JigsRSS

Make your shop time more efficient and accurate (and work more safely) with these easy-to-follow plans for jigs and fixtures from the editors and contributors to Popular Woodworking Magazine. You’ll find step-by-step plans for everything from jigs to help you lay out ellipses to dado jigs for your router to tenon jigs and panel-cutting sleds for your table saw to saw vises for holding your handsaws handsaws as you sharpen at your workbench. Plus workbench accessories no hand-tool woodworker should be without.

AprilCover

‘City Sideboard’ & Getting Square

Our April 2013 cover project is a “City Sideboard” built by Mario Rodriguez of the Philadelphia Furniture Workshop (the digital issue drops to subscribers late next week; the print issue will start arriving in subscribers’ mailboxes shortly thereafter). The sideboard, which is sized for smaller, contemporary spaces, is designed to introduce students to a traditional … Read more »

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Cheap & Simple Dado Jig

If you follow my woodworking habits, you are well aware that I enjoy using my routers with pattern bits chucked in the collet. The piece I’m working on for the August issue requires repetitive stop cuts that are a 1/4″ wide. As far as I know, pattern bits with a 1/4″ or 1/2″ shank in … Read more »

Start low and move up. Set the height of the saw blade to the shoulder line by sighting from the edge of the table. Make sure that one tooth is at top dead center, and make your initial setting slightly lower than you think you should. It will be easier to move up after a test cut than it would be to move down.

Table Saw Tenon Jig

This jig enables you to safely make a cut on the table saw with the workpiece held vertically as it moves over the blade. Read more »

Routing the Plate Opening: A good way to get a parallel and square opening is to use the saw fence as a guide for two of the cuts. Measure the offset from the edge of the router base to the side of the spiral bit and use this in setting the fence for each cut, parallel to the fence. Clamp a square piece of wood in place as a guide for the sides of the opening, perpendicular to the saw fence. Next form the rabbet that holds the insert in place by using the same procedure and bit you used to cut the opening

Router Fence for a Table Saw

Your table saw is a router table and jointer just waiting to happen. Replace one of the saw’s wings (or adapt your existing table board) to hold a router table insert, and you’re in business. Read more »

Start With a Sandwich Begin by sandwiching three pieces of wood. This part is made from two pieces of 3/4" x 6" x 36" plywood with a piece of 1" x 1" x 36" solid wood centered between. Use a spacer to index the center precisely in the middle of the larger panels. Glue and nail the sandwich together.

Dovetail Jig

Years ago when I first learned to cut dovetails, my first joints weren’t things of beauty. Sometimes there were more shims than pins. Over time, my work got better and faster. But despite the improvement in my skills, I still had trouble cutting tails or pins consistently, especially if I got out of practice.

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