George Vondriska

Build a Tool Chest Session 3: Joinery and Assembly

George Vondriska
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Our instructional video gives you the info you need to help lay out the dovetail joints for the chest. If you don’t want to cut dovetails, no problem. We also provide the instruction you need to make a rabbet or lock rabbet joint on the corners. Regardless of what joints you use, there are a few critical aspects of assembly. We’ll walk you through the steps to make sure the chest goes together square, and with minimal glue squeeze out.

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We're moving toward dovetails this is gonna be pretty cool now, just so you don't panic, if you don't own a dovetail jig that has the capacity to cut boards this wide or you just plain don't own a dovetail jig, I am gonna show you alternative joinery methods for the coroner. So you can bank this part you can archive this part of the video, and save it for later when you do own a dovetail jig that'll let you do this, either way pay attention to this part. You need to take the parts of your box, and get things labeled the manner in which they're gonna live together. So looking at an end panel here, what we can see on there is T for top, A, then as I come around the corner and look at the backside here there's another, A, these two parts are gonna join together. As we go around the front, B here, and B.

So I've got a couple things going on here. The marks being on these faces tell me, that's the outside of the box, so I marked the best faces. T for top that's gonna be important just to keep the parts oriented correctly, and then all the letters, A, B, C, D, to tell me which corners go together. Normally, I do that by simply writing lightly with a pencil, right on the material, but if I do that, you can't see it, so in this case, put the masking tape on, then use the felt tip to make a more distinct mark. Now let's talk dovetail jigs, here's what we've got going.

We're gonna do through dovetails what that means is that, each part projects through the other part we can see the end grain, of the tails beyond the face grain of the pin and socket, and vice versa the end grain of the pins, through the face grain of the tailboard. Each board is gonna get cut one board at a time, we'll have a look at the different modes that we can use in order to make that happen, it is important that you read the owner's manual for your jig to understand the idiosyncrasies, of your particular tool. What I wanna talk about are some general ideas of getting the joint laid out, and just using dovetail jigs in general, to make sure that your joint comes out okay. So here's where we're at, first thing we're gonna do is lay the joint out, this has got adjustable fingers on it, and many of the larger jigs like this do. So, what I need is one of the boards inserted in the jig, and the extreme left end of the jig, there's a stop, so I'm kissed up against that stop, And I'm kissed up against the bottom of the template, and lock the board in place.

I want my template to be out just a little bit, and the in and out the front and back at this point isn't real critical, what I'm looking at is on my very last finger out here, I want this template to be far enough forward, that I can pay attention to, the end of the metal right there. On your jig you'll probably have a similar part on the fingers. So I've got the comb brought forward, the template brought forward, lock that in place. And what I'm concerned with here is, I want, that piece of metal, even with the outside edge of the board. So that part's easy, loosen the fingers by whatever means your jig uses, make those flush, lock them in place, same thing on this end, that's already been done.

What we're after here is to get even spacing. Now it really doesn't matter what kind of dovetail layout you use that even spacing concept that am gonna show your work either way, am gonna do this so that I end up with five tails. Each of these holes here indicates where tail is gonna end up. I want them all to be the same, so here's a real easy way to do that. Loosen all the fingers.

But not the outside ones those stay, and slide everything down, to one end. Don't have to tighten them back up this is just temporary. Now I've got a space up here, and am gonna measure that, and that in my case comes out to seven and five eight. Now, how many openings that I have? How many tails am I cutting for?

Five. So total space here is seven and five eights, I use my handy dandy, fractional calculator, seven and five eights, divided by five, one and 1/2. So then, as luck would have it, there's a space or a cut to one and a half, 'cause I did another one of these toolboxes before so I knew that's where we were going with this. What you do with the spacer now is put that in between, slide the fingers over. I like to work from the outside in.

So that means that's gonna go on that side, then that's gonna go on that side. That's gonna go in there. Now, here's the acid test, does that go in there? If it does, then you know you have uniform spacing, a good question would be why go from the outside in? Why not just go left to right?

If your spacer block is off by just a tiny bit, and I have an odd number of sockets like I do here, sockets, sockets, sockets, sockets, sockets, then, same distance, same distance, same distance, same distance, and any little under sizedness or over sizedness I have will show up in the center socket, but we're still symmetrical, from the center out, so it puts all the irregularity in the middle and your human eye is never gonna see that. That's gonna give you your layout. Now on this particular jig, the way it works is that we cut the tails first, so that means flipping this over. We're gonna get a need a backer board on here so that as we cut through, we don't chip on the back side. I'mma take my project board out for now.

