Bevel Cut September 2026

By Andrew Davis

If I tell you that there are more YouTube videos currently available on woodworking than there are sand grains on Cape Cod beaches. This library of knowledge can be an extremely valuable resource as well as a total time-sucking distraction. But I had an interesting introduction to a friend of a friend last week and we shared a similar YouTube experience. The two of us are the same age and just hobbyists although he appears to have built most of the elegant furniture in his home. The coincidence is that we both had just finished making a complicated cutting board, and both of us used a Youtube video to get started.

In his case, he watched the video multiple times, consulted it during the build process, and had a successful outcome. His approach involved running six-foot boards through the table saw with the blade set at 30 degrees. Multiple six-foot boards were glued up and later sliced like a salami and then reglued. He did not notice any errors or omissions in the video.

For reasons I won’t go into in this column, I watched an entertaining video on making a honeycomb cutting board. I watched it a few times and then decided to actually turn the video into a word document which would be more convenient to access when working in the shop. Paying careful attention, it was clear that the “author” started off with five pieces of 18 x 2 x 0.75 maple and during the video these went through the drum sander multiple times as the project progressed. But near the end, I counted 6 pieces coming through the sander. No comment from the narrator. I had never seen maple reproduce before! Later, thin pieces of black walnut were created at 3/16 thickness; then they were sanded down to ¼” thickness – a nice trick if you can figure out how to do this. I didn’t let this stop me; I built the honeycomb board, but the experience reminded me of some past magazine articles where one given dimension was off, probably by accident; but nevertheless a nasty surprise if you are cutting wood stock for assembly.

Like many EMGW members, I have a large supply of cutoffs and a few boards where I purchased 5 boards and used just four. I’m determined to put this inventory to use, so YouTube may be my new best friend.