Step-and-Repeat Hole Jig

[LarryG]

Here's an interesting little jig I cooked up to solve a common shop problem. Anyone care to guess what it does? (Okay, I know ... the thread title DOES kinda give it away.)


But if you're still in the dark, maybe this next photo will help. The jig attaches to the bottom of my handheld router's plunge base, replacing the stock plastic subbase. Materials are 3/4" Baltic birch plywood for both the base and the fence. Note the indexing pin just to the right of the large hole for the bit.


Still stumped? With the indexing pin removed, the jig's fence is placed against the edge of the workpiece and a first hole is drilled at the desired location (router not shown, for clarity).


Then with the indexing pin reinstalled, successive holes are drilled by placing the indexing pin in the last-drilled hole and plunging the bit into the workpiece to drill the next one.


Yep, it's a shelf-pin drilling jig. There are a lot of shelf-pin jigs available, but most of them are quite large and yet are still of a finite size; i.e., they'll only handle workpieces as long as they are. This simple little jig is only 7" square but will drill holes from here to infinity ... and since each new hole is indexed off the last, it ensures that they will all have precisely equal spacing.

[John Hunter]

Very nice!

[Stormbringer]

Since I'm copying your idea Larry, where do I mail your royalty check

[jziegler]

Larry,

Some great jigs today. I'll probably have to steal your ideas for some of them. Now, I just need to get a plunge router and I can use this for cabinets. Looks a lot easier than my lay out lines in pencil and drill on the drill press. What spacing is it set for, and would it work to have multiple holes for the pin?

-Jim

[Tom Miller]

Dude, you've been holding out on us! Maybe if you'd have posted this sooner, my shelf unit wouldn't look like this:





Looks good, BTW. As does your jig.

Regards,
Tom
OK, I'm obviously just cracking myself up here....

[dkhoward]

I'm Impressed and have this one on my list of "shamelessly steal this idea at the first opportunity". I am in the process of planning new kitchen cabinets and I intend to build european style boxes which means LOTS of shelf pin holes to drill. I was planning on building a pretty complex table and indexing jig for my drill press, but this is a much cleaner and easier option.

Thanks for saving me a ton of time, effort and frustration!

[Black wallnut]

Great jig idea! I'm impressed.

[Bud]

Thats a real nifty idea. You could make the pin adjustable to set the hole distance to what ever is desired.

Bud

[LarryG]

What spacing is it set for, and would it work to have multiple holes for the pin?

The spacing is 32mm (hair more than 1.25"), which conforms to the European system. But it can be anything you want.

As the last picture shows, the knurled nut that secures the indexing pin is pretty close to the router's base casting. And of course the nut needs to be clear of the collet. Those would be the only limitations to having multiple holes.

Instead of a thru-pin with a nut, it would be possible to use a plain pin that is a press-fit into one of several holes in the baseplate. I actually thought about this when I was building the jig, in order to make the hole spacing adjustable. But in the end I decided I wasn't too wild about the idea of a press-fit pin in such close proximity to a spinning router bit ... if it fell or vibrated out, eh, could ruin your whole day.

[boblon]

Great looking little jig. I'm going to have to be making some shelf pin holes some time in the next couple of weeks, so the timing was great.

And thanks too for the effort posting the jigs in your other recent posts. Quite the nice little jig fest.

Thanks Larry,

BobL.

[Pappy]

Bunch of cabinet work in my near future. Thanks for the idea!

[monte]

Looks good Larry. Great idea too.

[jhart]

Another great idea that i can steal. Thanks Larry

[L. D. Jeffries]

Yah, me too! Steal the idea that is.

[scorrpio]

I use a different jig, one used with DP rather than router.
Normally, I use just half of the jig as a stopblock:

However, if I need to do the equal spaced holes thing, I reverse the fence and attach the rest of the jig:

I drill the first hole, then move the piece by the distance I need between holes, and adjust the jig so that index rod sits inside the 1st hole. Now, drill second hole. Lifting the rod slightly (it slides freely in the hole, but does not wobble), I move the piece over until rod slips into the just drilled hole, drill, rinse repeat.

The jig lets me drill repeat about any distance from edge (DP capacity allowing) and use whatever step. To quickly adjust the jig to a particular setting, I have small templates with 2 drilled holes. Index the drill to one hole, and the rod to the other, and I am set.