Thin Strip Jig Upgrade You Can’t Ignore

One of the many benefits of YouTube is that sharing ideas with others often helps all of us improve what we do. Such is the case with this Thin Strip Ripping Jig I made a few years ago. My buddy Bill, from the Sunflower Woodworkers Guild near Wichita, came up with cool safety adaptation for this and today I am going to make re-make this very popular jig ... 

One of my concerns with this style of jig, especially when ripping very small pieces of wood, the blade "could" flip a small piece of wood upward toward the operator ...

We always want to work a safely as possible, and that includes preventing, "unexpected" incidents, which can startle the operator and that alone has the potential for possible injury, and tools and wood can do unexpected so we need to try and mitigate even potential items that may crop up and this is one of them.

This thin strip ripping jig on it's own, is a great little workshop tool, it's quick easy to use and super accurate for anyone cutting small strips of wood for Inlay Banding or Kumiko.

Here is a great website anyone who wants to know more about Kumiko
  

 Wood Magazine did a nice article on Inlay Banding HERE

 And of course there are many other things in woodworking that require thin strips of wood that are shorter in length that what someone might use for edge banding a plywood shelf.

Rather than modify my existing jig I decided to make a whole new one that is slightly wider and longer for even later veneers.

My dimensions are:
Base: 3" x 1-1/2" x 16"
Handle: 7" long x 5" high x 1" thick
Upright: 7" High x 2" wide from 1/2" Baltic Birch Plywood (or similar plywood)
Upright Base from same Baltic Birch
Backstop of the Jig: Also Baltic Birch 3" long x 2" high with slot cut for hanger bolt on router

After cutting the base the next thing I did was insert the hanger bolt ... DON'T DO THIS, instead, make the slot in the backer board for the jig, you can make the slot manually but drilling holes about an inch apart in the middle of the backer board then clean out the middle to make it adjustable, or cut it on the router like I did.  The reason for this is it is much easier AFTER the backer board is cut, to find where the hanger bolt needs to be inserted into the back of the jig. 

Below is a shot of the upright being glued to it's base on my Squaring Jig, this way the upright should be exactly 90 degrees to the base (or very, very close) when installed. 

The rest of the build is pretty straight forward. If you notice the picture below the handle is not square to the base, somewhere that moved on me, but did not notice until I was finishing the jig, if you check out the final picture you can see that I squared that handle. Not a big deal either way, but I like stuff to look correct too, and this one with the slight offset handle was easily corrected.  

 If you are looking for a source for "Jig Knobs" and other accessories, check out my affiliate like to Taylor Tools
The red versions are some that I coated with the Dipit Plastic coating so they would stand out more.

Here is the finished front of the jig, showing the hold-down attachment (before finish was applied) so you can see the detail of how the constructed jig looks. 

The blade I used in the demo cut was a 40 tooth Diablo 7-1/4" circular saw blade that I use in my circular saw for cutting plywood sheets for nice clean cut. I prefer the 60 tooth version, show below and available from the Woodworkweb Amazon Store, a finer cut for cutting thin strips, almost no dust and a much quieter blade to use, and comes with a 5/8 Arbor size to fit table saw abors too.

And here is the finished jig, with re-adjusted handles and some wood dye applied to give it a bit more of a finished look,  which helps it to stand out from other lumber in my workshop for quicker and easier access.  

 The final thing, and something I did not talk about in the jig video, is Zero Clearance Inserts for your table saw and how to easily make them.  You can read more about on this website, but for now I am going to insert one of the videos I have made on doing this right here.

Thanks for watching
Colin Knecht

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