36VIDEO Joining the Footstool Legs and Crosspiece

In this video, I'm going to show you how to put together the parts of the footstool

I was just thinking, you know, this is a very simple project, but there's so many little opportunities for me to show you the fine points of woodworking

And these fine points are going to be applicable to lots of other things too. So it's a great project for that

Just before I go on, I want to mention a recap. As I mentioned before, it's important to keep an open

mind about your designs and even when you're working from plans sometimes it makes sense to modify

those plans a little bit as you go along now this particular plan if you want to call it that's

quite simple but i did make it for this course and i made some assumptions about dimensions which

i chose to change a bit once i actually had the wooden thing in front of me so if you remember

i shortened the legs from 14 and a half to 12 and a half so that's what we've got now i also

ended up in the end shortening this cross piece that's down here to bring the legs in a

little more to increase the amount of overhang on the top to the legs so we went from 16 to 15 and a

half and i think those dimensions work well and you'll probably want to use those dimensions when you're

building your own stool so one of the things to keep in mind when you're woodworking is that you're

constantly having to make decisions. And the main decision we have now is what kind of fasteners

we're going to use to hold these parts together. You might think, well, can't we just nail it

together? Well, I guess technically we could. The problem is if we just drove nails in here

you know, with a hammer or something, we would get splitting. This wood would split. And not only that

but nails don't hold nearly as well as screws. And that's because screws have those serrations that

actually grip the wood and when you tighten the screw it pulls things together. You don't have any of that

with nails. Nails only operate on friction of the friction of the metal of the nail within the hole and it's not

nearly as solid. So I almost never use nails except maybe for fine small trim and things like that

So for this project we're going to use some kind of wood screw and there's lots to choose from. So let's head over to the bench. I want to show you some of

the options and then I'm going to show you the one that I want to use for this

Not necessarily the one, the kind of screw that you have to use, but it's a great screw

and it's very strong. So let's go to the bench and take a look. Well, as you can see

there's lots to choose from here and I think I'm lapsing into a bit of a teaching tangent

too. If you stick with woodworking, a very important part of the discipline and the setup

is that you have your things organized, your supplies organized. And so I've got a couple

of trays here. I've got lots of trays like this with different fittings and things in it

some of which I'm going to talk to you about now. You might think, well, I'll just use some deck

screws to hold the footstool together. And you could. I mean, these are deck screws. They're

about the right length, maybe a little bit long. But the draw, they're widely available

The drawback is that they don't look all that great. I mean, the color is not ideal

for this stool, in my opinion. And it's just kind of a run-of-the-mill screw

You see these screws all the time. So it's a bit ho-hum as far as things go structurally

This would be fine. If I did want to use this kind of screw

and I wanted to make it a little bit fancier, I would get something like this

It's called a cup washer. And a cup washer is for use with screws

that have a kind of an angled head like this. In the hardware business, this is called a flathead design, and it's because it's flat on top

But a comp washer, it's kind of like half a bagel. Half a bagel sliced lengthwise

It has a place to hold the head, and it looks nicer

Looks a little more refined. Structurally, it also makes this screw grab a whole lot stronger, because now you've got a larger surface area

that the head can pull against as it's tightening down. This kind of head tends to split the wood because it's angled

whereas you put a cup washer on it, and there's no problem. Now, it doesn't really match, though

There's a color difference here, so that's a bit of a drawback. But it's not a drawback we necessarily need to pursue or to put up with

Here is a silver-colored screw. This is zinc-plated and with a zinc-plated cup washer

We could do that. And the Phillips head is a little fancier than the Robertson. So that looks quite nice. Further along that theme, we could use a brass cup washer and a brass screw

Same thing. The slot head, the slot-headed brass screw is kind of a classic in the world of woodworking

So we could use that, although this particular screw isn't long enough

to give us what we need. I'll talk more about how long screws need to be

Oh, here's another kind of, this is also a washer. It distributes the load on the square shoulder here

but it's designed to be completely inset into the wood. So all you see is the top of this screw

but underneath is this special kind of washer that stops the screw from being driven too deeply, increases

increases its holding power and it's just a kind of a refined approach

But it does require careful drilling of a pocket to accept this, this ring

So the screw that I'm going to use for this footstool is this one

This is called a structural screw and they're relatively new. I mean deck screws have been around for forever

