I’ve been a woodworker and a fly fisherman for years, so it was probably inevitable that sooner or later I would build a bamboo fly rod.

Inevitable, perhaps, but not necessarily a walk in the park. It cost me a fishing season. I broke rods long before they left the shop. I made rods that worked better as tomato stakes. I fried one rod to a crisp. I suffered epoxy failures and polyurethane busts. In short, I enjoyed every minute of it, and three rods after I started, I have a rod that I’m not ashamed to show to the world. It would have gone better if I had learned to follow directions at some point in my life, but it’s too late for that. I will never be a legendary rodmaker, but I hope I can save you from some beginner’s mistakes – perhaps all of them – in this article.

But let’s start at the beginning. A bamboo fly rod is made of six strips of bamboo glued together to form hexagon (photo below). The strips are triangular in cross-section, and since the rod tapers from handle to tip, the triangular strips taper, too — the triangle is bigger at one end of the strip than the other.

All of this is done in three stages: First you rough out a rod blank, splitting the bamboo stem to stern, kiln drying it, and then planing it into long triangular strips — a set of six strips for each section of the rod. In the second stage, you taper the triangular strips with a block plane and a special metal form. Then you glue the pieces together, clamping the pieces together by wrapping them with thread. On a good day, it’s a piece of cake. On a bad day, it’s worse than getting skunked on the stream. Far worse. The final stage is applying the finish and attaching the hardware. I like to think of the stages as lumberjack, cabinetmaker and finisher.

Stage One: Lumberjack

This stage begins with a piece of Tonkin cane, the only cane used in rod making, because its long, dense, fibers make for a powerful rod. In the entire world, Tonkin cane grows in a single 30-square mile patch of China. When trade with China was banned during the Cold War, the only dealer who still had any cane left was Charles Demerest, in Bloomingdale, New Jersey. From 1950 to 1971, his pre-embargo bamboo was the rodmaker’s only supply. Demerest is still one of the few suppliers in the country, and I buy my cane from him because he kept a tradition alive. His bamboo, like all Tonkin cane, is sold in 10-foot lengths, which are usually cut in half for shipping.

Technically, bamboo is a grass, and a stick is called a culm. The easiest and fastest way to get the strips you need is to split the culm the way Windsor chair makers rive a chair back from a log, and for the same reason. Splitting bamboo gives you a piece with long parallel strands of grain. Rodmakers often make their own splitters out of knives or screwdrivers that they drive into the end of the culm. Mine are chisels with edges that are ground to a rounded point. As the pieces get smaller, I hold the end of the chisel on the bench with one hand, and feed the bamboo into it with the other. Your goal: six strips plus whatever else you can get from the bottom five feet of the culm. This will be the butt section. The tip comes from the upper five feet of the culm, and because rods traditionally have an extra tip, you’ll want to split it into 12 pieces.

At this point, you make a couple of minor adjustments. A stick of bamboo is divided into shorter sections by a series of bumps, called nodes. You need to get rid of the bumps and deal with the bends that typically occur around them. Fortunately, bamboo bends when heated. Holding the node directly over a heat gun (photo below) until the wood is almost too hot to handle makes the heated section bend like warm plastic. Once you’ve heated it, you can flatten the node completely (or almost so) by clamping it in the vise with the outside face against a jaw. Count to 10, and then clamp the edges between the jaws to straighten out the bends. If any of the nodal bump remains, you sand it out by hand with 240-grit paper and a hard rubber sanding block.

Before we shape each piece into a triangle, there are two steps. The first is to get each piece down to a manageable width. Traditionally, this is done with a hand plane — it may be a grass, but bamboo works like wood. Tradition has its place, but this isn’t really the time for it. I rip the strips to width on the table saw (use lots of featherboards) and then I plane them into triangles on jig in the planer (photo below). The planer jig is a simple oak auxiliary table with 60-degree grooves routed into it. Battens on the bottom fit snugly against the front and back of the planer bed to hold the jig in place. Each groove is slightly shallower than its neighbor — the largest is about 3/8 inches deep and the smallest is about 1/16-inch deep. I feed all the strips into the first groove, flip them edge for edge, and then feed them into the next shallower groove. I work my way down the table until I’ve planed the strips to the size required by the rod.

