 Let's talk about one way to do really straight dog holes in a workbench I'm finishing up a thing called a pop-up workbench And so I am wanted to get dog holes in it And as you can see I've already done that the whole idea obviously is to get nice straight perpendicular dog holes and Get them to be lined up really well and by the way in doing the dog holes I put my smaller top on top of the saw horses first and then I put my large top on top of that So that when I drill these dog holes, I'm gonna drill them precisely through both Tops at the same time That way when you want to use the double layer for a top You can get these dog holes all lined each of my squares here where I've got cut Match fit dovetail grooves is six inches so it's six inches from the middle of the groove to the middle of the groove I took some Baltic birch plywood left over from this same build And I wanted to get a jig put together that would allow me to To have enough of a guidance hole there to get myself at 90 degrees I didn't want to try to just mark off where the dog hole would go and then go freehand I wanted something that was stable. I wanted something that would help me Keep my bit at 90 degrees because when you try to do it freehand You may look good from your perspective this direction and then you don't realize from over on this side That you're really angled So I laminated these three pieces together Then I cut them to the length that I wanted to get them lined up with the Match fit dovetail grooves. I just placed it on its side and then I came down with a Pencil and I made sure this was lined up right on the edges made sure it was 90 degrees or Parallel here not an angle and Then I just did a little mark right where the edges of each of these grooves is I Then use the combination square to just continue those marks across the jig Now I had one two three four Line pairs of lines that represented the dovetail grooves took a ruler And I went from corner to corner and drew a line and then drew a line from the other corner And of course where that intersects is the middle and so I did that for each of these five squares Now I know exactly where my middles are I then just used a hole punch to punch that so that my drill bit Would find that hole that exact middle so I I have this and I think it was only about $17 or so a wood owl wood owl OWL made in Japan smooth three-quarter inch auger bit and what it does is it has a a Tip on it that's got grooves and and when you let the drill Do the work by itself that tip bites into the wood and pulls this auger bit down into the wood and what you want to do when you drill these holes is Let the drill work by itself. Don't press down on it By the way, how did I get 90 degree holes in my jig in the first place? Well, obviously It's small enough. I can take that over to my drill press All right, so you use this drill bit. You've got these nice perpendicular holes because you did them on a drill press you take your in this case the base and I drew lines across Again each of squares. I did that on the jig, but I did that down here on the base as well And so that gave me the center and I only needed to do that on the two outside edges Because if I this jig is not flexible if I get the two outside ones lined up Then I should be good to go for the rest of them because these are lined up So mark that down below put this over it look for that Crosshatch down below get it all lined up perfectly make sure it's flush here and Flesh this way and as long as you're very careful going all the way down You should be able to get some really nice very straight dog Worked really well. I was very happy with the process because you only Went part way through and you just let that drill bit poke out at the bottom Then what do you do to finish off the hole the whole idea of not? Pressing the drill and letting this finish the hole is because of tear out on the bottom You want to avoid tear out whenever you can It would have been cumbersome to try to get a sacrificial piece underneath this whole workbench what you do then is just let this poke through so then you flip it over and Because it's poked through you see all these holes Well, then you can take a fast bore bit And or another three-quarter inch bit I like this because this pointed edge Goes into that little hole and so now I know I'm right in the center of where I need to be even though I'm coming at it from the other side and then just a little bit of pressure and Take out, you know about an eighth of an inch is all and Now it'll poke through and you don't have any tear out because now you're going the other direction And you're not going to push it all the way through So that's how you get them Drilled nice and straight. The only other thing I do Just a personal preference is I don't like to leave these all sharp Edges I like to do a little round over on them a little camber And so I use a one sixteenth and my little palm router here So I use a one sixteenth round over a bit test your depth of your cut on your practice jig and then Go do all of your holes So yesterday we took this test piece of plywood that has three different Match fit dovetail grooves in it and the idea was to try out different finishes and see which ones might be the best performing When you're trying to use match fit dovetail clamps in match fit dovetail grooves. They're really not match fit dovetail grooves They're just dovetail grooves So I had done this section here with Watco Danish oil this one happens to be natural color And this is Baltic Birch plywood. I did the middle section with a varathane Ultimate polyurethane that was water-based and that was interior and it's matte MATTE and then I did this section over here with 50% boiled linseed oil and 50% paint thinner or turpent or mineral spirits All right, so they've dried overnight and now we're ready to test them to see which one we might want to put on any kind of a jig or In this case the pop-up workbench So that these will slide so let me get these out of the way I've got these marked Danish oil water-based polyurethane and borrowed linseed oil So let's see how this clamp slides in the polyurethane Try to get it in there try to move it along Jiggle it push it You know everything you can in it when I did this the first coat it Boiled up as you know or feathered up because of the water base So I sanded that off and then I did the second coat and that's what has dried and I also Make sure I wiped as much as I could inside of the groove so that I didn't have buildup of excessive Polyurethane in there and I think maybe the water base swells up the wall of The match fit groove and so you could probably sand it down enough and use a little small Chisel and and get it working better, but that's a lot of work Let's see if using a different finish is just an easier way. So here's the 50-50 boiled linseed oil put that in there and Again And I'm not playing to the camera here this is this is real This boiled linseed oil boom as long as you don't let it build up there too much And then here's the Danish oil. Is that gonna stick like the polyurethane? man, that is That is cool, here's the result Danish oil Watco Danish oil works great the boiled linseed oil As long as you make sure you wipe your grooves very well 50-50 mix that works great So just decide which look you like the best which one this is a little Rougher and as you know workbench tops are not supposed to be sliding around a lot I'm going to use the Danish oil, but then I'm going to sand it when I'm through on the very top To rough it up a little bit So that I don't have things slide too much on my workbench That is a small workshop guys test of what I'm going to use in the future For my match fit dovetail clamp jigs of various types