12 Great Tablesaw Jigs with Jim Heavey - WOOD magazine

hi I'm Jim Heavey from WOOD magazine fear shop is anything like mine your table saw it takes center stage in this video we're going to show you how jigs and fixtures can greatly increase the accuracy and the versatility of this workhorse well any discussion about a table saw really should start with some checks and alignments and the first thing is to make sure that your blade is at 90 degrees to the table to do that I just use a machinist square and check real quickly to make sure that that's the case I can also use a plastic angle like this and tilt the blade at forty-five to make sure that that stop is set to if either of those stops does not allow for ninety degrees or 45 check your owner's manual to see how to adjust them the second thing is to make sure that your fence is parallel to the blade one of the easiest ways to do that is just take an adjustable square you can set it in the groove which is already parallel to the blade and slide the fence until it just touches the edge of that square and check here and at the other end to make sure that that alignment is exactly right if it's not again check your owners manual the adjustments on this fence are just behind the edge that will adjust it either way the last thing to do is to check and make sure that your miter gauge is at 90 degrees to the blade again with the plastic square slide the miter gauge up and check the alignment here and here and make sure that we're at 90 it can also do the same thing at 45 degrees and make that same alignment and once you've gotten it correct make sure that you really now you're all set to go I'm gonna use a variety of materials to build these jigs and templates the first one is MDF for medium density fiberboard it's a paper-based type product extremely strong very dense and nice and flat I like to use it on jigs that will contact or may contact the saw blades because this won't dull saw blades the nice part about it is that it's a great material to use for jigs the bad part is that it has an awful lot of sawdust that comes when you cut it so make sure that your vacuum control is set up well second material is multi ply plywood you may have heard it referred to as Baltic birch or maybe Finnish birch what's interesting about this plywood is it's got 13 plies that make up this 3/4 inch thickness even good plywood only has 5 these 13 plies and an awful lot more density they also keep the board really flat with no voids I really like using this stuff it comes from about quarter of inch up to 3/4 of an inch the third product is hard Borg or masonite I find it works very well for jigs especially when I've got the toilet bowl bolts underneath that you have to have something durable to pull up against it's a great material it's available in stores and usually 2 by 4 foot sizes that's available from eighth up to about quarter of an inch and the last material is Plexiglas or acrylic I like using this especially on jigs with routers because you'll find that you can see what the bid is doing but on table saws I can put this on the top deck as kind of a guard and I can see through and see what the blade is doing without worrying about getting anything in my eyes this is available in eighth of an inch and up to quarter can find it a lot of glass supply houses and also at the big-box stores those are the materials I've got to use and I what I found is that I like to take my jigs and templates and and base them around must-haves and nice-to-haves so the first thing we're going to start out with is the must-haves and we're going to start working on this zero clearance sensor as a woodworker you're very familiar with a throat plate that comes with your table saw these have a fairly big opening in the center of them which involves a saw blade to cut it either 90 degrees or tilt all the way down to 45 without contacting a plate that's a good thing usually you're doing all of your cutting with the blade set at 90 degrees which makes this opening too big for the table saw blade the problem there is as the blade cuts through this what's going to happen is it's going to leave chip out on your high-grade ply woods and also run you more brittle hardwoods so we want to do is replace this throat plate with what you see in the saw right now and that's a zero clearance insert a couple of ways to do that one is to look at the commercial aftermarket business and you'll find some of these that are made for your saw just need to know the manufacturer of your saw this one's made out of ultra high molecular weight or UHMW it's got a splitter in it already but the material I really like to use for this is this multi ply plywood we talked about a little bit earlier this is half-inch the same thickness as a throat plate that you're replacing and all you do to make these issues your existing throat plate as a template trace the outlines and cut them on the table saw and bandsaw and sand them to size slide them into the opening slide your fence over the top and just crank that spinning blade up and then back down again the groove that's cut in there will be exactly the width of the table saw blade and you'll get no chip out anymore and it's a lot safer you won't find pieces of material getting stuck between the blade and the saw you won't find pieces shoot into the bottom of the table it works really well one of the problems you're gonna find though is that when you insert this piece of plywood that you cut into the table saw to make that first cut it's not going to fit down into the saw and that's because none of these table saw blades go much deeper than a quarter of an inch into the table they never had to because they were going through a very