The Amazing Self-Centering Mortising Jig

[Music] welcome back everyone in today's video I'm going to show you how to build your own self centering mortising jig this is not a new jig this is a jig that I actually found in wood magazine and it's been featured many other places as well sometimes they're made of plexiglass sometimes they're made of plywood like this now this is a jig that's designed to be used with your plunge router I as do many woodworkers regard plunge routers as an essential tool around the shop it makes joinery work a lot more fun and a lot easier to do so I would definitely add a plunge router to my Christmas list if you don't already have one so I've got two mending plates taped together I've marked the center point created a mark so I can get my drill bit started I'm going to drill through both plates at the same time ideally you want these mending plates to have centered holes but in my case these did not come that way but luckily they are posing holes so that actually will balance out pretty well so the main components for this jig are of course the two mending plates that I drilled a center hole through some scrap wood is a one and a half inch block of fur is some half-inch plywood so this jig will be six inches by 12 inches in length and of course you need a plunge router so now I've got my centerline next I'm going to rip this block in half I've marked where each end of the mending plate needs to be now I just have to punch some holes for drilling I'm gonna see if I can get away with some brass screws first I don't really want him that tight I want some movement in there actually it could work that's actually not too bad I'm going to countersink on the top plate a little bit so I've got this down on a piece of test wood obviously I'm not ready to cut yet there's nothing in the surface here but I've got the main part of the jig set up the next part I need to do is make the guide fences that will go on the surface that allow me to guide my plunge router in two directions the one thing you want to notice on your plunge router on the sides and on the ends you'll see Center marks that indicate where the router bit will enter the wood on the surface of my board I have the centreline mark that I drew out earlier with pencil and what I'm going to do is line up the center line marks on the router so now that I've got this lined up I'm going to cut parts that I need for my fence using the other half of the plywood that I had so you want your fence to just barely be touching the side of the router completely optional and it's just a decorative element really but I'm going to put a strip of walnut that I have left over from a previous project so I've got this running essentially in a track with basically no effort all I would have to do is use the plunge and move it across and that's all I have to focus on the next step is to create a stop block on either end essentially a starting block and a finishing block so I can control the side-to-side movement so I'm going to take this scrap piece of poplar that I had in my bin and I'm going to use that so now I have the two stop blocks that I need I don't want to put anything fancy on here to try and make them adjustable and permanent only because I've got these big handles on either side and everything has to be low profile I'm simply going to use these plastic squeeze clamps will do just fine I'll drop a block on either end well dictate my distance right there I can move the block out so these stuff locks should do just fine so now I've got a spiral bit in my router and I'm going to do first pass [Applause] and there I have my max mortis length I can do anything up to this size so now that I've got that set up I can do another pass and another pass I can increase my depth on the piece underneath it we're just gonna use that as a test piece not too bad so that self-centering it feature does help quite a bit I might do a few fine adjustments to it but I think overall I'm happy with it it's almost dead center it's effortless it's really effortless to do it this way locking this on to a piece of wood and this is a smaller piece and this is why I tested on it because this is the challenge doing it on a smaller piece of wood I would normally get my router table out and set up a really complicated rig to do this kind of a mortise I don't have to even think about it I just put this jig on line everything up to Center which the self centering feature of this works really well yep my stop block setup which at some point I'm gonna figure out what the scale is here for my stuff locks roll my clamps on for the stop locks and I'm ready to go the only thing you have to do is plot where your mortises are going to be now because I thought I don't have a piece of plexiglass in here I can't see through it but I can look through this piece here I can line up any marks that I have on my board now you might ask what about cutting in grain and working on short pieces that happens sometimes can you use this jig if you do that well I'm about to find out turn I have the jig turned upside down right now I'm just going to basically drop it in over top of the hole clamp it together nice and tight and then I'm gonna take it over to my woodworking vise alright so I have this clamped into my woodworking vise I'm just gonna put one stop block in for this one I forgot it I already had a rabbet cut in on this side from this piece of scrap wood but that's the actual mortise I just cut in on a small piece of end grain once again I'm really impressed with how the self centering feature works on this [Music] well that concludes making a self centering mortising jig for your plunge router it takes seconds to set up adding the additional guide rails to my design made all the difference to me I don't even have to think about it I just put my router down and go the only thing I have to think about on this jig is to set up my beginning stop block and my end stop block and then I'm ready to go there's nothing new about this jig it's been done many times before but the difference with my jig is that I built in guide rails so I didn't have to use guide bushings on my router I'm gonna make a few fine adjustments to this jig and in subsequent videos I'm gonna show you how I turn this into a loose tenon and mortise ting system if you want to buy me a beer head on over to my patreon page right here please remember to Like share and subscribe if you haven't done so already there are a couple more videos to watch on this side until next time thanks for watching and have a great day

Channel: Eric Sorensen

Views: 572,178

Keywords: mortising jig, mortise and tenon joinery, loose tenon joinery, domino joiner, mortise cutting, easy mortise jig, wood router, plunge router, power tools, woodworking tools, Woodworking, DIY jigs, Joinery Jigs, DIY Tools, Furniture Making, Wood Shop, DIY Furniture, jig maker, carpenter, maker, maker space, making jigs for woodworking, domino

Id: 96iT4zuYBOc

Length: 12min 29sec (749 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 04 2018