[Box Joint Jig] - Assembly Part I

I'm taking a class in basic cabinet making offered by a local vocational school. The class is allowed to bring in suggestions for their own projects. So I thought about it and came up with a project that I could get some use out of.

A little background. I have a real handsaw problem. Buying them that is. Over the last couple of years, I've acquired some fairly nice old saws. And some really great new saws. The issue is they have no home. To keep them safe, they are nestled away in the basement in make shift or original boxes. So every time I need to cut, it's a trip downstairs to unpack. Then re-pack after I'm done. So I could really use a Saw Till.

Wait a minute! What does this have to do with a Box Joint Jig, which is the title of the post? The Saw Till will need to be joined at its corners. Now my first inclination is to put my newly acquired skill of hand-cut dovetails to the test. But since I'm in the class, and we're working primarily on machines I decided that learning to cut box joints would be an interesting and attractive way to go. So I thought I'd build a box joint jig first, in order to build the Saw Till.

I looked at a bunch of box joint jigs and settled on one from Shop Notes. This one looked fairly flexible, although a little more complex than a throw away jig. But hey, it's all about the learning process. So I decided to take it on.

Shop Notes even offers the hardware needed  for the jig. So once I saw this I jumped on it.

I have to admit, buiding this jig has been a challenge. It's introducing me to a lot of things that I've never done before. One of these was to cut 1/4" slots to accept the bolts for the adjustment feature. Just cut 3 simple slots, easy. But not as easy as it looks.

I settled on using a router to cut them. So I needed to make yet another jig . Now I'm making jigs for making a jig. I hadn't anticipated having to do that.

The jig for cutting 1/4" slots.The palm router runs between the rails and stop blocks are set to define the end of the cut.



Here is the result.

So I'm about halfway done at this point.

The front piece is going to be the adjustable mechanism, which will fit in the back of the fence which is behind it



There are more challenging and new techniques yet to be explored with making this jig. Like cutting metal brackets and boring new holes for them. See you next time.