thin piece of metal that was already cut for them so a couple options you can route a groove down the inside to allow a little bit more clearance so she can get the plate in there and then crank the blade up but I found it's a lot easier just replace your 10-inch table saw blade with an 8-inch dado blade do the same operation crank that blade up and down through it then swap those blades back out to put your 10-inch blade back in there and you're set to go make one of these for every cut you're planning on making for using different size dado blades make more of these if you're doing it on an angle make more still with a magic marker mark them you'll find you'll use them all the time it's a great way to improve the accuracy of your cut and keep any that chip out from happening now to provide the leveling for this plate all you need to do is use the same screws that came from your existing throat plate although I would suggest that you buy new ones they're available at all hardware stores there's really no need to tap these holes just drill four holes use an Allen wrench to drive those screws in there until the nibs protrude from the other side making adjustments there will provide a perfectly flat plate very much like the throat plate that you had the next must-have is dealing with your miter gauge now the standard miter gauge that comes with your saw is generally a little bit too small to do anything with it's hard to grip on here smaller pieces are very problematic to cut and most importantly the distance between the edge of that miter gauge and the blade is so broad that any time that you cut anything there's normally chip out on the backside what I'm going to suggest you do is provide an extension for this this is how I did it here's a miter gauge I decided to modify what I did is I used a piece of MDF 3/4 inch MDF and I cut a slot down the backside that matches up to the holes in your miter gauge now if your miter gauge doesn't have holes then drill a couple in there what I found is that I can insert a toilet bowl bolt through that T slot and adjusting that onto the back of the fence provides a really great extension to cut that slot I used either a t slot bit or in this case a keyhole bit now sometimes a keyhole bit won't cut quite a wide enough groove to be able to allow that bowl to stay together so make your first pass in the router table then come back at it a second time until that bolt slides easily once you've tightened these nuts you can adjust that fence all the way over the top of the blade so that either cutting at 90 degrees or 45 will be fully supported cutting small pieces is very easy to do we've also designed a small little stop block they'll allow you to cut in multiple pieces the same size and as this piece of MDF wears out just slide it over a little bit to a nice fresh piece and remember again this is MDF so it's not going to hurt your saw blades at all it's a great add-on to your miter gauge another great add-on a real must-have for your saw is a sacrificial fence you really do have to protect your fence when using a dado blade and rabbiting on the table saw you can buy commercial units but I found that this one made of MDF works just great it's a couple of pieces of 3/4 inch MDF spaced out by a few blocks of hardwood this has been glued and screwed together you know I clamped it to a flat surface so that after the the clamps are removed this is a perfectly parallel sacrificial fence I left the screws out of the center part of this because that's where the saw blade is going to contact it and the openings in here allow me to take a couple of clamps like this and attach it to my existing fence real easy way to do it once you've attached it you're gonna find that after a while the sight of this is going to be really beat up and all cut up by the dado blades that you're using and ultimately you may have to measure between that blade and the face of that fence to do some operation and it's really hard with all of those saw marks in there so the nice part here is that because this is parallel you can flip it to the clean side make whatever measurement you're gonna make between the blade in this fence and once you've gotten them flip it back to the dirty side and re clamp it now another thing is don't make this fence real tall you have to make sure that the clamps that you have can slide through the openings here and attach low enough so that you're not making this fence just a little bit tippy you'll also find that this fence sits flat on the table so very thin material will glide past the face of this and not slide underneath the fence like they sometimes do with your existing one lastly make two of these make one the length of your table saw fence and use that for daily work but make one a couple of feet longer when this is clamped into place and you put a piece of plywood on here you'll have a much bigger area to start that plywood before you go over the blade then you would have had you been using your existing fence with just this last little foot this is a great add-on it works really well and again out of MDF you don't have to worry about your table saw blades contacting it because nothing will get hurt now the last of our must-haves is some kind of an off feed table for your table saw I found it's really nice especially with longer or wider material as you're cutting them they have some place to support them as they come off the saw and in this case what we've done is we built what's called a three-in-one work support on this particular one especially used with the table saw we have a series of ball bearings it allows for a nice easy glide off the back of the saw there's a second part of this three-in-one support it is made with