George Vondriska

Shop Jigs, Helpers Session 4: Large Taper Jig, Straight Line Jig

George Vondriska
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Description

Need to cut tapers in long pieces? This jig has you covered. Need to straight-line rip a good edge on some live edge pieces? Yep, this jig will do that too. The jig takes advantage of some very cool clamps that seat in dovetail sockets cut into the base of the jig. In additional to being wonderful for this project, you’re sure to find other uses for the clamps in your shop.

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Here's one of my favorite table saw jigs. I use this thing a lot. It's a multi-purpose two purpose jig. One thing it'll do is let us cut tapers in really really long stock. The other thing it'll do is act as a straight line jig.

So in that application, which I'll show you in just a bit if we've got a board that's kind of banana edge, too much to take off or clean up on a joint or maybe you don't own a jointer we can straighten that edge here. So first let's talk about the taper. The jig itself, again, uses the dovetail clamps, I showed you earlier and I'll show you how to get the dovetail slots cut, how we're gonna take advantage of that. We've got a fence on here and the fence is adjustable and that's what's gonna allow us to adjust for whatever taper we wanna produce. On my board here that I'm about to cut, I've got a pencil mark on that end and a pencil mark on my end.

So the way this'll work is that we get the fence out of the way and then gotta kinda be in two places at once here. I'm aligning the pencil mark on my end and on the opposite end. And then again, double checking on my end, double checking on your end. And then once we've got that board on its layout lines we bring the fence over. And then one more check a room, that looks good.

Now we're gonna lock the fence in place. That's how we get repeatability out of this thing. Take advantage of those clamps. I'm gonna use that one, and this one, that's gonna hold the fence in place. Now there's pockets cut into the fence that allows the clamps to come past and lock the board down.

The rip fence is set to the same width as the baseboard, 10 inches. So at this point, we're ready to make a cut by simply allowing the base of the jig to ride against the rip fence. And that cool. It's such a nice, easy way to handle a long taper on a piece like that. Next thing I'm gonna pull my fence off of here, grab a piece of cool looking wood with a weird edge and show you how you can use this as a straight line jig.

This is a beautiful piece of Walnut, and I saw this on my bandsaw and a logs to lumber way. So as a result, I've still got the outside of the log on this board. And this jig makes for a really easy way to clean that up. Again, the edge, my left edge of the jig is gonna define where the cut is about to be made. So we can use that in order to locate our material and decide exactly where we want the cut to happen.

What I'm gonna do is get just past the sapwood in the material, start cutting into the hardwood. And even though this edge on my right is really hinky I'm gonna get a nice straight edge. So the benefit here is that there's no way that I could put this outside edge of the log up against my rip fence. But when I trap it in place like this with the clamps, the jig is nice and straight, so it's gonna result in a nice straight rip. Once we've got that straight edge established, now you can go back to standard techniques.

You can join the edge you can put that edge against the rip fence. You're good to go. So now that I've convinced you you gotta have one of those, let's look at making you one. The base for this jig is really easy to make. It's just a big slab of wood.

Again, use an MDF for both components for this jig. An MDF just works great in general for jigs. It's inexpensive, it stays nice and flat. My base is 10 inches wide and 49 inches long 'cause it's still the original width of the MDF. So MDF and particle board are a little funky that way we call it a four by eight, but they're really 49 by 97.

So my piece is 49 inches long. Here's what I'm gonna do, from this end for my dovetail sockets. I'm gonna measure over 10, that's the center 20, that's the center rotate, and guess what I'm gonna do now. 10 and 20. Now this one doesn't lend itself to the dovetail sockets being cut on a router table.

'Cause we'd be so far from the fence, we can't do it, the router is not big enough. We're gonna do it with a handheld router and a fence here on our material. What you need to know is how far it is from the center of the dovetail bit to the edge of the router base. In my case, it's three inches, square that off. My fancy-schmancy fence is just a board with a straight edge on it.

That gets aligned with the pencil line, and secure everything to the bench. Parameters on the router bit are the same as what we talked about before, as far as depth of cut. Three to go. That takes care of the base. Next thing we gotta do is head over to the table saw and make the fence for this jig.

In order to have a fence that works with the baseboard that we just made we gotta do a couple things to it. It needs these notches. And what those notches do is allow our clamp to go past the fence and lock down a board. As a result of that, the math here is critical. If you don't make the notches, the right depth the clamp's not gonna get past the edge of this and act as a holdout.

So follow the recipe I'm giving you here and look at the dimensions in the PDF that accompanies the video. And in this one, when I made this the first time I did three notches which is okay. I'm gonna go ahead and cut off four notches into the board that we're about to do now. And I'll show you how to set that up. The other thing we have to have in order to cut tapers is a foot at the end so that when we have a board on here, it engages against that and can't slide out the back end of the jig, gives us a solid registration point.

So here's how we make that. Take the board that you just dovetailed and lay your fence piece on here about centered and full length. We want our notches to be an inch and a quarter wide and you don't have to be all engineering about this. What I'm doing is letting my ruler sit in about the middle of the dovetail socket. Half of one and a quarter is five eighths.

So there's five eighths that way. Now I'm putting my five eighths mark in about the center of the socket, making a mark. That's the waste wood that results in an inch and a quarter wide notch. Same thing here, rinse and repeat. Now, just 'cause of the way we're gonna cut this on the table saw.

These two notches I mark it on the backside. This is gonna make more sense in a second. And I'm gonna make those a little more aggressive, so they're easier to see. Bring these down to the edge and notice I'm not being uber precise about this. You just don't have to be.

Height of the blade is two inches. And that is critical because again we've gotta have enough reach here on this clamp to get past the edge of the fence. So if you don't do that part, right none of this is gonna work. Height is two inches because we're gonna do this. Make a cut, make a cut aligning the pencil marks with the outside of the blade and get all the waste out of the center.

Same process, three more times. When you put your foot on make sure you do it on the right edge. The foot has to project out on the edge away from where you just did the notches. So this with our notches over here is the right spot for that foot to go. A little bit of glue, and a brad or a staple to hold that until the glue dries.

And that takes care of our fence and takes care of the jig. So now you know how to use it, you know how to build it you know how to love having it in your shop.

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