layout New layout project: Sakuragi no yu sen

[dotzen]

There is more info in this thread...

 

[SL58654号]

 @dotzen  My friend 3D-modeled this plan for me, too.
Interesting, but I think maybe I'd like to COMBINE the best of both track layouts. 

[SL58654号]

Yet another different track layout design I'm considering. I think this is the second to last layout plan I'll consider for an option.
Kindly rendered in 3D once again by Doug Coster in SCARM. The mountains where the tunnel portals lead to did turn out, however. 

[cteno4]

Sl,

 

Your latest plans now have a reversing loop in them. This will require you do do some additional wiring and running controls to deal with this (forgive me if you know all bout this already). Some hate dealing with reversing loop issues.

 

also keep thinking of access to your tunnel areas for derailments and cleaning. Two usual ways are to back the hill up against the side of the layout and have a removable wall, or have the whole hill scenery area lift off to access all the tracks. If you can push the hill up against the side(s) of the layout that’s usually a simpler way to get access and to make the hill keep going and make the tunnel look more reasonable (if hill stops just above the tunnel most rr would have cut a channel or just a big chunk out of the hill).

 

say hi to Doug for me!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[SL58654号]

@cteno4 I see your point. I don't want to deal with that, either, so I think this "modified" No. 35 plan will do. I can run two trains at once and not worry about complications with wiring. I do after all want to make a layout to represent 肥薩線again, and it has all the elements that I want. 

[katoftw]

I see no reversing loop.

 

Just to ovals. One is a dog bone.

 

Just looks like the Kato track plan with an extra full oval around the outside.

[SL58654号]

@katoftw This track designing phase is involving a lot of trial and error, for sure. I'm leaning towards track plan No. 35 thus far.
I'm using the impressions of my fellow JNS followers thus far as a barometer for what will make the bigger impact on people when I publicly exhibit the layout. 

[cteno4]

@katoftw I was referring to the original #35 plan and the derivatives above that had reversing loops. The most recent he removed the reversing loop added the folded dog bone with the outer loop. Easier running plan and 2 trains at once as well.

 

@SL58654号 this feels like a nice compromise, and doesn’t feel like a lot of track either which is important with a small layout or it feels like a spaghetti bowl of track and also not as much room for buildings and scenery as needed. It’s clean.

 

you are right layout planning is such an evolutionary process, some lineages just die out, other improve and gain new, interesting features! But worth the time and thought. Also important to get track and play with concepts at size as things change between screen and printouts and the real models running around and finds those gotchas of trains not liking some designs or you not liking them functionally and/or visually. Also pla yu g with track sometimes brings in new ideas you just don’t tend to see when staring at the screen. It’s a yin/yang thing.

 

another trick I’ve used in the past while working on layout planning is doing printouts of each plan and scribbling notes on each on what I changed and why and what I like and still don’t line about each and keep them in a binder as I work. Becomes a quick way to refer back to old ideas and remember later why something that comes up again just isn’t good. And a nice way to see the evolution and be sure you are improving as you go on as sometimes things can start to go backwards at times.

 

jeff

[SL58654号]

@cteno4 So to avoid confusion, you agree that this might be the best choice thus far? This is No. 35. (modified)
Good thing I'll keep a notepad handy in following your design process advice.

Edited September 18, 2023 by SL58654号

[dotzen]

I made lots of changes to my design over a short period of time, all on the PC, then laid the track out on a table to see what it looked like in real life. Do this often, there are many things that you may not catch on the design software, like tracks on inclines next to track on the flat, and how much space there is between them, also how steep any inclines are, particularly on curves as this adds extra resistance. My final design looks very similar to one above, but the real life mock up was an essential part of the process.

[SL58654号]

Now I'd say that THESE represent some real progress for my layout's final plan. It has everything I could want to represent the Hisatsu Line and there's at least some opportunity to place water beneath the bridges, I'm sure. Can run two trains and once and much room for storage. I'm getting excited to make progress, and I'll be making another trip to the hardware store this week to get down to that table.