UHMW ultra high molecular weight great way to position things maybe off a drill press and the last way to hold your work is with nice broad flat table like this and they all work the same way there are a series of runners on the bottom that connect this to the basic stand and I want to show you how that works now are moving the knobs on both sides you can see the extension this has got a hole in it which of course line up to the three different tops so swapping these out is really fast making the height elevation is done on a side with a small little knob and nut that run in at each rack it's a great way to very quickly raise this for a table saw or raise it even higher for a drill press the one thing I will tell you though is that when I cut this opening on the router table for the T track I was a little bit concerned about messing up this original piece so I was glad that I made an extension a little bit longer and cut off that piece so that I can take the router bit and use this scrap piece to be able to lay out the perfect spot for the extension it works really well you'll use this near shop all the time in between those three pieces you'll never be without some kind of support and one last tip when I was gluing these runners to the platform here and the other two I found out the glue made things kind of loose and they moved all over the place it was really hard to keep them aligned so I made a couple of brackets little blocks on both sides that helped me Center this a whole lot easier i clamped those in place so that when I inverted this to put them on the tops of these runners it stayed in the same spot when you're clamping this too you may not have clamps that are broad enough to be able to clamp each one of these little runners down to the side all I did was make a couple of calls like this so clamping it from the outside put pressure on these runners and really did a great job of gluing this at top follow these couple little tips when you're gluing it and it'll save an awful lot of frustration well we've showed you the must-haves and now it's time to move on to the nice-to-haves this first jig is called a raised panel jig it allows you to raise panels on your table saw without the need for a router or router table and the construction is fairly straightforward we've used 3/4 inch MDF a larger piece in the bottom and a vertical piece here to support that board the bar in the front is a clamping bar it's got a real slight call or bow to it so it allows a little bit of pressure to be placed on the center of that panel keeping it a lot more stable small piece of sandpaper on the face of this that keeps that board a little bit more stable on the front of this and finally it runs in a runner and then that runner runs into the track on the right side of the blade the basic plans for this will tell you how to construct it but the one important part for your saw is to make sure that the runner fits in your groove and all the grooves are a little bit different so when you cut one make sure that it fits in that groove nicely it does not stick in there but does not have any side play in it it'll allow this to run a lot smoother the last thing is the gussets that are in the back of this helped maintain the pressure against the front of this to keep that face nice and flat but they don't always guarantee square so make sure that when you're doing the glue up here invite some kind of clamping brackets that will attach to this with clamps that will hold this at square or 90 degrees so that when the glue up is done you're sure that it's at a perfect 90 degrees to the table that's how this jig works let me show you by actually doing a raised panel now I've set the saw up to cut a 2-inch groove all the way around the face part of this panel that's how we get started knowing a raised panel so we'll do that first so here's the start of our race panel you notice the grooves all the way around now it's time to put the jig in we're gonna set the saw blade to an angle and we're gonna cut all of the raised panels on this now I've assembled this panel good face out and set the blade at about 15 degrees so what I'm going to do is pass this panel in front of it and rotate and do all four sides you'll see how the cut comes out you'll have a beautiful raised panel and there you go beautiful raised panel a little bit of sanding around the edges and you got it what an easy way to do raised panels on your table saw with this raised panel jig this is a ninety-degree crosscut sled it allows you to cut material is wide as 16 inches extremely accurately on your table saw the component parts of this from the plans are fairly universal and you can make them up to look just like this the key is how you adapt this then to work on your saw so the first thing we have to do is provide the two runners that this will run in the grooves on the saws are almost all the same they are 3/8 thick and 3/4 inches wide but they do have some slight variances so make these runners to fit in your saw so that they don't bind but at the same time slide nicely in the grooves so once we've got those two I want to attach the top to those runners now because I cut these a little bit thin I want them slightly below the opening one of the ways to help make that alignment is by just using a couple of pennies so I'll put a couple of pennies in the groove first like this these will then sit just a little bit higher so now it allows me to set the top onto these runners the other very important thing is to make sure that your fence is perfectly aligned with these grooves you don't want any variances here because this is how we're actually going to set this sled and that's what's going to maintain its accuracy I'm