- Read Time: 6 mins
- Hits: 15638
I love making woodworking jigs, it's fun and intereting to see what improvements of adaptions can be made to suite every different woodworker's needs. This jig has been around for many, many years and has changed little during that time. Rather than follow one of the plans that are readily available on-line, I decided I needed to make this jig to fit my own needs that may or may not be available in the plans someone else has created. My main objective was to ensure that both legs of the jig would straddle the insert throat plate in my saw, after all, that was the whole purpose ... to build a jig that would accurately set or measure the distance from the top of a table saw blade to the top deck of my table saw and not to a measurement from the top of the blade to base of the throat plate, which is often the case.
To start off with I would need something thicker than 3/4 inch material for the main body of the jig because I wanted to use one of my plastic off-cuts of mitre slot material. I wanted something harder than many woods as this jig will be used a lot and I don't want the measuring arm to get dinted and chewed up by the table saw blades over time.
Making a Depth & Distance Measuring Jig
I started off with a block of wood that was 8 inches wide, 5 inches high and 1.25 inches deep. From this block, the first thing I did was to carefully cut a dado slot that would fit the plastic mitre slot material I wanted to use as the center measuring post. ...
- Read Time: 4 mins
- Hits: 12807
In woodworking, the making of jigs is a necessary element to help us work safer, quicker and more effectively. For some time I have been using the Dowelmax doweling jig and it has opened up a whole new world of woodworking for me because I can make things quicker, more accurate and just as strong as using mortise and tenon joints. One of the issues I face on rare occasion is that the dowels I need to use are sometimes too long, which means I either have to re-drill holes, or cut the dowels slightly shorter. I hate re-drilling holes if I can avoid it because sometimes it can make the holes a bit looser than I like. I prefer the dowels to fit tightly in the holes to give me a better fit and to ensure I get an excellent glue contact. So ... the next issue is cutting dowels. I seldom have to tim more that about a dozen or so, but even that can take a while and cutting them by hand as I have been doing means they are often slightly different lenghts. I have been thinking about some sort of consistent dowel cutting device for some time and I finally came up with an idea that I like.
Making a Dowel Length Cutting Jig
It is MUCH quicker than cutting the dowels by hand and each dowel is cut to the exact length and even better, it only takes a minute or so to set the jig up, which mean I will use it more often and get better results.
- Read Time: 1 min
- Hits: 9207
For most of us who work alone in our workshops, having another set of hands to help hold things would be a pleasant addition. A short time ago I saw a picture of something called an assebly jig, then I looked for more and found all sorts of different versions and most of them looked like a great thing to have in the workshop to help hold projects when you need to work on them and you already have both hands busy.
I alwasy like to try and make jigs that can be worked in more than just one configuration and this version is no exception. I decided that a jig that could work standing up and on it's side would be ideal for almost any occassion, so rather than put a side on the jig, I left it open, knowing that if I needed to make the base more stable, I could easily add a piece to do that at any time, and remove it quickly and easily if needed.
Building a Project Assembly Jig
The first thing to find was the lumber and I have lots of scraps around that are perfect for this. I used 1/2" baltic birch for the base and for the uprights. It's very stable and nice to work with. There really isn't too much to say about the cutting and the assebly that it's pretty straight forward in the video and the project is a simple one to make. I think I took me about 4 hours and much of that time was setting up machines and routers to make sure I had perfect corners, edges and that the slot I was cutting for the center would fit the T-Bolts snugly. I'm looking forward to using this little jig in the future ... it should make woodworking much easier going forward.
- Read Time: 5 mins
- Hits: 20759
When I look around at the jigs I have been amassing it's a bit frightening. So much so that I recently discovered that I have made 2 jigs that do exactly the same thing. One of them I made about 15 - 20 years ago, and for the life of me, I do not know where it went for most of it's life and I needed the same functionality about a year ago, so made that same jig again and soon after found the original ...
Maybe if I had made a dual purpose jig back then ... a jig that did more than one job I might got a bit more use from it and maybe used it a few time over the years instead of squirrliling it away in my wood storage room where is eventually got forgotten about. Well, time to make another jig, this time a dual purpose, and maybe I can even get it to do more?? Wouldn't that be nice, a multi purpose jig ... I must work on trying to make more of my jig do more kinds of things.
The Ultimage Router Jig for Dados & Slots
This router jig for cutting dados is something I have been meaning to make for a long time. I often need to cut one or two quick dados and setting up my dado blade on my table saw, making test cuts etc. Is a lot of time for what should be a short process. The other thing that I need that is along the same vein is a jig that I can use to cut slots ... in even more jigs I want to make, so why not make a jig that does both?