[cteno4]

This feels good. Folded dogbone gives nice long wandering run, or just do outside loop while fiddling with trains in the main yard. Running 2 trains will require doing some block wiring/control with 2 throttles to run two trains at once like that. if can run with one throttle just using point power routing. You will need to add an insulted joiner on each side of the center points there in the middle station where you have 2 right hand points facing each other (your need to break the common rail of both points to allow power routing to work properly.

 

you could eliminate the two curved points put two tracks up along the back and have 2 loops to run at once if you want. Running 2 trains is nice but on smaller layouts it can be a bit frenetic, but not so bad with smaller trains and steam usually isn’t going like a bullet train! Then can just use point power routing with one throttle for inner folded dogbone and one throttle for the outer loop.

 

block wiring is not hard, just need to put in insulated joiners around blocks and wire power to each block thru a dpdt switches on a control panel diagram to switch each block to one or the other throttle. gives more control,  but requires flipping more switches to reroute power. More wiring as well, not hard just tedious and need to do it cleanly or you have a rats nest of wires. But then you could also put in dpst switches on the control panel to control the points with simple bcd capacitor discharge.

 

jeff

[SL58654号]

@cteno4 All in good timing to tackle that wiring. Test-laying the track is still a little way down the line. I'm glad that you're satisfied with its appearance. Because I hope to exhibit this layout at whatever public opportunity, using point power routing, like I do with my temporary table layouts at home, I'd like to often let two trains run simultaneously to be more engaging. (58654 and a JR Kyushu DE10, anyone?) With other rolling stock left on sidings and one locomotive sitting on the turntable lazing around. (Get it?) 

[cteno4]

If you want to run 2 trains at once you will need to put in double tracks there in the back so you can have 2 loops. You can run these then with one transformer for inner folded dogbone and outer loop. You can run each with point routing then.

 

jeff

[SL58654号]

Well, gentlemen, this plot thickens...literally! I had come home last time with just the baseboard and foam for the track, now today I had arrived home, thanks to my former roommate, with the major supplies for the whole table (sides, legs, side strecthers) itself. Now the plan I have is to plan the wood (Japanese cedar wood) and finely sand it till I'm ready to assemble it, probably with nuts and bolts that I'll purchase during a return trip later. I fortunately kept the excess wood that was cut off to practice using the hand planer with. I want to make this as finely smooth as possible before I put the clear lacquer coat on after its ready to be stood up.
Then, the track laying and scenery planning begins! 

Now my plan is to get this layout built and working by December, when the next 肥薩線again exhibition should be! 😄

[SL58654号]

Slightly altered earthworks eliminating the need for curved viaduct sections. I'd much prefer to sculpt as natural-looking contours as possible for the gradients and mountains out of foam from the hardware store. Courtesy of Doug Coster. 

[SL58654号]

Just to let others be sure that my project is alive and well (in my spirit and motivation!) I've almost acquired all the hands tools I need to do all the work for assembling the table materials myself. I've ended up deciding to go back to joining the rails of the table with dovetails once again. It'll look so much better and work well. I've been gifted a set of chisels for the job, and by golly it's go big or go home! 
The legs I intend to assemble and make detachable via dowel and plug tenons. A drill and portable drill guide should do the trick. My goal is to accomplish the table construction before October is out! I'll get the tracks and trains set up by December no later! The KATO turntable for the layout will be the most expensive track component no doubt, which is why I'm glad this table is preventing me from buying it out of compulsion for now! 

[cteno4]

Before you go at any of your big planks of wood to try dovetails get some smaller pieces and practice. You can just keep sawing off the dovetail fingers and do another round of test fingers. They do take practice.

 

one big draw back of dovetail joints is if you screw up any of the fingers your piece of lumber is now ruined for that length. And if you get one end perfect and screw up the other end of the board your work on the other end is lost. You can recover some if you start (once you’re fully practiced) on your long boards first. If you screw up one end of a longer board you can always cut it down to use as a shorter end board and recover some of the lumber and maybe an end already done.