Like any piece of lumber, your strips of bamboo need to be kiln dried. This not only drives out water that might haunt you down the road, it tempers the bamboo, turning what would otherwise be a soft rod into one with backbone. It doesn’t take long — about 10 minutes at 350 degrees for the butts, and slightly less for the tips. The problem, of course, is finding an oven that will hold a strip of bamboo that is still somewhere between four and five feet long. Some people make friends with the folks at their local pizza shop. The current rage is a shop-built oven with a thermostat and electric heating elements mounted inside metal heating duct. (It was on a crude variation of this that I baked a rod into charcoal.) I now use a heat gun, combined with a couple of heat ducts — one inside the other — with lots of insulation around the outer pipe (photo and diagram below). The heat gun shoots heat down the outside duct; it rises into the inner duct at an even temperature. I use two meat thermometers, one at the top and one at the bottom of the ducts to monitor the temperature. I’m lucky: the unit automatically tops out at about 350 degrees, but if necessary, I can regulate the temperature by adjusting the air intake on my heat gun.

Stage Two: Cabinetmaker

Here, tradition rules, I am fine with it. You are working with a finely tuned plane, a razor-sharp blade and a tapering jig that adjusts to the thousandths of an inch. I enjoy it the way I enjoy fly casting—nothing matters but what you’re doing, and what you’re doing is about as good as it gets.

The fact is, that while there is no perfect taper for a rod, there are thousands of bad ones. I chose a time-tested taper developed by Everett Garrison. Garrison made some 700 rods from 1927 until his death in 1975, and they are considered some of the finest ever made. I copied the seven-foot rod he used on the last day he went fishing. The dimensions are listed in the chart (see below) 7’0″ Garrison Fly Rod Taper.  Some of his other tapers, as well as his directions for building can be found in his book A Master’s Guide to Building a Bamboo Fly Rod, co-authored with Hoagy Carmichael.

Understanding how rodmaking works means understanding how the tapering jig works. The tapering jig, also called a planing form, is made of two bars of steel five feet long. The edges that face each other are chamfered and form a V-groove when the bars are put together. At one end of the jig the chamfers form a deep valley; at the other end they form a shallow valley. In between, the chamfer forms a valley that slopes evenly between the two ends. The bamboo sits proud of the jig, and you plane it until the plane is riding on the jig. When it is, the bamboo is the same shape as the valley—wide at one end, narrow at the other. Because of the hundreds of different rod tapers, you can adjust the depth of the valley every five inches using a pair of bolts. One bolt pushes the metal bars further apart, the other pulls them together.

Setting the Planing Forms

Setting the forms to the proper taper requires two tools from the machinist’s trade — the dial caliper and a depth indicator with a pointed tip (above). Initially, you set the forms with a depth gauge, and after planing a test strip, you check the setting’s accuracy with the dial caliper.

On the face of it, setting the planning forms to get the taper you want is a matter of tightening and loosening a series of bolts. The problem comes in knowing how much to tighten or loosen them. For this, you rely on a machinist’s tool, called a depth gauge, which reads out the depth of a hole in thousandths. Because you’re measuring a V-groove, you put a 60-degree tip on the end of the gauge.

But because of the fine calibration involved, machinist tools have to be “zeroed out. ” On a dial caliper, your bring the jaws together, loosen the lock on the dial, and then turn it so the needle is pointing exactly at zero. For a lot of reasons, this is tricky with a V-point tip, and unless your setting is accurate, you can’t very well adjust the forms.

Here’s the solution. Zero out your dial caliper and then set the opening between the jaws to .100. Put the dial indicator between the jaws, and turn the dial until it reads .866. Lock the dial in place, and you’ve calibrated the depth gage. You’ll note the wooden base on my depth gauge. The 60-degree tip is a bit wide, and catches on the metal base that came with the indicator. A lot of rodmakers use wooden bases, and until I get around to buying a new tip, I will, too.