going to put a couple of pieces of double stick tape on here set the top on those runners which will help Willa fix it and then I'll mount them permanently with a couple of screws now I've attached the runners to the sled the idea now is to raise the saw blade and make one cut from the back all the way through to the front now that I've got that saw line through the base of this jig I'm going to measure four inches over from the end of that kerf and put a small mark at the bottom of this jig and then extend that line of the backside that's going to help me space this spacer block now to finish this jig up we're just going to apply this tape measure this has a self-adhesive backing I'll pull the backer off to adhere it and then the last thing is to put in this small piece of acrylic I've scored a line on there that I've kind of made a little cursor with that adjust to the block at now that four inch mark and in a minute you're gonna see how to use this jig you got a nice wide piece of material this is a glue up we did a little bit earlier and it's fairly broad you know how tough it is to try and square up one edge of this before you cut a whole bunch of pieces to size well it's real easy with this kind of a jig what I'm gonna do first is slide this in and square off one edge and then let's just say we want 18-inch long pieces I'll adjust the cursor 18 I just slide them up and I can cut dozens of them exactly the same and perfectly square now here is a board with nice perfect 90-degree corners much much easier to do than trying to do it on your miter gauge or maybe even up against your fence this is a great chick now on to my favorite jig and that's the taper jig not only because of its simplicity it does great great tapers but it also does four-sided tapers which can be a little bit tough with your standard tapering jig we'll talk about that in a second generally when you use one of these taper jigs they all work about the same you slide the fence up to the blades so that the jig just fits between the fence and the blade anything clamped to the outside of that when it's cut off provides that taper now let's talk a little bit about the construction here this is relatively straightforward the bottom is a piece of 3/4 inch multiply plywood the top is a quarter inch hard board to put the t-slots in there all we'll do is put a 5/8 dado blade set 3/16 of an inch above the table and cut dedos in that plywood board in this space is specified once we've cut all of those we're gonna glue this piece of quarter-inch hard board at the top of it once that's glued switch your 5/8 dado blade to a quarter-inch dado blade and now provide centered cuts over the top now that gives you the T slots you either use toilet bowl bolts or regular hex head bolts quarter-twenty through those slots and that's what holds these hold downs in place now a couple little tips when you're doing this when you glue this piece of hardboard to the top of the plywood make sure you clamp it to a known flat surface by doing that you assure a nice flat glue up when you're done if you don't have clamps long enough to bridge this I suggest making a series of calls these can be placed across the top edge here they have a slight little arch on the bottom of them and when you clamp down you'll put a little bit more pressure over the entire globe the second thing is while the glue up is happening my suggestion is cut some small thin strips and slide them in and out of those slots that way you'll clear any of the glue up that may be dripping on the inside makes it a whole lot easier later to be able to put those bolts in there once you've done that it's now time to make these little stop blocks you'll notice in here that they're also 3/4 inch plywood and they have a small quarter inch grooved on the bottom that rides in the dado slot that you put in great way to hold something together now one of the things I found when I put these together the bolt that's going through there is quarter-twenty the piece that's in here this small little shim that's in here is so quarter of an inch and when using the drill press and drilling a hole through there you have a real good chance of blowing the sides of that out so what I did is I created a small little female block so I cut a quarter inch dado in there when that goes through the center it holds that piece in line so that when the drill bit goes through there it won't get a chance to blow out that small piece of quarter-inch shim that's in the bottom actually works really well these then right in the slots each of them rides on that quarter 20 bolt and provide some great hold down power throughout the length of this jig now it may be a little bit easier as we talk about this jig to actually show you a taper so what I'm going to do is show you a four-sided leg taper when you think about it cutting two sides of a leg is real easy so you're cutting one edge and flipping the jig and cutting a second one but when you cut a four-sided taper the third cut and the fourth cut result in the taper being next to the hole downs and there's nothing to grip it to sometimes you have to use a shim to hold it the beauty of this jig is at this end we have a small little pivot block and this pivot block has a quarter twenty bolt coming out of it that will help index the end of that leg I'll show you how this works it couldn't be easier I made up a small leg here which I'd like to consider is a little table like what we've got at the top is a four inch shoulder I'd like this to be the part that's not tapered and it's going to taper down the length of each one of these sides about a quarter of an inch so to do that I've marked the edges on each edge about a quarter of an inch in you'll also