Tenon jig

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I’m making interior doors for my house and the backward way I was cutting tenons was tedious and the result was functional but not very clean (think lots of glue). I ran across an excellent design by thetinman over at LJ. His was more than functional, it was beautiful. Mine is merely functional.

The jig rides the fence while the rail workpiece gets cut on a stacked dado. The jig is reversible with one small fence for lengthwise cuts and one large fence for widthwise cuts. It will be in use this weekend as long as my wife doesn’t complain about the noise waking the baby. :-)

Losing fingers since 1969

10 Comments

I agree, functionality trumps looks. Good job!

HorizontalMike

Nice one. I bought the wood river tenon jig from Woodcraft a few months ago, and returned it right away. It was crap. The miter bar came with bushings that wouldn’t allow it to fit my miter slot, and the screws were so damn tight, you couldn’t loosen them to take them off. This will be a great alternative! Thank you for sharing!

Nice job. This one fits the KISS principle. (Keep it simple stupid!). I have a Rockwell tenoning jig and it is a pain to set up.

Tor and Odin are the greatest of gods.

Yep, simple is almost always better. In the short amount of time I’ve been working the wood, I have never bought a jig of any kind but I’ve made plenty. I kind of take some pride in that. I once made a simple triangle to square up large pieces of plywood. It’s big enough for nearly a half sheet and it works like a charm. Definitely a must have for making cabinets.

Here it is. Found a picture.

The jig rides the fence but keep the right side of the plywood away from the jig. Simple and effective

Losing fingers since 1969

You know Brian, you could always go off of the deep end like I did when I built a router based horizontal mortising machine. Much fun, but much more work to get the same product.

HorizontalMike

Hey that’s cool but I think you’re right about it bring more work. I think I’ll stick to the dado for now. :-) But I bet you get a lot more use out of that than just tenons. Looks like it could be useful for lots of other things.

Losing fingers since 1969

Here is the link to a tenon jig I just posted .
A different approach and inexpensive .

http://woodworkingweb.com/creations/122-quick-easy-and-inexpensive-tenon-jig-setup

I just saw that. It looks great. I’m cutting interior door rails with mine so your 2 blade setup wouldn’t work for me but I will definitely put that in the vault for when I’m making cabinet doors. I’m using a stacked dado to cut 7/16" wide by 2" tall per pass.

Losing fingers since 1969

Brian:

I like the functionality…

There was a time … perhaps the second or two as I press the ENTER key, that I was enamored with the Pantorouter – an ingenious device – and I purchased the plans. Basically, it’s the expensive version of HM’s every-bit-as-functional system. If I was smart, I would have contacted HM to pick his brains. Having said this, the KISS approach trumps virtually all pretenders to the throne.
Nicely Done.
MJCD

I have similar and it work great. I only used it a couple of time though.
Well done Brian.

This post is turning from “kiss” to some impressive machinery.
That is a cool machine HMike.

Abbas, Castro Valley, CA