Well, last weeks video went over better than I ever expected!
I guess it really fills a need for a lot of woodworkers. Not everyone has a saw with the ability to take a stack set, or maybe simply like me they don’t have the money to spend on one. Also I didn’t realise that in certain European countries dado stacks aren’t just hard to come by, they are illegal. Wow.
The free plans for my Single Blade Box joint Jig were downloaded over 400 times, that is just huge for one week, well for me at least! I’ve even had a lot of people send me photos of ones that they’ve built which is really cool too. Please do so if you make one too!
I wanted to show a technique that I came up with to cut different width fingers on the one joint, I mentioned it in the first video but didn’t explain it thoroughly. So here you go, another video. 🙂
Here’s a standard template with 3/4in fingers.
And here it is with half the fingers replaced with 1/2in blocks.
Instead of cutting these blocks at two different heights, I had a suggestion that I should cut them all at the one height, and then simply lie the relevant blocks on their sides for the low section. Makes sense, so that’s what I did here.
Now normally when cutting a box or drawer joints on this jig, you would cut all 4 sides at once, and simply offset two of them like I show in the first video. However when cutting joints with different width fingers, you have to first cut the sides, then the front & back together, or vice versa. If you don’t do that, the joints won’t line up.
(Because I’m just doing this as an example, I’m only cutting one piece per side.)
And I’m using 6mm mdf which is not a great material choice, but I have plenty and it is cheap!
To make the mating piece for this joint, all we need to to is reverse our template. Sounds hard? It’s not, we reverse it just by flipping the blocks on their side. So simply put, if a block was Tall, make it Short, if it was Short, make it Tall. Once that’s done, you’re all set.
Also, and this is very important with varied width fingers, after you reset the template make sure you do not offset the work pieces as you normally would for the mating lengths. The second lengths get butted right up to your fence guide exactly as the first two pieces did.
Done. Easy huh?
So that’s pretty much it, nothing too difficult about it at all. I only used two finger widths in this example but you can see how it would work with any number or size variation. Just don’t do it in 6mm mdf, even when it works, it looks crappy!
Did you happen to make this jig and maybe even use it to make a project? I’d love to see it!
Send a photo through to me at the below email or maybe tweet or facebook me, it’d be great to see what you came up with!
I’d like to see a demo of you cutting 1/4″ fingers.
In a future project video I will, but really, it’s just the same as cutting these widths would be.
Great jig idea!! The followup is great, too. My 2-cents is that on the original jig page you should remove the pic of a setup that you admit won’t work…it serves no good purpose.
I like. I like the plans with the drawer runners too but think that the dust might play havoc on them. I think with a little find tuning this could be the way i go. Also, I like how you can customize your pattern by using a different pattern of block or different size blocks. Great design. Perhaps adding something to clamp the blocks in place as opposed to wedging them in might work.
Yep, when I rebuild it I will work out a better solution for locking the blocks in place, for now though it works well. Thanks for commenting David, send a photo through when you make one!
great jig …
Thankyou!
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