Favorite/essential jigs?

[RFGuy]

Bainin,

I like that one and I haven't seen that before. One benefit of your technique is that it offers more contrast. Lining up a greyish sawblade tooth next to a gray pencil mark cut line presents a like-on-like situation that could cause some error as they tend to bleed together in appearance. Whenever you can contrast colors they will really stand out relative to each other making them a lot more visible to the eye. Using a light color wood for this, or even painting the front edge a light color is a good idea to contrast with the mark line on the wood you are cutting. Thanks for sharing...

[Hobbyman2]

Several years ago we purchased a set of these and have had good luck with them, changing bits can make things even more interesting , I dont have any pictures to share , but we have made a few boxes and picture frames . https://www.mlcswoodworking.com/shopsit ... ystem.html

when it comes to jigs I am a fan of laying out the outer dimensions of a frame on a sheet of plywood , screwing down a few straight pieces of scrap along those lines and building the frame inside of these pieces , it helps keep things tight and the angles are much easier to fine tune , if you keep things tight the need for clamps during glue up is minimal . in fact if you glue them up side down you can staple the edges together , I have made cabinet doors this way so they all match and cut and glue splines in the miters for strength . https://www.google.com/search?q=splined ... ezDxpvs65M ,,

on a box you can use a dove tail bit and make them appear to be dovetailed together like this article , I would make a jig to hold the box on a router table instead of freehand https://www.google.com/search?q=dovetai ... nt=gws-wiz

[whiteb01]

Heres another one Im trying out. It is mostly due to laziness. Instead of making actual measurements on blade distance to fence etc...I tend to make small tic marks on my boards where I want to cut them. Then i do my level best to hit those targets-sometimes its good, sometimes not so good.

The error occurs because the blade curves away from the board and its hard to gauge by eyeball if the blade aligns well to the tick mark on the board.

So i made this step gauge that uses the blade itself for self alignment and has a series of steps cut into its face to allow overhang/overlap with various board heights in 1/4" increments. It sets down on the blade and fits snugly-since the channel was made with the same blade.

step-gauge.jpg

The slot on the step face was aligned to the saw alignment slot on the bottom-the bottom slot is kindof drawn in pencil on the side of the board to give you an idea-it doesn't completely slot the board bottom.

step-gauge-side.jpg

Finally you can see how it works. You place the step gauge on the blade and slide your board up to the step face-where you can then clearly set your
blade to the tick mark on your board. The slot indicates the blade width-so its easy to setup for a left or right side cut on your tick mark.

You gotta be a little careful - as you could potentially bend your blade if you push sideways on something like this, but it definitely has improved my lazy accuracy.

step-gauge-board.jpg


b

I'm making one of these as soon as I get a chance. It looks like it offers a faster, far more accurate alignment of your mark to the blade.