 

I know you have seen how beautiful a nicely done dovetail joint is, but those beautiful ones are either machine made or if hand made done by master woodworkers. Because of them having so many seams if you see just a few off your eye will zap to those and all the tight seams ignored. Filling voids is possible, but again it leads to contrast and texture changes that mark the joints look. videos of masters doing this stuff make it look easier than it is and it takes a whole lot longer than it does in the videos. Try a few practice joints and see if it comes out how you want it to look. Otherwise butt joints with contrasting color dowel pegs may give you that more fancy joint look with little practice and much faster, without having to spend a huge amount of time trying to do dovetails by hand.

 

don’t mean to rain on your parade, just really want you to know that dovetails are one of the toughest details you can do in woodworking.

 

do you have something heavy like a workbench and some larger clamps to clamp your pieces down for sawing and chiseling? It’s a must for this kind of work as you don’t want your board slipping at all and held in place very firmly. If you can find a big plank of wood like 1’w X 6’l X 2” thick you could clam this to a table or bench as your bench to clamp your wood too. Just want a really solid thing to clamp your wood down on. Also you can see if there is something you could clamp the wood to vertically as that is actually easier to work on sawing and chiseling on dovetails (but harder on a 6’ lenght though…). Also use some wood scraps on the clamps against your wood so as not to mar the surface with the clamp and distribute the clamping force. 

 

Cheers,

 

jeff

[SL58654号]

@cteno4 Yes, you're quite right that I must get some practice and I will seek out unwanted scrap wood to do it. I haven't forgotten your warnings about what's necessary for dovetailing, but after much thought there seems to be no other pragmatic way to get the look and sturdiness for my table that I want.  

 

I also wonder if I could hand chisel the 'L' shape out of the main rails in which I want the layout board to sit in and be covered by a "lip" in the rail sides? 

 

Now to get a super smooth finish that I'll want before finalizing it with lacquer, do I dovetail and fit together the wood first, then do sanding? I also have bought a hand planner, but I wonder if that'll be necessary combined with sanding.  

 

My chisels haven't arrived yet, so I'll keep studying how the pros do it on YouTube. 

[Yugamu Tsuki]

Just a cautionary tale on burnout. Back when Love Love first started billing Nijigasaki as PDP, I wanted to make the electronic cat mask that Rina wore. I had limited computer power but went for architecture back in school before I switched to business so I figured I could get it done with a CAD program. I ordered myself a 3d printer, Arduino, and LEDs. I spent months creating the mask digitally in one program to find it wouldn't work due to that program's parameters and had to start all over again. I finally got the pieces set and more time spent figuring out the correct way to slice the image so it prints properly. More time to program the LEDs to do what I wanted them to do and change expression on voice command (if the mic registered louder noises it would open the mouth, close is silent, and blink randomly). I got the mask fully assembled and the LEDs to work not attached to the mask but then, you know what? It wasn't any fun anymore. All desire was past and it was just a drain to think about. Now what remains just sits in a box on the shelf for the past many years.

 

Even if it is something you really have a strong passion for, Maker burnout is real and at the end of the day you need something backing yourself up more than just the drive to do something because when the flame burns out, it may not come back for a while. This can be over come by muscle memory, past experience doing something to rely on, or that it is work you are expected to do to get a paycheck, none of which apply to either of our situations. A mask is small, but a train table in Japanese living parameters, if it sits there due to burnout it will take up a lot of space for something unfinished. If you want to continue with the dovetailing, all best wishes to you, but try to find something to force you to continue after you hit the wall. Starting off planning with failure will allow you to have something to fall back on to keep you going.

