Adjustable Dado and Mortise Jig - Cut ANY size dado you need!

i made an exact width dado jig and it has adjustable fences so that you can route any width dado that you need it also has adjustable front and back fences so you can make any sized stop dado that you need and wait there's more it also has some additional fences that you can add to the tracks so you can make things like mortises i'm making this jig for my plunge router so the first thing that i'll do is measure the width of the base my router's base is just over seven inches so that means that i'm going to need at least three and a half inches for the router base plate to rest on for both sides of the jig i'll make the main base pieces out of this half inch piece of plywood and i said i needed at least three and a half inches for the router base plate but i really needed to be wider than that so that i could put on the guides and for the adjustability factor so i'm assuming somewhere around six inches but i'll cut it bigger than that so that i can flush it up to that actual dimension i need later you'll see what i'm talking about in a bit now i'll cut the pieces to length but first i'll just cut off the factory edge i'll be using this t-track as my fences on the jig so i'll mark how long that is on here and cut it to wing before moving on i have to decide what router bit i want to use in my router to use with this jig because the way that this is going to work i have to use the same router bit every single time i use this jig so i'm thinking what do i need this jig for typically for three quarter inch material or somewhere around there so a half inch bit would work great you just make two passes and that would make the dimension that you need but let's say i want to work with half inch plywood so plywood is typically undersized it's less than half an inch so you can get specialty router bits that are made specifically to work with plywood they're just a little bit undersized just like that plywood but instead i'm just going to use a uh what am i using here 3 8 bit and that's going to be able to make a dado for that half inch plywood or anything bigger because this jig is totally adjustable now that i know a bit i'm using i can place the guide rails in the correct location so i don't need to measure or anything i'll just place my router on top of here and i'll place the router just so that the router bit is that's a little bit too much but i'll put it so that the router bit will just cut a little bit into the plywood and that's going to be where i'm going to lock down these runners and i'll cut this flush after the runners are locked down all right this is looking good so i'll clamp this t-track into place move the router out of the way and i'm only going to screw it down at the front over here right now i use a vix bit for this so that i get in the center of the holes now i could take my combo square and get that measurement for where that's at and do that to the front edge the front and back are now locked into place so i'll just lock down the rest of the t-track before moving on to the second one though it's important to mark this one for the correct side of the router because there might be a small inconsistency between the sides of these routers so i'm just going to make some sort of mark i guess i'll make like a circle and i'll make a circle on this side of my router so that i know that i always have to reference this side the circle side against this side that has the circle on the jig now i'll just repeat the same thing to the other base part of the jig now this next part is super important i'm going to run the router along the edge that i just um screwed on here and that's what's going to create the like zero clearance part of this that it's going to create the exact width that you need for any material that you're using i'm making sure that because this is the one that i drew the circle on that the circle part is against the fence here now for this piece i'm going to make sure to flip the router around so the opposite edge without the circle is running along this fence next up i need to make the fences that are going to go on the front and the back of the jig so to do that i'm going to take a piece of plywood and i'll make dados on either side of it one of the dadoes is going to be the exact width of the t-track and that's going to slide along the t-track there and it's going to keep it square and the other side is going to be bigger and that's going to create the adjustability factor of this whole jig so there's a few ways that you can make a dado on a piece of wood like this you can use a router you can use the miter saw using the depth stop i'm going to use the table saw if you have a dado stack this would be super simple and easy to do but i don't have one and this saw cannot hold one so i'm going to have to use a single blade and just take multiple passes but in order to make it the cleanest cut as possible i'm going to use here a flat tooth blade so that's going to make the top of the cut completely clean and i won't have to clean it up with the chisel afterwards but the only problem here is that normally for like my regular sleds i have my thin kerf blade for that and i don't want to widen the kerf on all my regular sleds so i just made a very simple sled right now where the kerf is the thickness of this full kerf flat tooth blade here so i am going to cut the dados on this sled now now it would be easy to set up the blade if i didn't already screw this down but we can still work with that i'll just use my combo square to get the correct height that i need and then set the blade height to that measurement i want these fences to be flush on the edge over here so that means that the dado for the t-track needs to be like somewhere around there so i could just get that measurement with my combo square by butting it up against the edge of the t-track and then lining the piece up to where the the combo square is going to touch a tooth on the blade that looks good now i just need to make multiple passes until the dado fits over the t-track now the other side doesn't need to be as accurate it doesn't need to fit around the t-track it's