If you’re doing a glue up of a cabinet, you will notice that despite the even cut of each panel, when you glue them together they are still misaligned. Using cauls can keep the panels together and evenly. So, when you glue them together, they won’t end up sliding apart.
Imagine a set of books held by two book ends. The book ends keep the books standing together in a line formation. In woodworking, the book ends are the cauls.
How to make regular and cambered cauls?
If you have a lot of extra wood beams in your shop, you can make as many cauls as you need. Just follow these simple steps:
• Choose your beam. Maple and oak are excellent for beams, but poplar is also good.
• A 2- to 3-feet long, 2 ½-inch thick beam is just about the right size. A thicker beam will less likely bend but will also be heavier. When determining the length and width of your cauls, take the size of the panels you plan to clamp.
• Drill a 1-inch hole on the edge of your beam using a 5/16-inch drill bit in the bottom and ¾-inch drill bit on top.
• Cut your threaded rod using a hacksaw to your desired length. Determine the clamp throat distance of your panel.
• Tap all the bottom holes with a 3/8-16 tap.
• Place a rod into the holes on the beam. Screw two 3/8-inch nuts on the rod close to the bottom before tightening using a wrench.
• Remove the nuts once you’ve secured the rod tightly on the beam.
• To keep the top and bottom beams from accidentally being glued together, cover the surface of the clamping side of both beams with packing tape.
• Place and lock down the top beams with wing nuts and washers.
A cambered caul is just a caul with a curve. To add the curve on your caul follow these steps (do this before putting packing tape on the clamping side):
• Mark the center of your caul by drawing a straight line to each end (this is also to mark the area you want to take out).
• Just a 1/8-inch difference between the center and the edges of your caul would be enough.
• Clamp up the caul on your workbench and run both sides of the clamping side using the mark as guide on your jointer.
• At this point, you now have a curve caul. You can finally proceed to the last two steps of preparing a regular caul.
Using cauls is a much better (and safer) solution than manually trying to adjust your woodwork to keep it aligned. A regular caul works just fine, but using a cambered caul can help you reach areas that a regular caul cannot.
Just a final tip though—if you’re yet to try using cauls, it would be best to practice on scrap first. This way, you won’t risk messing up your actual woodworking project as you learn the basics of this important technique.
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