Hacks To Make Your Woodworking Jobs Easier
They say there are no shortcuts to success but when it comes to woodworking, there are. To be on top of your woodworking projects, you must strike a balance between hard work and hacks. Little tricks you learn along the way serve as the tools of your trade and become standard practice for you over time. These tips and tricks will help you save time, be more efficient with your work, and make your job easier.
Below, we’ve shared a few woodworking hacks to take out the tedious so you can get back to enjoying your projects more.
MAKE A STORY STICK
Accurate measurements are critical to any successful woodworking project. But it can certainly get monotonous with repetitive measurements. To avoid taking the same measurements, again and again, you can make a story stick.
A story stick is a measured reference that you can make out of any scrap wood piece. It saves time and effort by serving as a layout tool in repeated work. You can get multiple correct measurements without needing to use a tape measure every time. Plus, you can use it as a drill guide for drilling consistent holes in multiple planks.
MARK DRILL DEPTH
Every hole you drill doesn’t need to be all the way through the material. Sometimes you need a specific depth for your screws, and for that, you need to drill carefully. If it’s a single hole, you can make do with guesswork, but drilling multiple holes of the same depth requires accuracy.
One way to do that is by setting up stops on a drill press. It isn’t the most feasible tool for the job most of the time though. A more accessible and efficient way of drilling accurate holes is making a depth marker on the drill bit using a piece of tape. So, when the drill bit reaches the edge of the tape while drilling, you stop and repeat the process for all holes. In the end, you’ll have equally drilled holes.
GET RID OF GLUE
Woodworking projects are nearly impossible without glue. While applying glue is quick and easy, the sticky, gummy, and messy paste can be frustrating to clean up.
If you’re dealing with glue squeeze-out, mix a little sawdust with the glue and rub it around. The sawdust will absorb the excess glue, and you can easily remove it without creating a mess.
If you have glue sticking to your hands, rub them together. As long as the glue is wet or damp, it will flake off easily.
CENTRALIZE DOWEL HOLES
It may seem like a trivial job, but making a centered hole in a dowel is pretty tricky. If you follow these steps though, you’ll never drill off-center again:
- Choose a drill bit the same size as your dowel.
- Take a scrap piece of wood and make a cut down the center of it.
- Center the drill bit on the kerf line (the cut you made).
- Lock the arbor, set the fence, and add a stop block.
- Drill all the way through the wooden piece.
- Replace the drill bit with a smaller one for the dowel hole.
- Place the dowel inside the hole in the wooden piece.
- Clamp the gap and drill down the center.
GET RID OF SAWDUST
Where there is woodwork, there is sawdust. But having a portable air compressor makes it super easy to clean up sawdust. You can attach it to your vacuum cleaner, and it will suck everything in, leaving your workspace spotless.
CONCLUSION
Woodworking is exciting, and having a few tricks up your sleeve doesn’t hurt. These little hacks make your job less time-consuming and more rewarding. They minimize repetition of the same steps, make clean-up super-fast, and enable you to do more projects in less time.