Project Information
At the beginning of 2012 my family and I sat down to make a few goals for the year. I prefer to make "goals" instead of "resolutions" so that they are something I can work towards during the year. My educational goal for 2012 was to learn how to make a box joint. I knew that I wanted to make a jig, so I looked at a few examples of jigs and alternated back and forth between a router based jig vs. a dado blade jig. In the end I settled on the jig for the table saw and dado blade because of the flexibility of making joints with different widths and heights.
The jig is pretty basic, just a framework with a replaceable face plate. I recognize that I will need to make a pin and set the distance with each set-up, but it doesn't seem like too much to cut a strip off the box material to have something the exact thickness. Back in the summer I picked up a pair of 4×4 "skids" made out of what I think is UHMW plastic from a job site for free and milled a pair of runners out of it. (I still have a considerable amount of the stuff) That was about as fancy as I got. The final picture is the first ever box joint that I have cut. I am pretty pleased that I was able to cross this off the list for the year. Maybe next year will be handcut dovetails.
The jig is pretty basic, just a framework with a replaceable face plate. I recognize that I will need to make a pin and set the distance with each set-up, but it doesn't seem like too much to cut a strip off the box material to have something the exact thickness. Back in the summer I picked up a pair of 4×4 "skids" made out of what I think is UHMW plastic from a job site for free and milled a pair of runners out of it. (I still have a considerable amount of the stuff) That was about as fancy as I got. The final picture is the first ever box joint that I have cut. I am pretty pleased that I was able to cross this off the list for the year. Maybe next year will be handcut dovetails.