notice that I put a hole in the center of this by doing cross lines and then drilling a quarter inch hole it's this hole it's going to index into this small little screw at the end of our pivot block now the pivot block is going to adjust up or down or in or out so that what you'll get out of that is this little line laid out exactly on the quarter inch mark these that are held in place at the top edge by our clamps like this so as I run this past the table saw blade this is the part that is not going to be cut and slowly but surely it'll taper down to that cut and because it's indexing against this little hole at this end what I'm going to do is pull it off flip it and put it in again and even after I start working into the tapers it's still going to be indexed off this same edge there's one more thing I want to add when you look at a table leg you want to make sure that the tapers on all of these are always ending up on the same floor sides so to do that each one of these blocks is adjusted so that it always indexes in the same spot but what makes it really nice on this jig is this small little quarter inch nut it's a little nylon nut once I've adjusted this block right up against the edge of the shoulder so I know it's always going to be in the same place all I do is take a wrench and tighten down that nut so even after I've loosened the clamp this stop is not going to move allows me each time to be able to slide that piece in and taper it I'll get a perfect line across the top and I'll get a beautiful taper down the side here's how it's done now what you'll notice here is that as we flip this leg the second and the third and the fourth time a taper began to show up against the bottom edge and because of this pivot block we wouldn't have had any other way to clamp that but the pivot block holds it in that same position so on each side that taper is maintained if you look on the inside edge of this you'll notice it in this particular spot the clamp itself in the back side here is only holding it down but the little stop block has already lost its function because the taper is moving away the top block because of that little lock washer that little lock nut on the top is holding it up against that shoulder so that every cut is exactly the same this is a great way to do a four-sided taper and a great jig to do it on and one more thing if you're doing a table with four legs you have 16 setups to make if you were trying to do it with a standard taper jig with this once the pivot block and the stop block is set at the top all 16 of those go very quickly now can I give you one more tip in most cases the joinery between the top of this leg and the table is going to be through some kind of a mortise or maybe even a biscuit do yourself a favor and put that mortise in or put the biscuit slots in before you do the taper otherwise you really won't enjoy the experience at the drill press or on your mortising table now I told you this was a versatile jig here's another thing it can do I found a piece of pretty wild edge stock here in the shop and I thought what I do is show you how this will also operate as a jointer what I'm gonna do is clamp this board as you see just so that a little bit of this edge of the board hangs over the outside edge I've slid my clamps up I removed that pivot block in the front and move these clamps to a more appropriate spot i clamped this down I'm still going to adjust the fence to the table saw blade like we did before when I run the jig through there it's gonna create a perfect jointed edge on that board by using a taper jig here's how you do it now here is our jointed edge beautiful flat straight jointed edge on a taper jig what a great jag all in all you'll probably won't find a nicer jig I guess that's why it's my favorite mortise and tenon joinery has always been the hallmark in quality furniture making it's strong and it's invisible and I've got a couple of jigs here that will make you an expert in no time now a couple of things to think about first I would suggest that you follow the 1/3 rule whenever you're making mortises and Tenon's I would suggest that the Tenon's themselves are the width of the mortises be one-third to thickness of this dock so on 3/4 inch material we're talking about a quarter-inch tenon the second thing is make sure that you mill all of your stock evenly before you start and the third thing is do all of your mortising first it's much easier to create a tenon to fit the mortise than it is the reverse now let me show you these jigs one at a time the first one is cutting the shoulders on this particular piece and the second one will be cutting the cheeks let's do the shoulder cutting one first the first of these two jigs as a shoulder cutting jig this is a very easy jig to build it's made for your particular saw so we have here first is an adjustment with a couple of screws through the back that attached this jig to the fence you'll see a support block sticking out of the backside of this in the front we have a stop block that allows me to adjust the length of the tenon and finally a small little shelf that's put over the top of the base that'll keep any fall-off and getting stuck on the saw what I did with this is following the rule of thirds I'm going to take my piece of stock and first I'm going to set my tenon length to inch and three-eighths I just thought that was a nice length and the second thing I'm going to do is set my blade about a quarter of an inch above that base plate so that I'm doing is creating a quarter shoulder on one side a quarter shoulder on the other side which leaves a full quarter inch tenon behind so the idea is this is going to slide up against the stop block and I'm going to