Make an Accurate Box Joint Jig, Simple and Fast

hi everyone now I know it's been a while since my last video but I wanted you to know that I've dedicated part of my schedule for video production so hopefully we'll get more videos out to you in a more timely manner what I want to do today is talk about box joints now the box joint sometimes called the finger joint it's probably the most popular and why they use joint for drawer construction and box making aesthetically it has a very nice look and structurally it is very strong so today I'm gonna show you a very easy method in making very a great box joints I like this method because it doesn't require any fancy jigs it is fast simple yet very accurate and the best part about it it costs next to nothing to make all you need is a piece of plywood and some hard wood scrap so let's go on out to the shop and make some box drawings to make our jig basically what we're doing is to cut a slot using our data so that we can insert our spacer now before I do that I want to explain a couple of things today I'm going to be making the drawer using 5/8 Baltic birch when making drawers I use three-eighths of an inch dataset almost exclusively there's a couple of reasons one aesthetically I like the look proportion wise and two it works out mathematically for what I wanted to do especially when I'm cutting the groove for my drawer bottoms now I'm going to show and explain that when we get to that part also when I'm making custom say kitchen cabinets the first drawer on top is usually what we call a six inch drawer that means that the drawer front is actually six inches so the opening is usually five with a half inch overlay that would cover the hole I like to make my jurors weren't in smaller then the opening so they would accommodate for the hardware and also room for clearance so with a four inch drawer mathematically is perfect because it gives me perfect symmetry so the first thing we need to do is to set the height of the blade and that is determined by the material you'll be using I'm just gonna grab a piece for my drawer lay it right next to the blade and I want to raise my blade so they'll be protruding about thirty prince of an inch worried about here that looks good and we're ready to cut so I'm just gonna eyeball this and cut it close to Center [Music] the next step is to cut our spacer to fit into our slot from experience I want my spacer to be about for thousands of an inch smaller than my opening it makes moving my piece from finger to finger while I'm cutting a little easier it won't be so tight now I'm using a 3/8 inch dataset so my opening should read 0.375 but when I put my caliper - this is actually reading 0.365 that's ten thousandth of an inch less now why is that well the teeth of the blades are an eighth of an inch but the body is a little bit thinner because of the set we need that because if the body was the same thickness as the teeth well that's a lot of metal that's rubbing against your piece of wood while you're cutting it makes it very difficult and also very dangerous now the manufacturer understands that and that's why this dataset comes with these magnetic shims and here I have one that actually says ten thousandths of an inch now I can insert this and bump it out to be 0.375 now I'm not going to do that just to show you that the tooling does not have to be perfect or that you have to buy the same brand of dataset that I use and that's the beauty of this method it really doesn't matter if our tooling is a little bit different it's okay because I'm going to show you a simple adjustment that will make our joints turn out exactly how we want it hopefully perfect to make the spacer there's two cuts there's the height and also the width I'm going to cut the high FERS I know it's about five eighths of an inch because of my stock I want to cut a little bit smaller than that because if my spacer is sticking out from the bottom well it's gonna teeter-totter like this when I try to set up so I'm gonna set my fence to about a thirty six everything smaller and make my first cut so this is where I might have a slight of an inch here at the school we have multiple table saws so i'ma leave my setup alone I'm gonna go to another table saw to cut my spacer so that this only table saw that you have then you just got to change your blade a couple of times it's no big deal I mean I don't know what to tell you kind of sucks huh so for my width remember I want to cut it four thousandths of an inch smaller than my opening which measures 0.365 so my target is gonna be 0.36 1 what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna set my fence to about 3/8 make my cut see how much I'm off and then tap my fence over so my caliber reads 0.39 1 which is 30 thousandths of an inch too big I'm gonna set my calibrate down whatever the reading is I'm going to tap it over 30 thousandths now I'm ready to make my cut let's see what we get perfect now that I've got this cut to size I'm just gonna cut a little piece off for my spacer so before I glue up my spacer I want to chamfer the top two edges it just makes it easier to go from cut to cut you when you're gluing up make sure that the spacer does that stick up from the bottom or from the back you well I think we're ready to make some box joints now this is the most important part the adjustment again from experience I found that using plywood to make box joints I want the fingers to be about five to six thousand seven inch smaller than my opening now I made a few samples here to show you the fit for different tolerances here I have a zero meaning that the fingers are exactly the same size as my opening and as you can see it's a little bit tight now I can probably drive it home with a mallet but after I apply glue you would just be way too tight so I thought well what happens if I make a three thousands of an inch smaller so again it's a little bit bitter but still a little bit tight for my taste so I also made one that's four thousand seven in smaller and then also make one that's five thousand and six thousand seven inch smaller and I found that well six thousand seems to work the best for me there is no gap even if when you apply glue to it it works just fine also if I had to choose between the five and six thousandths I would probably error on the six but the five thousands are very smaller we work just fine now I know some of you will be asking why am I so anal about these measurements that I have to get it to within a thousandth of an inch well when it comes to joinery you have to back in the days when I was running a production shop I have three people working here for me so that means I had to make payroll every other week no matter if I make money or not so I'm constantly looking for ways to increase production and at the same time cut production time and cost and one of the problem areas is assembling of chores sometimes the joints would be so tight that will either break or crack or drawers when using a mallet and that cost less time and money because we had to remake some of these so I use calibre mainly for speed if it only takes me a minute to make an adjustment and it will save me hours of frustration it just makes sense to do it I would never spend an hour to get within a thousandth of an inch and it would do me no good it's just a big waste of time so a calibre tells me exactly how much I'm off so