Mike Pekovich's Go-To Work Holding Jigs

we've got your workbench you've got your hand tools nice and sharp and you want to get some hand work done that's a really good start but another key ingredient in doing good work is keeping the stock from moving where the tool wants it to go now vices are pretty good for that they can handle most situations but it's not always the most efficient way to do it I don't really like clamping and unclamping parts every time I have to play in the face or an edge or switch from parts so I like to use stops and basically in its simplest form the stop is something that keeps apart from moving in the direction the tool wants it to move this is one of the simplest stops I can think of I call it a t-square it's a thin strip of wood drywall screw and a little block that's basically about it but it does a lot of work in my shop this little cleat gets clamped in my front vise on the opposite end you can either clamp that in place or I've drilled a little dog hole opposite my vices on both my benches and that just keeps that strip from spinning and this creates a really secure stop the full length of my bench so I do most my parts with this everything from table aprons to full-on tabletops I can handle with just this stop what I like about it is I can do a lot of work give the part of flip and I can keep on going I can work through a tabletop this way can work through multiple parts really quickly without clamping and unclamping vise now the only time I start to run into trouble it's one of my parts get longer in skinnier like table legs so for stuff like this I have a different jig that offers a little bit more support so this jig is a little bit more involved but not a whole lot more there's a plywood base there's my end stop and in addition there's a strip along the length which gives me a side stop as well on the bottom I have a little fin which clamps into my front vise to hold everything in place so with that in place I can knock out my legs pretty quickly without this workpiece wanting to wander around too much in addition when I'm working on table legs I tend to like to do some shaping whether it's champers or even more involved shapes to where I want to hold this stock at a 45 degree angle you know a really down and dirty way to do it is to hold it with one hand and chamfer with the other hand it works well enough for simple champers but to really get down and do the job right I have a couple of B blocks which I screw to this long stop the blocks are nothing more than a block of wood a couple 45-degree cuts it creates a little pocket for the stock to sit in at 45 degree angle and on the front one I've added a little strip of wood to act as a front stop those guys just get screwed in place now I can rest my workpiece in there so I can take a two-handed approach to my block plane my spokeshave whatever I want to be doing to be shaping that leg it's one of those things where I don't always go through that trouble but when I do I'm really glad I did so I've got the majority of my parts taken care of a long skinny parts taken care of I have a separate planing stop fourth in stock and small stock like drawer sighs drawer dividers that sort of thing it's a little bit different style of stop in that this is basically a bench hook and what a bench hook is is it's a piece of wood this piece of MDF with a fence again that's keeping my workpiece from moving in addition there's a cleat on the bottom and that registers against the edge of my bench so as a workpiece and the jig are moving forward that cleat contacts the edge of my bench and everything is really secured so I can plane on this all day long do my flipping get all that work done the other thing I like this jig for is when I'm trying to square up the edges of stock and it's really thin it can be really tippy it can fall over easily and even if I can get an edge on there it can be difficult to really maintain a perfectly 90-degree edge on parts like this so instead I take advantage of the fact that this elevates the stock above the workbench a little bit so I'll just lay it flat I'll just hang it over the edge of the jig a little bit and I can throw my hand playing flat on the workbench this way I can plane this edge really really easily no tipping no parts falling over and I can ensure that this edge stays 90 degrees to my face really cool really fun this jig I use quite a bit now the thing I don't use this jig for is shooting the ends of my stock for that I go to a dedicated shooting board again this is designed to use the plane on its site but rather than keep it on the side on my workbench the base consists of two layers of plywood to create a little ledge for the plane to write on the edge of that also creates a reference surface for the plane and the fence is attached with a little star knob an oversized hole what this allows me to do is it gives me just enough wiggle room to let me square up that fence every time I use it so whenever I'm ready to batch out some parts I'll pull out my combo square get it nice and square tighten that up and I'm good to go that fence is flush with that rabbit so what that does is it creates a zero clearance edge and prevent the stock from chipping out on this back corner really great for squaring up parts I also use this for cleaning up my 45 degree miter 's on frame parts and stuff for that I use a plastic speed square with little rabbeted piece of stock screwed on to act as a fence the base of this square it sits in a group that I've ripped in my shooting board and that rests against the fence so the square against the fence is what gives me a really accurate 45-degree angle and it makes it really easy to plane this at 45 degrees and also maintain a really vertical edge so my parts come together really well the one thing this 45-degree plane stop doesn't handle our wider parts like box parts because I could put it up here obviously my plane isn't that wide it would still be a precarious way to plane that so instead I have another shooting jig which is designed specifically for those types of miters it's a little bit different and that the top layer the jig has an edge that's cut at 45 degrees in addition there's a fence added basically it's a strip of wood where I rip a 45 degree angle and one edge and glue it down this creates a V for my hand plane to sit in which registers my plane at 45 degrees so all I need to do is throw the workpiece flat on the jig and I complain a really accurate angle while maintaining a really square edge along its length which is really important for everything to come together nice and square so between a t-square my jig for long parts my bench top for small parts and a couple shooting boards this handles all of my planing tasks there's a couple more jigs that I use when I'm sawing the one I use for larger stock again it's a bench hook where I have a fence and a cleat this fence has a series of cuts at 90 and 45 degrees they guide the saw to cut that angle the workpiece again goes against the fence using a Western saw that cuts on the push stroke as I'm making that cut that workpiece is forced against the fence the cleat is forced against a bench I can do a lot of work really efficiently I'm really only depending on this to get within a fraction of square the angle I want to cut and I'll use a shooting board to clean everything up so between this and the shooting boards I can do really accurate efficient work with hand tools the other saw book I like to use is for smaller parts this is really simple it's just a block of hardwood with rabbet cut in it this rabbit creates a fence to secure the stock and I just clamp this in my vise and because I use Japanese saw for trim work because it's got a really fine teeth and it leaves a really clean edge this cuts on the pull stroke so rather than having the fence oriented away from me I'm actually having the fence now towards me so I'm pulling the workpiece into the fence as I make this cut this also has 19 45 degree curves in it the way make those as I just hold my combo square up to the block of wood make a cut to get me square bring a pencil line down to give me a curve that's plumb since I'm using the saw itself to make that curve it gives me a really clean accurate registration line for making all of my cuts I use this quite a bit for small stock I really like this and this is one of those things where you know cutting small parts if you tried to take that to the chops our table saw really scary it's a bad way to do it this is one case where the hand tool is really the best way you should be doing this this makes it really easy so a couple saw hooks a bunch of plain hooks you know you invest an afternoon in your shop making these things and you can do a whole lot of handwork definitely give it a try I think it's going to help you out quite a bit if you want more information on making all this stuff I did article for fine woodworking magazine take a look hopefully that will help you out definitely give it a try and you're going to be doing some good work

Channel: FineWoodworking

Views: 241,714

Rating: 4.968473 out of 5

Keywords: 5186140247001, youtube, workbench

Id: eqWbgkl_ryM

Length: 12min 14sec (734 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 02 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/joelav]

The speed square idea is genius. I'm doing that tonight

[u/ax1onn]

So many simple, "why the hell didn't I think of that" things.

[u/skahunter831]

I saw this a couple weeks ago and promptly made the plane stops. So handy!

[u/Clock_Man]

I have plans to make every single one of these for my bench. Now that I've been jointing wide boards by hand, I see the need for a better planing stop than a bench dog.

Shooting boards are also on the short list, and they're needed desperately.

[u/GravityTracker]

I really like the shooting board. I've been wanting to make one but I'm not convinced I could make it accurate enough by cutting dadoes for the stops. His approach solves that issue.