But depth gauges are like fishermen. They aren’t always truthful. Set the forms .003 inch wider than called for, and plane a spare strip of bamboo. Check the size with your calipers, and adjust the forms until your sample and your calipers tell you you’ve got it right.

As you plane, always keep the outer face of the bamboo, called the rind, against a chamfer, so that you don’t cut through the fibers there, which are the strongest. Alternate planing between the remaining two sides with every pass, so you don’t plane more off one side than the other and end up with asymmetrical strip. Measure with your dial calipers as you go, and if the sides differ, plane the short side until they are equal. Once you’ve planed the butt sections, reset the jig for the tips, and plane away.

A Custom Built Rodmaker’s Plane

At some point early in your rod building, the edge of your plane will dig into the planing forms you’ve just spent a small fortune to buy. Everyone does it, and no one likes it. But special rodmakers’ planes give you the control you need to avoid gouging. They have a groove milled down the middle, creating two outside “rails” that glide along the form. The groove travels over the bamboo, and the blade extends just far enough to do its work without cutting into the planing form. I don’t always use the plane, but when I do, it is virtually impossible to gouge the planing form.

The only rodmaker’s plane on the market is a beautiful piece of work, but you’ll pay for it. Instead, I made my own by routing a groove through a favorite block plane. I used a 5/8-inch straight bit in the router table, and set the distance between the bit and rail to 1/2 inch– the width of a rail. Raise the router bit to make a cut about .001 deep and make a trial run on a piece of wood to check your setting. When everything is right, take the blade out of the plane and run the plane across the spinning bit, holding it tight against the fence. Turn it around, and make a pass with the other side of the plane against the fence. Repeat until the groove is .003 deep.

I tried this on a junky old plane, and when it worked (to my amazement) I tried it for real. Plane, router, and bit are all doing well.

Gluing the Rod Together

When the strips have been planed to final dimension, it is time to glue them together. Initially, I used polyurethane glue. It is widely available, affordable, and waterproof. It fills gaps, has a working time of 20 to 30 minutes, and dries the same color as bamboo. Unfortunately, 20 to 30 minutes isn’t a lot of time when you’re trying to clamp up six pieces of bamboo only slightly thicker than the butt end of a leader. The pieces slipped, slid and twisted as I worked, and to make a long story short, the polyurethane rods were the ones that became tomato stakes. I use industrial epoxy now, which is surprisingly friendly– it dries slowly, so if I have a problem I literally have hours to solve it.

The strips that make up a fly rod aren’t going to clamp together with even the best clamps, so rodmakers clamp them with a shop-made jig (photos below, designed by Everett Garrison) that binds the pieces together in taut, spiraling wraps of upholstery thread. You apply the glue first, of course, using a toothbrush to spread it over all six strips, which are lined up side-by-side on top of a piece of masking tape. You roll the pieces together, and then run them through the binder. A drive belt made of kite line turns the rod and moves it forward as upholstery thread, fed from above, wraps tightly around the rod.

Making a Garrison Binder

It is hard not to look at Garrison binder and think of Rube Goldberg, but at heart, it’s actually a simple machine. The drive belt — a length of kite string with the ends tied together — travels up from a weight and pulley to the rod. The belt wraps twice around the rod, and goes down to the drive wheel. From there, the belt travels back to the weight and pulley, back up to the rod, and so on. Turning the crank on the drive wheel turns the rod and moves it from left to right. The rest of the wheels — made from old pulleys — are simply there to guide the string. The two immediately left of the drive wheel pinch the string against it so the belt won’t slip. The other two wheels guide the string on its trip from the weights, and keep it from twisting.

The purpose of all this is to wrap upholstery thread around the rod and bind the pieces together. The thread feeds from above, is tucked under the drive string at the rod, and spirals around the rod as it moves.

