Projects Within Projects

Sometimes, the means to produce a part of a project are nearly as interesting as the project itself! I’m building another box (Shock!! Surprise!!), similar to the “Quiet Little Oak Box” only larger. I again needed to cut some skewed tenons.
I didn’t want to do it the same way as last time.
Not that it didn’t work, but I wanted more control and accuracy. Also, this time was not a change of mind, where I could use the first, straight tenons as a handy guide for sawing the skewed ones. So I came up with this: A sort of “Sled” jig. Simply drilled a large maneuvering hole (1”) and cut a working area for the blade, tilted the saw table to 45, cut a straight line, flipped it over and cut back out from the large hole, using where the blade emerged on the bottom from the first cut as the line for the second cut. After positioning the new jig offset 1/4” (looking for 1/2” tenons) and allowing for the blades slight cutting offset from the table, I clamped it FIRMLY to the table. After checking to see if there was ANY movement or sliding around (there wasn’t), I went ahead and started making the cuts. It actually worked better than I anticipated! Indeed, the first few cuts I was over-applying pressure and found that it worked easier with a lighter hand, just letting it slide along up to the depth marks.
The shoulder cuts still needed to be cut by hand but those are pretty straight forward. About half way through the jig cutting, I checked the clamp to see if the vibrations of the scroll saw had loosened it up at all, but all was good! Of course, I still had to clean everything up with a good file, but overall it worked almost too easy!! I’m thinking this would work pretty well on a band saw or drill press, and on small round stock as well. :-) Michael C.

-- Mike in Concord, NH---Unpleasant tasks are simply worthy challenges to improve skills.