run it over the blade and flip it four times to cut a perfect even shoulder all the way around here's how you do it the shoulder cuts are done nice clean and sharp all thanks to that really nice shoulder cutting jig we used it's now time to cut the cheeks so we have to remove the material all the way around to do that there's a few different ways the first is using a dado blade on your table saw a lot of woodworkers do that second is to go to a bandsaw cut the cheeks on the bandsaw that leaves slight ripple lines much like the dado blade does that you have to sand out the third way to do it brings us to the second one of our jigs and this is the cheap cutting jig it's a beauty I want to show you a few things about it first and then we'll actually cut the cheeks on this jig this is made to fit your saw in this case what we've done is we've made the two outside pieces of wood here match exactly around your existing fence it needs to be nice and tight and it needs to sit flat on the tabletop and we put a top over there to hold it the second thing is we've attached this face along the front of it and added a couple of small gussets on the back to hold at ninety-degree and again make sure that it's at a perfect 90 degree when you set this up and the last thing we've done is that a clamping block to the backside the way that this jig works is I align it up against the blade and I put my piece of material on this face we then use this little toggle clamp to hold it this is passed over the blade and the cheeks are cut on both ends and then turned around and cut on both faces it's a real easy extremely stable jig I think you're gonna like the way this works now in actual practice what you'd be doing you should be cutting this tenon and and slowly getting it narrower or narrower until it finally fits the mortise that you pre-drill in all of your pieces and once you get this to where the width that you want and it fits nicely because it's once it's set you can cut all your tenants at the same time so spend a little bit of time getting this to fit exactly right by moving your jig just a little bit and once you've gotten it you'll have a perfect setting for all the Tenon's into all of the mortises you've created aren't these a nice set of boxes and isn't this a good-looking frame one of the things you're going to notice on all of these is that we've done a little corner treatment and we did it because the joints and these our miter joints and by design miter joints are just not that strong so we've done is we've inserted a spline in each one of those corners it's really gonna beef up that corner but it's also going to add some decorative beauty there's two very simple jigs that we've used to do it and I'll show you how to do it actually we'll cut a corner and show you how it's done now this spline jig is a height to frugality this is a found 2x4 I mean you can pick these up almost anywhere and a small piece of quarter-inch hard board all i've done in that is cut a V in the front of it and to do that set your table saw blade at 45 and on your miter gauge run one pass on one side flip it to the other side and cut it again and that creates the V on the bottom side I'm going to set this so that my cut line from the table saw blade is 3/8 of an inch from the edge of that cut line to the back of this hardboard that way with most 3/4 inch material I'm putting that spline right down the middle now you can vary these depending upon what your interests are but I'm gonna start with it this way here's how this works we're just going to run on the table saw blade and cut a corner through a frame you'll see how well it works and here is a beautifully cut spline board now you just saw the jig that cut a groove for that spline down the center of the frame very nice very decorative very supportive same type of operation was done here but after we placed the splines in them we actually cut down the sides of the box on an angle changes a whole look of things lastly if you want to build a more supportive a little bit more beefier type jig like this one and angle your table saw blade at 15 degrees by doing that and running a box like this through it what we found is that you're putting kind of like a diamond shape on these it's a really nice look yeah it's just as much support but a little bit more flesh to it there's a lot of ideas here you can let your creativity kind of flow all these things have one thing in common what we did is we cut the grooves in here we still have to cut the splines to go in them I've got a great jig to show you how to do there now the grooves that I'm trying to fit in here is an eighth of an inch that's normally because I like to use an eighth of an inch saw blade when I do it this is the material I was thinking about using it's a piece of walnut and the color contrasts to look pretty nice so the idea is to try and cut 1/8 thin strip of this and make sure that it's perfect so it fits real nicely in that groove that when you sand it off will look real clean like it does here a couple different ways to do that the first is you can actually slide your fence up to within 1/8 of the saw blade and make a cut like that I'm not real fond of that there's no real way to get a push stick in there to be able to push that piece through you certainly can't hope that it will go through by pushing on the opposite side the second way to do it is use a scrap block of wood like this with a small foot on one end take your fence and slide it over to where that piece of scrap just touches the saw blade and in effect now that becomes your new 0 so on the fence in the back I can look and see whatever that that that number is if I want to cut an 8 inch piece by looking at the fence and