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Some of the jigs I make are jigs I wished I had made a long time ago, and this is one of those jigs. Yes, I did make another jig similar to this a few years ago, but this one seems easier to use and adjust, and the bonus is that with the clear plastic base, even with sawdust flying, I cans still see farily well what I am doing.
For the construction of this jig I decided on using a better grade of 3/4 inch plywood. I didn't have enough longer pieces around so time to go out and purchase a full 4 x 8 sheet.
Watch it on Youtube: https://youtu.be/bm9SDuWIAk0
I starte off by using my circular saw to cut strips off the 8 foot side of the sheet. I cut 2 of each of the following 3 inch, 2 inch and 1.5 inch, these would form the rails that the carriage would slide on, I also cut one more 3 inch that would serve as the sides of the carriage. I also found I did not have any clear plastic chunks bit enough so off to the plastic store to snoop through their cut-off bin to see what I could find ...
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In the world of woodworking, so much is "square" ... it's nice to make things that are round once in a while, and if you have a table saw, yes, even a table saw can make round blanks. The first time I ever heard of this, I thought ... that sounds dangerous, but then it was explained that to start off with, all you really do is make a buch of series of straight cuts until the wood is almost round, then finish up the last bit by just skimming the all those straight cuts ... a pretty simple concept really!!
Watching on Youtube: https://youtu.be/6TCFzoRVo1k
Like a lot of jigs, the circle making jig for the table saw can be made fully adjustable with all sorts of variable stops and clamps. The one that I elected to make is the simple version that might be for a one-time use, of for a limited number of round blanks. If you were going to make many, many, circel blanks, you might want to opt for a more complex version. For mine ... I started off with ...
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Adding detail to box corners really makes them stand out and helps to reinforce the edges as well. Adding Dovetail Splines is one way of adding detail but it does take a degree of patience, and you need to select the correct accessories and woods to make this job go smoothly and by reading this you will see some of the challenges I encountered and what you can do to help eleviate them.
Watch the video on Youtube Here: https://youtu.be/Te0NsctAtb4
The first thing that needs to be done is to make the jig. I made mine from good quality 1/2" plywood. I cut a 4 inch wide strip and after cutting that strip in half I had 2 - 1/2"x12"x4" strips. I glued the edges together at 90 degrees, making sure that the angle was exactly 90 degrees, you can see all the clamps I used to do this, I used my doweling jig to ensure the edges were aligned. My plywood was slightly bowed so I needed to ensure that the angle was correct and the wood was straight.
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There are many innovations, modifications and ideas that people develop and employ to make woodworking easier, quicker and more accurate ... are are a few that I use from time to time ..
#1 Board Glue-up Alignments & #2 Clamping Extension
Often one of most frustrating parts of woodworking is gluing boards together. This is especially true if the boards are already planed to thickness and just need to be glued together. When we apply glue the boards tend to slip and slide and even using a biscuit joiner does not eliminate the problem because most biscuits fit loosely in the slots and this still allows the boards to slide up and down enough to come out alignment. One way of helping to combat this is using "U alingners". These are small "U" shaped, shop made clamp accessories the sit above and below the glue joints and help to align the boards on each side.
When I glue boards, I try to align the centers, which often means the ends are out alignment and these little clamping accessories can help bring those board ends back into alignment with one another. The nice thing is they have a hole in the middle so the glue can dry naturally then in 30 or so minutes, when you take the clamps off to scrape the excess glue off, you can scrape the whole board clean.