And the template, should be resting right on top of that support board that we're gonna use later. So I'm loosening the comb, gives it it's loosening it lets it do that, make sure it's resting on the backer board tighten that back down, check the owner's manual for where you're supposed to set this position. Now, we're cutting tails and I am choosing to cut tails in the front and the back. You can do tails in the end boards if you want, but our sample chest that we looked at when we started, as a tails cut in the front and the back. So on these jigs, as the board comes up, we're gonna kiss the bottom of that comb, all the board tight against the stop, lock the board in place, bring the backer board forward, until it kisses the back of our vertical board so I keep using the word kisses, 'cause we don't wanna lean on this stuff we don't wanna distort its position, so it just takes a very gentle touch.

Now my check here end grain to face grain, they should be even. That looks great. Now very commonly setting depth to cut on these is done by simply, taking our mating board, putting it on the bottom of the comb, draw a line, that's the thickness then of our mating piece. And the depth of cut of our dovetail bit, get set so that it's gonna take away the pencil line. We wanna have our end grain, project slightly past the face grain.

We're set to go. Now, if you have any question in your mind, about that being the correct depth of cut and do a test cut in a piece of scrap first. Make sure that that's right before we go through and cut all the tails. When I cut the tails, am gonna follow in, follow in, follow in, I'm cutting into these U-shaped areas, in order to make sure I go and just the right spot, and this jig I'm gonna insert these bridges, that prevents me from going in between the fingers, where I shouldn't be. Straight in, straight up.

Little cord telescope there is nice when you're using a dovetail jig, keeps the cord from trailing down here where it could get hung up on the jig, last thing we want is for the jig to tip, as we're making any of these cuts or the router to tip as we're making any of these cuts. Now a couple of things watch for. As much as possible am gonna let my hands anchor on the jig, and control this with wrists, hands, and fingers, rather than my whole upper body, that gives me finer control it makes it easier to be accurate, really wanna make sure that the router doesn't rock and roll while we're doing this. I'm gonna set the router on the jig, then turn it on, make my cuts, come to the end, get to the last cut, let it come to a complete stop, then lift it off. All right starting to look suspiciously like dovetails, what we wanna do is look down through the fingers and what I'm looking at, is where the waste was taken out inside here, make sure I went deeply enough in this direction, so this should be completely parallel to the finger, completely parallel to the finger, in every one of these all the way down boom, boom, boom, boom, alongside our tails, right now, if we got to power up the router and make another cut it's that simple, if this comes out and you realize you have a problem with the tail, and you have to put it back in, it's very difficult to do.

So I look good there, well not me but the cuts look okay, so this can come out, now as long as we're taking that out, let's hit on our depth of cut. And when I compare, thickness of board to length of tail this is what I want where I'm getting my finger up there, that end grain is just ever so slightly past, oops, the face grain, of the mating piece, we'll clean that up later. Now, last thing give you, notice that for this jig, and most of these are like this, it's the outside face of my board, is gonna remain against the jig. So when this board comes out, that's the end I just cut, gonna rotate it under this end, that's always gonna be the case. So I'mma keep going am gonna get all my tails cut while we're in this orientation, then we'll come back and talk about perfectly fitting sockets for those tails.

All right that's all our tail work. Now it's not imperative, but it's handy if you have two routers, because in the case of through dovetails we use a dovetail bit for one of the cuts that's what we just did, and we use a straight bit for the other one. It's nice to be able to just go back and forth between the two routers if you can rather than swap in bits but not imperative. Next thing for my jig is we flipped the comb over back to where we were before. When we do these cuts when we get wrong, we have to have test pieces in order to get started with this.

So let me grab some test material, we want it to be the same as what we're working with for the project, then we'll come back and walk through what we need to do for test cuts in order to get our perfectly fitting sockets. Next thing is pins and sockets and then see if we're gonna have a fit. Let's talk about that fit for a second. Remember that the comb position is adjustable front to back the template, so let me give you an example here. If I draw a line, there, and that's defining the socket as we see it right now, and then I moved this back, this gets wider, that's gonna make the socket wider.

