Marking a Box Joint Jig for Router Cuts

Video Transcript

"Our next step is to take this piece of stock and put it up next to the miter gage and adjust it back and forth here until you have at least 3 and 1/2 inches of wood on the far side of the blade. In this case I have about 3 and 3/4 so I'm going to go ahead and just set this up at 3 and 1/2 inches and make a little mark down here for later on. We'll refer to that mark a little bit later. You want to have at least this amount of wood sticking out from outside of the blade because that is going to support our flat piece later when we start cutting these joints. This piece right here can be longer if you want and it can be not very much shorter. Now we want to move this piece over here and you want to allow oh a good inch and 1/2 on this side of this slot when you put this piece up next to it. I don't know if you can see that from where you are but there's about this much space and make a little mark right here. That looks maybe, let's move over here a little bit and give us some room. This mark right here is going to be about say that much. These marks here aren't really that critical, it is kind of up to you. They let you move this block back and forth to make fine adjustments and in the case of this jig right here, my old one, you can make several different slot set ups for different sizes, so we're ready to go ahead and cut our first slot in this piece of wood so we're going to be setting the router up and we'll be starting that in just a minute."