These kind of screws even longer than forever. So these, I think I noticed these, first of all, maybe 15 years ago or so

And the claim to fame is twofold. Threefold, actually. First of all, they're fairly thick

They have a beefy kind of a shank here. These threads are coarse and they're strong and they can grip the wood well

This deck screw, even though it's a fairly big one, it's somewhat smaller

Screws do get a lot smaller than that. You can see here's one that's even finer

this one will hold much more strongly than this one. So I like the threads

I like the fact that the head is large. So there's a lot of pulling power here

This can really hold together well. And the top looks nice too

That's a torx design, Torx head. That's T-O-R-X. And it's a family of driving bits

not peculiar to this particular brand of screw. It's kind of universal. And it grips very well

Once the bit goes in here, it's not, it's very unlikely that it's going to start to round that out

So nice and strong, looks decent. This is the one I'm going to use. But as you can see, there are other options

So for teaching purposes, I'm doing things a little bit in a little bit different order than I normally would

If I was building this and I wanted it to be a fairly refined piece that I could put in my house

I would not be assembling it right now. I would be refining the surfaces, sanding, getting everything ready

because you can't really sand properly when a project's together. You have to do it before it goes together

But in the interests of giving you something, a sense of accomplishment, we're going to assemble this first

and then in later parts of the course we're going to take it apart again

so we can do some finishing. So I'm breaking out the basic building and assembly

breaking it out from the finishing process in case you don't want to apply a finish

But taking apart a project like this is no problem so it's not really any wasted time

Now, before I mentioned that we have to make some decisions and the first decision that I've made

is what kind of screw I'm going to use. The second decision, is exactly what order I'm going to be putting things together in because that order matters a lot

I mean for instance if I said well I going to I going to fasten the top to the legs first Okay so you attach the top to the legs

And let's say you're careful and you measure so that the distance between the legs is

theoretically correct to accept the cross piece. Well, I can tell you that you can measure until you're blue in the face

and you're never going to get the spacing of these legs perfectly correct so that you can

and just slip the center piece in and have it fit without any gaps. So that's why, in this case

what we're going to want to do first is to fasten the legs to the cross piece as one unit

and then we're going to attach the top. So you need to sort of think things through. If I put this

together, will that cause problems for me in the future or not? So that's one decision

the order of assembly. Another decision, is how we're going to deal with the wonkiness of this wood

Because as I pointed out before, I mean these boards, although they used to be

perfectly flat and without any twists, that's not the case now. And I in fact, you can see that there. In fact, I chose these boards to be a little bit

wonky in the usual sort of way because I want to show you how you might want to deal with that

So we have a bit of a cup shape here. And look at this

We also, it wobbles. So we're going to have to deal with that

And of course, these pieces are cup shaped a bit too. And so is this one

So how do we deal with that? Well, my personal preference for the legs is to put the cup shape inwards

So let's take a look what I mean by that. Can you see? Can you see that cup shape there? I think it looks a lot better than if it's outwards

Not a big deal, it'll work structurally both ways, but I am opting to put the cups in

The little bit of a cup on the cross piece, it doesn't really matter whether we point it one way or the other, so that's not really an issue

and we've got a cup here and a wobble there. So how are we going to deal with that

Well, the first step is to mark for the position of the screws

and to drill the appropriate holes. Once we've got that in place, once we actually see how this thing is coming together

then I will be able to explain to you how we can deal with this wonkiness

and it's very important for you to understand that fastener placement makes a big difference in how things look

And by that, I mean, if for instance, I'm going to be putting three screws in the top, three screws will hold the top

if those things were uneven, so they weren't in the same line or they were closer to one side than the other

it's going to look unnecessarily messy and disheveled. So I'm a big fan of measuring for the location of fasteners that will remain visible

so that the whole project just looks more refined. And I can tell you, it makes a very big difference

Even if you're putting something together with something as small as finishing nails, which you just have a tiny little head, just going to leave a little mark

Still, measure, mark, and equalize the location of those things because your project is going to look a lot better

So let's start. by joining the legs and the cross piece. So it's time for some more decisions now

but they're easy decisions to make. It doesn't matter which end I put up

up or down for the legs. Looking at this piece of wood, I say no. I mean, it doesn't really matter which way around it goes

