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4 myths about building and construction unmasked:.
Are dados illegal in Europe?
End grain glue myth:.
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#woodworking #myths.
Woodworking myths. (Yeah, you prolly don't want to glue end grain though)
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The end grain glue joint may be stronger that the transverse strength of the wood, but it’s still much weaker than the longitudinal strength.
The strength of the glue doesn’t change but the strength of the wood does.
Steve, I don’t care what kind of videos you make just don’t stop making them. I have been watching for many years and really miss your build videos. I have made many of your items in the past and will continue to make them. I am (again) in the process of making your shoe rack right now.
Keep em coming steve
Couldn’t agree more, thanks for the entertainment too !!
Agreed! Steve’s the man!
This was a fun video and wouldn’t mind seeing more. Always love your down to earth practical thoughts on things.
I have two suggestions for WTS: A dentist does DIY , and Dad How Do I.
Definitely “A dentist does DIY” – he’s been making some great content.
@Erik The Viking Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll check that out.
@Erik The Viking is it “A dentist Does Home Implement”?
@Tucker Southard Yes that’s the one
Steve, you still hold the title of planet earth’s woodworking ambassador.
Keep it up!
This is a great video, yes please more myth videos, well videos in general! Also I love the WTS podcast!
Another excellent video and yes, this topic was great! I particularly appreciate your summary after your final observation. Well done as always, Scott
As long as I have been watching YouTube videos Steve has always made great videos that I never miss as long as you keep making videos I’ll be here to watch them cant wait for this year’s Halloween video
The myth of handplanes have been touched upon by Paul Sellers and according to his knowledge it comes from the time when the British public school introduced woodworking to the kids and in order for them not setting down the handplane on a piece of metal or nail and ruin the plane, the teachers taught the kids that they should always place them on the side.
Years later a simple (and logic) reasoning for keeping tools safe and working longer became a myth with weird explanations.
Love this topic, and I’m glad to see some logic applied to the end-grain glue discussion. Yes, end grain to end grain is kinda strong. But it is still impractical in real world builds!
Regarding the dado stack: Apparently it has to do with the fact that there are regulations in place that require a saw to stop spinning within a certain amount of time after powering down. With the heavy dado stacks, most home-use table saw simply don’t have the brake capacity to do that.
It’s mentioned in regulation “2006/42/EC” and it says:
“The machinery must be equipped with an automatic brake that stops the tool in a sufficiently short time if there is a risk of contact with the tool whilst it runs down;”
My understanding as well. Though I hit the info from, I believe, a Stumpy Nubs video
Here in Finland we usually have the problem that there is not enough room for more than one blade in any saw. But now I have bought a Dewalt saw that actually has that possibility to use a dado blades. And I have also found one Finnish company that actually sell them here too. But they are 200€ so I haven’t bought them yet but I now have the possibility to use them if I see the need
It’s always a pleasure to see you upload. I have been listening to the WTS podcast, and I liked your discussion with Sam the DIY Huntress about the stress of using YouTube as a career vs a hobby. I’m under the impression from other established channels that I enjoy that their Patreon income allows them to take more time on videos, posting less frequently, but with more focus on quality and subjects that they enjoy filming. Anyway, I hope you have found that balance, and I look forward to listening to your latest episode with Grady while I glue the end grains of all the scraps that I have been hoarding.
It’s hilarious that after watching the end grain to end grain joint experiment my very first thought was “awesome, but how can I use this in a project?” to which you immediately answered.
Great video Steve! You should make more of these types of videos. What about the myth associated with the use of pocket screws? Now that would be a good one. 👍👍🔨🔨
Hey Steve, I love your channel 🙂 I’m not sure how many other people had this experience, but my grandfather taught me to always put a plane on its side so that there is no risk of you putting it down on a nail or stone that will chip the blade and force you to spend half an hour filing it back in to working order.
I was tort the same tooooo
Great video!
Yes, I’m going to talk about end-grain glue ups 😁. As I recall from the testing video, end-to-face was stronger than face-to-face. The reason that reinforcing joints is important is that any glue orientation is far weaker than the long grain of a board. I think long grain was something like 5x stronger than an end-to-end glue up. A dowel joint means you have the long grain of the dowel crossing the joint. Same thing for tenons or dominos. Even a spline miter joint has the long grain of the spline across the joint. Half lap joints mean the glue is resisting shear stress as well as tensile stress.
So the conclusion is yes, reinforce your joints and don’t use butt joints. But the reason isn’t that a butt glue up is weaker than other glue ups, it’s that any kind of glue up is weaker than some kind of mechanical joint which involves the end grain.
