- Read Time: 7 mins
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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.
Making a Dovetail Spline Jig for the Router Table
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 ..
Woodworking Tips and Tricks: 5 Hacks for Clamps
#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.
- Read Time: 5 mins
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Making circles and cutting holes in wood can be accomplished in many ways such as ... the bandsaw, a jig saw, scroll saw, fret saw a hole saw, and even some others that are less common. Making circles or holes in wood is not always easy, depending on the tool, sometimes the circles or holes are not really round and very often the edges are quite rough, which sometime doesn't matter, but in some cases, and nice clean edge and a perfect circle are exactly what is needed.
One of the ways to make holes or circles is using a router fitted with a suitable straight bit. The problem with doing this with full size routers is that they are big and bulky and often the sizes of the cut-out can be quite small, which is exactly why I am making this Circle Jig for my Trim or Compact Router
Circle Cutting Jig for a Trim Router
Making a Circle Jig is pretty easy and doesn't take that long to make, but there are some procedures to follow to make it easier to make and more functional ...
- Read Time: 9 mins
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Featherboards are not used nearly as often as they could be for a few reasons, they are time consuming to make, they often don't work as well as they could and sometimes they are difficult to mount on your machinery. In this video I am taking one of the elements away, which is making, good quality featherboards that will give you consistent and repeatable results with little setup (depending on your equipment).
The biggest problem I have always had is making featherboards with consistently thin fingers that will give me the kind of pressure I need for use on my router table or table saw. This jig solves that problem and speeds up the process too.
Building a Featherboard Making Jig for the Bandsaw (2)
I first tried to use my "Lynn Sabin" box joint jig (kindly provided free, by Leeway Workshop), but the design of it simply doesn't not work well for featherboards. You can see more on the box joint jig I made right on this website here. I decided to try to re-design it using the same principal of using a threaded bar a the indexing component and went about making a prototype featherboard jig. I seldom need to make prototypes but I do find them useful at times when I don't have a clear vision for the end product. The prototype I made worked OK, but not nearly as well as I hoped, but what I learned making it was what I could do to improve it and so here is what I did ...