Making a Test Cut on a Box Joint Jig: Part 1

Video Transcript

"I'm going to go back to my old jig and just kind of plop it down on the table and use a quick clamp here and clamp it to the miter guide, come here you, just enough to hold it down and now I'm going to make a test cut and this is going to make sure that the dado cuts 1/2 inch wide and that my depth setting is sufficient for this block to go into the slot and to be flush with the table so we'll go ahead and do that right now. Here is our test slot and let's see how this block fits in there and it is very snug and that is as it should be. O'kay that block fits pretty tight in that slot and I'm going to lay it down against the table here and give it a knock or two. O'kay now what we have right here as you can see, it's not quite flat. There is two ways you can deal with that, one is to just grab a little piece of wood like this and give it a smack or two, like that and make sure it is flat so you can just pound it right down in the slot and that's a lot better. So now we have a good 1/2 inch slot so our dado is working fine and the depth seems to be pretty well because it's flush against the bottom and so now we're ready to make our cut on the jig that we're making now. So I'm going to take this off, set it aside, and we'll prepare to make our cuts on the new jig."