Great video, as always! I only ever use end grain to end grain when I’m gluing together scraps for a board. That way everything is held in place by strips left and right to the end grain/end grain joint. I have just finished building a saw till from oak scraps using this method. It turned out beautifully and it is very sturdy. For pieces where there is no support left and right you can just snap off the end grain/end grain, though, so I had to move around the pieces and adapt the layout, accordingly. I had other plans for that oak but most of that ancient beam turned out to beyond salvageable, so I improvised because the good parts were just too beautiful to throw away and as it turned out, such a joy to work with. Which brings me to my other point: for me at least it all comes down to the project which material I choose. They all have their merits and pros and cons and I try to choose to best fit the project. As a famous YouTuber once said “woodworking is not about woodworking” and for me that means for example to enjoy the process itself and understanding how to best work with the material at hand and maybe not so much the thing I’m trying to build. I’d like to use a dado stack, but I’m one of those pesky Europeans and that means the arbor in my table saw is way too short for one. Oh well. Instead, I got a flat tooth saw blade and moved on by accepting the fact that I have to do several passes. At least, Tamar’s design for a kerfmaker makes it a little easier, so I don’t have to sneak up on cuts anymore and the flat tooth saw blade leaves a nice surface which I don’t have to clean up afterwards. Plus, I suppose changing just one blade is probably a lot faster than installing a dado stack and fine tuning it afterwards. But that may just be the envy talking 😉
Thanks Steve, as a manager for a retail woodworking store, I address these almost daily. I am going to draw on your knowledge to continue my own “myth busting”! Keep doing what you do! Thanks, Eric
When I was in 7th grade woodworking class (early 60’s) our instructor would make us take planes apart and put back together if we set plane on sole. Interesting to see that as one of your points you are bringing up.
I think the one caveat to the “use what you want” manufactured wood advice is that MDF may not be as strong as solid wood in certain applications.
During lockdown, while some folks were baking sourdough bread I took up amateur woodworking. I found some plans online for a loft bed for my daughter, but they didn’t specify what wood to use, so I just got what was cheapest and most convenient – pre-primed MDF. My thinking was “well I’ve had lots of Ikea furniture made out of MDF, it should be good enough.”
I’ve had to replace a few parts on it that are clearly not strong enough for the way they’re being used.
Love your videos, but I’m going to disagree with you on a few things I have personal experience with.
First, end grain glue-ups, when done correctly (ie. sizing the wood before final application of glue). There are some practical applications for this. But when most people think about end grain glue joints they picture what you showed – taking a couple long boards and gluing them together to make a super long board. That joint is STILL very very strong, but the wood along it’s length is INSANELY strong (think carrying beam for a house!). Additionally, that’s a massive amount of force due to the length of the board vs. the small joint. If you were to run the grain the other way (across the short width) and did face gluing (face edge to face edge) and did that same experiment with the same wood, the wood would probably fail just swinging the thing around without even hitting the table.
Second, 45 miter joints are in face very very strong. I just did a massive picture from for a bathroom mirror and used no splines as they were not needed. The problem with picture frames is that you need a pretty accurate 45 cut 8 times in a row. Any gapping more than 2 or 3 pieces of paper and the joint starts to weaken in dramatic fashion. The problem is that getting 8 nearly perfect 45 cuts is darn near impossible for 99% of hobby woodworkers. Just getting that accuracy out of a non-industrial saw can be a challenge (plus the know how to tune it up). It means shooting your 45s and most hobby woodworkers don’t even know how to use a hand plane, let alone know how to shoot with them, AND even have a shooting board to shoot 45s! Additionally, clamping pressure is important and that is always tricky with a picture frame. With the large frame I recently made I did a ton of experiments with accuracy of the miter, sizing vs. not sizing the glue, different amounts of clamping force, etc. Because I REALLY didn’t want to screw up this walnut frame with hand cut molding. The winner, to no surprise, was PVA glue that was initially sized, with a pair of accurate 45s, a spring dog for alignment and a good amount of clamping pressure. How strong was it? The sloppier joints I could break by hand. Some required a lot more force. But the winner? I wound up clamping it to my work bench and striking it with a mallet with all the force I could muster and it STILL wouldn’t break. I was never actually successful in breaking the joint. People always recommend splines and stuff for picture frames and mitered boxes because it’s hard to make 8 45s and apply clamping force (how many people just clamp with tape?@!?!!) and they don’t think to size the joint with glue first. Bottom line, when properly done, 45 glue joints are insanely strong.
Last one, perhaps debatable….. for utilitarian furniture, yes, furniture made with lots of plywood is just as durable as solid wood. I would not say the same thing about MDF, but I would say it about plywood. The problem is when you start getting into higher end furniture like “heirloom” furniture that is intended to last multiple generations. In that case, solid wood will beat plywood. The reason is because if you are relying upon matal fasteners for joinery, ultimately at some point those joints are going to start to rack, or just completely fail. In that case the dimensional stability of plywood might actually be a benefit. But on heirloom furniture that is relying on wood/glue mechanical joinery, the solid wood will win. Why? Because plywood doesn’t work very well for most of these kinds of joints. Additionally, over the life of a piece of furniture, unless you and your kids and grandkids all live in the high desert, the piece of furniture it going to be subjected to plenty of periods of high humidity and that does take it’s toll on plywood. Not in a few years, but over many decades, it will. Eventually with the glues they use on plywood, you will start to get some separation. And if you spill liquids repeatedly on plywood it’s going to be worse. To make matters worse, we’ve all seen that the edges of plywood can be delicate and chip with abuse. Solid wood might dent depending on how hard the wood is, but it take a lot more effort to chip it than plywood. So bottom line, for most furniture that regular people put in their house, plywood is probably not a big deal and might even have advantages in stability. When you get into heirloom furniture that should be expected to last well over 100 years, solid wood is the winner.
I just spent WAY too much time on this comment! But it’s early Saturday morning and I have a really nice cup of coffee….