So the way this works is that the more the jig is to me, the smaller the socket will be, then so what we'll end up doing is we'll do a test cut, we'll see where we're at, then we will adjust the jig accordingly, if it's too tight, we'll move it away from us if it's too loose, we'll move it toward us, regardless of what kind of jig you have, they pretty much all work the same way. So following my manufacturer's instructions, am gonna set and set for a preliminary cut. Now, one of the things we should talk about is cutting action. We have to do things a little bit differently here, we're gonna take all of this waste out, and if all we do is get in there and cut willy-nilly, it's likely that we're gonna get some chipping here, especially in our reclaimed wood but this is a good precaution to take in any wood what we wanna do as a precaution, is start with what's called a climbed cut. Our normal cutting direction is left to right, on our first pass we're gonna go right to left, it's really important about that so you don't lose control of the router, is that we take a very small amount of material off, then I'mma come back to the right and I'mma climb cut again I wanna make sure that I'm well past the face of the piece, before I returned to a conventional cut, so I'm gonna do two passes maybe three and a climb cut right to left, then I'll come back allow the guide bushing to ride on the finger and continue in a conventional direction, do that with all the sockets.

I've already set the depth of cut same way we did before, by setting the router bit, to take away the pencil line, so we ended up with sockets that are just a little bit too deep, climb cut is gonna be important here to make sure we get the best possible cut quality. Once again starting with the router sitting on the work, before you turn it on, letting it come to a complete stop before I lifted off. Now we're ready for conventional setting. Visual inspection before the wood comes out, and I'm checking again to make sure that, those pins are parallel to the fingers. Now it looks good, making sure I cut deeply enough, and that looks good.

Next question. Do they fit? Can I get some stuff out of the way over here? Notice that our test board only has four sockets in it, and we have five tails but that doesn't matter, because all we're doing is seeing oh my gosh look at how loosey goosey that is! So our sockets are currently significantly too big, so we need to bring the comb forward, that's gonna make the socket smaller.

So here's what I'm gonna do, am gonna bring that forward, do another test cut, check it again, keep on keeping it on until I have the fit that I want, between the pins and sockets and the tails. Again follow your manufacturer's instructions, they commonly provide a guideline indicating how much change to make here, to affect the change that we want there. It's really important that you do these test cuts and scrap that is identical to what you're doing your real project out of. The reason for that is as the dovetail gets tighter, it's possible that you could get tricked, meaning if I use a really soft wood, in order to do these test cuts, but my project is made from a really hardwood, maybe my test dovetail slipped together because those fibers is compressed, but when I go to do my project it won't go together, 'cause that harder wood won't compress. So my preferences, Ponderosa Pine Project, Ponderosa Pine Project, then Ponderosa pine test pieces as well, that way we know if this works, the project is gonna work too.

I've got some test cuts to go, then we'll come back and look at what we've got one more thing about our backer board, we don't have to change that, 'cause we're gonna just keep exiting into the same spot so that backer board is just fine the way it is, I did flip it edge for edge when we went from tails to pins and sockets, so I'm using the opposite edge, but I can continue to use that same area to support the work I'm doing. Well even in the Ponderosa pine, it sure amazing what a nice job that climb cutting does to prevent chipping on a face, one of the things to notice here is that in this case now I'm good face out and my pin and socket board I can see my tape, and that's my last cut so I did my test fits, I got everything working the way it was supposed to work, I cut my four corners, getting us to a point where we can do that. And what it say over there? B, and B funny how that works out. It's always so fun to tap these dovetails together.

There she goes. Good beat, but kind of hard to dance to. Now let's look right across here, I kept talking about setting the bit just a little bit deeper than the thickness of the material, regardless of what kind of dovetail jig you're using you wanna do this, see how the end grain, right there of that pin, is passed the face grain. We'll glue this up, after the glue is dry I'll give you a couple of different ways to approach cleaning that up, and making it flush after the fact, much easier to do it later, than it is to try to incorporate that into the cutting of the dovetails now, that takes care of our dovetailing like I said, if you're not a dovetail kind of a person don't sweat it, am gonna give you two other approaches to make corners on this box. If for whatever reason you don't wanna dovetail your tool chest let me give you two other options that'll make really good corner joins for you.

