Making Jigs

[Daniel Heine]

Hello,

I recently purchased a jig making tool from the Stots company. You use template to make dovetail jigs, box joint jigs, etc. I was at Rockler yesterday lloking for UHMW for the jiggs, and they want 25.00 for a peice 4 inches by 10 inches. Seemed high to me. Anyone know of a good sourceto buy UHMW? I would like to use it for my new crosscut sled as well.

Thanks,
Dan Heine

[tod evans]

daniel, i`ve had good luck using the wal-mart plastic cutting-boards, restraunt supply houses have bigger-n-thicker ones too...02 tod

[Frank Chaffee]

Daniel,
Check out the yellow pages for local plastic suppliers. I used to buy Delrin, UHMWPE, HDPE etc, at reasonable prices, custom cut to my needs.
I would no more buy pre-cut plastics from a woodworking store than I would buy steel or aluminum from a borg.
Frank

[Joe Chritz]

I get boat loads of scrap of Avonite (sp) (a different brand of solid surface material as well as the plastic cutting board material and something called Ridgelite which is a super dense cutting board material. This comes from a commercial kitchen manufacturing place a friend works at.

I am making a bunch of tablesaw inserts and sacrificial fences out of it. It is 1/2 thick but great stuff to work with.

Maybe check some cabinet places and see if the installers would part with some scraps. Try to avoid the Krispy Kreme green stuff I just got. It is stop a train ugly. :rolleyes:

I also have ordered stuff from MSC. They tend to be a bit pricey but have endless supply to choose from.

Joe

[Jamie Buxton]

In my experience, UHMW is rather flexible. I'd hate to go to all the trouble of making one of those Stots dovetail templates, and then having the webs flex while I'm routing. I'd use high-quality plywood -- baltic birch, finn ply, apple-ply, that sort of stuff.

[Vaughn McMillan]

I've bought UHMW plastic from www.thecuttingboardfactory.com. They sell all sorts of sheet plastic. I ended up buying some of their "off" size scraps from the "Specials" page. Good prices and good service the one time I used them. (No affiliation, except some of their plastic is in my shop jigs.)

I second Jamie's comments about UHMW being flexible. It's great for some things, like runners on a crosscut sled or other confined applications, but I don't know if I'd want a dovetail jig template made of it. I've had poor results with UHMW tablesaw inserts, because they won't stay absolutely flat.

HTH -

- Vaughn

[Mike Ruane]

http://www.mcmaster.com/

Enter UHMW in the search box.

HTH
mike

[frank shic]

daniel, i bought the stots dovetail master two years ago and it has worked very well for me (until i recently learned how to cut them by hand watching frank klausz's video which works even BETTER albeit SLOWER!). i used some 1/2" cabinet grade plywood that i had lying around (not the exterior grade!) to make the templates and then laminated three pieces of 3/4" ply together to make the backer block. cut the plywood dovetail template a little narrower than the master so that you'll be able to just move the dovetail jig in and out of your table-mounted router instead of having to turn it off, wait for the router to stop and then lift the jig off - very TIME-CONSUMING. i highly recommend making an offset stop out of three pieces of plywood or wood scrap which is basically a |_| shaped piece that you can clamp on to the backer block so that you can register the pieces quickly and consistently - especially when you are routing multiple drawers. don't forget to make a mark on the drawer pieces to keep track of which way the pins and tails should be facing. remember that you will need to flip the pieces in a CLOCKWISE motion instead of END FOR END. make sure you use screw type clamps instead of the quik-grip type clamps otherwise the pieces will move when the router bit engages the wood. last of all, make a couple of copies of the jig at one time and make sure that they are screwed TIGHT to the template master.

if any of this sounds confusing, check out this site:
http://benchmark.20m.com/reviews/StotsTemplate/StotsTemplateReview.html