going to be wider so that this whole base can slide like that so to get a measurement for where that dado is going to start i'll just plop that in there put the router in plunge it down so i can close this up so it's butt up against the router bit in there leaving that that gap in there and i could just mark off on this piece where that dado is supposed to start now where the dado will end is determined by how wide of a dado i'm going to want to cut with this so i'll just move this over until i get to whatever i think i'm going to use this for so like two inches would be huge like i don't i don't know how many cases where i'm gonna need a two inch wide dado but you know what i'm already making this jig so i'm gonna make it at two inches and then i'll just mark the edge of the plywood there for where that dado should stop for my max two inch wide dado but you can make this however wide or narrow you want for your purposes i just want to show you guys how clean that cut is fresh off the saw with the flat tooth blade it makes joinery on the table saw so much cleaner and quicker and more accurate something that i forgot to mention is that this is actually the front and the back fence i decided to cut the dados at one time because i felt like it would be more accurate that way so now i'm just going to split this board in half and that'll create the front and back fences now i just need to drill out the holes for the bolts to fit in i could just mark the center of these stops and i think i'm just i'll just eyeball the center of this t-track here and just drill it out now that is simple and easy to do the next one on the other side where the dado was longer i need to make a longer groove in there and i could do this at the drill press just by taking a bunch of different passes and then cleaning it up with a chisel or some files or something i'm just going to do this at the router table i could easily set the fence here by just taking the hole that i just drilled out put it onto the bit and then just move the fence to where it stops now starting and stopping points i'll just mark that onto my fence first let me erase the old ones all right so i'll start the cut somewhere around there and end the cut somewhere around there so so everything is sliding really nicely and all the moving parts are moving as they should but before testing it out just a quick word from this week's sponsor audible so there's a ton of down time when it comes to woodworking like when i was coming up for the idea of this jig what materials to use and how i'm going to assemble it and put it all together on larger projects i could spend a good half hour just staring at a piece of wood deciding how to cut it up for optimal grain orientation and let's not forget about sanding so much sanding so during those quiet moments in my shop where i don't have to worry about keeping my fingers safe i like to listen to something that entertains or inspires me an audible is the best source for that spoken word entertainment sometimes i like to listen to inspiring titles like why we make things and why it matters by peter corn i personally find woodworking to be one of the most rewarding hobbies but it was really insightful to hear a master craftsman look back on his long career and search for reasons why we find it so satisfying this title and many others like it are part of audible's all-new plus catalog which you get full access to as an audible member you also get access to thousands of great podcasts audible originals and select audiobooks and every month you get one free audiobook from the premium collection of bestsellers and new releases that you get to keep forever and listen to anytime across all your devices that means if your kid needs your tablet for virtual school you can pick up right where you left off on any other device where you have the audible app installed so head on over to audible.com tamar or text tomorrow to 500 500 to start your 30 day free trial that's audible.com tamar t-a-m-a-r my name i also have a link down in the description box below so thank you so much audible for sponsoring this video now let's test this thing out actually before testing it out i just want to add a piece on the underside over here that's going to act as a stop so that i know if i butt it up against a work piece i know that dado is going to be really square so here's how i'll set that up i put the jig on a board here and made sure that the back fence this back fence over here is locked down and tight and square to the bottom base put my router on top there and you can see that if i plunge the bit down it's going to plunge into the work piece what i want is for that first plunge to go on the edge beyond the work piece that way i know that i will always be cutting a square dado and not a rounded stop dado so i'll just plunge down and push up i can't do this with one hand and i'll push it up against so that the router bit is up against that work piece and then make a mark on the bottom of this jig here for where i'm supposed to put the square all right so now i have a rough location for where that stopper piece is going to go i cut up a piece from the scrap from the base this is more half inch material and i'll just take some ca glue place it so that the front edge of it is by that line that i just made and take a square and lock it down with some brads just going to test it out and draw a line to see if that's square awesome all right so here is how it works let's say i want to make a dado into this piece of plywood over here that's going to fit this other piece of plywood so what i'll do is i'll put that in between the jig lock down all of the pull downs on all the fences here feels like it's going to be good now on a project i would have my marks for where to place this but this is just a test so just gonna place it anywhere there's enough room on the side here to clamp it down now i need to remember the marks that i made on the router so the circle that i made over here needs to correspond with the circle side that's on the base of the jig so i'll have to do this in two passes i'll go up the left-hand side of the jig and then i'll come back down the right-hand