Powermatic Tenon Jig: Product Review

Let's have a look at this Powermatic Tenoning jig. It's pretty cool. Very specifically, the feature I want to look at is the ability to use these two blocks, sandwich a mortise chisel or a router bit in there, then the material we're gonna cut the tenon in goes here. We can use that to set the jig to produce the right size tenon on this end. It's a really cool feature. Let's look at it a little more in-depth. For the first step, follow what's outlined in the owner's manual. The face of the jig itself will get zeroed against the saw blade. Then, the way that we take advantage of this, is by inserting your hollow chisel mortiser chisel between the two blocks, squeeze, plant block number two in place. When we remove this chisel, there should be just a little bit of pressure there, a little bit of tension. The material that you're working with goes in between block number two and this fence and then we can lock that in place. And that should be what it takes to give us a perfect tenon on the other side of the jig. Now, let's say you're working with router bits instead of with hollow chisel mortisers. We can do that. We've got a router bit here. It's just a little bit more difficult because what I need to do is find top dead center of those flutes when I clamp this block in place. But if you're doing mortises with a router table or a plunge router instead of with a hollow chisel mortiser, we can still take advantage of this. The setup is just a little bit more difficult. I'm going to repeat my setup with a hollow chisel mortiser and we'll see what kind of cut we get. Now on this side of the jig, what's clamped in place was simply cut, flip, cut. Let's have a look here and see how this went. I cut the cheeks off so that we can put this in. This mortise was made by the hollow chisel I just had here. And this, that's what I'm looking for. Just enough friction that the parts stay together when I pick them up like that. Now looking at the jig, if you need to do a microadjust, it's very easy to do. We can loosen that knob and then use this to make small adjustments in the position of the jig, so that we can microadjust the size of that tenon as needed. So there's an overview of how that specific mortise chisel attachment, mortise chisel set up or router bit set up works on the Powermatic Tenoning jig.