We're gonna do everything here on the table so we're gonna look at a rabbet and a locking joint, so here's where I'm at so far, I've got a dado head in the table saw who's width exceeds the thickness of my material. On the fence I've got a sacrificial fence clamped here, that's gonna come into play in just a second, first thing we need to do is a little bit of setup on the dado head itself we wanna get the height of the dado head half the thickness of our material, in this case three quarters of an inch. So half of three quarters, is three eights, easiest way to do that is to use bar stock, instead of a ruler. We've got the bar stock source for you, on a PDF that comes with the video, this is so handy to have a set of these, anytime you're doing a height setup like we're doing here, on a table saw, or on a router table, what I need is just the three eights bar, out of my set, then with the saw unplugged, bring the height of the dado ahead up, until it's even with the top of the bar stock it's so much easier than trying to do that with a ruler, here on the front of the side I'm locking the hub, in the middle of the hand wheel, make sure that's still good. Now as we locate the fence what's gonna happen is the reason the sacrificial fence is on there, is we come so close over here to the blade, wanna make sure that the dado head doesn't hit my rip fence.

So, by having the sacrificial fence on I can avoid that, positioning this fence is really easy, simply take your mating material, bring that down like this, and we're gonna gauge the fence location using the thickness of our mating piece. What I'm looking for here, is just a fingernail catch of dado head sticking past we're gonna make the rabbet, ever so slightly too wide. Now show you why we're gonna do that once we have one cut, that feels pretty good let me get it with a nail so you can hear it, just a little bit of a catch just slightly projected pass. Then we can do a test cut and see what we've got I need to plug my saw in in order to do that. This little feather, we can eliminate now in my project, I won't break that off, I'll slice it off with a chisel, to make sure that I don't accidentally crack off wood that I don't wanna crack off, and then we'll check our fit and this is what I want, I want this end grain, slightly past the face grain of this piece and here's the reason for that, we could mess and mess and mess with the fence location and make this come out absolutely perfect, if it doesn't, if it ends up that the face of this piece is past the end grain that is so hard to fix after assembly, so my choice here is I'mma go ahead and make the mistake I know I can fix, the mistake being, if the rabbet is too wide after the glue is dry, I can very easily come back with a Flush Trim Router Bit, or a block plane, and remove that, a little bit of end grain that projects past the face grain, and they're gonna look absolutely perfect.

Now what we get from this, that we wouldn't get from this is some interlock between the two parts, and a lot more glue surface, so this is a pretty substantial joint, that we could use on the corner of the tool chest, let me show you another one, that brings even more mechanical grab to the two pieces. Here's another joint you can use on your tool chest or any really strong corner that you wanna make it's a locking joint, it's different from the rabbet that we just did, because, the parts interlock so we have a little bit more mechanical strength here, good glue surface, this is a really nice strong way to put a case together. Everything is gonna happen on the table saw, what I've done with my dado head is reduced its width from full width three quarter inch, down to three eights of an inch, half the thickness of my material, so if you're applying this to other projects just keep that in mind, whatever the thickness of your material is, dado head is half of that. Now, in order to get my setup, am gonna do what I did before, bring the fence over, and am gonna gauge the fence location with the saw unpluged, using the thickness of my material, as a gauge block once again looking for the point where the dado head projects ever so slightly past, the face of the piece, height of the dado head is still three eight seven inch, just like it was for our last cut. Get the saw plugged in, we're ready to do this one.

What has to happen next is, we have to make a tongue, on this piece, that's gonna fit into that dado. We're gonna sneak up on this setting, initially, we're gonna make a tongue that is too thick and too short, then we're gonna change our settings until we have it just right. The way we're gonna do that, is by adding a sacrificial fence, 'cause like with the rabbet, we got to get really close to the dado ahead here, don't wanna cut into my rip fence. We have two settings here, the height of the blade, the location of the fence, our material we'll fit flat ways like this. The height of the blade then controls the resulting thickness of our tongue, the fence location controls the resulting length of the tongue.

So am gonna bury part of the dado head under the fence, that's gonna make it too short, am gonna lower the dado head that's gonna make the tongue too thick. Let's see what we have. When I do this, we can see that, tongue's not gonna fit into that dado 'cause it's too thick just like we thought it was gonna be. So I need to raise the blade, about an eighth of an inch, but we'll do that in small increments, we're gonna sneak up on this final setting. Then when I do this, we can see that the tongue is also too short.