[SL58654号]

12 minutes ago, Yugamu Tsuki said:

Just a cautionary tale on burnout. Back when Love Love first started billing Nijigasaki as PDP, I wanted to make the electronic cat mask that Rina wore. I had limited computer power but went for architecture back in school before I switched to business so I figured I could get it done with a CAD program. I ordered myself a 3d printer, Arduino, and LEDs. I spent months creating the mask digitally in one program to find it wouldn't work due to that program's parameters and had to start all over again. I finally got the pieces set and more time spent figuring out the correct way to slice the image so it prints properly. More time to program the LEDs to do what I wanted them to do and change expression on voice command (if the mic registered louder noises it would open the mouth, close is silent, and blink randomly). I got the mask fully assembled and the LEDs to work not attached to the mask but then, you know what? It wasn't any fun anymore. All desire was past and it was just a drain to think about. Now what remains just sits in a box on the shelf for the past many years.

 

Even if it is something you really have a strong passion for, Maker burnout is real and at the end of the day you need something backing yourself up more than just the drive to do something because when the flame burns out, it may not come back for a while. This can be over come by muscle memory, past experience doing something to rely on, or that it is work you are expected to do to get a paycheck, none of which apply to either of our situations. A mask is small, but a train table in Japanese living parameters, if it sits there due to burnout it will take up a lot of space for something unfinished. If you want to continue with the dovetailing, all best wishes to you, but try to find something to force you to continue after you hit the wall. Starting off planning with failure will allow you to have something to fall back on to keep you going.

You're right. I was conscious about losing motivation from the start months ago, but I have more than one reason to complete this project. It's been several months and fortunately the more materials I obtain and tools I need to use are acquired, the stronger the flame is getting.
Plus, I don't want to clutter up my apartment with unfinished woodwork for any reason, let alone an unfinished model railway that I want to make my pride and joy!

 

Speaking as a fellow rail fan to a fellow rail fan, when you mentioned burnout, it reminded me of a famous YouTube video in the Thomas the Tank Engine fandom, "The Mad Bomber". It gained the creator Leo such great acclamation, and he tried to make it into a trilogy, but when the fun stopped and people began to give him unwarranted threats and flak he abandoned the project. Fun, he said, is the key.  

[cteno4]

Yugamu speaks wisdom here. My fear was that it would take huge amounts of effort and time to do the woodworking you wanted and I feared it would take you months or years to get there and in the mean time your layout is not getting built or trains run. Or worse yet you get frustrated quickly and give up on the whole project and layout. This is a situation where you sort of want everything, but I don’t see you having the resources to get everything—something has to give. If you want master hand wood crafting on this then either you will need to become a master woodworker or hire one. To become one will take years of work, period. I would suggest you start with your first version using simpler woodworking. Then if you find the woodworking enjoyable and something you want to drop a lot of time, effort, and money on then you can either spend the time and money to learn the craft or spend the money for a master woodworker to make you the dovetail frame later. With your idea of having the layout plywood and foam base be sitting on the inside ledge of the frame you could just unscrew the layout from the frame and transfer it to a new, better base later. Or what I would suggest is by the time you finish the layout itself you will have whole host of ideas for v2.0!

 

The kind of end notch joint you are talking about is a simple rabbet joint (you can make fancier ones that lock in but these are almost impossible to do by hand and require a router). Basically you cut a notch in the end of one of your pieces that the end of the other corner piece fits into. It’s a stronger joints as you have both the butt end of a board and a bit of the side to glue to. Also stronger with lateral forces. But even though way less complex than a dovetail joint, cutting a notch like this cleanly by hand to get a nice tight joint is again getting into being a very good and experienced woodworker to do and with excellent tools (at this level of woodworking tools get expensive and require a lot of care). They are relatively easy to cut with a table saw or a router, though and a router is like $100 and a fairly small tool compared to a table saw!

 

as for strength you can do fine with regular butt joints that are glued and either screwed or pegged together. Your internal plywood top will give you all the strength you need to back up your frame. If you use screws you can countersink then and then plug the hole with plugs you make out of your wood so the screw disappear or you can use a contrasting color wood to make them look like pegs which was an age old method of doing joints like this. You can use pegs instead of screws, but that takes practice and care to sink your peg holes just right, usually using a solid clamping jig to hold the boards well while drilling your peg holes and driving your pegs. Your plywood layout base when screwed to the frame will give the whole structure plenty of strength. The layout needs not be over built as you are not sitting on it and it’s supporting a relatively small amount of weight. Too overbuilt of a frame can actually end up needing stronger joints to not tear itself apart and just heavy to move when you want to take it to shows.

