Cutting Plywood Without a Table Saw

I recently built a bat house and the full plans for that can be found in a link in the description at the beginning of this video. And in the process of building that bat house, I introduced a technique that allows you to make duplicate multiple parts accurately without a table saw. And that's a huge thing for those of you who do not own a table saw. All you need to do this is three tools that we have right here, one being the jigsaw. There's nothing fancy about the blade or anything. This is just a straight up jigsaw that we use to make rough cuts. We'll rough cut our parts with this. To do the finished edges, we'll need a nice straight edge. We've got one here. This is just a simple piece of MDF, about six-inches wide, with a straight edge here that was made on a table saw. So you'll have to find a friend or somebody you know to make that cut for you, or failing that, be very careful on what you buy at the lumberyard and make sure you have a nice, clean, straight edge there. So here's our straight edge marked by the arrows. Back here is a free zone where we can put our clamps and not worry about interfering with the router. And the final thing to make the cut is this router with a pattern-making bit. And you notice a pattern-making bit is different from a flush trim in that the bearing is at the top, and that's what we're gonna use to make our finished cuts. I've gone ahead and laid out the two parts I'm gonna need for the bat house. These are going to be the partitions and we want them to be identical. And I carefully laid out, with a framing square, each part. Now be very careful. This is the most critical part of your procedure because everything depends on how accurate your lines are. Everything's gonna be cut to these lines. So I checked to make sure that my factory edge is nice and square and it was. I made my lines, checked for square. And we're all set to go. All we have to do is rough cut, and I mean, rough cut with the jigsaw. Our tendency is to wanna cut right to the line, but we wanna leave at least an 8th of an inch extra. So we're just gonna run outside the line, cut out our parts, so let's get started. Now our part is all ready for final machining. So I've clamped my piece onto my bench so it overhangs the corner and lets the edge I'm going to machine be free and clear. And now the critical part is to line up my straight edge with my mark. And you just wanna get your straight edge right on your line so you can just barely see your line. Clamp it in place. Make sure nothing has shifted. And we're all set to machine that edge. And there you see, we've got a nice, straight, clean edge. Do the same thing on this line and we've got a perfect piece. So I've created my first partition here using the straight edge on the router. This is all squared up and ready to go. And I'm gonna use it as a template to create my other pieces. So I simply line up what I know to be my square edges front to back. And I've left the rough edge of the piece I'm gonna machine hanging out over the bench. Once I get 'em lined up, I'll just go ahead and clamp 'em in place. And we're ready to route. And there you have it, two identical pieces. Whether you're making two or a hundred, you can make them all the same this way. Now, I wanted to show you this last cut. This is the top of the sides of the bat house which has an angle on it for the roof. And I just wanted to show you that this technique lends itself really well to cutting angles like this on wider stock, you know, stock that's a little bit too big for your miter saw. Or if you don't own a miter saw, you can do angles with this technique. You can do straight edges, just about anything you want. So I hope you enjoyed the video. I hope you adapt this technique into your tool of tricks. It can do a lot for you. And I think you'll find that it really opens up some possibilities for your woodworking.