 The four basic principles of doing quality decorative pyramid plugs. Well, I would work with Paul Crossen here, a small workshop guy. The four principles are you want them to be perfectly aligned with the edge of your workpiece and with each other. If you get them out of alignment with each other or not well aligned with the edge of your workpiece, it'll be very obvious and very ugly. The second principle is that they need to all be the same size. In other words, you don't want to make mistakes with your chisel cutting the square hole for one and go too large and then just square it off and then leave the other one smaller. So if you're going to accidentally make one too large, make the one beside it too large as well so that they match each other. So that's the second principle. The third principle is they need to be the same height. In other words, you don't want one buried in your workpiece barely showing because you drove it too deep and then the one beside it sticking up higher. That will look awful. And then the fourth principle is to have a really nice crisp profile, however you achieve that. In this video, I'm going to talk about creating a little jig for pounding in your pyramids so that you don't end up mushrooming or flattening your nice sharp profile. Real quickly in the video that follows, you'll see me using some writing instruments. I use the Graphgear 1000 from Pentel and I use the 9mm and the 5mm. I absolutely love those. They got a nice soft grip. They retract when you press on the clip so that's easy to get it in your pocket and protect the lead and they're absolutely beautiful. Highly recommend them. I'm going to use my Veritas Half-Heads Chisel and then for sound protection, I use the ISO Tunes Pro. I find those a little cumbersome putting them on over the ear but unlike my full Bluetooth earpieces, they don't totally block out the noise so I can hear when something's going wrong with my cut or with my machinery. I recently, in working on this Samurai Carpenter workbench, had to do 32 pyramid plugs. In this case, they are primarily cosmetic and normally they will be because you will have either driven screws or something else to secure your work. In this particular case, I put a black walnut rod, I could have used any dowel, to go inside all the way through and to draw bore things as tight as I could. But then I purposely left a half an inch depth so that I can insert some decorative pyramid plugs. The idea is to make it look like you drove the square pegs all the way through. My recommendation would be first that in picking the size, pick a size that exactly matches one of your chisels. This is the Veritas Half-Heads Chisel. So I'm going to use that as the basis for my pyramid plugs so that I get a matching exactly half an inch Forstner bit. It might also, if you have it, want to use your half inch mortising chisel without the actual drill, just the exterior chisel. Go to your table saw and use your, if in this case walnut strips and cut them. But don't cut them to a half an inch. Cut them one thirty second over a half an inch. In other words, cut them at seventeen thirty seconds or even eighteen thirty seconds. It's easy enough with your sanders to then work your way down to exactly the size of the hole that you've got. The reason you want to oversize it is we tend to make mistakes on the size of the hole through our chiseling. And so then the last thing we want to do is put in a pyramid plug that doesn't go all the way to the edges. I use my Incra marking device to make my square boxes a half an inch on each side. And here I'm going to cross those boxes diagonally so that where the lines cross I can find the exact center and then using an awl to poach that center and then that gives my Forstner bit something to seat down into so that it doesn't travel on me. You can try to use a mortising chisel, but I find those are very hard to line up with these holes and you've got to be very, very careful. My preferred method is just to use a combination square where I can see the exact edges of the holes and then use a scrapping knife in order to give myself a nice line to chisel to. When you chisel, of course, don't go to the edge at the very beginning. Start on the inside and work your way around and then work your way out to the very edge. As shown here, if I try to use a mortising chisel, I often am just barely off and if that's the case, do not use it, go back and line up using your regular chisel because if you are just a scotch off, it will show up when you put in the plugs in there side by side. When doing pyramid plugs, there's no such thing as that's close enough and take your pyramid stock and test it with the holes. You want it to be slightly larger than your holes. When moving to the bandsaw, you're going to be cutting out really small pieces. You don't want them to get stuck, so put in a zero plate. That's easy. Take a piece of plywood and cut it and then just leave it there and secure it with a clamp. Then hold your stock at an angle and cut off just the corner and try not to get to the middle. Try to leave it short of the middle. Ideally, I like to leave a little box on the top of my pyramid plug. With my tip prepared on the bandsaw, I then head over to my bell sander. Make sure it's all square, clean up the grit on it, and then I carefully just get rid of that box on the top of my pyramid. I checked the depth of my holes with calipers because then that will allow me to cut off my pyramid plugs at just the right height. At this point, the plugs should be too large for your holes, and so what I do is taper the bottom edges all the way around. I do that using a set of pliers because I have found out you can't hold a small piece like this. It'll catch and go swinging across the room and you'll never find it. After some nice shots of my elbow here, I'm going to hold this up, but you probably won't be able to see it, but I've got it tapered all around the side. I got this idea for a pounding jig from Matt Jackson, next level carpenter. I'll put a link to his video down below. Take a piece of hardwood and in the cross grain direction, cut little angles that will be a half an inch across in my case and taller than my pyramid plug. That way when I pound down on using this as a pounding jig, I will not deform the top of my pyramid plug, and also I won't have it go down too far because I create that jig so that it bottoms out what I'm at. I put a little tongue oil on here to bring out the contrast between the oak and the black walnut. I purposely misaligned the two plunge closest to you so you can see how glaring that is is a mistake. As review of the four principles, make sure your plunge are perfectly aligned with the edge and each other. Make sure they're the same size. Make sure they're the same height and have a nice sharp profile on the top.