Building Strong Hexagon Shelves

all right now to get started we will need a 1 by 6 by 6 feet long piece of white common wood or piece of pine to keep the costs low grab your circular saw and set the bevel down to 30 degrees using some kind of speed square or any kind of right angle cutting device create a nice crisp cut across the board with a 30 degree angle after we got the 30 degree cut measure out 89 inches depending on how why do you want these shelves to be and then you will need a 150 degree cut since our miter gauge doesn't go to 150 degrees we will just flip the board over and create another 30 degree cut you'll want to repeat this process six identical times that way it'll ensure that you're a hexagon shelf is actually completely symmetrical now I've simplified this project based off the the common tools that people can get into but if you have access to a minor side they'll definitely speed up this process now you want to send every piece down to 150 grit on both the front and back side all right now when creating these hexagons or honeycomb shelves the end grain glue that's basically any time you see the side of you know and grain a piece of wood it's usually that the hardest glue up and the most difficult and the reason why is because the entire grain pattern of a piece of wood runs like straw so grab a handful of straws that's what it looks like and just like putting flowers like roses into a vase they tend to suck the water up when you put glue on top here let's say we glue these two pieces together there would be a lot of wood glue that would go into the end grain kind of like a straw and you would lose a lot of your strength before it actually dries up so one little tip that I've learned that doesn't guarantee a hundred percent strength but improves it significantly is if you clog these pores right away so all I'm doing is taking a little bit of wood glue and doing a little a fine layer on top it drives there really quickly I mean I'm pretty sure it's all gonna dry in about five minutes or so once it's dried and the pores are clogged and then at that point am I gonna put another layer of wood glue and then actually join them together so that's a little trick for you guys so they don't fall apart later now for the gloop you want to lay all the pieces on their belly and line them all up all the six pieces connect them all together with two to three strands of masking tape flip them back on their backs and put a liberal amount of wood glue in each joint then simply just roll it up together and connect the ending pieces with both wood glue and to Brad nails once you got it secured grab a ratchet strap and secure it completely around and given it a nice decent amount of pressure to hold it all together at this point it's symmetrical I like to go the extra step if you have access to a brad nail gun and put two Brad nails into each joint and let it dry overnight the next day when everything is dry remove the ratchet strap sand off any excess of wood glue squeeze-out and fill in all the brad nail holes with wood filler to get things ready for stain apply the stain using a foam brush once got to the desired color and it's dry finish off with two to three coats of a clear spray polyurethane for added protection for hardware I'm using sawtooth hangers they typically come with the half-inch nails I don't recommend using those instead use at least a one-inch nail or small screws to secure them in place because these shells will be pretty low hanging and I have kids in the house I wanted to secure these shelves exactly into the stud instead of the drywall by itself to help you this process I went down to my local hardware store and picked up the zircon HD 900 multi scanner one of my favorite features about the HD 902 scanner is that its ability to find the center of the stud as opposed to only the edge of it so what does that mean for us well we made our shelves we made them from 9 inch long pieces that way when two shelves are built together with a one inch gap spacing the two away there's exactly 16 inches from one Center to the other and since the modern-day building code is 16 inches on Center for every wall stud all we have to do is have the scanner show us exactly where one stud is in the center and then move it over to find the second Center and then now we have two perfectly placed shelves hanging on the wall some of my favorite features of the zircon multi scanner HD 900 is the wire detection it has the ability to detect the live AC current wire behind the walls in both the stud scan deep scan and the metal scan now speaking of metal scan one of my favorite things about the metal scan is that it's able to detect non-ferrous metals like copper pipes behind the wall up to an inch and a half deep and ferrous metals like steel pipe up to three inches deep [Music] well that is it for me this week thanks so much for watching this video big THANK YOU to zircon for partnering us on this project head over to the Instagram they're hosting a 2019 summer giveaway I'll put a link down description below for you guys to go check that out make sure you like comment and share this with your friends subscribe right there and check out that video right there tune out this week we'll see us next week see ya bye [Music]