- today, we are hereto talk about rabbets. (funky music) rabbets are one of those fundamental woodworking joints that you just can't get too far without knowing how to execute.
router jointer woodworking plan, they come in really handy. so, i've used rabbets extensively in a project i'm working on right now with the nightstands and chest of drawers,
where the panels, for thetop, the sides, the back, are made out of solid wood, and they have to go into a groove. so, in order to make everything fit and look the way i need it to look, we cut a rabbet around the perimeter. now, this is just one of my test pieces, so it's kinda jacked up a little bit but you can see what the rabbet is,
it's just a groove,essentially, or a dado, if you're going across the grain, that is on the edge. so it goes all the way to the edge and creates this little lip, and then this quarter-inch lip can go into a quarter-inch groove. and that's exactly what i have back here on this nightstand project.
so the top and the sides, here let me bring it over there. from this view, this isthe back but the side and top look the same,all you see is a nice, flat panel, and it's all solid wood, so you might be wondering what's going on movement-wise. well, that's where the rabbet comes in. so, what you're seeing isthis side of the panel.
the rabbet inside faces the inside, and it's been cut insuch a way top to bottom we're not so worried, right? it's across the grain this way where we have movement issues. so, the panel has been cut short by an eight of an inch to allow movement on both sides, and then,i just cut a 3/8 rabbet in both sides which alsohas a little bit of a gap.
so if you look inside the cabinet, you would see a littlebit of gap between the leg and this part of the rabbet here. so, that's just one use for a rabbet, but if you think in terms of just basic carcass construction for kitchen cabinets or like my shop cabinets here, you'll find rabbetsreally handy for let's say cabinet sides.
how do you get that top to sit on there? well you don't wanna just drop the top in and do a butt joint, right? you could put a rabbet into the top of that side piece and dropthat top of the cabinet right into the rabbetand then you could either drive a couple screws or just use glue alone, a lot of times, to seal that thing in there.
so, the rabbet is a fundamental joint so it's important to know how to make one. now, you can make 'em alot of different ways. you could use a router,you could use a table saw, several ways at the table saw alone. you can use a rabbeting bit, which is a bearing guided little doohickey that will create this sortof edge treatment on there. so, tons of ways to do it.
my favorite way is to use the table saw, and if any of you have read the book "hybrid woodworking,"which i have right here, i cover this as well as grooves and dados, in detail here, this might be something you wanna check out, butit's a cool technique where you can do the bulk of the work at a power tool, and then we come back to the workbench to finesse it, to fit
and get the perfect fit. so what i have in thetable saw is a dado stack, this is one of those tools that basically, if you have a table saw you kinda can't do without it, it really makesit a lot more versatile, but basically it's a bunch of saw blades stacked together in asandwich that allows you to cut nice wide pieces instead of just a single blade width.
i've got it for about 3/4 of an inch here, to give me the rabbetthat i'm looking for. now, here's the key to making this cut. do you see this littlefence that i have here? this is a sacrificialsurface, and what i mean by that is we're actually gonna cut into it intentionally. a lot of times you make a new fence, you don't wanna cutinto it, but this is one
that i can use specifically for this task. now, this is a really nicepice of like laminated material here, you don't need to have something that fancy. a simple piece of plywood clamped to your regular fencewould work just fine, a 2x4 that's been jointed and planed, so that you know it's nice and straight, you can use that toobecause here's the thing,
you're gonna start with the blade low, and then you're gonna bring the fence over so it's just over the blade. the goal is to actually burythe blade into the fence, and that's what's gonnaallow us to get our cut right up to the edge of the workpiece. so when i run a workpiece across, i should be able to get thatrabbet right on the edge, it'll be nice and clean.
i do recommend that you use some sort of push block here, andthe reason is because when you're removing this much material, the momentum and thesheer force of that blade wants to cause it tolift, and it can do that at the front of the cut,at the back of the cut, in the middle of the cut. so by using a push paddle, or the gripper, you can actually apply a good, even amount
of weight and pressurehopefully giving you a nice, consistent rabbet. the thing is, though, thenature of these things, not all your work pieces are this small, so you may not be ableto control it as well. you may have a biggerpiece or a piece of plywood or something, that has alittle bit of a bow in it, so you may actually end up with a slightly inconsistent rabbet, andthat's where the hand tools
come in, so let's headback to the workbench. so, let me show you thetwo tools that i like to use for making the adjustments here. first, is a router plane, this is one of my absolute favorites. if you are a power toolenthusiast, this is probably the hand tool that you'regonna relate to the best because you have the blade protruding out of the bottom of this plane as you run it
across the surface, it'sat a fixed location. so it works a lot like a regular router. you can kind of understandwhat this thing is doing, and unless you tilt itin some wacked out way, you kinda can't cut toofar, that's the great thing about it. it's a very consistent andeasy to understand tool. this is the other tool i like to use. this is my shoulder plane,
and this guy is prettyunique in that the blade goes all the way to the edges here, which a lot of planes,the blade is gonna stop inside the body of the plane. but the key is this onewill allow me to go right up to this edge, which iscritical for something like a rabbet, right? if it stopped any sooner,then you'd have a ridge at the end, which isn'tgonna be very helpful.
