Peanut 2 MiniJig Revised - and revisited! [video 474][**Gifted/Ad]

hi there i hope you're well in this video we're going to take a look at the revised peanut 2 mini jig to see what kind of changes that have been made to it now i've talked about the peanut 2 system in detail before and i've used it for builds and in the cabinetry basics series of video so i'm not going to go into too much detail about the system itself if you are new to the system there's a peanut 2 playlist that has all the peanut 2 videos the jigs and the projects all in one place so that's a great place to start i'll link that up down below in the video description in the interest of transparency this unit has been supplied full review by intelligent fixings i haven't been paid to make this video or to say nice things about the product but i am a member of their affiliate scheme so if you're thinking of making a purchase then using the links in the video description down below will benefit the channel at no additional cost to yourselves so thank you so much to the folks who do just that just to recap quickly though the peanut 2 is a small plastic dowel that's drilled into the edge of the board and a keyhole shaped slot routed into the corresponding face of a board with a proprietary cutter and due to some clever and patented design and engineering the peanut tightens itself as it's inserted into the slot so it produces a very strong self-clamping joint that leaves no visible marks on the workpiece the original peanut 2 jig was very much aimed at cabinetry in the workshop whereas the peanut 2 mini jig is a much smaller and highly portable version that can also be used on site it's also significantly cheaper making it much more accessible when i first featured this back in february it was a very impressive piece of kit one of the great things about working with smaller responsive companies like intelligent fixings is that they do react to suggestions and comments and since february there's been a few revisions to this jig this isn't the mini jig mark ii or anything like that but i just wanted to go through some of those changes that have been made to the mini jig because they're quite significant and they really do increase the range of connectors that you can now use with the mini jig let's take a quick look so there's been a few little revisions made to the jig five or six of them some of them quite small some of them quite significant we'll start with the sort of smaller ones first when i first got my hands on the jig i mean it's really nice really well thought out and well designed with clearly marked clamping areas where your clamp will be out of the way out of the way of the router as you're routing the slots one thing i did find is that once the clamp areas were fine for relatively small headed clamps like these they were a little bit on the small side for if you were using a bigger clamp like a one-handed betty clamp like this and what intelligent fixings have done have actually is that they've actually increased the size of the jig very slightly to give you slightly bigger clamping areas it's not much it's only about 10 or 12 mil either side but it's just enough to give you a little bit more elbow room and it makes it much easier much more comfortable to clamp the other thing they've done is that they've changed the shape very slightly i don't know if you can see on this one they've brought these little sort of horns in slightly tighter again only by 10 mil or so and that's a big help because this middle piece in the center here is used as a depth gauge for setting your router plunge depth and to be honest on the original jig it was just a little bit tight to get the smaller quarter inch router bases onto that bringing those in a little bit closer makes it much easier to deal with we've also got center lines scribed on the jig now as well both side to side and top and bottom this is particularly useful when you're using it off the fence so for example on a mid panel connector because it was quite hard to eyeball not hard it's just a little bit fiddly much easier to have a centerline scribed so you can line the whole jig up nice and easily i found i was sort of eyeballing it through the gravity pinholes which is not ideal and in the same vein when you're using the uh jig flat like that perhaps for a mid panel fixing one of the problems that i found was that it was quite hard to clamp the jig down because the jig is in the middle of a panel it's away from the edges you haven't got a clamp that's big enough and i was doing all kinds of elaborate schemes bits of board that were clamped at the edges and things one of my patreon supporters suggested that you could just screw it down and that's actually the perfect solution it's exactly what you can do and intelligent fixings are now providing countersunk screw points for this obviously on a mid panel fixing when you screw that in place the panel will cover the screw holes uh when it's fitted so that's a big a big help as well so the next revision is a little bit more significant and you've always been able to use the peanut 2 mini jig as a dowel jig of course because it comes with a six mil bushing a six mil insert for when you're drilling out the holes for the peanut two connectors uh so you could use six mil dowels straight away uh you can also get inserts for eight mil dowels now as well and also for 10 mil dowels and the best of my knowledge it's also the only dowel jig that can actually put dowels in uh into a miter joint as well correct me if i'm wrong let me know in the comments but i can't think of a single one so a very very useful dowel jig as well you could just purchase the jig just to use it as a dowel jig and then add in the peanut functionality later on if you wanted to there's one other change which again seems relatively insignificant when you think about it they've actually lengthened increased the size of the slot very slightly so you do get a slightly longer throw on the peanut t-slot that's really useful in itself because i think when i was making my hat and coat rack i ended up having to put the pegs on the other way around because there wasn't enough travel in the connector originally there was only 12 ml of travel in the connector there's a little bit more now so making it much more useful but possibly more useful again is that you can now use this peanut two mini jig for cutting loose tenons for making domino joinery and that's what i'm going to be doing next i haven't actually tried this yet i'll be doing this for the first time right here on this video so let's get into that right now but before we get to that i just want to say