The base of my binder is made of HDPE, an epoxy resistant plastic that works like wood. You can also make the jig out of wood or metal. None of the dimensions are particularly critical. The wheels can go almost anywhere, though the jig does seem to work better if the drive belt runs at an angle as it approaches and leaves the rod. For better traction, put a rubber band around the drive wheel.

The weights are fishing weights, connected to a pulley by a carabiner. I filed a small groove in the face of the pulley so that I could feed the drive belt through it.

Download construction drawings of the Garrison-Rod-Binder

Flatten the Rod

The fishing weights hanging from the drive belt determine the pressure with which the string is applied. On a tip as tiny as this one, as I discovered, the weight of anything more than the pulley is enough to snap the rod until you get a good 10 inches from the tip. At that point I add a 12-ounce weight. I use a 16-ounce weight on the butt section. Once the rod is wrapped, you straighten out any twists, and then roll it under a board, a roller, or both, to straighten it (photo below). I set it under weights on the planing form to keep it straight while the glue cures. There will still be some minor twists and bends when the glue dries, but you can straighten them out with gentle heat from the heat gun.

Stage Three: Finishing

All that remains is putting the ferrules, handle, reel seat and line guides on. Ferrules first: The i.d. of the ferrule is less than the o.d. of the rod, so you file down the ends as the blank turns on the lathe. You’ll need a three- or four- jawed chuck and a support to keep the far end the blank from whipping around. I made my support by bolting a piece of plywood to a table saw outfeed stand. Drill a hole in the plywood, line it with something soft (like a cork with a hole drilled in it) and then feed the rod through the hole to steady it.

The handle and reel seat get glued on next – get ready-made ones for your first couple of rods. You can learn to make your own later.

Finishing, as a friend observed, is half science and half snake oil. Garrison hit upon the method most rodmakers use today. He dipped the rod, narrow end down, into an upright pipe filled with varnish, and pulled it out with a motor running at 1 rpm.

This requires a pretty tall ceiling. I don’t have one, so I began to think about the last days of each semester in my college woodworking courses, when the shop smelled of Waterlox and Watco. It was the dustiest place on the planet, and yet because we were using oil-based finishes that we wiped off, we could still get a blemish-free finishes. So far, I’ve finished my rods with Birchwood Casey® TRU-OIL® Gun Stock Finish — a pure tung oil that is also traditional rod finish. I apply it with a rag, and rub it for about five minutes and set it aside to dry. If there are any imperfections once the coat dries, I sand them gently out with 1,000-grit paper. After three or four coats, the finish rivals varnish.

When the finish is dry, you can put on the guides. The loop at the tip of the rod is epoxied in place. The other guides are held in place by silk thread wrapped around the rod. I’ve found my fly tying bobbin is the easiest way to start the wrap. Once I’ve started the wrap, I run the thread through the middle of a book to create some drag, and turn the rod to wrap the guide.

If you started in the fall, and you have made no tomato stakes and started no fires, it will probably be early January by the time you apply the several coats of varnish that hold the silk thread in place. Around here, it will be a couple of more weeks before the blue-winged olive hatch. See you on the stream.

The post How To Make a Bamboo Fly Fishing Rod appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

Getting Started

The basis of the framework is the three main frame stiles (pieces 1). Find all of the dimensions for these parts in the Material List. On two of these stiles use a 45° bearing-guided router bit to put a chamfer on one long edge. Set the chamfer depth to leave a 3/8″ flat plane on the edge. On the third stile, this chamfer should be put on two matching edges.

Each of these chamfered edges now needs a centered groove plowed along its entire length. This is difficult to do freehand, so I moved to the router table. I took about four passes of increasing depth to mill each groove using the built-in depth stop of my router. Rout the grooves 3/8″ deep.

Next, make the four side rails that connect the three stiles together (pieces 2). Looking to the Drawings, plow grooves that will later accept the side panels (pieces 4). It is vitally important that this groove is centered, so I used an offcut to set up the router table. It took three passes to cut the grooves to depth, turning the components end for end with each pass. This actually made the slots a few thousandths of an inch oversize but, as the panels are a loose fit, it isn’t problematic.

