Home made table saw box joint jig

The joints are always the weakest part of any piece of woodwork. Because of this,
I'm always obsessing over making better joints. Dovetail joints are cool joints, but
way too much work to cut by hand, or require a relatively expensive jig to make with
a router, and even then, they don't end up that accurate and still take lots of time.
However, accuracy is the key to having strong wood joints. So I'm quite sure an
accurate box joint is much stronger than a typical dovetail joint, provided that both
have been properly glued.

Making a box joint really

accurate is very difficult on home
equipment. I figure for it to work
well, the cuts should be within
0.1 mm (about 0.004"), and that
sort of spacing can't be
consistently measured by hand
while operating a table saw. To
get around this problem, I built
this box jointing jig.

Cutting a box joint

This jig is essentially a board that, using a screw advance, can be very precisely
moved side to side with respect to the saw blade, allowing cuts with very precise
spacing to be made. The whole thing rests on a simple sliding table gadget
(sometimes called panel cutter) that slides in the T slot of my table saw. The sliding
table part provides for the movement when I actually cut the workpiece.

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I use this in combination with my cheap dado blade substitute to cut slots. However,
for this application, even without a proper dado, a proper set of dado shims is
almost a must, as the width of the cut has to be adjustable to about 0.1 mm.

The device is essentially a board that I can push back and forth with a threaded rod.
On the far end, the threaded rod, there is a block that holds the rod, and a crank for
turning the threaded rod with. This block I clamp to the fence of my sliding table.

Crank block Ball bearing and crank

To allow the threaded rod to turn freely, but fix it in the lateral direction, I run the 5/8"
threaded rod through a 5/8" ball bearing. The ball bearing is clamped between two
half thickness nuts on the rod. The ball bearing is the 'sealed' variety. Hopefully, this
will keep the dust out of it. It does have a small amount of lateral play however,
despite being brand new.

The threaded rod then goes through a nut which is fixed to the end of the board that
slides side to side. The nut on the threaded rod also has a tiny bit of play in it.
Having a bit of play in the system is unavoidable. The solution is when adjusting the
screw, to always approach the desired point from the same direction. The friction in
the board sliding side to side will ensure that the play is always going the same way,
so its net effect on the overall accuracy cancels out. The spring loaded roller guide
ensures that there always is adequate friction so my jig won't wiggle around.

To make sure the board is always stays firmly

pressed against the fence, I added a spring
loaded roller to push it against the fence. When I
bought the ball bearings, I wasn't yet sure about
what design I'd use, so I figured I might need
two bearings for the rod. As I didn't use it on the
rod, it came in very handy for the roller. I stuck
the bearing on the end of a 5/8" dowel, put that
through a block which is mounted on a hinge
(black). The hinge is a funny offset hinge, with
the actual pin relatively high up. This gives the
two springs that tension the roller against the
fence more mechanical advantage. I just
Roller guide happened to have a hinge like that lying around.

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To allow for a large amount of lateral adjustment, the screw needs to be able to go
into the board quite a bit. This requires either a very deep hole, or a cutout as shown
in the image above. The cutout essentially extends the hole without having a super
long drill. Even if you do have a super long drill, if you drill to a depth of 20 cm, you
may very well find your drill wandering off to the side, and the hole won't be properly
aligned with the threaded rod. Worse yet, with enough error, the drill may break out
of the side of the piece of wood.

Also note on the above picture the slots on the right side of the board. I took this
picture after I had just cut one joint with it. I don't bother trying to align subsequent
joints, so the bottom right of the board eventually mostly gets cut away. If I need a
solid backing to my piece, I can always clamp an extra piece of scrap wood to this
board for that purpose.

When designing a joint, its best to design it so that the

advance between each cut is an exact number of turns
on the crank, so you don't need to remember which
angle the crank is to face next time. Unfortunately, a
5/8" threaded rod is 11 threads per inch, an odd
measure even by awkward imperial units. Because I do
anything that needs precision in metric anyways, the
units really don't work out to anything evenly. I usually
make joints that involve 4 turns per cut, or 6 turns per
cut. With 4 turns per cut, I need two saw blades plus
about 0.015" of shim. With 6 turns per cut, I need 3 saw
blades and much more shims. Having a good metal
vernier or dial caliper is essential when setting up for a box jointed box corner
joint. I set it up by guessing the shims I need, making a
series of cuts, and then measuring the width of the cut slot and the width of the
remaining fingers. Divide that difference in half, and you get the thickness of shims
that must be added or removed. Then make a test joint to see how it goes together.
I always aim for a joint that holds together by friction even before any glue is
applied.

Chances are, whatever you have sliding in the T-slot of your table saw will also have
a bit of play to it as well. To eliminate this source of error, its important to always be
pushing the sliding table exactly the same way every time. Its best to apply a bit of a
turning force to the sliding table while pushing it across, and maintain this turning
force when pulling it back. I do this by pushing it forward by the left end (where I
have the crank) and then, pulling it back, I grab it closer to the blade and pull it back

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 while still maintaining a bit of forward force on the left side. Spraying a bit of WD40
into the T-slot before stating makes it go a lot smoother.

Cheap dado blade substitute

To get extra width, its possible to put shims between the blades, up to nearly a
millimeter before the blades leave a piece of wood in between. This way, you can do
fine adjustments for how wide your cut will be. A variety of materials work good
enough for shims - I prefer sheets of plastic, mostly from packaging. Cardboard also
works, although the edges can fray and then you can't rely on them to be completely
flat anymore. Or you can order a set of dado shims from Lee Valley Tools.

A dado by stacking cheap 7 1/2" saw blades

Finally, I wouldn't recommend stacking more than 4 blades at once. If you need a
wider cut, just make successive cuts.

Also, when you go to buy the blades, take a caliper with you, and make sure they all
are the same radius. I found that one of the three blades I bought had a radius that
was 0.5 mm smaller than the others. It was a good blade, just with all the teeth
ground slightly smaller - very annoying that way. Another old blade I had lying
around was just the right size and number of teeth, so I just use that one now.

People have commented...

Every once in a while, this idea is discussed in various online woodworking forums.
Two concerns keep coming up consistently:

This will plug up with sawdust

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Blades stacked like that don't leave a lot of room for sawdust chips to be carried
away, so surely this will get plugged up quickly.

I was worried about this when I first tried it too, but the best way to find out is to try
it. As it turns out, chip removal has never been a problem. I think mostly because
with a dado, one generally doesn't cut as deep and as fast as one would with a
regular saw blade.

Safety

Well, this one's subjective, and hard to argue. When I use a real dado, I'm always a
little queasy about stacking them on the arbor. The shape of the dado chip removers
is not that confidence inspiring. I'm more comfortable stacking saw blades than
dado chip removers. But if you think this is unsafe, you probably shouldn't be using
dado blades either. But really, this one's subjective. Some people are less
comfortable trying things out than others.

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