– Hey guys, what's up. Welcome back to the channel. In this video, we're gonna cover how to install aluminum channel for LED lighting in floating shelves. We'll cover your router bit,
setup, how to make the jig and some little hints along the way to make your project come
out really crisp and clean. Hope you enjoy the video. (rumbling and glass crashing) I purchased these
channels from amazon.com, very reasonably priced. They come with the channel and a diffuser, which will go across the
top over the tape lighting. This set also came with some clips, but I'm not gonna use them.
I'm gonna use some
double-sided tape in my channel to hold the track in place. These particular channels
were 39 inches long, and my shelves were 41 inches long, which gave me an inch on both sides. So it was pretty nice. I didn't even have to actually
cut down the channels. Now, in order to route this dado groove, we're gonna have to make a
custom jig in order to do so. And there's gonna be two different options as far as router bits.
Most people are gonna
either use a flush trim bit, so flush cutters with a flush bearing, or you can use an offset bit. So you might use a 1/2 inch bit and a 5/8 inch outside
diameter guide bushing. For most beginners, I'd recommend just using a flush bit with flush bearing. But in my particular case here today, I looked in my router bit box and I didn't have a flush bit that I liked for this application. So I opted to use a 1/2
inch down cutting spiral bit and a 5/8 inch outside
diameter guide bushing. There is always some slop
around the screw holes on these router plates,
so you want to make sure that you're centering the guide bushing around the actual bit.
In a case like this, what
I do is I just site down from the top of the bit with my eyes and just center it by eye. As you center the router
bit on the guide bushing, snug up your screws carefully,
and it should be good to go. Now that we've determined
our router setup, we need to make the jig that we'll use to route this channel. For that, we're just gonna
simply need some scrap plywood. We'll need the actual aluminum channel so that we know the width. We'll need a 1/8 inch spacer block since we're using a guide
bushing on our router instead of a flush bit. With a flush bit, you won't
need this spacer block, you'll make your router jig the
exact width of your channel. And then we'll need some CA
glue to assemble this jig.
All right, so now it's
time to make our jig. Ideally, to do this, you just want to use some scrap material. If you've got some plywood laying around, it'll work just fine. The ideal situation is that
the material for the jig would be flat and not have any
major bows or twists in it. So plywood works pretty well for this. I happen to have a jointer in my shop, so I went ahead and just ran
my pieces through the jointer to ensure that I had nice straight edges before I started assembling my jig. There are four basic parts to this jig. We're gonna have the two pieces of plywood that we just ripped, and
then we're gonna need two spacer blocks. The spacer blocks are
the most important part of this whole process. Since we're using an offset guide bushing, our spacer blocks need to
be 1/8 of an inch wider than our actual aluminum channel to account for the offset
between the router bit and our guide bushing. The most crucial part of making this jig is getting the spacer
blocks the correct width.
We need to take the width
of our aluminum channel and add 1/8 of an inch
to account for the offset between our router bit
and our guide bushing. The thing is, if you make this too tight, you might have trouble
getting your aluminum channel into your dado or getting it out if you need to ever take
it out for any reason. So ideally you want to have
a little bit of extra space so that it's easy to put in and remove that aluminum channel. In order to get the length
of the slot on your jig, you want to use the same principles. Simply put your aluminum
channel in your jig, use your offset block. In this case, I actually went 3/16 to give me a little extra space. And we'll use CA glue,
which is absolutely amazing for making jigs.
It dries instantly, and you
don't have to use any nails or fasteners or anything like that. So here, what I'm doing is
using my offset gauge block and trying to figure out
a way to spread this apart so that I can insert this block. And then with the CA glue,
that'll instantly set up. I'll have links to all the
products I'm using in this video in the video description. These are iGaging setup blocks. They're absolutely amazing
to have around the shop. I have a couple sets, and I cannot recommend them highly enough. Now that I've got these assembled, I'll take my sander and go ahead and just give this jig a light sanding to make sure everything
is sitting flat and flush with the different pieces. Now, at this point, we could stop here and just simply clamp the
jig onto the floating shelf and route it out and be done with it.
But since I've got six of these, I want to go ahead and add some stops to the underside of my jig, so that the jig actually self-references onto the floating shelf each
time I want to route a slot, and I get all of these dados
in the exact same place. To do this, I'll put a couple stops on the underside of the jig placed square to the reference line and just a little bit wider than what my actual floating shelf is going to be. Again, I'll go ahead
and use my 2P-10 CA glue to attach these blocks. Works really great for
making jigs like this. And now we're finally at the
last step of making this jig. We'll add one more stop to
the underside of this jig, which will bump up against the backside of the floating shelf and give
us our final reference point for whenever we clamp this
down to the floating shelf.