These four side rails now need a stub tenon cut on each end. I used a homemade jig on the router table for this operation, employing a 1″ straight cutter to raise the tenons. This jig consists of a plywood base with a crosspiece attached at 90°. Two clamps lock the workpiece into place; the third holds a replaceable, sacrificial backer.

With these components completed, you can now dry assemble the framework and accurately establish the length of the front rails — pieces 3. Mine worked out to be 20″ including the 1/2″ stub tenon on each end. Next, I machined the open mortises by laying the two frame stiles flat on the router table and milling stopped grooves. The stub tenons on the front rails were made on the jig as described earlier. They must be “carved” round to fit the curved ends of the mortises.

All six of the rails also need another groove plowed into them to capture the plywood sub-top and bottom (pieces 5) that will help to keep the whole structure rigid. When that’s done, test fit the front rails to ensure that the parts fit. Next, cut the sub-top and bottom to fit their openings. Experience has taught me it’s better to dry-assemble the framework and take your measurements from that than to rigidly follow a material list.

At the same time, you can take the measurements for the two side panels (pieces 4). I made mine from 1/2″ plywood and then trimmed them down on the router table on all the edges to fit the 1/4″ grooves in the framework.

When everything fits, you can then go for glue-up. I used a combination of strap clamps and hand-operated clamps to do this. I made sure the bottom of the framework was all in correct alignment with the plywood bottom panel and left that portion of the assembly to set. I then slid in the side plywood panels from the top and made sure they were correctly seated. Next, I dropped in the frame side rails and slid in the sub-top (from the front) and finished by dropping in the front rail. I held it all together with a strap clamp, but this would not pull everything in as tightly as was needed. I added three hand-operated clamps to further tighten the assembly and then retightened the strap clamp. This completed the body of the cabinet. Once the glue dries, you are ready to move on to the door.

Making the Door

The door is made of a 1″ x 2″ rail-and-stile framework with a 3/8″-thick oak panel (pieces 6 through 8). Check the measurements in the Material List against your actual cabinet to be sure everything fits correctly. The stiles and rails of the door are joined with stub tenons, so remember to account for the tenon lengths if you stray from the Material List dimensions. I used my jig again to raise the stub tenons. I plowed the door panel grooves on the router table.

I find that making large, thin panels in stock as hard as oak can be a bit difficult. No matter how well dried oak is, it will usually take on some sort of curved distortion when I resaw it thinly. My small band saw will only resaw material up to 5″ in depth, so I cut my stock in 4″-wide strips. I planed these until they were 1/64″ oversize.

If you do not have a specialized panel-making jig, I find the best way to deal with minor distortions starts at glue-up. Lay your strips out so that any bows they have taken are set at opposites. This will exaggerate the bowing, but do not worry. Glue up the strips, and then tighten up your central clamps. Then quickly use small hand clamps to align the edges of the individual strips. Have your preferred grain face upwards and use a damp sponge to remove any excess glue from your “show” surface. Allow the glue to cure.

I have a small drum sander that I use for flattening panels like this. If you do not have one of these, then a belt sander followed by an orbital down through the grits is the way to go. You can then cut your panel to size and assemble the door.

Finishing Up the Cabinet

The last job is to make the two shelves and the top (pieces 9 and 10). The bottom shelf is really only there to cover the ugliness of the plywood floor and just drops into place (not shown in the Drawings). The middle shelf is exactly the same size and sits on supports that are glued halfway up the frame stiles. The last piece is the top.

All these pieces are triangular, and they are a chance to use up all of your offcuts. They are all 5/8″ thick. I planed the stock square and glued up the three components. This method makes very strong panels that are unlikely to warp or twist. Take your measurements off the finished cabinet. After you sand the panels down, cut the square sides of these panels first on the table saw to absolutely 90° and then cut the angles. I used small blocks (pieces 11) glued to the three frame stiles to support the middle shelf.

