Izzy Swan shared the woodworking tips featured in this video.
The video collects ten inexpensive, practical shop tips grouped into three categories: gluing and laminations, assembly and clamping, and sanding hard-to-reach shapes. These small tricks use everyday items—pinking scissors, rubber bands, magnets, dish soap, and simple shop-made jigs—to speed work and reduce frustration.
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Gluing and Laminations
Izzy emphasizes even glue distribution when laminating large surfaces, and demonstrates a few inexpensive spreaders that work better than a single brush swipe. Pinking scissors and Mondo/Bondo-style plastic spreaders give a consistent, thin rib pattern so boards seat flat and squeeze-out is predictable.
For edge-banding and small laminations, Izzy offers two low-cost clamping options that avoid specialized hardware. Painter’s tape can provide enough pressure to hold thin solid wood edge strips while glue cures, and a 99-cent spring clamp wrapped with a few rubber-band turns makes a reusable, quick clamp for repetitive work.
- Use pinking scissors or plastic spreaders to create even glue ribs across large panels.
- Painter’s tape works for short edge-banding runs where heavy clamps are overkill.
- Wrap a rubber band around inexpensive spring clamps to make quick, repeatable edge clamps.
Clamping and Assembly Shortcuts
Izzy shows how small accessories can make assembly easier and safer, especially when dealing with awkward bolts, washers, or tight hoses. A magnet holder (like a MAG Switch) can hold nuts and washers in place while starting a bolt, freeing a hand and preventing dropped parts.
Other practical tips include using dish soap as a lubricant when slipping hoses onto dust-collection fittings and repurposing office rubber bands around clamps to mimic pricier spring-clamp designs. These straightforward substitutions save time and money and are easy to adapt to different shop setups.
- Use a magnetic tool to hold washers and nuts during assembly for quicker starts and fewer dropped parts.
- Apply dish soap and water to tight dust-collection fittings to ease installation without damaging the hose.
- Stretch inexpensive rubber bands over clamps to add grip or mimic higher-end clamp jaws.
Sanding and Shaping in Tight Areas
For sanding curves, holes, and narrow cutouts, Izzy demonstrates DIY flap sanders made from dowels and folded sandpaper that attach to a drill for fast material removal. Cutting a groove in the dowel and sliding doubled sandpaper into the slot creates a compact, aggressive sander that reaches where standard sanders cannot.
Izzy also adapts paint sticks into sanding files by attaching hook-and-loop strips and narrow rolls of abrasive to make thin, shaped sanding sticks. These shop-made sanding files are ideal for round-overs, concave surfaces, and contours where larger machines or flat blocks can’t reach.
- Make a flap sander from a dowel and folded sandpaper for drilling-powered sanding in small radiuses and cutouts.
- Create sanding files from paint sticks plus hook-and-loop backing and narrow sandpaper rolls for controlled contour work.
- Consider a drill-powered handheld spindle sander for finishing compound curves or areas a bench spindle cannot reach.
Why These Tricks Matter
Each tip focuses on replacing complexity with simplicity—small tools and household items that reduce steps and solve common shop headaches. Adopting a few of these ideas helps maintain momentum on builds by cutting fiddly setup time and avoiding over-complicated fixtures.
These techniques are adaptable across skill levels and shop sizes, and they emphasize problem-solving over gear acquisition so woodworkers can focus on shaping and finishing rather than wrestling with temporary setups.
They encourage creative reuse of inexpensive supplies to get reliable results without breaking the bank.
Please support Izzy by visiting his website: https://www.izzyswan.com/.