Menu
What's new

Finger Joint Jig

Norman Hitt said:
Sean, (Not Stu here), but I will try to explain how it works. You set the distance between the blade and the indexing pin the same distance as the indexing pin is wide, then you take one of the pieces you are going to cut and make all the cuts on that piece. Next, you flip that piece around and slide the last notch down over the indexing pin, (that gives you one tab of the piece filling the gap between the index pin and the blade), and then you slide the mating piece up against that piece and make the first cut. Now remove that first piece you cut from the index pin and slide the piece you just cut over so the cut you made butts against and hangs over the index pin and make the next cut, then just move that cut over onto the index pin, and so on across the piece.

(hope this is clearer than mud).:D

Note: The adjustment feature is just so you can fine tune the distance between the index pin and the blade so it exactly matches the width of the index pin.
Click to expand...

Ok, I see how it works now. Thanks for explaining that. :thumb: The other jigs that I have seen for this purpose didn't have the adjustment screw. That threw me there. The part that I was lost began where you flip the first one over and butt the new piece up to it...... It all makes sense now. :doh:
 
Stu

Nice job on the jig, what is the project going to be?

Vaughn, do I detect a carpet on the shop floor?

Jay
 
Sean, the other thing is the "Finger" is replaceable, I can put different sized fingers in there, this makes the jig a lot more versatile.

Jay, I made the jig for a project that then got redesigned and I've not used it on anything else........... yet! :rolleyes:
 
Hmmmm... so I was trying to figure out what that new-fangled thing pictured in Dave's post was. Oh, so *that's* what a woodrat looks like. I wonder how much those things go for? Off on a web search. Up come the videos. Wow! The guy doing the demo is taling about making tenons on a bandsaw. And he says "As someone else said to me: 'Eight cuts! And all of them wrong!'" ;)

Looks like I've found a new motto! ;)

Really, those machines are very cool... but I suppose my cobbled together ridgid/incra setup will have to suffice for a while... ;)

Thanks,

Bill
 
I don't have a picture of mine, its nothing fancy enough to photograph :D
Just a piece of BB ply with a 1/2" BB index pin set in it. Gets screwed to the sacrificial part of the crosscut jig, and then indexed to the blade using one of the pieces to be cut turned sideways as a spacer. Works great and is really fast to set up, as long as the fingers are the same width as the thickness of the material.

Stu -- McMaster Carr should have nice little round shims for sale, just what you need. Aluminum cans work, but the paper/cardboard thing is a real pain. One place I worked for, that was the standard method for setting the dado cutter's width, and I swear it took so long that we could have bought a new dado set every third set up with all the wasted wages. Trouble was that the cardboard compressed just enough to add yet another variable to the set up, adding about three more iterations of trial and error to the process :huh:
 
John Downey said:
....................Stu -- McMaster Carr should have nice little round shims for sale, just what you need. Aluminum cans work, but the paper/cardboard thing is a real pain. One place I worked for, that was the standard method for setting the dado cutter's width, and I swear it took so long that we could have bought a new dado set every third set up with all the wasted wages. Trouble was that the cardboard compressed just enough to add yet another variable to the set up, adding about three more iterations of trial and error to the process :huh:
Click to expand...

John, LV sells a shim kit for this dado set, I bought the set from them, it's only $7.75 US, but I always forget to buy the darn thing :rolleyes: :eek:

05j1301s1.jpg


Now I use cardboard, and pop cans, the US made pop cans are MUCH thinner than the Japanese ones, and I can get both, so I have two different thicknesses to play with!:wave:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top