crown profile, but we have cutters to make the back of the crown profile as well. If you’re in the business of doing custom millwork or furniture, a molder is one of the best tools for saving time and money. From the time we purchased these molders, not a scrap of wood over 1″wide has been wasted. It all goes to making custom moldings from shoe mold to several profiles of base cap.

The molder isn’t the only way to make moldings.

 A shaper or router table can also be used to make decorative moldings. The decorative edge on this dental molding was created with a classic roman ogee bit on a shaper. This edge will just add a little extra detail to the dental. I used a radial arm saw with a dado blade to cut the teeth for this molding. I only had about 30′ to mill up, so I just marked each stick with a pattern that I originally marked by hand, one tooth at a time. The whole process took a little over an hour and had the dental ready for install. I’ll have some finished photos on the crown with dental soon.

Another molding that we use a shaper for milling instead of a molder is what we call a baby crown. It’s just a 1 1/8″ X 1 1/8″ large cove that we use for that little extra detail on anything too small for regular crown.
This molding is made from the cutoffs of the bar molding to cut costs. 

Well, the bar should start to shape up in the next post or two. We still have to finish the bar tops and some corbels that we’ll post about next. Here are some photos of what’s to come.

Building a custom bar…..Page 5

Well, I spent the first part of the day redoing the damn arches I made earlier, I goofed!
Even though I was using a story pole, it’s easy to make mistakes. My mistake was getting ahead of myself. I should have built the columns first (like I have so many times in the past) and set them where they belong, so I could get a look at what I was building. Instead I used the story pole and jumped right into the arches. Well- the center arch ended up looking like you could drive a car through it. If I had the columns built first, I would have caught this before I started the arches. Oh well, Pop will always say it’s not a mistake until it leaves the shop.
The rest of the day was spent finishing up the new arches and adding the trim and keystone. If you click on the picture and look closely, you can see I built the arches out of birch plywood, then added a ¼” cherry plywood skin over the birch. The reason for this  is that I didn’t have any ¾” cherry. I also added a 1″ wide by a ¼” thin piece of solid cherry to cover the bottom raw edge of the plywood arch. Now when anybody looks up at the bottom of the arch it looks like a solid 1″ backing piece behind the trim.
We made the three arches in two sections and joined it in the center creating one long piece with 3 arches. This is supposed to make the install easier. (We’ll see!)

Next, we went to work on the front bar. There is no cabinetry in the front bar only a 2×6x 42″ high wall that is there now. We’re just going to cover both sides of the wall with paneling and add a 32″ wide bar top including bar molding on both sides to the top of this wall. First we had to build an extension to the 2×6 wall on both sides to support our top. This extension wall was built mainly out of plywood scraps.
The stile and rail frame for the ¼” flat paneling was put together just like the stile and rails for the cabinetry face frame, with the kreg jig. I can’t tell you enough how this tool has changed the way we work. After the frame is assembled, I routed out a rabbet groove around the back side of each opening to accept the ¼” cherry flat panel. The flat panels are then cut to size and each corner rounded with a jig saw, then nailed and glued into position, ready for molding!

Preview for day 6
 Adding moldings to the columns and running crown and  dental molding around the top of the back bar.