Rockler Dovetail Jig ?

[rcp612]

I'm very interested in the Rockler dovetail jig, especially at $99.99 right now.
Does anyone own this jig?? Is it as great as they make it appear??
As a hobbiest, I'm looking for low price and am not interested in anything like the Leigh or others in that price range.
Also, I like their dust collection system for this jig,,, has anyone seen it in action (other than Rockler's video) or own this?
I appreciate your guy's input and thank you.

[JimD]

I have seen several reviews of the Rockler jig but I've never used it. The reviews have not been good.

For an inexpensive half blind dovetail jig, I like the Harbor Freight. Less than $50 normally and about $30 on sale. It is a bit difficult to set up and the instructions are bad. With better instructions and some patience, it will cut good half-blind dovetails. You can get extra template guides from Grizzly.

For a good jig that will do half blind or through dovetails I would go with the PC. It typically gets a "best tool" rating in reviews. I haven't used it but I have reviewed the manual. It looks good to me. It is simpler to setup than the Harbor Freight or similar jigs. It is maybe $125 - a bit more than the Rockler but worth it in my estimation.

Jim

[drumpriest]

I have not used the newest incarnation of the rockler jig, but you'll get very different responses from different people. I used the last gen, and found it to be a bloody nightmare to work with. I've used it, the PC and the Leigh jigs, I bought the D4R, which is out of your price attitude certainly.

I found that as price went up, so did ease of use. The rockler was the biggest pain, the PC was less painful, and the Leigh was down right pleasant. Now that there is a 12" Leigh jig though, I'm surprised that PC hasn't dropped the price further. It looks as though Leigh has upped the price though, used to be 180$, now 220$.

[kirkroy]

I've got the current rockler. I've never used any other one to compare but I find it easy to use...

[jhart]

I have the Rockler from about 2 years ago. I found it difficult to get everything set up properly and make dovetails that looked and fit decently. About 6-8 months ago, I bought a Rockler setup jig (was relatively cheap) used it to do the setup and was making almost perfect dovetails. Am happy with the Rockler now.

[DonHo]

I have had the Rockler jig for 2 or 3 years. It's sturdy and made of heavy material( except mine has plastic "finger" piece for the router guide to ride against). It's fit and finish is good but like Joe I found it hard to set up until I too bought the set up jig. I'd suggest that if you go with the Rockler you buy the set up jig also. Also the instructions I got with my jig were somewhat lacking. Someone on this forum had a link where you could download a better set of instructions, if you can't find that link I might be able to search my computer and find the pdf file but I've probably had two rebuilds on the computer since I downloaded them so I'm not sure.

DonHo

[jhart]

Here's a link to the setup jig Don and I were mentioning.


http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=16904