Same with this one. I mean, this is pretty much clear. There's no reason to turn it one way around the other

Same for this. So what we want to do is we want to have this centerpiece

this cross piece in the center of the legs and flush with the top. That's our goal at this stage

So step number one is to mark a center line on this piece of wood. So I'm going to look at that

Now that is a little bit less than nine inches wide. It's kind of shameful really because this is sold to me as a two by ten

considerably narrower than nine and a half inches but this is what we'll go with so

what's half a nine half a nine is four and a half that's a smidge less than nine

so we're gonna go a smidge less than four and a half now is that really the

center well I can double check that with my combination square so what I do is

I'll I'll adjust the blade so that it's lined up with that mark

Now, if it's really in the middle, because I could have made a mistake in my math or my thinking

if it's really in the middle, it should work out this way

Now, actually, as you can see, I didn't have it quite in the middle. It's very close, though

Very close. I'll just pull it back a little bit, and then we should be directly in the middle

That's the middle of the board. And I don't need to have to worry that it's not because I'm proving it from both sides

Now, I want to drill two holes in these legs, one about here, one about here, and I want them to be in the same line

So I'm going to use my combination square. As I explained, combination squares can be used sometimes

It's to mark. Now my cross piece is of course the same width as the leg and I want the I want the screws to be about to be evenly distributed so one third of the distance here a screw another third of the distance here a screw and then another third of the distance there so actually you know I think I'm going to make it a little bit now that I see it

I'm going to make it a little bit unbalanced. I'm going to make it slightly closer to the edges than the middle

I just think that's going to hold a bit better. Maybe look a little nicer. So what do we have

Two inches there, two inches there. That seems about right. So just before I go on with that piece of wood, I'm going to mark this other leg

because I don't want to disturb the setting of the combination square

to make the next adjustment before I've finished with the combination square for this application

So, I'm going to double check. Am I still correct? Yep, it's in the middle

So, two inches. Two inches down. There. Here, just a minute

Let me just... We'll put this board on here. I know where I need to measure the next two inch mark

So two inches from the top. And nine minus two inches from the top and nine minus two

means me to seven for the bottom. So this is where I want to drill the holes

This is the inside face. This is the outside face. In this case, it doesn't matter from which direction I drill

So I'm going to drill from the inside. And so I'm up against another decision now

And the decision is what size of drill bit to use? because for this application, I want the screw to be able to pass freely through the wood

So I don't want the hole to be huge, but I don't want the hole to be small enough that the threads grab onto the wood

Because don forget the legs are being pulled into the cross piece by these threads So I want this to be able to slide easily through here so that the screw is free to pull the leg tight to the end of the cross piece

So how do I determine the size of hole I need? Well, I'm going to go to my collection of drill bits

which is probably something that you'll want to buy fairly soon. This is a very full-featured set

Each bit increases in size by 164th of an inch. You won't need a set this detailed to begin with

Even just a set that gets bigger by a 16th of an inch in this size range here

That'll be sufficient for you as a beginner. But the nice thing about the bits fitting into a box like this

this is called a drill index, by the way, is that it makes it very easy for me to determine

ideal drill bit size for a given screw. So quarter inch is that big enough? Let's give

that to try. So we take the bit out. Does the screw fit nicely in there? Well, it's a

little bit snug. Technically this is a quarter inch screw but I want something a little

bit bigger than the screw, just a little bit bigger. So I'm going to go with this

one the next size up. I think that's going to work fine. So perfect, just slides through nicely

So now it's time to get out a handheld drill and to drill some holes for these screws

So time to do some drilling. And you're going to need a drill for that

A lot of people have drills in their house. So you might not have to go out and buy one

If you do have to buy one, expect to pay $100 or so for the cheapest drill

that's worth buying. You can find drills cheaper than $100, but, I mean, some of them even $50

but that's too cheap. That won't last. You won't like that. I'll go more into this topic later

but a drill is certainly one of the very first tools you'd want to buy, and it's not a whole lot of

money. You may even have one, as I said, there are a few other small tools that you might want

to consider too. But for now, we're just going to drill the holes. And as you remember, I've got the

marked here. I'm not just going to start drilling though. I want to create a little depression

first in the wood just to help hold the drill bit so that it doesn't wander around. It doesn't take

much. There are special tools for this, but you can just use a screw or anything. I've also

raised this up off my assembly cart here on the other leg, and I've offset it. So when I drill down

