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I was intrigued with Nick Engler’s Ingenious Jigs article from December 2001 that showed you how to make a jig for cutting perfect dados in the sides of case pieces. After my last project, where the routing was the most repetitious and boring part of the piece, I thought there should be an easier way. I wasn’t happy with the dados made using my router table, radial arm saw or table saw. I don’t like to take the time to make a jig, even though some have been proven helpful and many times reusable.
In looking around my shop, my eye alighted on my commercial dovetail jig. It had all the properties of the jig from the article: a good, straight, sturdy hold-down clamp with a wide throat to accommodate wide boards or even multiple boards needing the same dado. The clamp that holds boards in the jig makes a perfect fence for my router. When running multiple boards, I did take the precaution of clamping the pieces together with another clamp to prevent them from slipping in the jig, as many times slight variances of wood thickness will allow this to happen.
– Roberta Keefe
Here are some supplies and tools we find essential in our everyday work around the shop. We may receive a commission from sales referred by our links; however, we have carefully selected these products for their usefulness and quality.