Also anticipated that 'cause we put the fence over the dado head so we buried part of the dado head, that means I have to move the fence back a little more than an eighth of an inch in that case, once again we wanna sneak up on that, if we end up with the tongue too long or too thin, then we have to start the whole process over again so tiny tiny changes, in your setup, and we'll just keep on keeping on, until we get the fit we want. Oh she is close one more a little bit. All right now we're getting there. Now, here's what I'm looking for, might have to do one more pass. Wanna be able to tap this in by hand, but when I do this, I want the parts to be able to stay stuck together, so I'm still just a tiny bit, too thick on that tongue you gotta be careful with this, if it starts to go but you're forcing it in, it's possible you could bust this little ear off of here, so let's get one more pass out of this.

Now we're cooking. Now between the two, little bit more strength from this one, and with the nature of this tongue and groove that we have going here, if you build your tool chest from contrasting woods, walnut and cherry cherry and maple, that'll really show off the joint you've cut at the top here. We wanna make sure that we've got a good fit between the two parts so that the glue has a chance to do what it's supposed to do, our tongue should be bottoming out, in the dado, and we have that snuggisity here where the parts just from their own friction are gonna stay stuck together. So between the rabbet, and the lock, two alternatives to the dovetail there for you, that'll make really good corners on your tool chest. Pre-assembly we got to get groovy we got to cut a groove that the bottom will fit into really hard to do that after the box's glued together, half inch wide dado ahead in the table saw, you could alternatively do this on a router table with 1/2 inch bit, I'm located 1/2 inch from the fence, all of that is on the drawing.

Make sure as you cut your parts, you're cutting them in the right orientation it's great to still have the marks on here, 'cause the marks give me the roadmap. T for top is gonna be away from the fence, if I can see the marks remember remark the outside faces, that tells me, that this phase has to be up. One of the most important things I think, is labeling parts, before you come to a machine to start cutting them. What I don't wanna see students do is, fumbling around with these pieces while the dado head is running and trying to figure out what goes where and how it goes, one, it's taken your mind off of the tool that's not good, two, it's a really easy way to mess up your parts, we're very deep into this project would hate to have to go back and replace something. So, outside face up, bottom edge against the fence got to cut off four, with the joinery that I've shown you and I've done on this one don't panic that groove that we're cutting is gonna show on the outside of the box, or remember we're putting out a base mold.

So we are just simply cutting all the way through we don't have to do stopped grooves. Coolest part of this, it smells just like 100 year old Ponderosa pine in here, it's too bad you don't have smell of vision, it's really cool you can really smell the resin and the age of this material that we're working with. That takes care of our grooves, pretty darn close to being able to put these boxes together. A couple of pre-assembly steps that you need to take, anytime you're putting something together, you wanna sand all the internal phases, before assembly. The reason for that is that once the box is put together it's so hard to sand inside, compared to just doing this big flat surface right now.

The other thing that we need is a bottom for the box, we already cut the groove, you saw that happen, we need to cut the bottom to size, I'm using 1/2 inch plywood for the bottom, easiest way to get that dimensioned, is to measure from the bottom of the dovetail to the bottom of the dovetail, so I'm gonna hook here, and then I'm gonna measure to that point, and then we're gonna add, the depth of a groove, and the depth of a groove, minus an eighth of an inch. We want the bottom to be a little bit smaller than the groove size so that it's easy to put in, it doesn't have to be a perfect fit. So, corner to corner, so not outside to outside, but this corner to corner, plus groove depth, plus groove depth minus an eighth, and your ends it's gonna be just like that but different. On your ends, it's bottom of the socket, to bottom of the socket, plus the groove plus the groove minus an eighth. That'll give you the dimension for the bottom.

Now before I stood in front of you here today, I made sure that I dry assembled the box, with the bottom in place, we wanna make sure that everything is gonna go together as expected, be really bad to run into a problem, once we start putting glue into the joints, so make sure you do a dry fit always all your projects, before we get to this step. One of the problems we're gonna probably run into is squeeze out. So we're gonna cut that off at the pass, with a little bit of masking tape, we're gonna mask off all the inside corners, on every piece. What I'm carefully working on here is getting the edge of the tape, even with the bottom of the dovetail socket. And in this case, edge of the tape, even with the bottom of the tail.

