Creating a Stop for the Router on a Box Joint Jig

Video Transcript

"Good, now we're ready to cut a slot from this mark to this mark. It's going to be 1/2 inch wide and 1/4 of an inch deep. So I get my router and I've already set my router up with 1/2 inch straight bit. Now in my case I happen to have a plunge router but if you don't have a plunge router, I'll show you in a second how to do this with a regular round router. I'm going to set the router down with the center of the blade right on that line, if you can see it. Can the camera see that? We're going to put that down right in the center of that line. We'll get that nice and straight and for that we'll use our long square and lay the square up like this right along that edge, get in the center and using our flat chiseled pencil, draw a line like that. Take the router off and I'm going to set up a stop this is to butt the router up against and draw the flat edge of my router along this fence right here, this little strip I'm setting up that I'm going to clamp down and that will hold it the correct distance away from this line while we cut this slot. Looks like it is lined up pretty good. This is very very critical however to make sure that this piece of wood that I'm putting on this is right on that line. It has got to be right there otherwise when you cut the slot the slot may go up or down if this is twisted, your router is not going to make a straight line and this piece may not be able to slide back and forth on the table so this is real critical to get this line straight. I have my strip set up. Now I'm going to take a couple of clamps and I'm going to clamp the strip, the piece of stock together to the table. Hold it down steady and when you put the clamp on its ok if the clamp sticks over this strip a little bit because my router has a clearance here and so it won't hit it. And now we'll set the other clamp."