How To Join Oak Kitchen Worktops (Mason's Mitre) | Easy Step By Step Guide

Today I'm going to be showing you guys at home how to do your very own mason's miter. Right so now that we've got our second piece of top cut we've took ourself a little bit of off cut a bit of scrap which is the same size and we're just going to lay it across the base there and that's just going to allow us to sit the second piece on top. So just as this one we've set this one square to the front of the units and what we need to do is mark where the two tops or the two Two countertops intersect, so for us that's going to be here. So we're just going to put a pencil mark right between the two counters there. This is a jig from Trend. Mason's Miter is this here and what that basically does is that's going to put us a join that comes up and along. and then the next piece we'll have the male version of that that will slide in and we bolt it together so you're going to need yourself a jig like this we're also going to need ourselves a half inch router with a 12.7 millimeter flute cutter and a 30 mil guide bush so that's that there and a couple of clamps so now that we've got our mark we need to add a little measurement that we take from our router which is from the outside of our bush to the edge of the cutter so we've measured ours and it's come up at nine millimeters so what we're going to do we're going to add that nine millimeters we're going to come away from our edge nine millimeters and put ourselves another pencil line so ours is here so we've got a nine millimeter difference right there so we bring our jig and if you look at these trend jigs we've got pins And on the top we have an F90 and an M90. F90 female 90 joint so this is going to be going into the worktop so that's female side so we're going to put our pins in the F90 one two and three slide that forward drop our pins in and as we slide this along we're gonna slide the jig up until The jig hits our second line. So we're right on that now. So all we need to do is clamp this in place. Don't be using it without clamps. We want this to never ever move while we're using it. So we're just going to use these Bessie clamps, making sure that we're still tight and we're still on our mark. Right, so don't rush this process. Double check, triple check, quadruple check. This is super important that this is in the correct position. So double check all your pins are touching the front. which ours are, our clamps are tight it's not going to go anywhere and we're bam on our mark that we made the nine millimeter difference right so the reason we do that spacing is because when these cut they don't actually cut to the edge of the guide the guide bush keeps this that distance away so when we plunge down we're going to be cutting exactly on the mark that we made earlier with our other countertop right so one last check before we plug this in and start routing make sure All our pins are low and nothing's going to get caught but we're all good. Double check before you plug it in and now we're ready to plug it in and the way we're going to be doing this is we're going to be making multiple passes so we're not going to try and cut through all of this at once. We're going to make a very shallow pass and that's just going to keep a nice clean edge on the top and then we'll start dropping in 10-15 mil cuts at a time until we're all the way through and another tip we're going to be keeping it on the close edge so we're going to be keeping it tight because as you can see there's just a little bit of slack in these jigs so we're going to be keeping it tight to us until the last pass and then we're going to go tight to the very back and that's just going to give us a nice clean cut all the way through. Let's get this plugged in. Depending on your router there's a couple of ways you can do this so our router you plunge down to your required depth and there's a lock on the side and that's going to hold it into our first position and a lot of routers now They have this step so you can step it down in increments without adjusting anything so it's got a stop on the side so as we plunge our first cut we lock it off and then as we come through for our next passes we just adjust this stop here and it'll go deeper and deeper or you can just leave this off and adjust it by eye roughly 10 to 15 mil increments that's what we're going So we're going to do our first pass now around Three to five millimeters remembering as we do our first few passes we're going to be favoring this front edge towards me. Right so now that we've done our scoring pass, our shallow pass, we're now going to drop it 10 to 15 millimeters. One thing to note I'm cutting in at the face first and coming around and out while the cutter's spinning clockwise because that's going to give us the cleanest edge and we're not going to have any breakout if we come in from the faces. That's why we've set the jig up like this so when we do the opposite one we'll actually be cutting on the underside. So let's get these cuts made. Right so we've done our multiple cuts we've now got around Five millimeters of top left so we're going to go all the way through and now we're going to favor the back edge we're going to be pushing against the jig and that should leave us with a nice clean finish. Right so as you can see we've got our mason's miter now and the difference between our original mark and the mark we made now becomes clear so we finished on our original mark and that was the nine millimeters we added for our bushing over there. So this is the first one, the female, so now we're going to go and mark out and get ready to do our male. Right, so now that we've got this section of countertop back in, we've got ourselves some scrap underneath, we're going to slide our second part up over the top into position. Making sure we're nice and flat. So