I'm going to go down into thin air. I'm not going to be drilling into my bench

and I'm not going to be drilling into the leg. So we want a fairly fast speed

And keep it as square as we can and not angled. There we go

There's our hole. How does it actually work with that screw? Well, pretty much perfectly, right

Just as I hoped. So same thing for the other four holes, so two in this leg and two in the other leg

So I'm on, I'm off to a good start here

And now it's time to start working with the cross piece. I need to explain a few things

It would be theoretically possible for me to to drive, to put these screws in here now and to drive them

into the end of the cross piece. But if I did that, there's an excellent chance that that cross piece would split

This wood is fairly dry, and this screw is fairly large in diameter

So I don't want to just drive it in here. I need to do something else first

I need to what's called pre-drill for these screws, and that takes a little bit of finesse, as I'll show you coming up

coming up. So my holes are drilled in the legs. Can you see that? That's the concave side on the

inside. So I'm grabbing the screws from the outside and that's the same thing I've got going here

Now as I explained the tendency would be for this wood to split and so we need to pre-drill

holes for these screws and that gets a bit trickier because in this

case we wanted the screw to be able to go freely through the hole. It's very

important that you'd be able to move the screw like that, but just barely. I mean, I

don't want a huge hole, I just wanted the screw to be able to move. But if I

drilled a hole of that size in here, well, the hole is too big. The threads

would not be able to grip the hole. There wouldn't be any holding power there. So I

need a smaller drill bit. And the question is, how much smaller? If I make the drill bit too

small, I'm going to drill and I'm still going to get the wood's still going to split. And if I drill it

too big, it's not going to hold. So I need to start by taking a guess. What I want to achieve

I hope you can see this here, but you see on any kind of wood screw, in fact, any kind of bolt, too

we've got what's called the root diameter. So that's the diameter of the screw from the

valley here, sort of the trough between two threads here. and the trough between two threads there

And I think you can see that ideally, at least in theory

ideally my whole size would match the root diameter of the screw

allowing the threads to bite into the wood to pull the screw in

So I'm going to look at that. I'm going to think, well, what kind of drill bit would I need

I'm going to get out this one. That's 1164th. And I'm going to hold it up. I don't know if you can see that. I'm going to hold that up

Well, that looks pretty good to me. Do you see how it's about the right size to cover the root diameter, but it's not interfering with the threads

I think this is the right size of bit. But I know from lots of experience and disappointment that my idea of the right size of bit is not necessarily the right size

and the reason is because wood has different tendencies to split, it has different hardnesses

and all of that affects the ideal diameter for this pre-drilled hole

And by the way, in the world of woodworking, this is called a pilot hole

So it's a hole that will guide the travel of the screw while still letting the screw do its business

So what I always, always do is when I think I, I've got the right bit. I go and get a piece of scrap, just like this piece of wood here

exactly the same as the piece of wood I'm using, and I drill the hole. I drill the hole in the end

not this side, not the face, because that's going to be encountering wood in a different direction

and the wood behaves very differently in different directions. I'm going to drill a hole in the end

and I'm actually going to try to drive this screw. See how it works. Now, one of a couple of different things will happen

Maybe this drill bit is too small. And when I drive the screw, it'll cause the wood to split

That's a possibility. Another thing is maybe this screw is too big and it's not going to hold very well

If I was, I should mention some other thing too. This is softwood, right

So if I was doing this in hardwood, I would have to make a slightly larger hole

And I would find out by my test whether it's appropriate or not. But hardwood is very different in consistency

than softwood when it comes to this kind of thing. And I have found that I usually have to err on the side of a slightly larger hole than a slightly smaller one when I'm dealing with hardwood

I think this bit going to be just fine in softwood but let me grab a scrap and we try drilling and we actually see how it works So I going to keep this bit handy because I know it the right size for part of the hole

And I'm going to put in a smaller bit here. The one I think is going to work

This is my scrap. I'm just going to eyeball a similar dimension because it's just a test, right