If you're assembling your box with the rabbet joint that I taught you, this masking off isn't as critical with a rabbet joint and with the lock joint, you don't tend to get as much squeeze out on the inside of the box as you do with a dovetail. Whenever you can it's a great idea to assemble in stages, some pieces of furniture and cabinetry lend themselves to that with this box, there's no great way to put it together in portions we really have to do the whole thing at one time, so, got to have all your duct in a row we want enough clamps to hold everything together, glue, glue brush, mallet, square, to make sure it's square once we get that far, rosin paper on the bench, so that we don't get glue all over the bench, already did the dry fit, like I talked about. What we're after here is to get glue, into the bottom of our dovetail sockets, seed our mating board in that, notice that we've still got our roadmap on the outside of the boards. We still so we can see how they go together. Now here's a nice tip what we need is for that to stand there and get glue on it, and insert the other board, it's really handy to just grab a clamp, and do this, and that'll help that stand up so it doesn't get all tippy on you.

All right my roadmap says that's corner number D, off we go. I guess D is a letter not a number isn't it? Corner letter D. Glue on the bottom of the socket and up the pins, bottom of the socket up the pins. This is a pretty thirsty wood, so it's soaking up that first application gonna get some more on there.

Don't wanna dilly or dally because, the glue is gonna start to grab, you know your glue does have an open time, which is limited. So depending on how warm it is and your shop, how dry the wood is, glue dries by evaporation, so the more quickly it has a chance to evaporate the more quickly it'll dry. All right, I'm gonna leave that one sit, find my other end. That's gonna be A. A and D it says that's not that one.

It's that one. Let's put the groove to the bottom on all the parts that'll be handy for putting the bottom in it. Any more than a gentle tapping here, I'm fine with that, am gonna get a piece of scrap on here. To protect that. However, it really shouldn't take more than a gentle tapping to close the joint.

Clamps can come off. Flip. Don't forget this important part. Little sawdust left in there from the sanding process, and I wanna make sure that it's gone before the glue goes in, 'cause that'll affect the adhesion of the glue. Not glue in the bottom in it's not necessary.

If you wanna stay real traditional, and use a solid wood bottom instead of apply wood bottom so use the same material for the bottom we used on the rest of the box, nothing wrong with that. Be sure that you let that bottom float in the grooves, it's gonna need to be able to expand and contract seasonally. So we wanna make sure there's enough wiggle room, for that solid wood to do that otherwise it's gonna crack on you. The same eighth inch that we allowed for the plywood bottom, I would allow for a solid wood bottom, for that expansion and contraction. All right now, with the dovetail joint because of the mechanical nature of the dovetail where it pulls itself in because of those angles, we really shouldn't need any clamps this way, we only need clamps this way, I wanna clamp on every tail, so when I said earlier, be sure you have enough clamps, that's what I was talking about in this case it's gonna take 10 clamps, five per side, to close everything.

And this is why I had my blocks here, easier to get that bottom one on, if it's up in the air. Don't worry about the squeeze out. Like we talked about with the edge to edge glue up, we're gonna let that get rubbery, and then come back and deal with it. Or, take it off at the point in the project where we're cleaning up the end grain on those dovetail joints. Now with our clamp going long ways, if you're using a rabbet joint, I would run a clamp, in the long direction, to make sure that the board is pulled right up against the shoulder of the rabbet.

If you're doing a lock joint, you won't need a clamp, in the long direction. Now these clamps it's handy, I have found a turn the other way, just because of the proximity of the clamps it's hard to get to the handle, if it's poking out that side. Okay, now squaring you can do one of two things, one would be, corner to corner, that number needs to be the same, as that number, yay! Or, put a square in the inside corner, and check that, if it's not what you'll need to do is loosen the clamps and readjust so here's the deal. Let's say when I measure my two diagonals, this is the longer of the two, rack some of the clamps not all of them, in the same direction as the long diagonal, so, if this diagonal is too long, I'm gonna start by loosening one clamp, and what I said was rack the clamp in the same direction as the long diagonal so grossly exaggerating, twist the clamp the same way as the long diagonal, but just a little bit.

So I moved that end that way, my end this way, re-tighten, check it again. If one didn't do it, then let's go to this side, do the same thing again. If that didn't do it, moved down a clamp. Now the really good news with this is that, the top completely overlays the top of the tool chest, so, 'cause a little bit out of square, in all honesty nobody's gonna know a little bit being 16th, of an inch, you're never gonna be able to tell, but we don't want it to be a mile out of square, 'cause that's gonna mess up your trays that wanna sit inside here. So take the time, get the assembly done just right, check it for square, make it look like a porcupine with full of clamps here, let that glue dry, and we'll be ready to move on with our tool chest.

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