we've lined up the corner and we're going to take a very sharp pencil and we're going to mark the underside of our next piece and that's going to give us the location of our miter. Right so we've got our countertop outside this one is now upside down so this is the underside so what we've done is we've flipped our jig and what we're looking for is an M90 so we've put our pins on the M90 and we've also made ourselves some marks. for that nine mil difference that we've got on our guide bush. Exactly the same with the other one. Just we're all upside down now. The only difference is what I've done with this jig is I've put myself some pilot holes in here and I'm going to put some screws through the jig into the waste piece that we'll be cutting off and that's going to prevent it from snapping and damaging the underside which is now the top. Right, so our jig is all set, it's clamped, it's secure, it's not going to go anywhere and if you want you can just double check by plunging your router down with it switched off and you can just see that that cutter It's touching our original scribe line so we've set our jig correctly. We're going to come back to the start and start making our multiple passes all the way through and then leave a nice shallow section at the face because that is the top of this one and we want to really look after it. Well that's it we've worked our way through most of the material so now it's time for our final pass. We're going to be nice and gentle with this and take our time because obviously Rather than that being the bottom, that is now the face, the very top. So let's get that done. So we can now remove the waste section that I screwed in. That's why I do it. So we've had nothing drop off and cause damage to the top and we'll move the jig and check what it's looking like. Right so we've got our piece into position we're going to slide it up check that our mitres are good and yep they're going to be great once we get the bolt holes and bolted up and glued. So before we get on with that we need to trim any excess because we left this section long so for us we're going to be matching the front overhang so we'll get that cut down. and then we'll start marking out for our bolt. So we've measured and marked the overhang we want left. So put our marks on, set our track on on the top against our marks and we're just going to score the top with a really slight cut and now we're going to get ready to go through full depth. The reason we put that score cut in is it just leaves a nicer cut on the top it prevents the chipping out of our top surface. So we're going to slide those up Double check we're happy with our joint and now we need to move on to the slots for our bolts that go underneath. So the jigs do come with a template to put them in set places but what I like to do I get a pencil I go underneath and I'm going to scribe across the two pieces in the open section of cabinet. So this is the top the smaller section upside down and we've got the two spaces So the two marks that... Indicate the space underneath that's open that's close enough to the edge that i'm going to be using that space to cut our slots So if we take our jig and we're going to place our pins into the B slots and all i'm going to do i'm going to line the edge of this left one up cut that out and then i'm going to move to the edge of this side cut this one out and then i'm going to put one in the center and i'm going to do exactly the same on that side so let's get this clamp down and cut so like the joint we're going to do this in a couple of passes and we're going to set this to 20 mil which is halfway so what i've done i've just put myself a little pencil line at 20 mil half the depth of the counter itself and we're just gonna follow the guide bush again so that's what we're looking for that's the pocket we need so i'm going to do the rest just remember the most important part of this is one the depth we need to be at least sort of halfway and two they need to match from one side to the next that's why we drew across the pair so let's get the rest of these done and now we've got the opposite piece and again we're going to go to our marks making sure they're in the identical positions off the smaller section and now we're going to mark out these bolt holes. Right so our parts are in place our bolt holes are now cut into the back the little slots so these are the bolts we're going to be using and what we do we take the bolt we slide it into this plastic sleeve so once we've slid the We've slid the black sleeve over the bolt like so. We come to one side of our thread And we plug it up and inside and we push that sleeve up inside tight. Right, so now that our bolts are in place, I've put something inside the cupboard to protect the unit because now we're going to be applying glue to the whole face of both of our joints. Like so. And if we can just use our finger or brush, if you like. We're just going to spread that across the whole joint. Right, now that our glue's in place, we're going to lift our second piece. Up and over our bolts and then slowly down into position, lining our joint up and then what we need is a 10mm open ended spanner like that and we're going to start tightening our bolts up from underneath. So what we're doing as we're tightening the bolts, we're making sure we're as flush as we can possibly get. With oak you might not get one million percent all the way through but we're just going to adjust each section where each piece of bolt is so we'll get this bit kind of tight then we'll get the back then we'll adjust the middle and then we'll keep clamping until the two pieces pull nice and tight and if you follow all of those steps you should end up with a lovely miter like this and if you want to see the full install on this kitchen go check out the video Remember, like, comment, and subscribe. Peace.