Wisconsin Woods Woodworking

May 2009

New Plans Added!

This Months Feature - Portable Saw Jig
	Now is the time when we begin to tackle all those outdoor projects. Unfortunately whether you are working in the back yard, or that cottage in the north woods we don't always have the luxury of using those precise machine tools we have come to rely on in the shop. So today we will build a cutting jig for your portable circular saw that I have found works great for ripping plywood in preparation for moving into the workshop (if you have a limited space workshop like myself). But not only that, the accuracy it provides allowed me to actually build a set of kitchen cabinets at a cabin in the middle of the woods. Here you can see the finished version of the 4 foot jig we are building today, but an 8 foot version is great to have as well. As you can see it is simple, takes only a few minutes to build from scrap material, and saves a tremendous amount of frustration.
As you can see here, the jig consists of a base of 1/4 inch plywood and in this case a guide strip of 1/2 inch MDF. I used the factory edge on the MDF to insure I had an extremely straight edge to begin with. The dimensions here will vary depending on the width from the edge of the baseplate to the blade on your saw. In this case the saw's baseplate measured 4 1/2 inches to the blade so we allowed 5 inches initially for the saw, and another 2 1/2 inches which is the width of the guide rail making our plywood base 7 1/2 inches wide X 48 inches long and our guide 2 1/2 inches wide by 48 inches long. We begin by applying glue to the guide strip and clamping it to the edge of the plywood base with the factory edge towards the inside of the jig.		From Taunton Press Download this video today!
	Here we have completed gluing the guide strip to the base and you can see we have used screws about every 8 inches to further secure the guide.
Once the Glue has dried, to complete the jig we simply set the saw cut depth for slightly more than the plywood base, and proceed to carefully run the saw along the guide to cut off the excess plywood base. In doing so we leave an edge on the plywood that precisely matches the cutoff line of the saw blade.
	Now to use this jig, we simply mark the location of our cutoff on workpiece and clamp the jig in place using the edge of the plywood base as a guide.
Portable Router Table Here is another portable jig that I have found to be very handy. This portable router table I can load in the back of the car and when I am working remotely I can still have a very functional router table for my projects. For the full set of plans for these check out our budget tune-ups section.	Portable Router Table Plans
	NEW REVIEWS! Check out our new review of the Rockler Fence Clamps
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