 

you can have a nice looking frame just using the simple butt joints, these only require you cut your ends very clean and square. If done cleanly the look very nice and simple elegance. With the proper power tools that’s pretty easy with some experience. Using hand tools that’s pretty hard and requires a lot of experience or a nice big framer’s miter box and a lot of care to get clean and square cuts that will make tight joints that look nice.

 

if you get into this and find you are making joints that are not as pretty as you like you can also cheat and just add a layer of veneer around the frame to cover it up. No pretty joints seen but all clean wood (and you can get very pretty woods) and no ugly joints showing.

 

Planes are used to flatten uneven wood or clean out notches for joints. You don’t finish with them. They are tools that require a lot of training and practice with and delicate in application. Also expensive to get planes that will give nice surfaces and lots of sharpening (funny if you take artisan or Japanese hand wood working classes, the first few classes will just be sharpening and tuning your tools!). Your wood is probably planed well from the yard. Hand planing is a fine art and one of the hardest things to do well. with end joints you would usually sand flush any overhangs. Takes time if too much there. You can’t hand plane the end of a board across the end grain without a very sharp plane and an end planing jig as shaving across grain is really hard and you risk the edges chipping. Again planing ends is in the realm of master wood crafting.
 

Last step in the wood finishing is to either hand block sand (tedious but pretty simple process) or use an electric finishing sander like a palm random orbital sander (relatively inexpensive $30 for a cheap one). This will remove any tool marks and imperfections in the wood surface to get the smooth surface you want before you lacquer it. I usually use the electric sander to do most of the work and then finish with hand block sanding with the grain if i want it really nice. This brings back some of the visual textures of the grain. You start with rough grits to get things knocked down (100-120) then you move to finer grits for smooth finishing (150-220). Some woods have big pores that can look bad once sanded smooth so you can use various sanding fillers to help close them and then finish sand. Finishing wood is a very fine art in addition to wood crafting and takes practice and experience and also just experimenting with the wood you are using to get the desired results. I’m constantly testing finishes and experimenting with new finishes and permutations, it’s endless the results you can get! And if it’s a nice piece I always use scraps of the wood I used in the project to test my finishing materials and process as many finishes are really hard to remove totally if you screw up.

 

Starting simple with your wood working will be much faster and you will get way better results and start on the path of doing better and more complex woodworking. Starting at the deep end, I guarantee you will not give you any good results for a very long time and is a really frustrating and almost impossible way to learn as woodworking, like many skills, is one that is built up from basic skills and complexity and detail builds with experience and learning.

 

jeff

[SL58654号]

7 hours ago, cteno4 said:

Yugamu speaks wisdom here. My fear was that it would take huge amounts of effort and time to do the woodworking you wanted and I feared it would take you months or years to get there and in the mean time your layout is not getting built or trains run. Or worse yet you get frustrated quickly and give up on the whole project and layout. This is a situation where you sort of want everything, but I don’t see you having the resources to get everything—something has to give. If you want master hand wood crafting on this then either you will need to become a master woodworker or hire one. To become one will take years of work, period. I would suggest you start with your first version using simpler woodworking. Then if you find the woodworking enjoyable and something you want to drop a lot of time, effort, and money on then you can either spend the time and money to learn the craft or spend the money for a master woodworker to make you the dovetail frame later. With your idea of having the layout plywood and foam base be sitting on the inside ledge of the frame you could just unscrew the layout from the frame and transfer it to a new, better base later. Or what I would suggest is by the time you finish the layout itself you will have whole host of ideas for v2.0!