I had this scrap around too and you might be tempted and I think well I mean I don't want to I don't want to ruin a piece of wood like this

so I'll just use this little scrap it's not useful for anything but you know the problem is I can have the the very

best diameter of pilot hole in this piece of wood but because it's so short

it's probably gonna split like crazy so it's not really representative because it's too short

So I think this is representative. Let's give this a try. I'm going to just make a little hole

Might as well do two. I get two tests just to be sure

Now, I'm eyeballing straight up and down. See how the bit picks up and down

sawdust like that this is a small hole it's not particularly challenging but but

sometimes you need to kind of drill partway and then pull the bit out and

remove the sawdust and then drill further that's sometimes necessary those channels do need to be open for the sawdust to come up and out as you can see

and there we go so Time to drive a couple of test screws now

Now, depending on the screws that you are using and their head design, you may want to use something different than I'm going to use

if I'm a regular screwdriver will work fine. In this case, I'm using a torx driver on a ratchet wrench

Now, this is part of my mechanics tool collection, so it's not really woodworking tools exactly

but it is often used for woodworking. And as I said, the only reason I'm using this is because

of the kind of screw I'm using. You could usually use a regular screwdriver for that

Now, what am I paying attention to here? Well, I'm paying attention to how difficult it is to tighten this

If it was too difficult, if there was too much force required

there would be too much outward movement, and there would be a very good chance that I would split

this wood. This feels just about right. I'm not having to apply a whole lot of pressure

Now, that's about as far as I need to go because that's, you know, it's going to be

fastening another piece of wood on here. That's another thing. Your pilot hole needs to be

deep enough to accommodate the whole screw. If I only drilled it part way, my pilot hole

might be correct, but if I'm heading into a zone where there's no pilot hole further down

then that can cause some splitting too. So I think we're in good shape here

We're ready to join the legs in the cross piece, but we need to mark the cross piece first

so we get it aligned properly. So do you remember I want the center of the cross piece

the center of the edge of the cross piece aligned with that line? So in order for me to do that

I need to extend some lines. So I'm extending this line here

so that I can see it on the top when I have the cross piece in place

I'm also going to extend it out the bottom a bit. So that I can see where that line comes out

past the bottom of the cross piece. OK, that's good. Now, I need to mark the center of the cross piece

on its edge on both edges so I can line up my mark here

with the marks I've just made. So I know this is an inch and a half thick

And half of an inch and a half is three quarters of an inch. So I'm going to adjust my combination square to three quarters of an inch

But I'm not going to trust myself. Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I wasn't paying attention

I'm going to do the double check. Actually, I was a little bit off there

More than a little bit, but I can actually readjust that. Or I can just say that's the center right there

I'm splitting the difference. That's the middle line as what I'm going to go for

Same with this side. And there, the center of this board is right between those two lines

So here's what's going to happen. You see, now I'm going to line these up

flush with the tub, and then I'm going to drive those screws home, and it's going to become a solid unit

In this case, I'm going to do this vertically here. This piece is wide enough that it can work fine

But, as you see, I don't have my holes yet, my pilot holes. So how do I get, how do I know where those

need to go exactly. Well, the screws themselves are going to tell us. So I've got that side lined up

I'm going to go down here, line up that side. Can you see that? I'm lined up in the center there

My line here is lined up with the center of the board. So I'm in a good position to grab a hammer or anything else and just

I've got my marks. That's exactly where the holes need to be drilled

And I want to drill the full length of the drill bit so that I have enough depth of hole

so that it's going to work properly. So I'm eyeballing it for square

There we go. So if I've done everything right, this should come together

I'm extending the screws out a little bit so that they kind of engage with the holes I've just drilled

There we go. We're flush on the top. I'm going to switch to the other one now

Tighten that one up a bit. Since this is soft wood, there's a certain amount of squish to the wood

So I should be able to tighten this down and the top of the screwhead become flush with the surrounding wood

That's ideally what I want. That knot, that might give us a little bit of grief because knots are a lot harder than the surrounding wood

But no, that's working well. You see how that's pulling down nicely? It's flush now

and then I just repeat the same process over here. There we go

I'm going to do the other side now, and then we're going to come back

and I'm going to show you how to put on the top and some other adjustments that will help

to make this footstool even better