a huge thank you to my youtube members and patreon supporters it's the support that i receive from the channel members that really helps me to keep the lights on here and to keep making the content that i want to make and as well as the rosy glow that channel members receive from supporting the channel they also have access to the back cat logo free plans and ad-free versions of the public-facing videos channel members also have a weekly week in the workshop vlog style video where i chat about whatever's been going on that week with some behind the scenes and over the shoulder type video as well and as well as discussions of future plans and projects channel members also receive a 20 discount on all 10 minute workshop products there's a new batch of these coming this weekend i hope to my etsy and they also have early access to these products which is probably why these are always in short supply uh if any or all of that sounds like your kind of thing then do come and join us as part of the 10 minute workshop team we'd love to have you on board and taking part but that's enough of that for now let's get on and cut some mortises so if you're familiar with festool's domino with the loose tannins in general you'll probably know what's coming if you're not then a loose tenon is basically like a mortise antenna but it's two mortises connected by a tenon that is loose sometimes called a floating tenon because it's not physically connected to either of the work pieces uh what we've got here are two pieces of board two bits of mdf exactly the same size i'm going to basically join these in a simple l shape just as you would for the side and base of a cabinet say just as a little memory aid i'll mark on these we'll do the face here and we'll do the edge here there's no measuring needed here i'm just using the standard gravity pins to reference off the edges of the board and clamping the jig down making sure the clamps are outside the marked areas i fitted a 30 ml guide bush in the router and centered it with a mandrel [Music] and i'm using a mil spiral up cut bit to cut the face slots in a single pass [Applause] h slots next and again locating the jig with the gravity pins clamping it down and cutting the mortise in a single pass [Music] [Applause] [Music] so proof of the pudding time i've got a couple of five by 30 ml dominoes i did clear out the mortises very slightly with the vacuum every time i do this kind of thing it really makes me appreciate how good the festool dust extraction is on the domino normally with a spiral up cut bit it really helps with the extraction didn't do a great deal this particular time didn't do badly it wasn't impacted like it has been with a straight bit but i would always recommend using a spiral up cut bit if you're going to use it for for cutting mortises anyway let's pop these two in these are regular 5 by 30 mil they're still dominoes in that side we've got referenced off that side and that edge so they should just go in very very nicely that is nice and flush all around very good and one thing i didn't mention earlier on is that when you're using the peanut 2 mini jig for domino mortises for loose end mortises you've got to have the little gravity pins the little reference pins symmetrical either side of the uh slot normally they're offset slightly one way or the other but it did you can use both positions so it gives you the option to vary how close to the edge you actually get it but no i'm that is literally the first time i've i've used one of these for a domino a loose tenon so yeah very very impressed with that so there we go that's what intelligent fixings have been up to over the last eight months or so they haven't been sitting idly on their hands basking in the glory of uh the peanut two miniature they've been quietly responding to comments and suggestions and making those improvements um of course the flip side of innovative small british companies that react to comments and suggestions is that uh you might be an early adopter saying hang on a minute i bought one of those out only eight months ago and i'll be left behind i can't have all the cool stuff that you now get with a pin at two mini jig and yes to an extent that's absolutely true the jig did exactly and still does exactly what you bought it to do but there have been improvements made what intelligent fixings are doing though they've got a small number of original shape peanut 2 mini jigs and they've re-machined them to take advantage of the loose tenon and the center markings now it's body only so they're only of any use to existing original peanut 2 miniature owners because you need to use the same fence and guide bush inserts that you've got already but they're available on intelligent fixings website there is limited supply of these because they don't have many of this particular shape left but they are available for i believe 35 pounds so if that's something that interests you if you really want to get into loose tenant jewelry using your existing peanut 2 mini jig the original version then you can do that for just 35 quid which i think is is pretty reasonable to be perfectly honest for a jig of this quality to be able to get the the whole new body re-machined to take advantage of the loose town and joinery i think that's a pretty decent thing to do there's a link down in the video description below if that's something that interests you other than that i think we're done for this one i think it's a great upgrade it really does make it one of the most versatile jigs around i think i said earlier you could actually buy this bear without the starter pack and use it simply as a dowel jig or a loose tenon jig and then when the time comes that you need something that's a knock down fixing then you can upgrade to the peanut 2 starter pack and get the bit and the selection of peanut 2's as well i think it's a great thing that uh intelligent fixings have done that'll leave it there i think for this week thank you very much indeed for taking a look thank you as well to intelligent fixings for giving me the opportunity to take a look at this latest version of the peanut 2 mini jig thank you as always to my amazing patreon supporters and youtube members but that's it for this one thanks for taking a look i'll see you in the next one all right take care you

Channel: Peter Millard

Views: 18,729

Keywords: woodwork, workshop, DIY hack, how-to, carpentry, cabinets, festool, MDF, Domino, Lamello, Clamex, Tenso, Dowel, jointing, joining, Peanut, peanut connector, peanut 2, casings, carcass

Id: r38uEEUkx0w

Length: 13min 30sec (810 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 22 2021