The top needs strips of backstop (pieces 12) fitted around it to prevent anything falling off the sides or behind the cabinet. I cut a shallow 3/8″-wide recess around all but the front edge of the top with the router to allow me to accurately seat this rim. Cut the end angles of the backstop pieces on your table saw or miter saw. Glue and brad-nail the pieces in place. Sand off any projecting corners, then attach the top to the cabinet with screws driven up through the sub-top panel.

I hung my cabinet door using two standard stainless-steel hinges and a stainless door knob (pieces 13 and 14). A magnetic catch (piece 15) keeps the door closed.

Tiled bathrooms can be very humid places. To raise the cabinet up off the damp floor, I glued and screwed three small feet (pieces 16) to the bottoms of the three frame stiles. For the same reason, I finished the whole cabinet off with thinned, satin-sheen polyurethane varnish. Then it was ready for use in the smallest room of our house. You can skip the feet if you use this cabinet elsewhere in your home.

Click Here to Download the Drawings and Materials List.

Don Phillips is a British builder and writer who now manages to live in the sunny plains of Spain.

The post PROJECT: Simple Corner Cabinet appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

This article will show you how to transform five ordinary 3/4″ pipe clamps into a vertical clamping press. The press uses pairs of long platens and press bars to squeeze the panel flat as well as hold it securely, and the pipe clamps close the glue joints. To use the press, you spread glue onto your boards, slide them into place between the platens and press bars and tighten everything up. No more wasted bench space! As it’s sized here, this press can handle 2″-thick panels up to 40″ wide and any reasonable length.

Making the Platens and Press Bars

Your first task is to make four pairs of platens and press bars (pieces 1). Each of these eight parts consists of a wooden base edged with a piece of aluminum angle stock. To make blanks for the platens and press bars, I glued two strips of 3/4″ plywood together. When the glue dries, mill opposing 45° chamfers along one edge of each base, being careful to leave a 3/16″-wide flat area between the chamfers to accommodate any fillet inside the aluminum angle. (Do not use angle iron here, as it may react with glue and leave stains.) Epoxy the aluminum angles (pieces 2) to the bases. Designate four of them as “platens” and the other four as “press bars.”

The platens and press bars will be drawn together by long carriage bolts and star knobs, so the next step is to drill holes for these bolts. I made a simple V-shaped drill press cradle to ensure that these bolt holes would be straight, perpendicular and pass precisely through the center of the aluminum facings. Drill 1/2″-diameter centered holes, 2″ from each end, completely through the four press bars. Set them aside.

Switching to the platens, use a 1″-diameter bit to bore 1-1/2″-deep, centered counterbore holes 2″ from each end. Extend bolt holes the rest of the way with a 3/8″-diameter bit. Now, spread a bead of epoxy under the carriage bolt heads (pieces 3) and insert the bolts into the counterbores. Thread a star knob onto each bolt and tighten it to hold the bolts perpendicular until the epoxy sets.

Fill each counterbore with a dowel plug (pieces 4) glued in place. Wrap up your work on the platens and press bars by driving screws (pieces 5) along the outer edges of the aluminum facings about every 8″ to reinforce the epoxy joints.

Building Large and Small Brackets

The press requires four pairs of large upper and lower brackets, plus one pair of smaller brackets, to hold the pipe clamps. Make the tops (pieces 6 and 7) of the large brackets first. I saved time by gang-cutting the tops from a plywood blank about 30″ long and ripped to 8-3/8″ wide. Start by penciling a line along the length of the blank, located 1-5/8″ in from one long edge. Mill 3/4″-wide x 3/8″ deep rabbets into both long bottom edges. Crosscut the eight large bracket tops to 3″ wide, and designate four of them “uppers” and the rest as “lowers.” For each upper bracket top, drill a 1-1/2″-diameter hole centered on the pencil line and 1-5/16″ in from the front edge of the workpieces. Then, convert these holes into U-shaped openings by sawing away the material to the front edge. Repeat the process for the lower bracket tops, only this time drill 1-1/8″- diameter clamp holes on the pencil line, 1-5/16″ from the front edges. Don’t open them up into U shapes.

