My first "on the forum" as I go project

Ok – so I said that I was going to pick a project from one of my favorite books and then post my progress on line. So here we go. I’ve chosen as my first project a box from Doug Stowe’s book – Basic Box Making – A sliding top Pencil box. The first thing I decided about this project was that I wanted to cut the fingers on the router and not the table saw. The reasoning for this is that the two ends are very short and to hold the end against the fence I would either have to have my fingers very close to the blade or use a clamp to hold the piece in place. The closeness I do not like at all and the clamp would be very time consuming considering how many fingers there are to cut. So I decided this would go on the router table instead.

Having decided on the router table I needed to make a finger joint jig to make accurate cuts. So that took me to Bill Hylton’s Ulitmiate Guide to the Router Table. Page 45 has a very simple jig and then the box joint fence is described on page 89. So that’s what I’ve done tonight – make this jig. Here are the pictures to show my steps. I apologize for the picture quality – but between my camera and my photography skills—- what can I say.

This is the jig from Bill’s book

I wanted to make the jig of just stuff I had in my shop. Wanted to be frugal—- so the sides are pine and the reset is mdf

Having only 2 hands I had to come up with a way to hold the sides onto the sides of the router table in order to attached the front and back fences. I used carpet tape (which I don’t think I’ve ever actually used with carpet.) – I did run into a slight problem with the tape once I screwed the front and back on——it’s hard to get off with tape—- I had to tap it with my hammer to loosen the tapes hold.

I put two thicknesses of copy paper on one side so as to give a little play so the jig would actually slide and not stick. It actually worked amazingly well.

When I was looking for parts I was lucky enough to find a few boards just a tad over the length I needed. I did not measure these, rather I laid them out and marked directly on the board the cut line and then used the chop saw to finish it off.

this is how I clamped them on the table.

Just showing the counter sink, I don’t have the fancy counter sink bits so I use a forstener bit to make the countersink then use a regular brad point bit to drill the pilot hole.

Here is the jig with the front and back pieces on.

Next came drilling the holes for the fence. I’ve never done this so this was an interesting task. I ended up using shorter bolts and wing type knobs.

Here I’ve set up a stop block and my fence.

I almost forgot that I needed a start mark before a stop block! The blue tape has a mark on it, which you can’t see for lack of my photo skills.

One issue I ran into was that the fence had to be moved back for the second cut in order to use the same stop block setting. Not sure I can explain this but if you lay out your marks on the board and try it you’ll see what I mean.

Here I’m cheating and I put the board on top of the bit and looked under it to see that the bit was on my layout lines.

Before I put the fence one I’m going to round off the front corners and the top corners of the fence. I used a 1.25 radius for this

so now I’m ready to attach the fence to the jig. You can see I marked the spot where NO screws were to go so that I did not ruin my router bit.

Opps- my drill is to large to fit that last screw in – I ended up going through the bottom for the screws on both ends.

Almost done. This shows the fence attached

I held the fence on with a clamp and then drilled through the back and into the finger fence to get a starting mark then took the finger fence to the drill press to drill through holes for the bolts.

HA! – I almost amazed myself with this—- needed a washer – so I made one! Just a piece of walnut with a hole – how about that!

Did not have a stove bolt so used a t-track bolt.

Got to use my chisel to chisel out the recess for the bolt so they are flush with the face of the fence. I wish everything was as easy to chisel as MDF——;-)

Finished and ready for the first cut. That’s tomorrow.

Well – hope I’ve not bored you to death with this. I welcome any suggestions on making the jig better. I’m pretty surprised that it slides as well as it does. The proof will be in the pudding as they say once I try to make my box with it.

Thanks for looking.

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