side of the jig all right test number one let's see how this dip it's pretty good now i'll show how to make a stop dado using this and i'll do that with half inch plywood because it doesn't really matter what size dado you want as long as you adjust this fence to the width of the material that you're using that's the size that it's going to cut so first i'll put this up against my work piece here and let's say i want to do a stop dado all i have to do is move this fence like that so i'm realizing right now that i don't have a way to accurately place these fences so that i can put it for where i want that stop dado to stop so i need to add a marker piece underneath these fences to show where the bit is going to cut and where it's going to stop so i'm going to add that underneath the fences here but in order to get that measurement i'm first going to plunge with the router to see at what distance i need to put those stopper marker pieces so i'll just set this like this and this will be my my guide for where i'm going to make that guide piece i'll put the half inch plywood in here adjust the fence this way lock everything down and now i'll make the cut i forgot to clip it down now i took a strip of the half inch material that i used for the base and i cut it to about 3 8 so that it'll fit into the slot and now i will put on some ca glue and i'll place it underneath using a square a straight edge in the slot pushing it up to where the edge of that dado was and i'll keep it there for about 30 seconds and then i can gently remove the fence and lock that down with brads all right so i'll take this half inch piece of plywood and let's say i want to make the dado the length of this piece i'll make a mark here now i can take my jig align it up against here make sure that it's square on the bottom and i can adjust the fence so where my marker piece is now going to line up with that line that i just made and i'll lock it down only on the right hand side so that i can adjust the width now so i'll take my piece of half-inch plywood tighten down on the left-hand side now clamp everything down and make my cuts ooh i went a little bit deep i totally wasn't paying attention to the depth there but let's see how that looks now take off the jig and you could see the dado went right up to the line i just would need to square that up with a chisel and now let's see how that half inch piece of plywood fits into there i mean it's pretty pretty awesome now let me show you something else that this can do okay so this back fence is totally adjustable to make stop dados and the front fence is completely adjustable also so that you can make any size you want and you can make double ended stop dados like i did on my record player cabinet project that's actually why i decided to come up with this jig but then i got to thinking what if i added some fences in between the front and back fence and then i could make multiple dados within the same line like let's say i could use this to make mortises so i made some more fences and added those stopper pieces to them as well and i'm going to see if i can make multiple mortises in one shot using this jig so i have these middle fences in here that could be moved around and i could plunge my router into different sections of the jig to create mortises super cool i'll take this random piece of material i have no idea how thick this is but it does not matter at all and i'm going to make three mortises into this piece of plywood here so i'll move this fence i'll just move them so that they're like equally spaced apart but normally for a project you would measure and make things more precise but for the sake of time because my kids are about to come home i'm just going to do it like this lock it everything down on the right hand side and let me test it out i didn't go all the way through but you could figure out i guess how this would work and you can see three different locations where i made some mortises so there's i think a lot of flexibility here you can like keep a clamp down and move these fences as you need to i think this is a really really really cool jig what do you guys think about this i think this is really cool i don't think i've ever seen something with these adjustable fences going up and down this way i've only seen it being adjustable this way so i'm curious what you guys think about this and i had a lot of fun figuring it out thanks so much to woodcraft and audible for sponsoring this video and i'll see you on the next one wait i forgot to show you guys how this fit into the mortise perfect fit well this way not that way but i didn't really measure that way but you can imagine what this would be like for a real project are your headphones on yeah i'm gonna make another cut okay okay why do you need two hats why do i need two halves because one is going to be a fence for the front and one is going to be a fence for the back but i cut these like dados in here that's what those are called those little notches in there i cut them at the same time so that they would be exactly the same is that cool yeah does that make sense like you didn't cut them at the same time you just cut like all this together in this uh-huh but then you cut it yeah that's what i did so that way like these two are like exactly the same like if i would have cut these in half beforehand and then cut these notches in here yeah i could have possibly made a mistake and they wouldn't be exactly the same does that make sense yeah why do you want to be exactly the same why because then it will be more accurate and it will work better oh so it's gonna be just a cool thing just a cool thing can we show the camera what you made it's just a cool thing very cool

Channel: 3x3Custom - Tamar

Views: 517,615

Keywords: dado jig, router jig, woodworking jig, cutting dadoes, router bit, how to, woodworking projects, perfect dados, beginner woodworking, woodworking projects for beginners, mortise jig, mortise with router, exact width dado jig, woodcraft, woman woodworker, adjustbale dado jig, woodworking, woodshop, stopped dado

Id: LhZSS-VFf6Y

Length: 23min 57sec (1437 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 20 2020