Now it's time to put our jig
to work and route these dados on these floating shelves. We already have our router
set up with a 1/2 inch down cut spiral bit. The down cut is important
because that is going to make sure we get a really
nice cut on this dado and we're not actually pulling chips up, which might lead to some tear out. A plunge router is a little bit more ideal for situations like this,
because it has a rod attached to the side of the router, which makes it easier
to set the exact depth.
Since I don't have a plunge
router set up right now, what I'm gonna do is just
take the aluminum channel and place it underneath my jig, and then I can simply place
my router on top of the jig, drop the bit down until it
touches my floating shelf, and that should be the depth
that I need to route my dado. Since we've taken the time to make a really nice jig for this, the routing process is
very straightforward. It's simply a matter of dropping the jig onto your floating shelf and making sure that the bump stops on
the underside of your jig are fully up against the floating shelf. Then we'll simply use some
clamps to clamp down the jig to the floating shelf, using
my Paulk style work bench, which has seen better days. Again, router is pretty
straightforward for this.
Because I'm using a D handle router, I'm taking the full depth
of the dado in one pass from a depth perspective. If I would have a plunge router, it probably would have
been a little bit better to go to half depth, make a
pass, and then go to full depth. It was definitely pushing
this bit setup a little bit, taking quite a bit of
material out at once. With this setup, I don't have
any dust collection set up. So every once in a while,
you may have to stop and blow out the channel to
get rid of all of the sawdust. That way you can ensure
that your guide bushing is riding up against your jig and you're gonna get a
really accurate dado. After you complete your first dado, you're gonna want to do a test bit to make sure that you're getting the correct width on your dado
before you proceed forward.
I found that I actually was
getting a little bit tighter fit than what I actually wanted. If you remember earlier, I showed how there's slop in the router
base with your guide bushing. One little trick that you can do, if you find that you
need to make your dado a little bit wider is
to rotate your router 180 degrees after you complete the dado and hit it again with
your router 180 degrees. Any minute offset between
your guide bushing and the router bit, then, will be doubled and it'll actually make your
dado a little bit wider. So that's what I did on this, and I ended up coming
out with a perfect dado. Go ahead and use some sandpaper to slightly round over the sharp corner. That way, if you pull out your channel, you're not gonna pull out any of that plywood grain with it. The ideal fit here is to be able to insert the aluminum
channel, have a snug fit, but yet still be able to
remove it whenever you need to. Because we did use a round router bit, 1/2 inch router bit to be precise, that means we're gonna be
left with a 1/4 inch radius at the ends of our dado.
We're gonna need to square
that off to make it look good with this aluminum channel. And to do that, I'm gonna
use my favorite chisels, Stanley Sweetheart chisels. You can buy them off Amazon. They're really nice and sharp, and I really like working with them. The key whenever doing work like this is to have a really nice, sharp chisel. That's gonna allow you to do
a nice paring, rocking motion to get a nice clean cut as
you clear out this corner with minimal pressure. Again, guys I'll have
links to these chisels in the video description. I always provide links to
the tools I'm using there. Those are affiliate links and
I get a kickback from Amazon. When you purchase through those links, it helps support the channel and allows me to dedicate more
time to making these videos as high quality and
informative as possible. Also link there to my Amazon storefront, where you'll find lists
of my favorite tools. Definitely check that out also. The final step in this
process is for me to do my job and take care of the
trades that come behind me, i.e.
The electrician. So I want to go ahead and drill some holes in the ends of this aluminum channel, as well as the floating shelf, so that we have a nice area
in order to fish the wires for this LED tape lighting. This channel is made out of aluminum, so it's very soft and
the metal is very thin, so it's pretty easy to drill through just with a standard spade bit. I opted to go ahead and drill holes on both ends of this aluminum
channel and the shelves, that way I'd have maximum flexibility in deciding where I
wanted to fish the wires. As you can see, these
shelves turned out great. We've got the correct width of dado to where the channel fits nice and snugly, but yet loose enough
that it can be removed. I'll go ahead and install
these floating shelves on site without the aluminum channel in place. That way the painter
can finish them first, and then the electrician will come through and mount the aluminum channel using 1/2 inch double-sided tape.
If you want to see more video
of the installation process, as well as the finished product, be sure to subscribe to the channel. Here's a little sneak peek
at the installation process. Here you can see I'm
fishing the wires through for the electrician. That way he'll be able to
pull wire for the tape light after these are actually installed. So the painter will finish these on site. They came out great, and
I'm really looking forward to see the finished result. This is a nice high-end home
here in Northern Indiana, and this is a basement wet bar, so it's gonna be a great spot and look really nice finished up. These floating shelves
are filled with PL premium and thankfully we had the
mechanical room on the back side to make it easy for the electrician
to wire these babies up. Be sure to stay tuned to the channel for more videos on installation
of these floating shelves, and thanks again for watching. (dramatic music).