Complete the large bracket tops by cutting a 3/4″-wide x 3/8″-deep dado into their bottom faces to house the bracket backs. Inset these dadoes 1/2″ from the back edges.

Use the leftover section of plywood blank from the larger tops to make tops for the upper and lower small brackets (pieces 8 and 9). Bore the pipe clamp holes, open one into a U-shape and mill the rabbets and back dadoes just as you did for the larger bracket tops.

Next, make 10 pairs of side braces (pieces 10) for all of the brackets. Study the Drawings to mark and cut a 3/8″ deep scallop along the front edge of each brace. Rip and crosscut large and small bracket backs (pieces 11 and 12) to size.

Sand the parts before you glue and fasten the tops, backs and braces together with screws (pieces 13) to make up the five pairs of brackets.

Installing the Press

The brackets, press bars, platens and clamps are all secured to a pair of mounting rails (pieces 14) fastened to the wall. Rip and crosscut your rails to size now, and apply your choice of finish to all of the panel press parts. While the finish dries, choose a wall location for your press. You’ll need at least 5 feet of open space to one side of the press for loading panel lumber. Level and attach one of the rails to the wall near the floor with long screws (pieces 15) driven into the wall studs. Align, level and mount the other rail 45″ above the first (measured top edge to top edge).

Hang one of the large upper brackets from its back lip on the top rail, flush with the rail’s right end. Fasten it in place with screws (pieces 16). Position and attach the small upper bracket to the opposite end of the top rail. Space the other three upper brackets evenly apart along the rail (15″ on centers), and screw them in place.

Now attach the lower brackets to the bottom mounting rail. Use a long level or plumb bob to make certain each lower bracket is aligned properly with its mate on the top rail.

Temporarily clamp the four platens in place against the left sides of the brackets. Make the top ends of the platens flush with the top brackets. Pull a taught string across the platen facings to align them in a common plane. Work the string diagonally as well as horizontally. Adjust and re-clamp as needed, then screw the platens to the brackets.

Next, slide the press bars onto the carriage bolts; they should move freely along the bolts. If necessary, improve the sliding action by carefully bending the carriage bolts or enlarging the holes in the press bars slightly. When you are satisfied with the fit, add washers and star knobs (pieces 17 and 18). Cover the exposed bolt ends with plastic caps (pieces 19).

Finally, hang a pipe clamp (pieces 20) on each upper bracket and screw pairs of mounting lugs (pieces 21) on the upper brackets against the clamp heads. These lugs prevent the clamps from twisting or falling off the brackets. On my press, I made the lugs from pieces of hardwood to accommodate the flared flanks of my Rockler “Sure-Foot” clamp heads. I also kept the bracket tops 1/4″ shy of the wall to accommodate their built-in clamp hooks. With a little ingenuity, you can fashion lugs for any brand of clamp you own.

For example, you can make lugs for the curved indentations on Pony clamp heads using 1/2″-thick pieces of 1″-diameter dowel. When locating the lugs, make sure the clamp head is pushed all the way to the back of the U-shaped cut-out, and provide a little clearance so the clamp head lifts easily out of the bracket. Install rubber clamp pads (pieces 22) on your clamp hardware, if you prefer.

TIP: After mounting your rails, draw a pattern of horizontal lines on the wall every 2″. They’ll provide a handy visual reference for lining up the clamp tails to prepare for a glue-up.

Using the Press

Here’s how to put your new panel press to work: pull the press bars far enough out on the bolts so boards will slide in easily. Open the pipe clamps about 1″ wider than the width of the overall glue-up. Spread glue along one edge of the first board and slide it into place between the platens and press bars. Rest it on the clamp tail stops. Load the remaining edge-glued boards.