moving that 1/8 of an inch I will now expose an edge that's an eighth of an inch away from the blade and by putting my piece of wood in here pass it forward and cut that off it does work one of the problems is is that piece passes through the blade there's no way to hold it in the back and that little vibration on there can leave some saw marks which may be tough to get off the third way to do this in the what with the one I would kind of suggest is with what's called a thin strip ripping gauge now we've had this around for a while and it works just great the jist of it is I have a small little ruler underneath this piece of plexiglass and a screw at the other end what I'm going to do is I'm going to set this in the slot I'm going to adjust my cursor to match zero on that gauge in this little brass school I'm going to turn it in or back it off until it just touches a left facing tooth on my saw blade so when this is set at zero I know that the edge of this screw is exactly where that saw blade is going to cut it now if I want to cut an eighth of an inch piece of material all I need to do is move that cursor 1/8 of an inch so what I've done now is I've moved this screw head 1/8 of an inch away from the saw blade here's the material that I want to cut using my fence as a gauge I'm going to slide that until that piece of wood just touches that exposed screw head and now what I've got is a piece of wood that will have 1/8 inch left after I make the cut it's a great way to do it me run it through and I'll show you what I'm talking about and here is my eighth inch piece of wood it's also another way to add a decorative piece of wood to cover that piece of plywood edge that exposed plywood edge and a cabinets you're working on one of the nice parts about this is that all you're going to do is run your material up against the edge and the cut off piece becomes the part that you glue to the end of the plywood it's a perfect way to disguise it if you try and make one of these jigs to cut a thin strip off and you're planning on covering an 8-foot long piece of plywood on the edge this block has to be eight feet long in this case by using a thin strip ripping gauge it works just great this is a piece of crown molding you've probably seen this at a lot of the home improvement stores and what's nice about crown molding is this very gentle little coal fat both the top and the bottom of the molding these are normally done at big factories with molding machines but I'll bet you'd be surprised to find out that you can do that on your table saw it's a very easy process and all you really need is a couple of pieces of scrap wood this is the jig that I've made for this at one end of this I put a small hinge the backside extends like this with one edge being attached to the fence the other side going diagonally across the top of the blade and this swing arm helps provide a permanent attachment for that arm all we're going to do is take a piece of material and run a diagonally over that blade and going diagonally we're gonna begin to create that cove now I'll show you that cut in just a second but I want to give you a couple little tips first the first is whenever you're set up for a job like this make sure that you use a piece of scrap for the same thickness and width to kind of determine where that Cove is going to go and you can make adjustments in there the second thing is whenever you're planning on doing any kind of custom trim make sure that you make more than enough trim you're gonna find that you'll never be able to recreate that trim if you go back and fix a mistake so make it as long as you can allow plenty of room for excess and the third thing is as you're cutting these make the most minor of height adjustments every time you raise that blade you only want a very slight increase because the smoothness of that cut depends on how little you're taking off at each time may seem a little bit more involved and take a little bit more time but you'll really save time in the sanding aspect later so here's how we do this now this may not be the cleanest of operations even with the best of vacuum control but you'll find that putting a cove on a board like this really opens up the possibilities of creating custom molding for your projects or for your home it's a great jig easy to put together and easy to use now I know that this may look like a lack of organizational skills but it actually represents all the jigs we've shown you in this video and you'll find even more jigs in wood magazine in addition to those jigs and the ones that you've seen here I'm sure you can create jigs of your own to help you in your workshop you're gonna find like we have that the addition of a few jigs can greatly increase the accuracy and the versatility of your table saw hopefully this will give you the enthusiasm to get back into that shop and work on that project you've been holding off on

Channel: WOOD magazine

Views: 507,371

Rating: 4.9000378 out of 5

Keywords: WOOD magazine, woodworking, how-to, project, plan, carpentry, tool, technique, review, table, saw, band, miter, making, make, build, jig, spline, tenon, zero, insert, clearance, work, support, cove, cutting, thin, strip, ripping, materials, crosscut, cross-cut, sled, raised, panel, taper, tapering

Id: 53rtu1wmoAc

Length: 43min 50sec (2630 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 09 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/toadkicker]

I thought there were so many little tidbits of information just outside of making these jigs that were super useful. Also the plans are all included in the links below the video.

[u/nsbound]

Interesting. Thank you for sharing

[u/CypherdiazGaming]

WELP Thats just fantastic