 

The kind of end notch joint you are talking about is a simple rabbet joint (you can make fancier ones that lock in but these are almost impossible to do by hand and require a router). Basically you cut a notch in the end of one of your pieces that the end of the other corner piece fits into. It’s a stronger joints as you have both the butt end of a board and a bit of the side to glue to. Also stronger with lateral forces. But even though way less complex than a dovetail joint, cutting a notch like this cleanly by hand to get a nice tight joint is again getting into being a very good and experienced woodworker to do and with excellent tools (at this level of woodworking tools get expensive and require a lot of care). They are relatively easy to cut with a table saw or a router, though and a router is like $100 and a fairly small tool compared to a table saw!

 

as for strength you can do fine with regular butt joints that are glued and either screwed or pegged together. Your internal plywood top will give you all the strength you need to back up your frame. If you use screws you can countersink then and then plug the hole with plugs you make out of your wood so the screw disappear or you can use a contrasting color wood to make them look like pegs which was an age old method of doing joints like this. You can use pegs instead of screws, but that takes practice and care to sink your peg holes just right, usually using a solid clamping jig to hold the boards well while drilling your peg holes and driving your pegs. Your plywood layout base when screwed to the frame will give the whole structure plenty of strength. The layout needs not be over built as you are not sitting on it and it’s supporting a relatively small amount of weight. Too overbuilt of a frame can actually end up needing stronger joints to not tear itself apart and just heavy to move when you want to take it to shows.

 

you can have a nice looking frame just using the simple butt joints, these only require you cut your ends very clean and square. If done cleanly the look very nice and simple elegance. With the proper power tools that’s pretty easy with some experience. Using hand tools that’s pretty hard and requires a lot of experience or a nice big framer’s miter box and a lot of care to get clean and square cuts that will make tight joints that look nice.

 

if you get into this and find you are making joints that are not as pretty as you like you can also cheat and just add a layer of veneer around the frame to cover it up. No pretty joints seen but all clean wood (and you can get very pretty woods) and no ugly joints showing.

 

Planes are used to flatten uneven wood or clean out notches for joints. You don’t finish with them. They are tools that require a lot of training and practice with and delicate in application. Also expensive to get planes that will give nice surfaces and lots of sharpening (funny if you take artisan or Japanese hand wood working classes, the first few classes will just be sharpening and tuning your tools!). Your wood is probably planed well from the yard. Hand planing is a fine art and one of the hardest things to do well. with end joints you would usually sand flush any overhangs. Takes time if too much there. You can’t hand plane the end of a board across the end grain without a very sharp plane and an end planing jig as shaving across grain is really hard and you risk the edges chipping. Again planing ends is in the realm of master wood crafting.
 

Last step in the wood finishing is to either hand block sand (tedious but pretty simple process) or use an electric finishing sander like a palm random orbital sander (relatively inexpensive $30 for a cheap one). This will remove any tool marks and imperfections in the wood surface to get the smooth surface you want before you lacquer it. I usually use the electric sander to do most of the work and then finish with hand block sanding with the grain if i want it really nice. This brings back some of the visual textures of the grain. You start with rough grits to get things knocked down (100-120) then you move to finer grits for smooth finishing (150-220). Some woods have big pores that can look bad once sanded smooth so you can use various sanding fillers to help close them and then finish sand. Finishing wood is a very fine art in addition to wood crafting and takes practice and experience and also just experimenting with the wood you are using to get the desired results. I’m constantly testing finishes and experimenting with new finishes and permutations, it’s endless the results you can get! And if it’s a nice piece I always use scraps of the wood I used in the project to test my finishing materials and process as many finishes are really hard to remove totally if you screw up.

 

Starting simple with your wood working will be much faster and you will get way better results and start on the path of doing better and more complex woodworking. Starting at the deep end, I guarantee you will not give you any good results for a very long time and is a really frustrating and almost impossible way to learn as woodworking, like many skills, is one that is built up from basic skills and complexity and detail builds with experience and learning.