Before tightening the pipe clamps, push the press bars and panel boards against the platens. Tighten the star knobs just enough to hold the boards in place. Try to tighten the star knobs evenly to equalize the clamping pressure. If your boards aren’t warped and have been properly surfaced for edge gluing, it shouldn’t require much force to hold them flat against the platens. If you tighten the press bars excessively, you can overstress the components and even dent the boards, so go easy on those knobs.

With the panel held flat against the platens, tighten the clamp screws until glue begins to squeeze out. If your panel is longer than the press is wide, add a few more clamps to secure the glue joints at the ends of the panel. We all have an opinion about the best way to handle glue squeeze-out. I like to wait until the glue is rubbery, and then scrape away the squeeze-out while the boards are still in the press. Unless your forearms are built like Popeye’s, you should be able to reach glue squeeze-out on the backside of the panel with a handled paint scraper or a damp cloth on the end of a stick.

Once you get the hang of using your press, those big panel glue-ups will be more efficient and enjoyable. You’ll never trip over or work around panels leaning precariously against a wall. Best of all, you can free up your bench from messy glue-ups and use it for more productive work.

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Joint

This bit provides two advantages to your glue-ups. The first is to create more glue area to improve adhesion. By creating two mating tongues, it provides more surface contact between the two faces. The second advantage is alignment. The interlocking tongues keep the edges referenced to each other properly. The edges will no longer try and slip leaving ridges on your panel that need to be removed. The tighter you clamp, the more the tongues bring the edges together.

Cut 1

To mate the tongues, each mating edge is milled with the bit, but they are mirror images. So after running the two edges, one of the boards must be flipped over to meet the other.  (See “Joint” photo) Care must be taken to keep the boards aligned properly so that grain patterns are not ruined as the parts are flipped over to glue. The outside pieces of your panel only need one edge milled. For the internal boards, I prefer to run one edge, (“Cut 1” photo) then flip the board and run the other edge. (“Cut 2″ photo) Lay out the parts and make reference marks across one face, then run the boards in sequence,  flipping them for the second edge. This should keep them all in the proper order. Remember, too, that the joint overlaps, so you will lose a little width with each joint. Be sure to allow for it. This particular bit requires 1/4″ for each joint (1/8” each board).

Cut 2

Setting this bit up does take a few tries. Like many other joinery bits, the height of the bit is determined by the thickness of the stock, so be sure to make up a few setup pieces.  Set the fence so that the innermost part of the cutting edge is exactly aligned with the face of the fence. Ideally, you want cut the tongues, but not the entire edge.

Setup

Mark the top of the parts and mill the edges, then fit them together.  Adjust the height of the bit accordingly and make another pair of cuts. Remember that each adjustment affects both parts, so make small adjustments until the upper and lower faces are exactly aligned. Keep one of the final test cuts, and the next time you need to set the bit up, you can get very close with the first try (See “Setup” photo) If the joints are cut properly, finger pressure along should be enough to close the gap.

Shim Fence

None of the joining systems I discussed above will create good joints if the edges are not perfectly straight, and the Glue Joint bit is no exception. Squeezing even slight gaps closed with clamps will only add stress to the panel which may come back to haunt you later. This is when the Glue Joint bit can rescue your panel job. If you don’t happen to own a jointer, this bit can joint the boards for you.

Jointed Edge

If you can’t get perfect edges, set the fence 1/32″ back from the innermost cutting edge of the bit (instead of flush) and add a 1/32″ spacer to the outfeed fence (“Shim Fence” photo). This will remove an additional 1/32″ from the edge of the part (which you will need to account for) and will remove any minor flaws in the edge (see “Jointed Edge” photo). Try that with a biscuit jointer!

Lastly, the top section of the Glue Joint bit can add wide rabeting capability to your shop. This bit is about 1-1/2″ wide so it can safely remove about 3/4 of an inch of material. Most dedicated rabet bits will not cut that deep.  This rabetting ability can allow you to cut substantial tongues on the ends of your panels for adding breadboard ends.

So, next time you need panels glued up for a project, give this is bit a try. Even a lightly equipped shop can get professional results.

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