so which one do you use? well, i should mention that this, we would have intentionally cut this thing just a bit shy, so that ifthe workpiece lifted up, we'd have a little bit ofextra material to remove, and at the very least, we take one complete passor two complete passes to get this thing to fit into our groove. i like to be cautious when it comes
to this stuff instead ofgoing, trying to get right to the number then overshooting. so we'll just put it into the bench. important thing here isyou really only need a stop at the front, but i bringthe back dog in just to support it. i don't crank this thing down, cause if you crank it down,you create a bow here, and that makes itdifficult to plane, right?
so, just a little bit ofpressure to immobilize it, hold it in place. so, we can use this shoulderplane to do the work, and i'll just make a quick cut here. now, these can be alittle tricky to balance cause it is kind of anodd-shaped plane, right? so it takes a little getting used to. the thing about this is, it will take some of those high spots and knock them down,
if you know where the high spots are. so, you might just take your groove, put it on there, and try to spot where the high spots are. and you go oh, it's alittle thick right here, i can't get the work piece to go on, so let me just work this area here, and you can clean that spot up. the thing that thisdoesn't do is it doesn't
make sure that we have an even depth all the way across. and that's what the router plane is really good at doing, so that's where you might consider using this one. so, let's intentionallyinduce a bit of a taper here. right so i've got a littlebit more material removed on this side than i do on this side. well, the router plane isgonna help me find that,
even if i didn't know it was there. so, if i'm set here, i don't know for sure at this point, i mean ido because i just did it but you might normally not know if this is the lowest point, butyou basically set it to that point, and thenmove it along the surface and see if it starts to catch. you can kinda move alongand find all the places it starts to grab, youknow you may have had
the lowest point. if i start over here and go to this side, i'm gonna see a gap, so itshould be pretty obvious when i'm at the low point. all right so, puttingpressure on the right side, my left hand is just kindahelping me move it forward, but all the downwardpressure is on the right, otherwise i tip. i'm just pushing forward,and i start to see
the blade catching, therewe go, look at that. you see? so there wasa bit of a high point in the middle. so if i wanted to, icould then loosen it up, bring it down a little bit more, repeat. didn't take very much off, there we go. now it's going all the way across. okay, so what's greatabout this is it's going to ensure that the depthof this rabbet is even
but i do find that i getbetter, smoother results with the shoulder plane, so you know, if i even it out and thenmaybe take one more pass, i get a nice shaving offof there and this is nice and smooth. so, you're not reallydoing a whole lot of work to this board. if you are, then you gottaadjust your table saw to make a deeper cut.
the goal is not to workmore for the sake of using hand tools, it's touse the hand tools quickly, and make one or two passes to get this guy to fit perfectly, andyou just sweeten the fit, you're not looking todo a ton of extra work. either one of these tools will do the job but you can see, fundamentally, they work differently. so this guy, the routerplane, is gonna help me
fix some problems. this one will help me fix them too, but i gotta know a little bit more about that surface beforei use it because i might make the problem a little bit worse if i'm not careful enough with it. but this for me is avery quick way to end up with really a precise, perfect fit. now, i'll tell you what,if i just go power tools
and i don't do this, typicallywhat i wind up having to do is raise the blade a little bit so that all of my rabbetsfit in the grooves. what that inevitably does,is it results in some of those rabbets not fitting quite as snug as i want them to. a lot of folks question whether or not incorporating hand tools is worthwhile, because they see the handtools as being very slow.
but the reality is, if it's done properly, you start to find the placeswhere your power tools can let you down. and sometimes, it's just the pure physics of the situation that result in a joint that's not completely consistent. but man, those hand tools can bail you out of those situations. and, i gotta say, there is something fun
about taking some nice,sweet shavings off, getting the absoluteperfect, dialed-in fit, and just knowing thatyou're at the sweet spot. and sometimes with a power tool, you may find the sweet spot, but you also may go right past it. (laughs) that's theproblem with power tools. so yeah, that's thebasics of creating rabbets the hybrid style.
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