Timber Frame Knee Braces Scribing Shouldering and Setting Tutorial Series (14x8 Deck episode 5)

Okay, I'm going to show you how to scribe in one of the knee braces because we need to cut the shoulder out so that this whole piece recesses in. And since we cut all of our own knee braces, like this one, you can see there's a little different imperfection. So when we're routering that in, this is going to be site-specific for this joint. And as you see, I mark everything. And before I leave, I mark everything so that we know that those fit together. So just get it in place, hold it in line, and scribe. So now what we need to see, we don't have an angle there, I'm going to need to router that out with this pattern here so that it matches specifically that piece. So what we're going to do is we're going to router out three-eighths of an inch this entire pattern. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to take out the bulk of the material here first, leaving this line. So what I normally do is I'll bring this up here, I'll set my gauge to be slightly inside this line so when I'm removing all of the excess material, there isn't some sort of mistake or jump with the machine, and you'll cut past your line. And then I'll show you how we come back and make one smooth cut right through here. I just set my jig slightly less than this line, and we're going to just remove all of the material. And I'm leaving very little bit of material so when we cut, we don't have an excess amount that we're trying to cut through. We can make a perfectly straight line. And my guard is keeping me. Now I'm resetting my gauge, that last little sixteenth of an inch. As you can see here, we made one perfect beautiful cut line right to our pencil mark where we needed to go. I even followed the scribe of that particular knee brace. So I'm going to take out the other side, and I'll show you how to fit it. So now you see I have removed all of the excess material in our shoulder. We're going to dry fit our knee brace, which even with this imperfection, you see how beautiful that cuts in. Now we still need to cut our back relief 45 so that this sits all the way down. You see we're not in. You should give yourself a straight line if you're not completely used to using chisels. Now I'm going to chisel a 45 so that that can fit in there. Hopefully that's not going to mess with us with our dry test. But now it's just a check. It fits. Are we sitting? I draw a line across here. So when I pull it up, I'm looking to see if I'm sitting all the way even. And I can tell right here that I need maybe another 16th, which I need to just clean this piece up right there. All your cuts are going to be visible forever. That's the beauty of a timber frame. So you need to take your time. You can't add wood, but you can always chisel more out. I'm just trying to show you how tight a hand fit one, hand cut one I mean, can fit. And boom. We're down. We're in. We're sitting. We're slightly touching right here. So we're going to need to just that little bit. Again, this is hand cut oak. So it could be slightly. You see it's this pattern is slightly different than perfectly square. And I'm going to chisel in less than the line. Pencil was. I'm sure it's going to fit this time. And now you see that the line is not at the bottom anymore. So we're underneath. So this has been pulled in and we're sitting tight. So that's how you set a knee brace. Okay. Last pocket that we need to make because the joist cannot be dovetailed like the rest of them. Because we made an extended post so that we can have a railing. So what we're going to have to do here to make a pocket for the two outside posts only. And then they'll sit dovetailed to the inside wall. So we know that this is one got to be level with the top. The beam that we're actually using is a six by ten. So I'm going to do my mark out. Mark my ten. And we know it's six inches and we want to be flush with the outside. So I'm just a hair under six. So I already have my saw set at a one inch depth which is the size of the pocket we need. I'm going to finish the corner with my chisel. And I'm going to take my saw again. And I'm going to make a series of cuts. Okay. So now you've chopped out all the slag that you have. And because you used the saw, the actual cuts in here are going to give you a pretty good indication of the level of the wood of where you need to plane down. Since it's a saw back here, it's round. So naturally we're going to have to chisel out. So now you can see we've removed all of the extra slag. Everything is close. Now you take one of your finishing chisels. There's our guy. And do the finish work. Okay. I've cleaned everything up with our Robert Sorby inside. You can see that we've chiseled it down just above where my cut lines are. So I know that I've got a flat surface. What I like to do. It's very hard to get a straight edge cutting with the chisel for your look. Is that I leave this little bit here. And then I work it with my sander. And that's how I keep a perfect edge when I'm using this. And while the sander is in there, I give it a little quick clean up. So that the wax will hold good.