 

jeff

@cteno4 Once again, Jeff, I'm glad to have others keeping my feet on the ground. It'll help me get this layout done right the first time. I'll attribute credit to you all when I write an article about my project in the JRS Bullet-In. 

 

After I get the chisel set and try my hand at the art by practicing with scrap wood, I'll see if I really will pull it off. If not, I'll settle for a simpler joint like what you suggested or something like this. I also intend to obtain a drill and drill guide to add dowels for added strength. Today I finally picked up a power saw with router guides for cheap. I plan to use it to make the "L" shape inside the rails for where the layout board will sit inside. That'll be a major step I'll be glad to get out of the way. 
 

Edited October 20, 2023 by SL58654号

[cteno4]

Sorry you won’t be able to make pretty finished joints like this with a circular saw. it would be very dangerous to try to create these joints with a circular saw on smaller stock. You can do it with larger framing material but worh smaller stock it gets hard and you need to do safety no non like locking the b

lade shield back. A circular saw is also one of the most dangerous pieces of equipment you can use. It’s pretty safe when just doing straight cuts, but trying to use it for notches it’s not in the beginner zone. Also since it’s a hand held power tool it make super smooth cuts if you want really clean joints.

 

circular saw would not work well to do the trough cut to slip in your layout ply, it would be very difficult to do the edge cut, it would require clamping on a long jig to the boat to set up a fence to run the saw along and difficult to keep the saw square vertically while cutting. I would make the side troughs for the plywood to drop into by just taking on small strips of wood on the inside for the ply to rest on. If you want to cut the L in the frame top use a router.

 

better approach for a cut off saw is a power miter saw / chop saw. These can give nice square, clean cuts for tight joints. Even using a square to try to cutoff stock with a hand circular saw it just won’t be a clean cut you need for a finish joint you want.
 

You would need to do it he’s kinds of joints with a router and making some jigs and fences for it or a table saw. Outside of a table saw a router and some jigs is the best power tool for making more complex joints. But jigs require some woodworking skills and knowledge as well.

 

drill guides don’t work very well on end joints like this, they are usually do bulky to work on the very corners where the holes are needed. You really don’t need a drill guide anyway it’s just practice to have drill well perpendicular anyway. The main thing if you dowel the joints is you have to clamp your wood down very carefully and well to drill your holes. It actually doesn’t matter if you are off perpendicular a tad with your dowel hole. You don’t need the dowels for strength, longer screws will work fine and you can countersink and plug them to hide the holes or use doweling for the plugs to give the appearance of having doweled the joints.

 

what ever you do with this, just be careful. Look up on youtube how to use each of your tools safely and what to do and not do with them. Even hand tools can be dangerous and power tools even worse! I have three woodworking friends missing parts of fingers or whole fingers and they were extremely experienced and safe But just goofed once… I’ve never come close but I’m careful and very experienced but every time I approach using tools I act like this could be the time something goes wrong.

 

Again you are just trying to reach too far as your first woodworking project. If you want to get into making joints like this you really need to see about taking some courses and learning the basics first and perhaps getting access to a decent woodshop. For your first project just use butt joints, it will be enough work to get them tight and clean, more sophisticated joints will just get harder and harder to do and have look nice if work at all. Butt joints will work just fine and can look clean and nice, a crappy looking complex joint just looks like crap.
 

jeff

[SL58654号]

18 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

Sorry you won’t be able to make pretty finished joints like this with a circular saw. it would be very dangerous to try to create these joints with a circular saw on smaller stock. You can do it with larger framing material but worh smaller stock it gets hard and you need to do safety no non like locking the b

lade shield back. A circular saw is also one of the most dangerous pieces of equipment you can use. It’s pretty safe when just doing straight cuts, but trying to use it for notches it’s not in the beginner zone. Also since it’s a hand held power tool it make super smooth cuts if you want really clean joints.

 

I didn't say I was going to use the saw for the finished joints. I have a hand saw and alter the chisels for that. The saw I mean to use to get the wood removed longitudinally.