I can make the proper adjustment it's all about speed and just getting the job done all right so I'm going to show you how easy it is to set or Jake perfectly to meet our tolerance remember I want the fingers of my box noise to be about five to six thousand seven inch smaller than my opening which is 0.365 so my target is going to be 0.36 zero or 0.359 so I'm just gonna grab this piece here that we've cut off earlier for our spacer knowing that this is four thousand seven inch smaller so I'm just gonna place it right up to here put it against one of my teeth and this would give me close for my first cut now I'm going to purposely mess it up screw it up so that this way it gives me a chance to show you how to bring it back in so I'm going to clamp it I have a test piece here I'm gonna use to see where I'm at [Music] I may use my caliper take a reading and it reads 0.37 one so it looks like the fingers or about 11 to 12 thousandths of an inch too big so if it's too big what we want to do is we want to move the jig over this way into the blade so that it has a chance to remove a little bit more off so to do that I like to use a feeler gauge find twelve thousands of an inch right here put this weight against the side of my jig use the block and by the way I like to have my block with a point on it just in case my edge of my jig is not perfectly square or my block is not perfectly square so this gives a better reading put this up against my feeler gauge I'm going to clamp it remove my feeler gauge now I have a chance to shift my jig over twelve thousands of an inch okay so I'm ready to do another test cut and they say what we got [Music] whoa you know check this out this doesn't happen very often point three five nine and a half split that tolerance right down the middle now I'm ready to make some drawers so before I do I'd like to make a reference mark and all my pieces also it's very important to cut the fronts and the backs of your drawers first now you see what I mean when I cut the grooves for the drawer bottom so if these were my sides of the drawer and these are the fronts and the backs I'm gonna cut these first so I'm gonna set the size of the drawers over here and cut these first so it's very important to start with the reference mark up against the spacer for the first cut so here we go [Music] witness my force against the spacing [Music] [Music] but then Brooklyn smoke [Music] now that we've finished cutting our fronts in the backs we're ready to cut our sides so basically what we're doing is to cut the negatives to match the fingers so that means the blade has to start right at the edge so I have to line this piece right to the tip of the blade like that so that means I need a spacer between my blade and my stop remember our first cut of the drawer front right here this finger is the perfect spacer all we have to do is flip this one around like this so basically reference mark to reference mark and this will be our first cut so when I'm cutting the blade would not touch my drawer front here but we'll start right on the edge so here we go [Music] remember the reference map well I think I'm ready to do a dry fit so the first thing I want to do is line all my pieces up with the reference mark facing up it's like this so I hope it fits this is the moment of truth oh man my hands are shaking you know to be honest with you right now I'm more nervous than Mike Tyson in the spelling bee if it's really nice okay well there you have it if you look closely at the drawer top here it all lines up perfectly so to fit the grooves for my drawer bottoms I like to use the table saw rather than a router table for me the table saw is much faster especially when I'm patching out a whole bunch of drawers and besides I don't want to have to listen to a router screaming for a few hours I'm also using a quarter inch plywood now you know that a quarter inch is never a quarter of an inch it's always a little bit smaller so by using a table saw I can dial it in for my second cut to give it a nice custom fit now the blade that I'll be using is a flat top blade it's made by force they say will work a two with a number one grind you can make multiple passes and if we absolutely smooth and flat there is no scoring mark this is the blade that I use for all my joinery and also in my joinery class so if you're interested in its blade you can go to my website I think it's in my online store under power tools so the blade right now is set to a quarter of an inch plus the 30 seconds for some clearance I'm going to set the fence to half-inch because I'll be using the Blum tandem slice and that's what is required a half inch from the bottom I'm gonna make my cuts on all my drawer parts first and then I'm gonna dial it in for my second cut so I'm gonna take apart my drawer but I want to make sure that all my reference marks will be up against the fence for my first cut [Music] now for my second cut I'm not gonna use caliber on this because it's really not that critical I'm just gonna take my drawer bottom place it right on my groove and just see how much I'm off I'm just going to tap it over until it fits now you can use a scrap piece and use that to test it out before you make your final cut but it's really not that critical it doesn't have to be perfect so here we go right there that's your perfect fit okay now I can run everything through okay I'm gonna assemble my drawers so remember earlier I said I would explain and show you why I used three eighths of an inch dataset and why I cut the Front's in the backs of the drawers first well you see these holes here that's from cutting the grooves for my drawer bottoms but when you install your drawer front that would cover the holes and that's why I cut the fronts and backs of my drawers first and from the side you won't see any holes and that's because using 3/8 of an inch dataset it works out perfect mathematically so I hope you like and enjoy the video did we do share with a friend and don't forget to subscribe to the channel I promise I'll get more videos out to you so until then thanks for watching you

Channel: William Ng

Views: 1,361,238

Rating: 4.9405303 out of 5

Keywords: Finger Joint, Woodworking, Box Joint, Woodworking Joints (TV Subject), Box Joint Jig, box joint table saw, box joint jig for table saw, box joint jig sled, box joint jig youtube, finger joint jig, finger joint jig table saw, finger joint jig diy, finger joiny jig youtube

Id: NutwD7B6tmE

Length: 20min 36sec (1236 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 05 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/dozure]

If you only have one table saw I don't know what to tell you.... kinda sucks, hunh?

I LOLed.

[u/Schoffleine]

The reference mark bit was especially helpful to me. I've always had problems visualizing the end over end flip over method that seemingly every other box joint video has (this is the first time I've seen just using a reference mark) and mess it up a fair amount of the time. It's a lot simpler just to make the mark and go off that.

[u/mclabop]

Great video. Wish I had time and money to take a course from him.

[u/MikeJules]

Not every day you see someone take a few thousandths off something on the table saw. Dudes got skills.

[u/mfr220]

Great video, thanks for sharing.

[u/neetones]

I love William. I took his week-long joinery class and it completely changed my work.