BT3 Box Joint Jig?

[phi1l]

This, of course, has to be the ultimate box joint jig.

OOps. wrong link THIS is the ultimate one.

[Stytooner]

I like that one. Very nice.

[Tony Caro]

took a quick look at that one. Suwat forgot an important note: the drill bit must be the same width as the saw blade or the slot will grow or shrink as he moves on down.

Loring is 100% correct. My tablesaw setup won't take dado blades and I have been looking for a jig that I could use with the standard blade.
Suwat's article is lacking in detail (particularly about having the drill bit measure exactly the same diameter as the saw blade) so I measured my saw blade (about 2.5mm), inserted a 2.5 mm drill bit and guess what? Accumulated error on every finger. The blade acutally cuts a kerf of just under 3mm so I went through a number of drill bits that were close to this measurement but found accumulated errors with all of them. I found a nail which was pretty close to the kerf measurement and have used that (as a reference) and this gives me very tight fingers but at least it's something, I then take to the joints with a chisel for a nice fit. It is long-winded but I will get a proper table saw with dado capability in my next life.
Hope this saves someone some time if they make a jig like this.

[os1kne]

Some very nice jigs. It's always interesting to see the different jigs. I've been meaning to get around to building a box joint jig for several years. There seems to be dozens of good designs for box joint jigs - that range from very simple to very complex.

[dbhost]

Here's a link to the basic box joint jig I built.

http://www.cabinetmaking.com/pages/fingerjig.htm

It works pretty easily, and is bug ugly... I need to make some changes to the design though, I am considering setting it up on a base / runner to ride in the miter slot table instead of using the SMT.

[Tony Caro]

Loring is 100% correct. My tablesaw setup won't take dado blades and I have been looking for a jig that I could use with the standard blade.
Suwat's article is lacking in detail (particularly about having the drill bit measure exactly the same diameter as the saw blade) so I measured my saw blade (about 2.5mm), inserted a 2.5 mm drill bit and guess what? Accumulated error on every finger. The blade acutally cuts a kerf of just under 3mm so I went through a number of drill bits that were close to this measurement but found accumulated errors with all of them. I found a nail which was pretty close to the kerf measurement and have used that (as a reference) and this gives me very tight fingers but at least it's something, I then take to the joints with a chisel for a nice fit. It is long-winded but I will get a proper table saw with dado capability in my next life.
Hope this saves someone some time if they make a jig like this.

One other thing about this jig that you should bear in mind if you're going to use it is that it is hard to fine tune/adjust. It's hard to use a shim because the reference pin has such a small bearing surface. It's difficult to micro-adjust so that you get that "perfect fit" like you may be able to with other jigs.