Measure the length of your remaining widest piece of 1x12, and the width between your guide rails. Box finger joint jig router 90 one of your rails down to the side of the line closest to the end of the board. Butt your material up to the fixed spacer and make your next cut. The mate for the finnger will be started without the spacer, and your boards will line up perfectly. You could make it do wider or narrower cuts, but it will be fixed to whatever width you build it as.

Lock it into the miter slot of your table with our comfortable Easy-to-Grip knobs and you're ready to rout. Make strong, tight-fitting box joints on your router table—great for small- to medium-sized boxes! Item Skip to the end of the images gallery. Skip to the beginning of the images gallery. In stock. See how you can get free standard shipping. This box joint will be set precisely to do half-inch cuts.

You could make it do wider or narrower cuts, but it will be fixed to whatever width you build it as. Any table saw that works with a dado bit will almost certainly support a half-inch wide groove. If you decide to build your jig to a different gauge, then make replace all the measurements here with the desired width. Take your remaining 1x12, hold it vertically against the rip fence, and pass it over the blade. This will set one width of your spacer.

Cut out the rest of your spacer. Note: this will be tough at the end, because your smallest piece will be between the blade and the rip fence. Use a push stick, another scrap. Be careful as always! Use the mitre saw to cut off two lengths of this stick, about four inches long. Now that you've done all the rip cuts, it's time to start attaching the rails. For this step, you'll need the rails, glue, and the widest remaining piece of your 1x12 should be about " wide by now - I was lucky enough to have a fresh piece, so my base is a full 12" wide, but it doesn't have to be that wide.

Square up at least one end of this board on the mitre saw that is, make sure it's perpendicular to the sides. This is important for the next step. Measure the length of your remaining widest piece of 1x12, and the width between your guide rails. Subtract the guide rail distance from the length of your board, divide that number in half, and measure that distance from the end. For example, assume I have 24" of board, and the gap between guide rails is 10". The difference is 14", and half of that is 7".

So, I come 7" in from one end of the board and mark it with the carpenter square for now, just do one end. Glue one of your rails down to the side of the line closest to the end of the board. Use your square to straighten it up. In the first picture, I obviously did not use a carpenter's combination square. I suggest always using a combination square, as my jig did come out a bit off angle.

If you're too impatient to let the glue dry, predrill a few holes and screw it in place. This doesn't have to be pretty, so I screwed them in tightly so as to countersink them below the surface of the rail. This will prevent the screw head from rubbing on the table. Since you know your width between your rails, measure out the width from the edge of the fixed rail closest to the center, mark your next line, and set the next rail in the same way.

While the glue is wet, take a second to fit the jig in your table saw to make sure you got the width correct. It's important that the guard rails line up to the table saw grooves, moreso than lining up to the ends. To make sure your guide rails work, test for squareness of the rails, and to get clear on where the middle of the board is, cut through your base about halfway and check it with the square.

Go find that 4" rip cut you made in step 3. Go ahead, I'll wait. OK Got it? Use your square to draw out a line perpendicular to the end of the board you squared up in the previous step about two inches from the back of your base.

Double-check that line is perpendicular to the saw cut in the middle. It's more important that you are perpendicular to the saw cut than to the end of the board anyway, so having both there is a good way to make sure you're square all around.

Set your backplane in with glue and screws. Put two screws on each side from underneath. Also, make sure to give several inches of clearance from the center cut.

Support this board with the 2x4 scrap. Put it in place behind the backplane and screw it down from the bottom and through the backplane. OK, time to get interesting Move the rip fence out of the way. The other is used to basically eliminate any space and will allow the router bit to cut a hole in the end of a board.

I raised the router bit a skosh above the thickness of the wood I'd be using. It is easier to sand off a protrusion than to fill in a depression. Then ran it into the rear fence and tested the keys. I made that error and knocked out the key and trimmed it down and the spacer down to the proper height.

Now to test the jig. I cut two pieces of wood the same size. Then I removed the spacer and staggered and aligned the two notches on and up to the fixed key. It then became a matter of leap-frogging over the key until I reached the end of the board. The same result can be gotten by doing each separately. The first goes against the permanent key, the second goes against the spacer.

Basically, you are creating tongues and groves that will go together to form a joint. I was very pleased with the result. Now I must admit I looked at dozens of How Tos on making this jig and Frankensteined my own version to fit my router.

You'll notice I only have one runner where as most I saw have two. Even one I saw made a second runner off the side of the table. Some were so elaborate it'd take me forever to build it. The simple one I show here took a few hours on and off while doing other things around the house. It meets my needs, and that is the whole purpose.

Make a jig to suit your personal requirements. I'm making my jig now.

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