Every wood shop has its tools. But, sometimes the tools that you buy still won’t do the job you need them to do. For that reason, building jigs is often the only solution.

A jig is anything you build that will make a process work successfully. Usually, it is a way to hold a piece of wood while it is being shaped, either by hand or by machine. Jigs come in all shapes and sizes, and they tend to be one woodworker’s design. But, one can often look through print or online resources and get great ideas from others to help solve a problem.

I find that if I build a jig, taking my time to think it through, design it carefully, and build it well and accurately, it can often serve for many years and well beyond the original use for which it was intended. Let me show you some jigs that I have built for various jobs. These are by no means all the jigs I have made!

     (click on images to enlarge)

I often build a prototype of something, and even jigs can have prototypes. This is a project I am playing with, a sashimono meditation bench. The jig is designed to hold the piece while I route a sliding dovetail into the wood at a specific angle and depth. As I played around with the concept, I quickly banged together this prototype jig. Once I work out the details, I will rebuild it to be much more accurate and permanent. By doing it carefully, I can repeat the step and thereby make a number of these.

This jig allows me to machine a mortise into a round leg that is used on the Triangle Table you can see in the gallery. First, the legs are turned on the lathe to round, then mortised, then returned to the lathe to be turned to a taper. This jig holds a round piece of wood in a specific aspect to allow two such mortises to be cut.

Some jigs are simple. The ones on the right here serve as fences for the table saw, preserving the material on the original table saw fence. The long white item is used to provide a track with which to route a dado or groove into a panel. This is often used in building cabinets for the floors or shelves.

 

Cutting dovetails on the band saw requires very accurate cuts, and this angled bed allows me to cut a specific angle and do so over and over.

These two jigs are for a new skill I am learning. On Japanese shoji screens, the lattice pattern is called kumiko. Thin strips of wood are cut into intricate rosettes, but holding the pieces firmly while cutting, or actually shaving the ends to specific angles requires this jig to ensure accuracy. As I develop this new skill, I will post more in the future.

My current project is building some backgammon sets. You can see the original that I created decades ago in the gallery. To make the careful cuts that allow the inlays to work perfectly, I have built these three jigs to hold the wood, one for each specific angle. By spending extra time, and adding solid hold-downs, the work will be done on the myriad pieces in a way that guarantees their accuracy.

Not every job needs a jig to achieve the end results, but when a specific task needs a special tool, taking the time to design and build a jig can make all the difference. An added bonus is using a tool that I built that produces the results I originally envision!