Elegant Entry Divider - Wood Tools

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Builder
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ICUTAUGNMENT NOTCH. To occurotely olign the workpiece
when cuiting the dodoes thot form the holHops, cut o deep
notch in o long ouxiliory fence ottoched to the miter gouge.
f SET BLADE HEIGHT. With the blode height set to iust under
holf the thickness of the workpiece, moke iwo cuts in the end
of o test piece, flipping it between cuts (2). Roise the blode
sl;ghtly ond repeot ihe process until the sliver is gone /3i.
'{ TEST FlT. Once the
blode height is odlusted,
cut robbets in two tesr
pieces, ond check to see
if they fit flush.
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JOINERY^
A half-lap joint is exactly what the nanre irnplies - a
joint with half the thickness of each mating piece
removed so that overlapping pieces fit flush.This provides
a strong fice-to-face glue joint that is useful for
building franres, lattices, and grids (like the grids ir.r the
backdoor bench on page 49, or the entry divider on
page 62).
Sfock Prep & Toble Sqw Setup
There are two requirenrer-rts for cuttir-rg perfect-fitting
half-lap joints: unifornr stock thickness and accurate
blade setup.
Stock Thickness - Ulnless all the pieces that will be
joined together are exactly the sar.ne thickness, it's di{Ecult
to create flush-fitting lap joints. So the first step is to
plane all of 1'our blanks to identical thickness. It'.s also a
good idea to make a few blanks for test cuts.
Blade Setup - The quickest way to cut half-laps is
with a dado blade mounted in tl.re table saw.Just set up the
dado blade to match the width of the pieces to be joined
together. (For half-lap joints on pieces rvider than a fullwidth
dado blade, you will have to rnake nrultiple passes.)
A useful aid for cutting half-laps is a long auxiliary fence
attached to the miter gauge. I recomr.nend cutting a deep
notch in it, as shown in Fig. 1. The notch will be used ro
accurately align the workpiece along the fence (Fi.q. 5).
Once the notch is cllt, you can set the blade height.
Renrember, you have to remove lmlf rhe thickness of
each workpiece.To do that, raise the blade to just under
half the thickness of the stock.Then make fwo passes in
a test blank, flipping the piece over between passes (Fig
2).Thts leaves a thin sliver of wood that will be removed
once the final blade height is established.That's accomplished
by raising the bladejust a hair and repeating the
pass-arrd-fli process until the sliver disappears (Fig.3).Be
aware that any change in blade height is doubled, so
adjustments nlust be small.Then, to check the final blade
height, cut rwo test pieces, and fit them to€iether ro make
sure their faces are flush (Fig. 4).
54 woRKBENCH ! FEBRUAI{y 2005