This project will be very patriotic because I'm making some United States flags made out of wood. Speaking of wood, I'll be using curly maple, black walnut and sapele. I've never worked with sapele (red) but it looked better than mahogany when choosing between them. Anyways, what you don't see in this picture is the other three pieces that I had to buy because I ran out of all three types of wood. No big deal because there's a killer sandwich shop called D'Elia's Grinders right around the corner from Reel Lumber in Riverside.

Every project I work on has challenges and this one was no exception. In fact, I'll be using a tool I have very little experience with. What I plan on doing is making two different sizes of flags: one will be 40" long and the other will be 24" long. And there will be three of each (six total). Once you have the setup, it's not that much extra work to make more than one.

These will all be presents for different family members: birthdays or fathers day gifts. Yes I know I'm very early for fathers day but I figure it's better than being late. And one of these will be given in September later this year. With that being said, let's jump in and get started. 
 

Let's Make Some Stripes

I borrowed this DeWalt table saw from my son-in-law. And one of the larger ones will be for him on Father's Day. Now this is the tool I very little experience with, but this should make life much easier because I'm going to have a bunch of pieces. In fact I'll be dealing with two different widths of stripes because I'm making two sizes of flags. More on that later. 
 

This old desk top has come in really handy and I use all the time now that I'm finished with my granddaughter Christmas present. What I'm using it for this time is an 'out feed table' for the long pieces that I'll be working with. I placed it on my adjustable saw horses and it's just the right height.
 

I'll be using the black walnut for the Cantons and I've got all my pieces that I need below.
 

I'm using a biscuit joiner (or plate joiner) for the black walnut. This Porter Cable tool was given to me by my father-in-law a few years ago and I forgot that I even had it, till recently that is. Now I've never used one of these before so I read the manual that came with it to get an idea how it works. Turns out they're very easy to use and this operation goes quickly.

A good eye will notice that I'm using my desk top for this operation. The reason for this: turns out it's very flat so it doubles as an assembly table as well. The pieces that you see below are for the smaller flag and are 9 1/2" long. I used two biscuits in each one here, but I used three on the larger pieces, which are 15" long.

To use this tool, you put a pencil mark at the slot location and then line up the joiner with your mark. The biscuit joiner has a small red line at it's center making it easy to line up with your pencil mark. Then all you do is press firmly against your work piece, pull the trigger and push the joiner into your work piece. Each slot only takes about one or two seconds to cut, pull back on the tool and you're done. Pretty easy, but it makes a mess.
 

In the Porter Cable box, there were three sizes of biscuits, #0, #10 and #20 and I'll be using #10s. The larger the number, the larger the size of biscuit. As you can see the biscuits are shaped like a football and they help locate your pieces for glue-ups. Once I cut all the slots, I ran my sanding block over the surface to remove any standing wood pieces and then blew off everything with compressed air.

The biscuit joiner is adjustable, depending on the size biscuits being used. You can see the adjustment knob in the picture above (white dial) which allows you to refine the depth that's needed.
 

Here I'm gluing the Cantons together, again using that old desk top. That biscuit joiner worked out really good because the top surfaces of my work pieces were very close when I pulled the clamps off. No more movement while clamping things together. Why didn't I use this tool before?